But many details remained to be settled, the most vexatious to Beethoven being the prices of admission. Beethoven wanted an advance on the regular tariff. Duport appealed to the Minister of Police, but permission to raise the prices was refused. In the selection of solo singers Therese Grünbaum had been considered, but she was eventually set aside in favor of Henrietta Sontag, for whom Beethoven had a personal admiration (he could not know much, if anything, about her voice and art). She and Unger, who had a sincere love for Beethoven’s music, were the composer’s “pretty witches” and had been invited by him to dinner. Jäger had been suggested for the tenor part, but Anton Haitzinger was chosen because, in a spirit of professional courtesy, Jäger refused to take a part away from a Kärnthnerthor singer. Forti and Preisinger were rival candidates for the solo bass parts. The latter was considered the more musical of the two and better fitted for Beethoven’s music, and was therefore selected. He took part in the rehearsals, and for him Beethoven made a change in the music of the recitative in the Symphony (Schindler gives it in his biography); but at the last the _tessitura_ of the part was found to be too high for him and Preisinger had to withdraw. It was impossible under the circumstances now to appeal to Forti, and the part was entrusted to Seipelt of the company at the Theater-an-der-Wien.
It was originally intended that the programme should consist of the new Overture (Op. 124), the Mass in D and the new Symphony; but realizing that this would make the concert unduly long Beethoven first decided to omit the _Gloria_ of the mass, and after the rehearsals had already begun he curtailed the list still more by eliding the _Sanctus_. The large amount of copying involved was done by a staff of men some of whom worked, apparently, under the supervision of the widow of Schlemmer, Beethoven’s favorite copyist who had died the year before. The composer angrily rejected Haslinger’s suggestion that the chorus parts be engraved, but consented to have them duplicated by lithographic process. The church authorities were opposed to the performance of missal music in a theatre and the censor therefore withheld his approval of the programme. So, in April, at the suggestion of Schindler, Beethoven wrote a letter to the censor, Sartorius, in which he pleaded for his consent to the performance on the ground that he was giving the concert by request, had involved himself in costs by reason of the copying, there was no time in which to produce other novelties, and if consent were refused he would be compelled to abandon the concert and all his expenditures would have been in vain. The three ecclesiastical pieces which were to be performed were to be listed on the programme as hymns. The letter failed of its mission; not until an appeal was made to Count Sedlnitzky, the Police President, through the agency of Count Lichnowsky, was the performance sanctioned.