ABSTRACT
Beethoven's sketchbooks have been familiar to a comparatively large public for over 100 years—not indeed at first hand but through the writings of Gustav Nottebohm. His conversation books have often been referred to, and were drawn upon both by his first biographer, Anton Schindler, and by the author of the classic life, A. W. Thayer. By 1818 Beethoven was almost stone deaf (although the degree of his impenetrability seems to have varied). He therefore resorted to the practice of keeping with him small notebooks in which his friends and visitors could write down what they wanted to say to him. Thayer is said to have transcribed almost all the books that he found in Berlin. His transcriptions have never been located, though he had drawn on them extensively in the preparations for that part of his biography that was published after his death.
