It is
related that Beethoven's friend, Marie Bigot, played the Appassionata
Sonata at sight from the manuscript for the delectation of some friends.
Madame Bigot was the wife of the librarian of Count Rasoumowsky and
evidently took a prominent part in these entertainments. Sight-reading
before a critical audience is surely a difficult enough task under the
most favoring conditions; how much more so from the manuscript, with its
excisions and corrections and general indistinctness! It was, however,
an every-day matter especially in chamber-music. Huemmel is reported as
saying: "In Vienna there are a hundred ladies who can play the piano
better than I." Another musician, writing from Vienna in 1820, said: "In
every house there is a good instrument; at one, a banker's, there are
five."
On one occasion, some one laid before Beethoven a quartet in manuscript
which had just been composed. The band essayed it, of course at sight,
not one of the party having seen the manuscript before. The cellist got
out in the first movement.
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