A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Leidesdorf, Max

by George Grove

LEIDESDORF, Max Josef, a musician and music-seller of Vienna, who appears to have lived there from about 1804 to 1827, and then to have left it for Florence, where he died Sept. 26, 1840. He will go down to posterity embalmed in a little note^[1] of Beethoven's, apparently written at the earlier of the two dates just given above, sending Ries for some easy 4-hand pieces—'and better still let him have them for nothing'—beginning with a pun on his name, 'Dorf des Leides!' and ending 'Beethoven minimus.' Leidesdorf was one of those who signed the address to Beethoven in 1824, praying him to produce the Ninth Symphony and the Mass in D, and to write a second opera. [See p. 196b.] He was one of Schubert's publishers.

[ G. ]

1. Nohl, Briefe Beethoven's, No. 35.