‘Beethoven now busies himself, as Papa Haydn once did, with arrangements of Scottish songs. He is apparently quite incapable of greater accomplishments.’ When the Missa Solemnis and the Ninth Symphony appeared two or three years later, the unfortunate critic who wrote those words in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in 1821 must have thanked his lucky stars that his article had been published anonymously. But he had a point. The last decade of Beethoven's life began strangely enough. For several years after completing the two cello sonatas, op. 102, discussed in the previous chapter, he composed no chamber music of importance apart from a fine arrangement for string quintet of the Piano Trio in C minor, op. 1 no. 3, published as op. 104, and the short Fugue in D major, also for string quintet, op. 137 – both composed in 1817.

Beethoven's health, which had taken a turn for the worse in 1815, was at least partly responsible. That year, and yet again in the 1820s, he was confined to bed for several weeks at a time with serious abdominal and breathing problems. To add to his woes, by 1818 his hearing had deteriorated to such an extent that, in addition to his ear-trumpet, he increasingly had to resort to conversation books in which his many visitors and friends wrote their questions and comments. There were periods of remission, however, when Beethoven's general health improved. Between 1816 and 1820, for example, he spent many happy evenings with the cultured and musical Giannattasio family, whose school his nephew Karl attended for a time. He particularly enjoyed accompanying the Giannattasio's two daughters, Franziska (Fanny) and Anna, in performances of his own songs – evenings which, unknown to him, had at least one unsuspected consequence: ‘Is it really possible’, the serious Fanny wrote in her diary in 1816, ‘that he has become so important, so dear to me that I should have been irritated and hurt by my sister's facetious advice not to fall in love with him?’

There were some cheerful letters from Beethoven too: ‘Well, thank God, I am now feeling better’, he told Franz Brentano some time later; ‘good health seems at last to be returning to revive my spirits, so that I may again start a new life to be devoted to my art.