# Beethoven (Rolland)/His Life

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HIS LIFE
He was short and thick set, broad shouldered and of athletic build. A big face, ruddy in complexion—except towards the end of his life, when his colour became sickly and yellow, especially in the winter after he had been remaining indoors far from the fields. He had a massive and rugged forehead, extremely black and extraordinarily thick hair through which it seemed the comb had never passed, for it was always very rumpled, veritable bristling "serpents of Medusa." His eyes shone ​with prodigious force. It was one of the chief things one noticed on first encountering him, but many were mistaken in their colour. When they shone out in dark splendour from a sad and tragic visage, they generally appeared black; but they were really a bluish grey. Small and very deep set, they flashed fiercely in moments of passion or warmth, and dilated in a peculiar way under the influence of inspiration, reflecting his thoughts with a marvellous exactness. Often they inclined up wards with a melancholy expression. His nose was short and broad with the nostrils of a lion; the mouth refined, with the lower lip somewhat prominent. He had very strong jaws, which would easily break nuts, a large indentation in his chin imparted a curious irregularity to the face. "He had a charming smile," said Moscheles, "and in conversation a manner often lovable and inviting confidence; on the other hand his laugh was most disagreeable, loud, discordant and strident"—the laugh of a man unused to happiness. His usual expression was one of melancholy. Rellstab in 1825 said that he had to summon up all his courage to prevent himself from breaking into tears when he looked into Beethoven's "tender eyes with their speaking sadness." Braun von Braunthal met him in an inn a year later. Beethoven was sitting ​in a corner with closed eyes, smoking a long pipe—a habit which grew on him more and more as he approached death. A friend spoke to him. He smiled sadly, drew from his pocket a little note-tablet, and in a thin voice which frequently sounded cracked notes, asked him to write down his request. His face would frequently become suddenly transfigured, maybe in the access of sudden inspiration which seized him at random, even in the street, filling the passers-by with amazement, or it might be when great thoughts came to him suddenly, when seated at the piano. "The muscles of his face would stand out, his veins would swell; his wild eyes would become doubly terrible. His lips trembled, he had the manner of a wizard controlling the demons which he had invoked." ". . . . .A Shakespearean visage—'King Lear'"—so Sir Julius Benedict described it.
Ludwig van Beethoven was born on December 16th, 1770, in a little bare attic of a humble dwelling at Bonn, a small University town on the Rhine near Cologne. He came of Flemish ​origin. His father was an illiterate and lazy tenor singer—a "good-for-nothing fellow" and a confirmed drunkard. His mother was the daughter of a cook. She had been a maidservant and by her first marriage was the widow of a valet de chambre.
Unlike the more fortunate Mozart, Beethoven spent an unhappy childhood devoid of domestic comfort. From his earliest years life was for him a sad, even a brutal, fight for existence. His father wished to exploit the boy's musical talents and to turn him to lucrative purposes as a prodigy. At the age of four he compelled the boy to practise on the harpsichord for hours together and he shut him up alone with the violin, forcing him to work in this way. It is astonishing that the boy was not completely disgusted with music, for the father persisted in this treatment for many years, often resorting to actual violence. Beethoven's youth was saddened by the care and anxiety of earning his daily bread by tasks far too burdensome for his age. When he was eleven years old he was placed in the theatre orchestra; at thirteen he be came an organist of the chapel. In 1787 he lost his mother whom he adored. "She was so ​good to me, so worthy of love, the best friend I had! How happy was I when I could utter that dear name of mother and she could hear it!" She died of consumption and Beethoven believed himself to be affected with the same complaint. Already he suffered continually, and a depression of spirits even more terrible than the physical pain hung over him always. When he was seventeen he was practically the head of the family and responsible for the education of his two younger brothers. He suffered the humiliation of being obliged to beg for a pension for his father, that his father's pension should be paid to himself, as the father only squandered it in drink. These sad experiences made a profound impression on the youth. However, he found great affection and sympathy from a family in Bonn who always remained very dear to him—the Breuning family. The gentle "Lorchen," Eleonore von Breuning, was two years younger than Beethoven. He taught her music and she initiated him into the charms of poetry. She was the companion of his youth and there may have been between them a still more tender sentiment. Later on Eleonore married Dr. Wegeler, one of Beethoven's best friends; and up to Beethoven's last day there existed between the three a deep, steady friendship, amply proven by the regular and loving epistles of ​Wegeler and Eleonore, and those of their old faithful friend (alter treuer Freund) to the dear good Wegeler (guter lieber Wegeler). These friendly bonds became all the more touching as old age crept on all three, and still their hearts remained warm. Beethoven also found a safe guide and good friend in Christian Gottlob Neefe, his music master, whose high moral character had no less influence on the young musician than did his broad and his intelligent, artistic views.
Sad as was the childhood of Beethoven, he always treasured a tender and melancholy memory of the places where it was spent. Though com- pelled to leave Bonn, and destined to spend nearly the whole of his life in the frivilous city of Vienna with its dull environs, he never forgot the beautiful Rhine valley and the majestic river. "Unser Vater Rhine" (our father Rhine) as he called it, was to him almost human in its sympathy, being like some gigantic soul whose deep thoughts are beyond all human reckoning. No part is more beautiful, more powerful, more calm, than that part where the river caresses the shady and flowered slopes of the old University city of Bonn. There Beethoven spent the first twenty years of his life. There the dreams of his waking heart were born—in the fields, which slope languishingly down to the water side, with their ​mist-capped poplars, their bushes and their willows and the fruit trees whose roots are steeped in the rapid silent stream. And all along lying gently on the banks, strangely soft, are towns, churches, and even cemeteries, whilst away on the horizon the blue tints of the Seven Mountains show in wild jagged edges against the sky, forming a striking background to the graceful, slender, dream-like silhouettes of old ruined castles. His heart remained ever faithful to the beautiful, natural surroundings of his childhood, and until his very last moment he dreamt of seeing these scenes once again. My native land, the beautiful country where I first saw the light of day; it is always as clear and as beautiful in my eves as when I left it." He never saw it again.
In November, 1792, Beethoven removed to Vienna, the musical metropolis of Germany. The Revolution had broken out. It threatened to spread over the whole of Europe. Beethoven left Bonn just at the moment when the war ​reached it. On his way to Vienna he passed the Hessian armies marching to France. In 1796 and 1797 he set the war poems of Friedberg to music: a Song of Farewell, and a patriotic chorus; Ein grosses deutches Volk sind wir (A great German people are we). But it was in vain that he sang of the enemies of the Revolution; the Revolution overcame the world—and Beethoven with it. From 1798, in spite of the strained relations between Austria and France, Beethoven became closely connected with the French, with the Embassy and General Bernadotte, who had just arrived in Vienna. In this intercourse strong republican sympathies showed themselves in Beethoven, and these feelings became stronger and stronger with time.
A sketch which Steinhauser made of him at this time gives a good idea of his general appearance at this period. This portrait of Beethoven is to later ones what Guérin's portrait of Napoleon is to the other effigies. Guérin's face is rugged, almost savage, and wasted with ambition. Beethoven looks very young for his age, thin and straight, very stiff in his high cravat, a defiant, strained look in his eyes; he knows his own worth and is confident of his power. In 1796 he wrote in his notebook, "Courage! in spite of all my bodily weakness my genius shall yet triumph. . . . Twenty-five years! that is my age now. . . . This very year the man I am. must reveal himself en​tirely." Both Madame von Bernhard and Gelinck say that he was extremely proud with rough and clumsy ways and spoke with a strong provincial accent. Only his intimate friends knew what exquisite talent lay hidden under this rough exterior. Writing to Wegeler about his successes, the first thought that springs to his mind is the following: "for example, I meet a friend in need; if my purse does not allow me to help him at once, I have only to go to my work table, and in a short time I have removed his trouble. . . See how charming it is to do this." And a little further on, he says: "My art shall be devoted to no other object than the relief of the poor" (Dann soll meine Kunst sich nur zum Besten der Armen zeigen).
