Ludwig van Beethoven, Brief an Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig, Teplitz, 23. August 1811, Autograph

Beethoven writes to his publisher from Teplitz in Bohemia, where he is taking the waters in the summer. He hoped to improve his health problems, in particular his hearing problems.

He tells him that he has finished correcting the Oratorio op. 85 and the Lieder op. 83 and that they are on their way to Leipzig.

Regarding the oratorio he notes that the extremely bad text cannot, however, be altered very much, as it will otherwise no longer fit to the music ("even a bad text has been thought out as a whole, so it is difficult when making single changes to avoid upsetting this. A single word can be so endowed with meaning that it has to stay."). But he has accepted several of the publisher's changes, "as they really are improvements".

Beethoven is extremely pleased with the positive reception of Mozart's "Don Giovanni" in Rome (he had obviously read a report about it in the AmZ). Beethoven greatly revered Mozart, particularly his operas and the supreme ease with which he brought together text and music. The fact that others also admired Mozart's works as much as he did "makes me as happy as if it were my own work".