In mid-February, Diabelli brought to Beethoven a lithograph of Haydn's birthplace in Rohrau, which he had just published. Gerhard von Breuning writes, "The picture caused him great pleasure; when I came at noon, he showed it to me at once: 'Look, I got this today. Just see the little house, and such a great man was born in it. Your father must have a frame made for me; I'm going to hang it up.'" Gerhard brought the lithograph to his piano teacher, who made the frame and added in the lower margin, "Joseph Hayden's [sic] Birthplace in Rohrau." Beethoven became furious at the misspelling of Haydn's name; his "face turned red with rage and he asked me angrily: 'Who wrote that, anyway? ... What's that donkey's name? An ignoramus like that calls himself a piano teacher, calls himself a musician, and can't even spell the name of a master like Haydn.'"
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Sunday, September 30, 2018
An Ignoramus
Maynard Solomon, Beethoven (New York: Schirmer Books, 1979), p. 290: