other movements were received enthusiastically, but the fugue was not a success. Many musicians and critics in Vienna's music periodicals denounced the fugue. Composer and violinist Louis Spohr called it, and the other late quartets, "an indecipherable, uncorrected horror". Despite the contemporary criticism, Beethoven himself never doubted the value of the fugue. Karl Holz, Beethoven's secretary, confidant and second violinist of the Schuppanzigh Quartet that first performed the work, brought Beethoven the news that the audience had demanded encores of two middle movements. Beethoven, enraged, was reported to have growled, "And why didn't they encore the Fugue? That alone should have been repeated! Cattle! Asses!" However, the fugue was so roundly condemned by critics and audience alike that Beethoven's publisher, Matthias Artaria (1793–1835), decided to try to convince Beethoven to publish it separately. Artaria tasked Holz with persuading Beethoven to separate the fugue from the rest of the quartet. Holz wrote: Artaria ... charged me with the terrible and difficult task of convincing Beethoven to compose a new finale, which would be more accessible to the listeners as well as the instrumentalists, to substitute for the fugue which was so difficult to understand. I maintained to Beethoven that this fugue, which departed from the ordinary and surpassed even the last quartets in originality, should be published as a separate work and that it merited a designation as a separate opus. I communicated to him that Artaria was disposed to pay him a supplementary honorarium for the new finale. Beethoven told me he would reflect on it, but already on the next day I received a letter giving his agreement. Why the notoriously stubborn Beethoven apparently agreed so readily to replace the fugue is an enigma in the history of this quintessentially enigmatic piece. Some historians have speculated that he likely did it for the money (Beethoven was extremely bad at managing his personal finances and was often broke), while others believe it was to satisfy his critics, or simply because Beethoven came to feel the fugue stood best on its own. The fugue is connected to the other movements of Op. 130 by various hints of motifs, and by a tonal link to the preceding Cavatina movement (the Cavatina ends on a G, and the fugue begins with the same G). The lively replacement final movement is in the form of a contredanse and is completely uncontroversial. Beethoven composed this