Walter Meyer asked:

>I replied to Margaret's response to my question before I read Joyce's.
>What was WoO 16?  A work for solo instrument?  Ensemble?  Voice?

Some dances, not very important, a trifle.

>>But also concerning the life there's still uncertainty about various
>>important problems, like the riddle of the Immortal Beloved.
>
>Some of us might not consider the answer to that riddle so important!

Yes, I can understand this very well. However, Beethoven's diary and
letters show that the affair was a very important one, a watershed in his
life. It can be compared to the Heiligenstadt crisis, when he realized
that he would become deaf and expressed his feelings in that famous
ego-document, known as the Heiligenstadt Testament. A decade later he had
to undergo a second crisis and again he suffered from a deep, a very deep
depression. According to Schindler (yes, I know, an unreliable witness) the
crisis of 1812/13 (the letter dates from  July 1812) was deeper than the
crisis of 1802. If so, this has something to say. The man Beethoven before
the love affair was another man than the Beethoven after the affair. So we
must conclude that the unknown woman must have played a very important role
in his life.

>>To this day the identity of the woman is unknown.  Oh yes, many
>>fascinating hypotheses and speculations, but nobody who is able to prove
>>beyond any doubt one of those theories, not even Solomon.  Only a few
>>months ago a completely new hypothesis for a completely new candidate
>>popped up. It was published in The Beethoven Journal.
>
>So, at least in that regard, Thayer-Forbes' biography need not be
>considered dated.

That's an error, for Thayer's digressions on the Immortal Beloved are as
wrong as Solomon's! And IMHO the new hypothesis is also nonsense.

Joyce Maier
www.ademu.com/Beethoven