CHAPTER VIII. A Year of Sickness and Sorrow--The

Last String Quartets--Wolfmayer Commissions a “Requiem” and Pays in Advance--Many Works _in petto_--Controversy with Prince Galitzin and His Son--The Fugue in the B-flat Quartet--“Muss es sein?”--Dedication of the Ninth Symphony--The King of Prussia and His Gift of a Dubious Diamond--Abbé Stadler--Beethoven Defends Mozart’s “Requiem”--Friedrich Wieck--Beethoven Goes to His Brother’s Summer Home--Life at Gneixendorf--Relations with His Brother’s Family--Young Oxen Thrown into a Panic Fear--The Quartet in F and a New Finale for the Quartet in B-flat--The Year 1826--Beethoven’s Last Compositions 218