Beethoven promises his publisher Simrock in Bonn that he will send him the Mass op. 123 in the spring (in actual fact the mass was only finished one and a half years later). He excuses the delay on account of illness, the translator was also overworked and not available. (To make the mass more marketable the Latin text was to be translated into German so that the mass could be performed like an oratorio in the concert hall. According to the BGA Friedrich August Kanne might have been the translator. However it is not possible to identify him with complete certainty as the work was far from being completed at the time this letter was written and the translation referred to here was not realized, nor did Simrock publish the mass.) Beethoven already praises the quality of the expected German text. He closes the letter with greetings to Franz Gerhard Wegeler, adding one of his less inventive puns.
