As the subscription for Beethoven's monument is only getting on
slowly, and as the carrying out of this undertaking seems to be
rather far distant, I venture to make a proposal to you, the
acceptance of which would make me very happy. [In Bonn,
Beethoven's birthplace, a committee had been formed to erect a
Beethoven monument. Yet, in spite of the assent which met the
proposal, the contributions flowed in so meagrely - Paris, for
example, contributed only 424 francs 90 centimes - that Liszt, on
reading this in a paper, immediately formed the noble resolution
mentioned in the above letter. "Such a niggardly almsgiving, got
together with such trouble and sending round the hat, must not be
allowed to help towards building our Beethoven's monument!" he
wrote to Berlioz. Thus the German nation has in great measure to
thank Franz Liszt for the monument erected to its greatest
composer at Bonn.]
I offer myself to make up, from my own means, the sum still
wanting for the erection of the monument, and ask no other
privilege than that of naming the artist who shall execute the
work. That artist is Bartolini of Florence, who is universally
considered the first sculptor in Italy.
I have spoken to him about the matter provisionally, and he
assures me that a monument in marble (which would cost about
fifty to sixty thousand francs) could be finished in two years,
and he is ready to begin the work at once.
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