[E] It is a pleasant
reflection that this country is no longer the terra incognita in musical
matters that it was in Beethoven's time. The ready recognition extended
Wagner from the first here, has, no doubt, helped to bring this about.
[D] When writing this letter Beethoven could have had no prevision that
in this aboriginal North America, in a little village called Natick,
there was then living a five-year-old boy, answering to the name of
Alexander W. Thayer, who was eventually to furnish a biography of the
master, so painstaking, exact and voluminous, that it is unique in its
class. The Beethoven biography was Thayer's life-work, to which he
gladly sacrificed his means as well, and was then only brought down to
the year 1816. Thayer's name will always be associated with that of
Beethoven, it is such a record-making work. It is published only in
German at this writing (1904), but an English translation is promised on
completion of the second edition, one volume of which has appeared in
1902. Mr. Thayer died in 1897.
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