Trouble was already knocking at the door; it entered—never more to leave him. Between 1796 and 1800, deafness began its sad work. He suffered from continual singing and humming in his ears. His hearing became gradually weaker. ​For several years he kept the secret to himself, even from his dearest friends. He avoided company, so that his infliction should not be noticed. But in 1801 he can no longer remain silent; and in his despair he confides in two of his friends, Dr. Wegeler and Pastor Amenda. "My dear, good, loving Amenda, how often have I longed to have you near me! Your Beethoven is very unhappy. You must know that the best part of me, my hearing, has become very weak. Even at the time when we were together I was aware of distressing symptoms which I kept to myself; but my condition is now much worse. . . . . Can I ever be cured? Naturally I hope so; but my hopes are very faint, for such maladies are the least hopeful of all. How sad my life is! For I am obliged to avoid all those I love and all that are dear to me; and all this in a world so miserable and so selfish!. . . How sad is this resignation in which I take refuge! Of course I have steeled ​myself to rise above all these misfortunes. But how is this going to be possible?. . . ." And to Wegeler: ". . . . I lead a miserable life indeed. For the last two years I have completely avoided all society, for I cannot talk with my fellow-men. I am deaf. Had my profession been any other, things might still be bearable; but as it is, my situation is terrible. What will my enemies say? And they are not few! . . . . At the theatre I always have to be quite near the orchestra in order to understand the actor. I cannot hear the high notes of the instruments or the voices, if I am but a little distance off. . . . . When anyone speaks quietly I only hear with difficulty, . . . . On the other hand, I find it unbearable when people shout to me. . . . . Often I have cursed my very existence. Plutarch has guided me to a spirit of resignation. If it be possible at all, I will courageously bear with my fate; but there are moments in my life when I feel the most miserable of all God's creatures. . . . Resignation! What a sorry refuge! And yet it is the only one left to me!"
This tragic sadness is expressed in some of the works of this period, in the Sonate pathétique Op. 13 (1799), and especially in the Largo of the Piano Sonata in D, Opus ro, No. 3 (1798). It is a ​marvel that we do not find it in all the works; the radiant Septet (1800), the limpid First Symphony (C Major, 1800), both breathe a spirit of youthful gaiety. There is no doubt that he is determined to accustom his soul to grief. The spirit of man has such a strong desire for happiness that when it has it not, it is forced to create it. When the present has become too painful, the soul lives on the past. Happy days are not effaced at one stroke. Their radiance persists long after they have gone. Alone and unhappy in Vienna, Beethoven took refuge in the remembrances of his native land; his thoughts were always of Bonn. The theme of the Andante for the Variation in the Septet is a Rhenish Song. The Symphony in C Major is also inspired by the Rhine. It is a poem of youth smiling over its own dreams. It is gay and languorous; one feels there the hope and the desire of pleasing. But in certain passages in the Introduction, in the shading of the sombre bass passages of the Allegro, in this young composer, in the fantastic Scherzo, one feels with emotion the promise of the great genius to come. The expression calls to mind the eyes of Botticelli's Bambino in his Holy Families—those eyes of a little child in which one already divines the approaching tragedy.
Troubles of another kind were soon to be added to his physical sufferings. Wegeler says that he never knew Beethoven to be free of a love passion carried to extremes. These love affairs seemed ​to have always been of the purest kind. With him there was no connection between passion and pleasure. The confusion established between the two things nowadays only shows how little most men know of passion and its extreme rarity. Beethoven had something of the Puritan in his nature; licentious conversation and thoughts were abhorrent to him; he had always unchangeable ideas on the sanctity of love. . . . . It is said that he could not forgive Mozart for having prostituted his genius by writing Don Giovanni. Schindler, who was his intimate friend, assures us that "he spent his life in virginal modesty without ever having to reproach himself for any weakness." Such a man was destined to be the dupe and victim of love; and so indeed it came about. He was always falling violently in love and ceaselessly dreaming of its happiness, only however to be deceived and to be plunged in the deepest suffering. In these alternating states of love and passionate grief, of youthful confidence and outraged pride, we find the most fruitful source of Beethoven's inspiration, until at length his fiery, passionate nature gradually calms down into melancholy resignation.
In 1801 the object of his passion appears to have been Giulietta Guicciardi, whom he immortalised in the dedication of the famous (so-called) "Moonlight" Sonata, Opus 27 (1802). "I now see things in a better light," he writes to Wegeler, "and associate more with my kind. . . . . This ​change has been brought about by the charm of a dear girl; she loves me and I love her. These are the first happy moments I have had for two years." He paid dearly for them. From the first, this love made him feel more keenly the misery of the infirmity which had overtaken him and the precarious conditions of his life which made it impossible for him to marry the one he loved. Moreover, Giulietta was a flirt, childish and selfish by nature; she made Beethoven suffer most cruelly, and in November 1803, she married Count Gallenberg. Such passions devastate the soul; indeed, when the spirit is already enfeebled by illness, as was Beethoven's, complete disaster is risked. This was the only time in Beethoven's life when he seems to have been on the point of succumbing. He passed the terrible crisis, however, and the details are given in a letter known as the Heiligenstadt Testament to his brothers Carl and Johann, with the following direction: "To be read and carried out after my death." It is an outcry of revolt, full of the most poignant grief. One cannot hear it without ​being cut to the heart. In that dark hour he was on the verge of suicide. Only his strong moral force saved him. His final hopes of recovering his health disappeared. "Even the lofty courage which has hitherto sustained me has now. disappeared. O Providence, grant that but a single day of real happiness may be mine once again. I have been a stranger to the thrill of joy for so long. When, O God, when shall I feel joy once more? . . . . Ever again? No, that would be too cruel!"
This is indeed a cry of a torn heart, and Beethoven was destined to live yet twenty-five years longer. His powerful nature would not refuse to sink beneath the weight of his woe. My physical strength improves always with the growth of my intellectual force . . . . Yes, I really feel that my youth is only just beginning. Each day brings me nearer to my goal, which I can feel without being able to define clearly. . . . . O, if I were only free from my deafness I would embrace the world! . . . . No rest! At least, none that I know of except sleep; and I am so unhappy that I have to give more time to it than formerly. If only I could be free of a part of my ​It infirmity; and then . . . . no, I can bear it no longer. I will wage war against destiny. shall not overcome me completely. Oh, how fine it would be to live a thousand lives in one!"
This love of his, this suffering, this resignation, these alternations of dejection and pride, these "soul-tragedies are all reflected in the great compositions written in 1802—the Sonata with the Funeral March, Opus 26; the Sonata quasi una Fantasia, Opus 27, No. 1; the Sonata called the Moonlight," Opus 27; the Sonata in D Minor, Opus 31, No. 2, with its dramatic recitatives which seem like some grand yet heart-broken monologue; the Sonata in C minor for Violin, Opus 30, dedicated to the Emperor Alexander; the Kreutzer Sonata, Opus 47; and the Six Religious Songs, heroic yet grief-laden, to the words of Gellert, Opus 48. The Second Symphony written in 1803 reflects rather his youthful love; and here one feels that his will is decidedly gaining the upper hand. An irresistible force sweeps away his sad thoughts, a veritable bubbling over of life shows itself in the finale. Beethoven was determined to be happy. He was not willing to believe his misfortune hopeless, he wanted health, he wanted love, and he threw aside despair.
​In many of his works one is struck by the powerful and energetic march rhythms, full of the fighting spirit. This is especially noticeable in the Allegro and the Finale of Second Symphony, and still more in the first movement, full of superb heroism, of the Violin Sonata dedicated to the Emperor Alexander. The war-like character of this music recalls the period in which it was written. The Revolution had reached Vienna. Beethoven was completely carried away by it. "He spoke freely amongst his intimate friends," said the Chevalier de Seyfried, "on political affairs, which he estimated with unusual intelligence, with a clear and well-balanced out-look. All his sympathies leaned towards revolutionary ideas." He liked the Republican principles. Schindler, the friend who knew him best during the last period of his life, said, "He was an upholder of unlimited liberty and of national independence . . . . . . he desired that everyone should take part in the government of the State. . . . . For France he desired universal suffrage and hoped that Bonaparte would establish it, thus laying down the proper basis of human happiness." A Roman of the revolutionary type, brought up on Plutarch, he dreamt of a triumphant Republic, founded by the god of victory, the first Consul. And blow by blow he forged the Eroica Symphony, Bonaparte, 1804, the Iliad of Empire, and the Finale ​of the Symphony in C minor, 1805 to 1808, the grand epic of glory. This is really the first music breathing the revolutionary feeling. The soul of the times lives again in it with the intensity and purity which great events have for those mighty and solitary souls who live apart and whose impressions are not contaminated by contact with the reality. Beethoven's spirit reveals itself, marked with stirring events, coloured by the reflections of these great wars. Evidences of this, (perhaps unconscious to him) crop up everywhere in the works of this period, in the Coriolanus Overture (1807), where tempests roar over the scene; in the Fourth Quartet, Opus 18, the first movement of which shows a close relation to this Overture; in the Sonata Appassionata, Op. 57 (1804), of which Bismarck said, "If I heard that ​often I should always be very valiant"; in the score of Egmont; and even in his Pianoforte Concertos, in the one in E flat, Opus 73 (1809), where even the virtuosity is heroic: whole armies of warriors pass by. Nor need we be astonished at this. Though when writing the Funeral March on the death of an hero (Sonata, Opus 26), Beethoven was ignorant that the hero most worthy of his music, namely Hoche, the one who approximated more closely than Bonaparte to the model of the Eroica Symphony, had just died near the Rhine, where indeed his tomb stands at the top of a small hill between Coblentz and Bonn. . . . . He had twice seen the Revolution victorious in Vienna itself. French officers were present at the first production of Fidelio in Vienna in November, 1805. It was General Hulin, the conqueror of the Bastille, who stayed with Lobkovitz, Beethoven's friend and protector, to whom he dedicated the Eroica and the C minor Symphony. And on 10 May, 1809, Napoleon slept at Schönbrunn.
​Beethoven suddenly broke off the C minor Symphony to write the Fourth Symphony at a single sitting without his usual sketches. Happiness had come to him. In May 1806, he was betrothed to Theresa von Brunswick. She had loved him for a long time-ever since as a young girl she had taken piano lessons from him during his first stay in Vienna. Beethoven was a friend of her brother Count Franz. In 1806 he stayed with them at Martonvasar in Hungary, and it was there that they fell in love. The remembrance of these happy days is kept fresh by some stories in some of Theresa's writings. "One Sunday even​ing" she says, "after dinner, with the moon shining into the room, Beethoven was seated at the piano. At first he laid his hands flat on the keyboard. Franz and I always understood this, for it was his usual preparation. Then he struck some chords in the bass and slowly with an air of solemnity and mystery drifted into a song of John Sebastian Bach: 'If thou wilt give me thy heart, first let it be in secret, that our hearts may commingle and no one divine it.' My mother and the priest had fallen asleep and my brother was dream gazing whilst I who understood his song and his expression, felt life come to me in all its fullness. The following morning we met in the park and he said to me, 'I am now writing an opera; the principal character is in me and around me wherever I go. Never before have I reached such heights of happiness; I feel light, purity and splendour all around me and within. Until now I have been like the child in the fairy story, picking up pebbles along the road without seeing the beautiful flower blossoming close by.' . . . . It was in May, 1806, that I became betrothed to him with the ready consent of my dear brother Franz.
The Fourth Symphony composed in this year is a pure fragrant flower which treasures up the perfume of these days, the calmest in all his life. It has been justly remarked that at this time "Beethoven's desire was to reconcile his genius as ​far as possible with what was generally known and admired in the forms handed down by his predecessors."
The same conciliating spirit springing from this love re-acted on his manners and his way of living in general. Ignaz von Seyfried and Grillparzar say that he was full of life, bright, happy and witty, courteous in society, patient with tedious people and careful in his dress. Even his deafness was not noticed, and they say that he was in good health with the exception of his eyesight, which was rather weak. This strikes one in looking at Mahler's portrait of him painted at this time, in which he is represented with an elegance unusual for him and a romantic, even slightly affected look. Beethoven wishes to please, and rather fancies himself in doing so. The lion is in love; he draws in his claws. But one feels deep beneath under all this playfulness, the imagination and tenderness of the Symphony in B flat, the tremendous force, the capricious humour and the passionate temper of his nature.
This profound peace was not destined to last although love exercised its soothing influence until ​1810. Beethoven doubtless owed to it the self-mastery which at this period enabled him to pro- duce some of the most perfect fruits of his genius; that great classical tragedy, the Symphony in C minor and that delicious idyll of a summer's day: the Pastoral Symphony, 1808. The Sonata Appassionata, inspired by Shakespeare's Tempest, the Sonata which he himself regarded as his most powerful one, appeared in 1807 and was dedicated to Theresa's brother. To Theresa herself he dedicated the dreamy and fantastic Sonata in F sharp, Opus 78 (1809). An undated letter addressed to his "Immortal Beloved expresses the intensity of his love no less strongly than does the Sonata Appassionata.
July (1806?).
"My Angel, my all, my very self.
Just a few words to-day—and indeed in pencil (with thine). Only till to-morrow is my room definitely engaged. What an unworthy waste of time in such matters! Why this deep sorrow where necessity speaks? Can our love endure otherwise than through sacrifices, through restraint in longing? Canst thou help not being wholly mine? Can I, not being wholly thine? Oh! gaze at nature in all ​its beauty, and calmly accept the inevitable—love demands everything, and rightly so. Thus is it for me with thee, for thee with me, only thou so easily forgettest that I must live for my-self and for thee. Were we wholly united, thou wouldst feel this painful fact as little as I should. My journey was terrible. I arrived here only yesterday morning at four o'clock, and as they were short of herses, the mail-coach selected another route; but what an awful road! At the last stage but one, I was advised not to travel by night; they warned me against the wood, but that only spurred me on, and I was wrong; the coach must needs break down, the road being dreadful, a swamp, a mere country road; without the postillions I had with me I should have stuck on the way. Esterhazy, by the ordinary road, met the same fate with eight horses as I with four—yet it gave me some pleasure, as successfully overcoming any difficulty always does. Now for a quick change from without to within; we shall probably soon see each other; besides, to-day I cannot tell thee what has been passing through my mind during the past few days concerning my life. Were our hearts closely united I should not do things of this kind. My heart is full of the many things I have to say to thee. Ah! there are moments in which I feel that speech is powerless. Cheer up. Remain my true, my only treasure, my all!!! As I to thee. The gods ​must send the rest; what is in store for us must be and ought to be.
Thy faithful Ludwig."
It is difficult to divine what was the barrier which separated these two from the consummation of their love. Was it the lack of fortune or the difference in social position? Perhaps Beethoven rebelled against the long period of probation which was imposed on him or resented the humiliation of keeping his love secret for an indefinite period. Perhaps, impulsive and afflicted as he was, a misanthrope too, he caused his loved one to suffer without wishing it and gave himself up to despair in consequence. The fact remains that the engagement was broken off, although neither seems ever to have proved faithless.
Even to her last day (she lived till 1861) Theresa von Brunswick loved Beethoven, and Beethoven was no less faithful. In 1816 he remarked, "When I think of her my heart beats as violently as on the day when I first saw her." To this year belong the six songs, Opus 98, which have so touching and profound a feeling. They are dedicated "To the loved one far away" (An die ferne Geliebte). He wrote in his notes, "My heart overflows at the thought of her beautiful nature; and yet she is not here, not near me!" Theresa had given her portrait to Beethoven, inscribed, "To the rare genius, the great artist, the generous ​man. T.B." Once during the last year of his life a friend surprised Beethoven alone, and found him holding this portrait and speaking to himself through his tears: "Thou wert so lovely and great, so like to an angel!" The friend withdrew, and returning a little later found him at the piano, and said "To-day, my old friend, there are no black looks on your face." Beethoven replied "It is because my good angel has visited me." The wound was deep. "Poor Beethoven" he said to himself, "there is no happiness for you in this world; only in the realms of the ideal will you find strength to conquer yourself."
In his notebook he wrote, "submission, complete submission to your destiny. You can no longer live for yourself, only for others. For you there is happiness only in your art. O God, give me strength to conquer "myself."'" . . .
Love then abandoned him. In 1810 he was once more alone; but joy had come to him and the consciousness of his power. He was in the prime of life. He gave himself up to his violent and wild moods regardless of results, and certainty without care for the opinions of the world and the ​usual conventions of life. What, indeed, had he to fear or to be careful of? Gone are love and ambition. Strength and the joy of it, the necessity for using it, almost abusing it, were left to him. "Power constitutes the morality of men who distinguish themselves above the ordinary." He returned to his neglect in matters of dress, and his manners now became even freer than before. He knew that he had the right to speak freely even to the greatest. "I recognise no sign of superiority in mankind other than goodness," he writes on 17 July, 1812. Bettina Brentano, who saw him at that time, says that " no king or emperor was ever so conscious of his power." She was fascinated by his very strength. "When I saw him for the first time," she wrote to Goethe, "the whole exterior world vanished from me. Beethoven made me forget the world, and even you, O Goethe. . . . I do not think I am wrong in saying this man is very far ahead of modern civilisation." Goethe attempted to make Beethoven's acquaintance. ​ They met at a Bohemian spa, Töplitz, in 1812, but did not agree well. Beethoven passionately admired Goethe's genius; but his own character was too free and too wild not to wound the susceptibilities of Goethe. Beethoven himself has told us of this walk which they took together, in the course of which the haughty republican gave the courtly councillor of the Grand-duke of Weimar a lesson in dignity which he never forgot.
Nor did Goethe forget the scene.
In 1812 the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies ​were written during a stay of several months at Töplitz. These works are veritable orgies of rhythm and humour; in them he is perhaps revealing himself in his most natural and as he styled it himself, most "unbuttoned " (aufgeknopft) moods, transports of gaiety contrasting unexpectedly with storms of fury and disconcerting flashes of wit followed by those Titanic explosions which terrified both Goethe and Zelter and caused the remark in North Germany that the Symphony in A was the work of a drunkard. The work of an inebriated man indeed it was, but one intoxicated with power and genius; one who said of himself, "I am the Bacchus who crushes delicious nectar for mankind. It is I who give the divine frenzy to men." Wagner wrote, "I do not know whether Beethoven wished to depict a Dionysian orgy in the Finale of his Symphony, though I recognise in this passionate kermesse a sign of his Flemish origin, just as we see it likewise in his bold manner of speech and in his bearing so free and so utterly out of harmony with a country ruled by an iron discipline and rigid etiquette. Nowhere is there greater frankness or freer power than in the Symphony in A. It is a ​mad outburst of superhuman energy, with no other object than for the pleasure of unloosing it like a river overflowing its banks and flooding the surrounding country. In the Eighth Symphony the power is not so sublime, though it is still more strange and characteristic of the man, mingling tragedy with farce and a Herculean vigour with the games and caprices of a child."
The year 1814 marks the summit of Beethoven's fortunes. At the Vienna Congress he enjoyed European fame. He took an active part in the fêtes, princes rendered him homage, and (as he afterwards boasted to Schindler) he allowed him. self to be courted by them. He was carried away by his sympathy with the War of Independence. In 1813 he wrote a Symphony on Wellington's Victory and in the beginning of 1814 a martial chorus, Germany's Rebirth (Germanias Wiedergeburt). On November 29th, 1814, he conducted before an audience of kings a patriotic Cantata, The Glorious Moment (Der glorreiche Augenblick), and on the occasion of the capture of Paris in 1815 he composed a Chorus, It is accomplished (Es ist vollbracht). These occasional pieces did more to spread his fame than all the rest of his music together. The engraving by Blasius Hoefel ​from a sketch by the Frenchman Latronne and the savage-looking cast by Franz Klein in 1812 present a lifelike image of Beethoven at the time of the Congress of Vienna. The dominating charac. teristic of this leonine face with its firm set jaws scored with the furrows of anger and trouble, is determination—a Napoleonic will. One recognises the man who said of Napoleon after Jena, "How unfortunate that I do not know as much about warfare as music! I would show myself his master." But his kingdom was not of this world. My empire is in the air," he wrote to Franz von Brunswick.
After this hour of glory comes the saddest and most miserable period. Vienna had never been sympathetic to Beethoven. Haughty and bold genius as he was, he could not be at ease in this frivolous city with its mundane and its mediocre spirit, which Wagner laughed to scorn later on. He lost no opportunities of going away; and ​towards 1808 he thought seriously of leaving Austria to go to the court of Jerome Bonaparte, King of Westphalia. But Vienna had abundant musical resources; and one must do it justice by saying that there were always noble dilettanti who felt the grandeur of Beethoven, and who spared their country the shame of losing him. In 1809, three of the richest noblemen of Vienna, the Archduke Rudolph, a pupil of Beethoven, Prince Lobkovitz and Prince Kinsky undertook to pay him annually a pension of 4,000 florins on the sole condition that he remained in Austria. "As it is evident," they said, "that a man can only devote himself entirely to art when he is free from all material care, and that it is only then that he can produce such sublime works which are the glory of art, the undersigned have formed a resolution to release Ludwig van Beethoven from the shadow of need, and thus disperse the miserable obstacles which are so detrimental to his flights of genius." Unhappily the results did not come up to the promises. The pension was always very irregularly paid; soon it ceased altogether. Also Vienna had very much changed in character after the ​Congress of 1814. Society was distracted from art by politics. Musical taste was spoilt by Italianism, and the fashionable people favoured Rossini, treating Beethoven as pedantic. Beethoven's friends and protectors went away or died: Prince Kinsky in 1812, Lichnovsky in 1814, Lobkovitz in 1816. Rasumowsky, for whom he had written the three admirable Quartets, Opus 59, gave his last concert in February, 1815. In 1815 Beethoven quarrelled with Stephen von Breuning, the friend of his childhood, the brother of Eleonore. From this time he was alone. "I have no friends. I am alone in the world" he wrote in his notebook of 1816.
His deafness became complete. After the ​autumn of 1815 he could only communicate with his friends by writing. The oldest conversation-book is dated 1816. There is a sad story recorded by Schindler with regard to the representation of Fidelio in 1822. "Beethoven wanted to conduct the general rehearsal. . . . . From the duet of the First Act, it was evident that he could hear nothing of what was going on. He kept back the pace considerably; and whilst the orchestra followed his beat, the singer hurried the time. There followed general confusion. The usual leader of the orchestra, Umlauf, suggested a short rest, without giving any reason; and after exchanging a few words with the singers, they began again. The same disorder broke out afresh. Another interval was necessary. The impossibility of continuing under Beethoven's direction was evident; but how could they make him understand? No one had the heart to say to him, 'Go away, poor unfortunate one, you cannot conduct.' Beethoven, uneasy and agitated, turned from side to side, trying to read the expression of the different faces, and to understand what the difficulty was: a silence came over all. Suddenly he called me in his imperious manner. When I was quite near to him, he handed me his pocket-book, and made signs to me to write. I put down these words:
​'I beg you not to continue; I will explain why at your house. With one leap he jumped from the platform, saying to me, 'Let us go quickly.' He ran straight to his house, went in and threw him-self down on a sofa, covering his face with his hands; he remained like that until dinner-time. At the table it was impossible to draw a word from him; he wore an expression of complete despondency and profound grief. After dinner when I wanted to leave him, he kept me, expressing a desire not to be left alone. When we separated he asked me to go with him to his doctor, who had a great reputation for complaints of the ear. During the whole of my connection with Beethoven I do not know of any day which can compare with this awful day of November. He had been smitten to the heart, and until the day of his death, he retained the impression of this terrible scene."
