50. "Herr Stein is completely daft on the subject of his
daughter. She is eight years old and learns everything by heart.
Something may come of her for she has talent, but not if she goes
on as she is doing now; she will never acquire velocity because
she purposely makes her hand heavy. She will never learn the most
necessary, most difficult and principal thing in music, that is
time, because from childhood she has designedly cultivated the
habit of ignoring the beat."

(Augsburg, October 23, 1777, to his father. Nanette Stein
afterward married Andreas Streicher, who was Schiller's companion
in his flight to Franconia. As Frau Streicher she became
Beethoven's faithful friend and frequently took it upon herself
to straighten out his domestic affairs.)

51. "If she does not get some thoughts and ideas (for now she has
absolutely none), it will all be in vain, for God knows, I can
not give her any. It is not her father's intention to make a
great composer out of her. 'She shall,' he says, 'not write any
operas, or arias, or symphonies, but only great sonatas for her
instrument and mine!' I gave her her fourth lesson today, and so
far as the rules of composition and her exercises are concerned I
am pretty well satisfied with her. She wrote a very good bass to
the first minuet which I set her, and has already begun to write
in three parts. It goes, but she gets bored too quickly. I can
not help her; progress is impossible, she is too young even if
she had talent. Unfortunately she has none; she must be taught
artificially; she has no ideas, there are no results, I have
tried in every sort of way. Among other things it occurred to me
to write down a very simple minuet and to see if she could write