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Beethoven, the Man and the Artist, as Revealed in His Own Words by Ludwig van Beethoven
page 45 of 113 (39%)
house of a merchant, who was seeking information about an oratorio
which Beethoven had been commissioned to write by the Handel and
Haydn Society of Boston.)

95. "Ha! 'Faust;' that would be a piece of work! Something might
come out of that! But for some time I have been big with three
other large works. Much is already sketched out, that is, in my
head. I must be rid of them first:--two large symphonies
differing from each other, and each differing from all the
others, and an oratorio. And this will take a long time. you
see, for a considerable time I have had trouble to get myself to
write. I sit and think, and think I've long had the thing, but it
will not on the paper. I dread the beginning of these large works.
Once into the work, and it goes."

(In the summer of 1822, to Rochlitz, at Baden. The symphonies
referred to are the ninth and tenth. They existed only in
Beethoven's mind and a few sketches. In it he intended to combine
antique and modern views of life.)

["In the text Greek mythology, cantique ecclesiastique; in the
Allegro, a Bacchic festival." (Sketchbook of 1818)]

[The oratorio was to have been called "The Victory of the Cross."
It was not written. Schindler wrote to Moscheles in London about
Beethoven in the last weeks of his life: "He said much about the
plan of the tenth symphony. As the work had shaped itself in his
imagination it might have become a musical monstrosity, compared
with which his other symphonies would have been mere opuscula."]

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