Two years later, on 7 May, 1824, when conducting the Choral Symphony (or rather, as the programme said, "taking part in the direction of the concert ") he heard nothing at all of the clamour of the audience applauding him. He did not even suspect it, until one of the singers, taking him by the hand turned him round; and he suddenly saw the audience waving their hats and clapping their hands. An English traveller, ​Russell, who saw him at the piano about the year 1825, says that when he wanted to play quietly the notes did not sound and that it was very moving to follow in silence the emotion animating him expressed in his face, and in the movements of his fingers. Buried in himself, and separated from all mankind, his only consolation was in Nature. "She was his sole confident," says Theresa of Brunswick, "she was his refuge." Charles Neate, who knew him in 1815, says that he never saw anyone who loved flowers, clouds and nature so devotedly; he seemed to live in them. No one on earth can love the country so much as I," wrote Beethoven. "I love a tree more than a man." When in Vienna he walked round the ramparts every day. In the country from daybreak till night he walked alone, without hat, in sunshine ог rain. Almighty God! In the woods I am happy, happy in the woods, where each tree speaks through Thee. O God, what splendour! In the forests, on the hills, it is the calm, the quiet, that helps me."
His unrestfulness of mind found some respite there. He was harassed by financial cares. He ​wrote in 1818, "I am almost reduced to beggary, and I am obliged to pretend that I do not lack necessities"; and at another time, "The Sonata Op. 106 has been written under pressing circumstances. It is a hard thing to have to work for bread." Spohr says that often he could not go out on account of his worn-out shoes. He owed large debts to his publishers and his compositions did not bring him in anything. The Mass in D, published by subscription, obtained only seven subscribers (of whom not one was a musician). He received barely thirty or forty ducats for his fine Sonatas, each one of which cost him three months' work. The Quartets, Opp. 127, 130, and 132, amongst his profoundest works, which seem to be written with his very heart-blood, were written for Prince Galitzin, who neglected to pay for them. Beethoven was worn out with domestic difficulties, and with endless law suits to obtain the pensions owing to him or to retain the guardianship of a nephew, the son of his brother Carl, who died of consumption in 1815.
He had bestowed on this child all the care and devotion with which his heart overflowed. But he was repaid with cruel suffering. It seemed that a kind of special fate had taken care to renew ceaselessly and to accumulate his miseries in order that his genius should not lack for food. At first he ​had a dispute over Carl with his mother, who wanted to take him away. "O, my God," he cried, my shield and my defence, my only refuge! Thou readest the depths of my soul and Thou knowest the griefs that I experience when I have to cause suffering to those who want to dispute my Carl, my treasure. Hearken unto me, Great Being, that I know not how to name. Grant the fervent prayer of the most unhappy of Thy creatures!"
"O God, aid me! Thou wilt not leave me entirely in the hands of men; because I do not wish to make a covenant with injustice! Hear the prayer which I make to Thee, that at least for the future I may live with my Carl! . . . . O cruel fate, implacable destiny! No, no, my unhappiness will never end!"
Then this nephew, so passionately loved, proved unworthy of the confidence of his uncle. The correspondence between Beethoven and him is sad and revolting, like that of Michael Angelo with his brothers, but more simple and touching.
"Am I to be repaid once again with the most abominable ingratitude? Ah, well, if the bond must be broken, so be it! All impartial people who hear of it will hate you. If the compact between us weighs too heavily, in the name of God, may it be according to His will! I abandon ​you to Providence; I have done all that I could; I am ready to appear before the Supreme Judge!
"Spoilt as you are, that should not make it difficult to teach you to be simple and true; my heart has suffered so much by your hypocritical conduct, and it is difficult for me to forget. . . . . God is my witness, I only long to be a thousand miles from you and from that sorry brother and from this abominable family. . . . . I shall never more have confidence in you." And he signed "Unhappily your father—or rather, not your father." But pardon came almost immediately.
"My dear son! No more of this! Come to my arms. You shall not hear one harsh word. I will receive you with the same love. We will talk over what is to be done for your future in a friendly manner. On my word of honour there will be no reproach. That would do no good. You have nothing to expect from me but sympathy and the most loving care. Come, come to the faithful heart of your father. Come immediately you receive this letter, come to the house." (And on the envelope in French, "If you do not come, you will surely kill me.")
BEETHOVEN
AT THE AGE OF 48.
(From a Painting by Kloeber.)
​with your moral development, with an affection more than paternal, begs you from the bottom of his heart to follow the only true path of the good and the just.
Your faithful foster-father.
After having cherished all kinds of dreams for the future of this nephew, who was not lacking in intelligence and whom he wished to take up a University career, Beethoven had to consent to make a merchant of him. But Carl frequented gambling dens and contracted debts. By a sad phenomenon, more frequent than one believes, the moral grandeur of his uncle, instead of doing him good, made him worse. It exasperated him, impelling him to revolt, as he said in those terrible words where his miserable soul appears so plainly, "I have become worse because my uncle wished me to do better." He reached such a state that in the summer of 1826 he shot himself in the head with a pistol. He did not die from it, but it was Beethoven who just missed dying. He never recovered from this terrible fright. Carl recovered; he lived to the end to cause suffering to his uncle, ​whose death he hastened in no slight measure. Nor was he with him at the hour of his death. "God has never abandoned me," wrote Beethoven to his nephew, some years before. "He will find someone to close my eyes." This was not to be the one whom he called "his son."
It was from the depth of this abyss that Beethoven undertook to chant his immortal Ode to Joy It was the plan of his whole life. As early as 1793, he had thought of it at Bonn. All his life he wished to celebrate Joy; and to make it the climax of one of his great works. He was always striving to find the exact form of the Hymn, and the work where he could place it. He was far from being decided, even in his Ninth Symphony. ​Until the very last moment, he was on the point of putting off the Ode to Joy to a Tenth or Eleventh Symphony. One ought to notice that the Ninth Symphony is not entitled Choral Symphony, as it is now invariably called, but Symphony with a Final Chorus on the Ode to Joy. It narrowly missed having another conclusion. In July, 1823, Beethoven still thought of giving it an instrumental finale, which he used later on for the quartet Op: 132. Both Czerny and Sonnleithner say that even after the performance in May, 1824, Beethoven had not abandoned this idea.
He found great technical difficulties in introducing the Chorus into the Symphony, as is shown by Beethoven's note-books and his numerous attempts to make the voices enter at another part of the work and in a different manner. In the sketches for the second subject of the Adagio he wrote Perhaps the Chorus could enter conveniently here." But he could not decide to part from his faithful orchestra. "When an idea comes to me," he said, "I hear it on an instrument, never on a voice." So he put back the place for employing voices as late as possible. At first he wanted to give the instruments not only the recitatives of the Finale but even the Theme of Joy itself.
But we must go still further into the reason of these hesitations and delays. The explanation is ​very deep. Continually tormented by grief, this unfortunate man had always aspired to sing the excellence of Joy; and from year to year he put off his task, held back ceaselessly by the whirlwind of his passion and grief. It was only at the very last that he succeeded. But with what a success!
