Beethoven offers the publisher Artaria the Mass op. 123 for 1,000 florins C.M. He assures him that this is the price he has already been offered by another publisher (C. F. Peters in Leipzig). Beethoven presses for a prompt answer as the other publisher is also waiting for a reply and the next day is mail day. Beethoven adds that this sum cannot be offset against the existing loan of 150 florins (Artaria had lent him this sum one and a half years before), as he urgently needs the complete sum. Furthermore he asks him to maintain complete secrecy regarding the mass.
In Beethoven's time the publishing business was extremely hard. Publishers did not pay any royalties, only a flat rate and were then able to publish the work and sell it as often as they wished. It is therefore no surprise that the prices were often bitterly bargained and composers kept trying to acquire the best possible price of their work. It was therefore common practice to negotiate with several publishers simultaneously to raise the price. Beethoven was very good at this and played his publishers off against each other without a qualm. Plagued by financial worries he offered the Missa solemnis to no less than seven publishers simultaneously, to whom he said that he must receive at least 1,000 florins and that he already had an interested party for this price. His friend Ferdinand Ries, who lived in London, was also commissioned to find an English publisher. In the end it was the Mainz publisher Schott who cut the deal.
