Ludwig van Beethoven, Brief an Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig, Franzensbad, 9. August 1812, Autograph

Beethoven promises his publisher to soon deliver the title for the Mass op. 86. Here he only cites the person to whom it is to be dedicated, although he had already done so in an earlier letter.

Beethoven briefly mentions the benefit concert which he had given together with the violinist Giovanni Battista Polledro in Karlsbad. The proceeds went to the victims of the fire in Baden near Vienna. He tells him about his stay at the spa and is a little disgruntled, "once again I have to splash around in the water, I have hardly finished filling my insides with a goodly quantity of the same and then I have to go and have the outside washed over again and again."

The composer describes Goethe, whom he had met here, pityingly as a fawning courtier, "the court air pleases Goethe too much, more than is fitting for a writer. There is not much more that can be said here about the ridiculous behaviour of the virtuosos if a poet who is considered to be the nation's most important teacher can forget all else in the presence of such glitter."