At the moment when the Theme of Joy appears for the first time, the orchestra stops abruptly, thus giving a sudden unexpected character to the entrance of the Song. And this is a true touch; this theme is rightly divine. Joy descends from heaven enveloped in a supernatural calm; it soothes the suffering with its cool breath; and the first impression that it makes, is so tender as it steals into the sorrowing heart, that a friend of Beethoven has said "One feels inclined to weep, as one looks into those soft, calm eyes of his." When the Theme passes first to the voices, it is the Basses who present it first with a solemn and rather weighty character. But, little by little, Joy takes possession of us. It is a real battle, a fight with sorrow. We can hear the rhythms of the marching armies. In the ardent panting song of the tenor, in all these quivering pages we can almost feel the breath of Beethoven himself, the rhythm of his breathing and his inspired cries as he wandered across the fields, composing the work, transported by a demoniacal fury like King Lear in the middle of a storm. After the warlike joy comes religious ecstacy. ​Then follows a sacred orgy, a very delirium of love. A whole trembling humanity lifts its arms to the sky, utters powerful outcries, rushes forth towards this Joy and clasps it to the heart.
This Titanic work overcame the indifference of the public. The frivolous crowds of Vienna were moved for an instant, but they still favoured Rossini and his Italian operas. Humiliated and saddened, Beethoven was on the point of going to live in London and thought of giving his Ninth Symphony there. A second time, as in 1809, some noble friends sent him a petition asking that he would not leave the country. They said "We know that you have written a new composition of sacred music in which you have expressed sentiments inspired by your profound faith. The supernatural light which penetrates your great soul illumines the work. We know besides that the garland of your inspired symphonies has been increased by an immortal flower . . . . Your absence during these last years has troubled all those whose eyes are turned to you. Everyone sadly thought that the man of genius placed so high amongst living beings remained silent whilst another kind of foreign art sought to plant itself in our country, causing the productions of German art to be forgotten . . . . From you only, the ​nation awaits new life, new laurels, and a new reign of truth and beauty, despite the fashion of the day. . . . . Give us the hope of soon seeing our desires 'satisfied. And then the springtime which is coming will blossom again doubly, thanks to your gifts to us and to the world!" This noble address shews what power, not only artistic but also moral, Beethoven exercised over the élite of Germany. The first word which occurs to his followers who wish to praise his genius is neither science, nor art; it is faith.
Beethoven was deeply moved by these words. He stayed. On May 7th, 1824, the first performance in Vienna of the Mass in D and the Ninth Symphony took place. The success was amazing; and his greeting almost of a seditious character for when Beethoven appeared he was accorded five rounds of applause; whereas according to the strict etiquette of the city, it was the custom to give three only for the entrance of the Royal Family. The police had to put an end to the manifestations. The Symphony raised frantic enthusiasm. Many wept. Beethoven fainted with emotion after the concert; he was taken to ​Schindler's house where he remained asleep all the night and the following morning, fully dressed, neither eating nor drinking. The triumph was only fleeting, however, and the concert brought in nothing for Beethoven. His material circumstances of life were not changed by it. He found himself poor, ill, alone but a conqueror: conqueror of the mediocrity of mankind, conqueror of his destiny, conqueror of his suffering. "Sacrifice, always sacrifice the trifles of life to art! God is over all!"
He had then completed the object of his whole life. He had tasted perfect Joy. Would he be able to rest on this triumph of the soul which ruled the tempest? Certainly he ought to feel the relief from the days of his past anguish. Indeed his last quartets are full of strange forebodings. But it seems that the victory of the Ninth Symphony had left its glorious traces in its nature. The plans which he had for the future: the Tenth ​ Symphony, the overture on the name of Bach, the music for Grillparzer's Melusina, for Körner's Odyssey and Goethe's Faust, the Biblical oratorio of Saul and David, all shew that he was attracted by the mighty serenity of the old German masters—Bach and Handel—and more still to the light of the South—the South of France or Italy, where he hoped to travel.
​Dr. Spiker, who saw him in 1826, said that his face had become smiling and jovial. The same year when Grillparzer spoke to him for the last time, it was Beethoven who had more energy than the worn-out poet: "Ah!" said the latter, "if I had a thousandth part of your strength and determination." Times were hard; the monarchial reaction oppressed their spirits. "The censors have killed me," groaned Grillparzer. "One must go to North America if one wishes to speak freely." But no power could put a stop to Beethoven's thoughts. "Words are bound in chains, but, happily, sounds are still free," he wrote to the poet Kuffner. Beethoven's is the great voice of freedom, perhaps the only one then of the whole of German thought. He felt it. Often he spoke of the duty which was imposed on him to act by means of his art "for poor humanity, for humanity to come, to restore its courage and to shake off its lassitude and cowardice." "At the present time," he wrote to his nephew, "there is need for mighty spirits to lash into action these wretched rebellious human souls." Dr. Müller said in 1827 that "Beethoven always expressed himself freely on the subjects of government, the police, the aristocracy, even in public. The police knew him but they looked on his criticisms and satires as harmless fancies, and they did not care to interfere with the man whose genius had such ​an extraordinary reputation." Thus nothing was able to break this indomitable will. It seemed now to make sport of grief. The music written in these last years, in spite of the painful circum. stances under which it was composed, has often quite a new, ironical character of heroic and joyous disdain. The very last piece that he finished, the new Finale to the Quartet, Op. 130, is very gay. This was in November 1826, four months before his death. In truth this gaiety is not of the usual kind; for at times it is the harsh and spasmodic laughter of which Mocheles speaks; often it is the affecting smile, the result of suffering conquered. It matters not; he is the conqueror. He does not believe in death.
It came, however. At the end of November, 1826, he caught a chill which turned to pleurisy: he was taken ill in Vienna when returning from a journey undertaken in winter to arrange for the future of his nephew. He was far from his friends. ​He told his nephew to go for a doctor. The wretch forgot his commission and only remembered two days after. The doctor came too late and treated Beethoven unskilfully. For three months his iron constitution fought against the illness. On January 3rd, 1827, he made his well-loved nephew his chief executor. He thought of his dear friends on the Rhine; he wrote again to Wegeler: "How I would like to talk with you! But I am too weak. I can do no more than embrace you in my heart, you and your Lorchen." Poverty would have made his last moments more gloomy, had it not been for the generosity of some English friends. He had become very gentle and very patient. On his death-bed on February 17th, 1827, after three operations and awaiting a fourth, he wrote with perfect calmness, "I am patient and I think that all misfortune brings some blessing with it." This boon was deliverance—"the end of the comedy," as he said when dying. We night say rather the end of the tragedy. . . . . . He died in the climax of a violent storm, a tempest of snow, heavily punctuated with terrible thunder
​claps. A strange hand closed his eyes, March 26th, 1827.
Beloved Beethoven! So many others have praised his artistic grandeur. But he is easily the first of musicians. He is the most heroic soul in modern art. He is the grandest and the best friend of those who suffer and struggle. When we are saddened by worldly miseries, it is he who comes near to us, as he used to go and play to a mother in grief, and without uttering a word thus console her by the song of his own plaintive resignation. And when we are utterly exhausted in the eternal battle uselessly waged against mediocrity, vice and virtue, it is an unspeakable boon to find fresh strength in this great ocean-torrent of strong will and faith. An atmosphere of courage emanates from his personality, a love of battle, the exultation of a conscious ​feeling of the God within. It seems that in his constant communion with nature he had ended by assimilating its deep and mighty powers. Grillparzer, who admired Beethoven with a kind of awe, said of him, "He penetrated into regions where art melts away and unites with the wild and capricious elements." Schumann wrote similarly of his Symphony in C minor: "Every time it is performed it exercises an unvarying power on us, like natural phenomena which fill us with awe and amazement every time they occur." And Schindler, his confidential friend, says, "He possessed the spirit of nature." It is true, "Beethoven is a force of nature; and this battle of elemental power against the rest of nature is a spectacle of truly Homeric grandeur."
