Footnotes

¹ Schenker's diary for Friday October 16 records: "Breisach appears again for his lesson. The explanation of the notorious passage in the development section [of the Fifth Symphony], where Beethoven prepares to regain the recapitulation, specifically from the emergence and effect of the triplet figure, moved him so much that, innocently and trustingly in equal measure, he puts the question as to why I alone could provide an answer, whether it was due to [my] work or talent, and so on. In my reply I stressed above all the phenomenon, which Breisach could also find confirmed by Weingartner, that every genius-endowed sign contains something ultimately concealed, which most people could only approach to a limited extent; and even those very people who appeared to come very close still always remained sufficiently far away. In this way, I wished to give some insight into the true depths of things about which it is merely the case that the talented person cannot approach it. But the boy seems not to have properly understood the reference to the matter; and he seemed more interested in the person than in the matter, and the question of his value and categorization."

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