Page:Rolland - Beethoven, tr. Hull, 1927.pdf/60

 Congress of 1814. Society was distracted from art by politics. Musical taste was spoilt by Italianism, and the fashionable people favoured Rossini, treating Beethoven as pedantic. Beethoven's friends and protectors went away or died: Prince Kinsky in 1812, Lichnovsky in 1814, Lobkovitz in 1816. Rasumowsky, for whom he had written the three admirable Quartets, Opus 59, gave his last concert in February, 1815. In 1815 Beethoven quarrelled with Stephen von Breuning, the friend of his childhood, the brother of Eleonore. From this time he was alone. "I have no friends. I am alone in the world" he wrote in his notebook of 1816.

His deafness became complete. After the