His whole life is like a stormy day. At the beginning—a fresh clear morning, perhaps a languid breeze, scarcely a breath of air. But there is already in the still air a secret menace, a dark foreboding. Large shadows loom and pass; tragic rumblings; murmuring awesome silences; the furious gusts of the winds of the Eroica and the C minor. However, the freshness of the day is not yet gone. Joy remains joy; the brightness of the sky is not overcast; sadness is never without a ray of hope. But after 1810 the poise of the ​soul is disturbed. A strange light glows. Mists obscure his deepest thoughts; some of the clearer thoughts appear as vapour rising; they disappear, are dispelled, yet form anew; they obscure the heart with their melancholy and capricious gloom; often the musical idea seems to vanish entirely, to be submerged, but only to re-appear again at the end of a piece in a veritable storm of melody. Even joy has assumed a rough and riotous character. A bitter feeling becomes mingled in all his sentiments. Storms gather as evening comes on. Heavy clouds are big with tempests. Lightning flashes o'er the black of night. The climax of the hurricane is approaching. Suddenly, at the height of the tempest, the darkness is dispersed. Night is driven away and the clear, tranquil atmosphere is restored by a sheer act of will power. What a conquest was this! What Napoleonic battle can be likened to it? What was Austerlitz glory to the radiance of this superhuman effort, this victory, the most brilliant that has ever been won by an infirm and lonely spirit. Sorrow personified, to whom the world refused joy, created joy himself to give to the world. He forged it from his own misery, as he proudly said in reviewing his life. And indeed it was the motto of his whole heroic soul:
JOY THROUGH SUFFERING (To Countess Erdödy, October 19th, 1815).
* ↑ J. Russell (1822). Charles Czerny who, when a child, saw him in 1801 with a beard of several days' growth, hair bristling, wearing a waistcoat and trouser of goats' wool, thought he had met Robinson Crusoe.
* ↑ The painter Kloeber's remark, when he painted his portrait about 1818.
* ↑ Dr. W. C. Müller observed particularly "his fine eloquent eyes sometimes so kind and tender, at other times so wild, threatening and awe inspiring" (1820).
* ↑ Kloeber said "Ossian's." All these details are taken from notes of Beethoven's friends, or from travellers who saw him, such Czerny, Moscheles, Kloeber, Daniel Amadeus Atterbohm, W.C. Müller, J. Russell, Julius Benedict, Rochlitz, etc.
* ↑ His grandfather, Ludwig, the most remarkable man of the family and whom Beethoven most resembled, was born at Antwerp, and only settled at Bonn in his twentieth year when he became choir master to the Prince Elector. We must not forget this fact to understand properly the passionate independence of Beethoven's nature and so many other traits which are not really German in his character.
* ↑ Letter to Dr. Schade at Augsburg, 15th September, 1787.
* ↑ Later on, in 1816, he said: "He is a poor man who does not know how to die! I myself knew, when I was but fifteen."
* ↑ We quote from several of these letters in a later part of the book, pages 65, et seq.
* ↑ To Wegeler, 29th June, 1801.
* ↑ He had already made a short stay there, in the spring of 1787. On that occasion he met Mozart who, however, took little notice of him. Haydn, whose acquaintance he made at Bonn in December, 1790, gave him some lessons. Beethoven also had for masters, Albrechitsberger and Salieri. The first-named taught him Counterpoint and Fugue, the second trained him in vocal writing.
* ↑ It can hardly be called his début, for his first Concert in Vienna had taken place on 30th March, 1795.
* ↑ To Wegeler, 29th June, 1801 (Nohl 14). "None of my friends shall want whilst I have anything," he wrote to Ries about 1801.
* ↑ In his Will and Testarnent of 1802, Beethoven says that his deafness first appeared six years before—very likely in 1796. Le us notice in passing that in the catalogue of his works, Opus one alone (Three Trios) was written before 1796. Opus 2, the first three Piano Sonatas appeared in March, 1796. It may, therefore, be said that the whole of Beethoven's work is that of a deaf man. See the article on Beethoven's deafness by Dr. Klotz Forest in the "Medical Chronicle" of 15th May, 1905. The writer of the article believes that the complaint had its origin in a general hereditary affliction (perhaps in the phthisis of his mother). The deafness increased without ever becoming total. Beethoven heard low sounds better than high ones. In his last years it is said that he used a wooden rod, one end of which was placed in the piano sound-box, the other between his teeth. He used this means of hearing when he composed. (On the same question see C. G. Cunn: Wiener medizinische Wochenschrift, February-March, 1892; Nagel: Die Musik (15th March, 1902); Theodor von Frimmel: Der Merker, July, 1912). There are preserved in the Beethoven museum at Bonn the acoustical instruments made for Beethoven, about 1814, by the mechanician Maelzel.
* ↑ I have translated these extracts from M. Rolland's text. Мг. Shedlock's translation from the original German may be seen on pages 65 et seq.—B.C.H.
* ↑ To Wegeler, 16 November, 1801.
* ↑ She was not afraid either of boasting of her old love for Beethoven in preference to that for her husband. Beethoven helped Gallenberg. "He was my enemy; that is the very reason why I should do all possible for him," he told Schindler on one of his conversation note-books in 1821. But he scorned to take advantage of the position. "Having arrived in Vienna," he wrote in French, "she sought me out and came weeping to me, but I rejected her."
* ↑ 6th October, 1802 (see page 57).
* ↑ "Bring up your children to be virtuous. That alone can make them happy; money will not. I speak from experience. It is that which sustained me in my misery. Virtue and Art alone have saved me from taking my own life." And in another letter, and May, 1810, to Wegeler: "If I had not read somewhere that a man ought not to take his own life so long as he can still do a kind action, I should long ago have ended my existence, and doubtless by my own hand.
* ↑ To Wegeler.
* ↑ Hornemann's miniature, of 1802, represents Beethoven dressed in the fashion of the day with side whiskers, long hair, the tragic air of one of Byron's heroes, but with the firm Napoleonic look which never gives way.
* ↑ It is a fact that the Eroica Symphony was written for and around Bonaparte, and the first MS. still bears the title, "Bonaparte." Afterwards Beethoven learnt of the Coronation of Napoleon. Breaking out into a fury, he cried: "He is only an ordinary man"; and in his indignation he tore off the dedication and wrote the avenging and touching title: Sinfonia Eroice composta per festeggiare il souvenire di un grand Uomo. (Heroic Symphony composed to celebrate the memory of a great man). Schindler relates that later on his scorn for Napoleon became more subdued; he saw in him rather the unfortunate victim of circumstances worthy of pity, an Icarus flung down from Heaven. When he heard of the St. Helena catastrophe in 1821, he remarked: "I composed the music suitable for this sad event some seventeen years ago." It pleased him to recognise in the Funeral March of his Symphony a presentiment of the conqueror's tragic end. There was then probably in the Eroica Symphony and especially in the first movement, a kind of portrait of Bonaparte in Beethoven's mind, doubtless very different from the real man, and rather what he imagined him to be or would have liked him to be—the genius of the Revolution. Beethoven, in the Finale of the Eroica Symphony, used again one of the chief phrases of the work he had already written on the revolutionary hero par excellence, the god of liberty, Prometheus, 1801.
* ↑ Robert de Keudell, German Ambassador in Rome: Bismarck and his family, 1901. Robert de Keudell played this Sonata to Bismarck on an indifferent piano on 30th October, 1870, at Versailles. Bismarck remarked regarding the latter part of the work: "The sighs and struggles of a whole life are in this music." He preferred Beethoven to all other composers, and more than once affirmed "Beethoven's music more than any other soothes my nerves."
