The Op. 18 Quartets—Influence of Förster—Deafness increases —Despair and Resolution—Countess Guicciardi and the “Moonlight” Sonata fiction—Beethoven’s playing of Bach—A subscription for Bach’s Daughter—Sixteen subscribers!—Prometheus Ballet Music

Beethoven had by this time essayed all the branches of composition on which his fame rests. For pianoforte solo he had written numerous sets of variations and ten of the sonatas, and this year (1800) was to see the appearance of the eleventh, in B flat, Op. 22; his first symphony had been well received, and was on the point of publication; he had to his credit three concertos, (B flat, C, and C minor) ; two ’cello and three violin sonatas; many works for wind ensemble—a medium for which he had a strong partiality at first, but for which he wrote nothing during the last twenty-six years of his life, save the Equali for four trombones; some choral works and songs, among the latter being “Adelaide” and the scena “Ah! perfido”; and he had tried his hand at stage work with some ballet music. He was now to develop the form in which his genius was to reveal itself more completely, perhaps, than in any other—the string quartet.