This conversation was the beginning of a more constant intercourse, leading to a friendship founded on such close agreement of principle in all matters of importance as to render it indissoluble: I have ever since, in joy or sorrow, been assured of your hearty sympathy and support.
I should be perfectly justified in offering you this book as a testimony of my love and gratitude, even if its contents concerned you less. But music has ever played so important a part in our intercourse, whether I sat beside you at the piano, or stood behind your chair, or we wandered into talk; so great a share in the book belongs to you, who have ever urged me forward with the work, sometimes (I may acknowledge it now) even unmercifully, that I can offer it in its completed form to none with more pleasure and confidence than to yourself.
And now you must give me leave to lay before you much that is on my mind concerning it. Let me imagine that I have come as of old to you and your wife for comfort and encouragement, and prepare for a long talk.
You are aware, my dear friend, how this biography originated, and how it has gradually increased to an extent which has alarmed even myself. Occupied at first only with the biography of Beethoven, I soon saw that it would be impossible to do full justice to his great and original creations without a clear survey of the life and works of Mozart, the pioneer of the musical future, as whose natural heir Beethoven attained his pre-eminent position in the history of music. The exposition would have been too comprehensive for an introduction, and I determined to arrange the ill-digested and unreadable mass of biographical material which Nissen had collected into a readable treatise on the life of Mozart, to serve as a foundation for the observations which I meant to deduce therefrom. With this end in view, I gradually amassed so large a store of materials for the story of his life and the appreciation of his works, that there rose before me the duty of erecting a new structure upon a new foundation. But before I proceed to specify the sources whence I have drawn my materials,
allow me to glance over all the biographies of Mozart hitherto published, so far as they are known to me.