I have been here for three weeks in search of health and have now received your letter of August 2nd. It may have been lying in Vienna for some time. I had just started to revise the oratorio [Opus 85] and the songs, [Opus 83] and you will have all these works in a few days – Here and there the text must remain in its original form. I know that the text is extremely bad. But once one has thought out a whole work which is based even on a bad text, it is difficult to prevent this whole from being destroyed if individual alterations are made here and there. And although it may only be the case of one single word to which sometimes great significance has been attached, well then, that word must stand. And he is a poor composer who is neither able nor anxious to extract as much good as possible even from an inferior text. And if he can’t do this, alterations will certainly not improve the whole –
I have accepted some alterations, because they really are improvements –
All good wishes; and let me have some news of you soon. Oliva is here and says he is going to write to you – The good reception of Mozart’s Don Juan gives me as much pleasure as if it were my own work. Although I know plenty of unprejudiced Italians who do justice to Germans, yet the indolent and easy-going character of Italian musicians is certainly responsible to a great extent for that nation’s unsatisfactory attitude in the matter. However, I have met several Italian lovers of music who preferred our composers to their Paisiello (to whom I have done more justice than his own countrymen) and so forth –
Your most devoted servant
Ludwig van Beethoven