Page:Anecdotes of Great Musicians.djvu/199

Rh ; and while their auditors think them torn and swayed by some passionate emotion, they may be enjoying some bit of by-play on the stage, entirely opposite to the assumed emotion.

For instance, it is related that Mme. Devrient, when, as "Leonora," she offered Haizinger, the "Florestan" of the evening, the crust of bread that the libretto prescribes for the latter, and he was somewhat slow in taking it, impatiently whispered to him:—

"Why in the deuce don't you take it? Do you want it buttered?"  

Beethoven was an enemy to all quackery and shallow pretensions, and disliked the meaningless style of composition that was so prevalent in his day.

Diabelli, the music publisher, importuned him to write a series of variations, which was a very popular style at that time; but Beethoven declined to write that kind of thing, till, one day, he threw a manuscript in at the publisher's door, with the exclamation:—

"Here are three and thirty for one; but now, for God's sake, leave me in peace!"

Diabelli had asked Beethoven to be one of the fifty composers to contribute to the book of fifty variations; but instead of joining the fifty and writing one, he himself wrote thirty-three variations on the Diabelli theme. This series of variations is one of the best known of his smaller works.  

Franz Liszt used to take great pleasure in relating various happenings of his youthful days, and none gave him more merriment than the recital of a trick he tried to play on Czerny, with whom be began to study when but nine years of age. Czerny was very kind and Liszt