* ↑ Beethoven's house was situated near those fortifications of Vienna which Napoleon had blown up after the taking of the city. "What an awful life, with ruins all around me," wrote Beethoven to the publishers, Breitkopf & Härtel, on 26th June, 1809, "nothing but drums, trumpets, and misery of every kind." A portrait of Beethoven at this time has been left to us by a Frenchman who saw him in Vienna in 1809, Baron Trémont, of the Council of State. It gives a picturesque description of the disorder in Beethoven's room. They talked together of philosophy, religion, politics, and especially of Shakespeare." Beethoven was very much inclined to follow Trémont to Paris, where he knew they had already performed his Symphonies at the Conservatoire, and there he had many enthusiastic admirers. (See Mercure Musical, May, 1906, Une visite à Beethoven, by Baron Trémont, published by J. Chantavoine).
* ↑ Or to be more exact, Theresa Brunsvik. Beethoven had met the Brunsviks at Vienna between 1796 and 1799. Giulietta Guicciardi was the cousin of Theresa. Beethoven seems also to have been attracted at one period by one of Theresa's sisters, Josephine, who first married Count Deym, and later on, the Baron Stackelberg. Some very striking details on the Brunsvik family are found in an article by M. André de Hevesy. Beethoven et l'Immortelle Bien-aimée (Revue de Paris, March 1 and 15, 1910). For this study M. de Hevesy has made use of the MS. Memoires and the papers of Theresa, which were preserved at Martonvasar in Hungary. They all show an af fectionate intimacy between Beethoven and the Brunsviks, and raise again the question of his love for Theresa. But the arguments are not convincing, and I leave them to be discussed at some future time.
* ↑ Marian Tenger: Beethovens unsterbliche Geliebte (Beethoven's undying Love), Bonn, 1890.
* ↑ Wilst du dein Here mir schenken (Aria di Govannini), Edition Peters, 2071. This beautiful air appears in the album which Bach wrote for his wife, Anna Magdalena.
* ↑ Nohl: Life of Beethoven.
* ↑ Beethoven was really short-sighted. Ignaz von Seyfried says that this was caused by smallpox, and that he was obliged to wear spectacles when quite young. This short-sightedness would probably exaggerate the wild expression of his eyes. His letters between 1823-4 contain frequent complaints on the subject of his eyes which were often painful. See the articles by Christian Kalischer on this subject, Beethovens Augens und Augenleiden (Die Musik, 15th March-1st April, 1902).
* ↑ The music for Goethe's play Egmont was commenced in 1809. Beethoven had also wished to write the music to William Tell, but Gyrovetz was chosen before him.
* ↑ Conversation with Schindler.
* ↑ But written (so it seems) from Korompa at the Brunswick's house.
* ↑ This portrait can still be seen in Beethoven's house at Bonn. It is reproduced in Frimmel's Life of Beethoven, page 29, and in the "Musical Times," 15th December, 1892.
* ↑ To Gleichenstein.
* ↑ "The heart is the mainspring of all that is great" (to Giannatasio del Rio).
* ↑ "Goethe's poems give me great happiness," he wrote to Bettina Brentano on 19th February, 1811. And also "Goethe and Schiller are my favourite poets, together with Ossian and Homer, whom, unfortunately, I can only read in translations." To Breitkopf & Härtel, 8th August, 1809, Nohl, New Letters, LIII. It is remarkable that Beethoven's taste in literature was so sound in view of his neglected education. In addition to Goethe, who he said was "grand, majestic, always in D major" (and more than Goethe) he loved three men, Homer, Plutarch and Shakespeare. Of Homer's works he preferred the Odyssey to the Iliad; he was continually reading Shakespeare (from a German translation) and we know with what tragic grandeur he has set Coriolanus and the Tempest in music. Plutarch continually, as did all who were in favour of the revolution. Brutus was his hero, as was also the case with Michael Angelo; he had a small statue of him in his bedroom. He loved Plato, and dreamed of establishing his republic in in the whole world. "Socrates and Jesus have been my models," he wrote once on his notebooks (Conversations during 1819 and 1820).
* ↑ To Bettina von Arnim. The authenticity of Beethoven's letters to Bettina, doubted by Schindler, Marx and Deiters, has been supported by Moritz Carriere, Nohl and Kalischer. Bettina has perhaps embellished them a little, but the foundation remains reliable.
* ↑ "Beethoven," said Goethe to Zelter, "is, unfortunately, possessed of a wild and uncouth disposition; doubtless, he is not wrong in finding the world detestable, but that is not the way to make it pleasant for himself or for others. We must excuse and pity him for he is deaf." After that he did nothing against Beethoven nor did he do anything for him, but he ignored him completely. At the bottom, however, he admired Beethoven's music and feared it also. He was afraid it would cause him to lose that mental calm which he had gained through so much trouble. A letter of young Felix Mendelssohn, who passed through Weimar in 1830, gives us a very interesting glimpse into the depths of that storm-tossed passionate soul controlled as it was by a masterly and powerful intellect. . . . "At first," writes Mendelssohn, "he did not want to hear Beethoven's name mentioned, but after a time he was persuaded to listen to the First Movement of the Symphony in C minor, which moved him deeply. He would not show anything outwardly, but merely remarked to me, 'that does not touch me, it only surprises me.' After a time he said 'It is really grand, it is maddening, you would think the house was crumbling to pieces. Afterwards, at dinner, he sat pensive and absorbed until he began to question me about Beethoven's music. I saw quite clearly that a deep impression had been made on him. . . ." (For information on the relations between Goethe and Beethoven, see various articles by Frimmel).
* ↑ Letter from Goethe to Zelter, and September, 1812. Zelter to Goethe, 14th September, 1812 . . . . "Auch ich bewundere ihn mit Schrecken" ("I, too, regard him with mingled admiration and dread "). Zelter writes to Goethe in 1819, "They say he is mad."
* ↑ At any rate, this was a subject which Beethoven had in his mind; for we find it in his notes, especially those for the proposed Tenth Symphony.
* ↑ There was a very tender intimacy between Amalie Sebald and him about this time, and it is possible that this may have supplied the inspiration.
* ↑ Differing from him in this, Schubert had written in 1807 a pièce d'occasion, in honour of Napoleon the Great, and conducted the performance himself before the Emperor.
* ↑ "I say nothing of our monarchs and wrote to auka during the Congress. empire of the spirit is the dearest of all. their kingdoms," he "To my mind, the It is the first of all kingdoms, temporal and spiritual."
* ↑ Vienna, is that not to say everything? All trace of German Protestantism eradicated, even the national accent lost, Italianised . . . . German spirit, German habits and ways explained from textbooks of Italian and Spanish origin. The country of debased history, falsified science, falsified religion. . . . A frivolous scepticisın calculated to undermine all love of truth, honour, and independence! (Wagner, Beethoven, 1870). Grillparzer has written that it was a misfortune to be born an Austrian. The great German composers of the end of the 19th Century who have lived in Vienna, have suffered cruelly
* ↑ King Jerome had offered Beethoven an annuity of six hundred ducats of gold and 150 silver ducats for travelling expenses, for playing to him occasionally and for managing his chamber-music concerts, which were not long or very frequent. Beethoven was eager to go
* ↑ Rossini's Tancredi sufficed to shake the whole German musical edifice. Bauernfold (quoted by Ehrhard) notes in his Journal this criticism which circulated in the Viennese salons in 1816: "Mozart and Beethoven are old pedants; the stupidity of the preceding period amused them: it is only since Rossini that one has really known melody. Fidelio is quite devoid of music; one cannot understand why people take the trouble to weary themselves with it." Beethoven gave his last concert as pianist in 1814.
* ↑ The same year Beethoven lost his brother Karl. "He clung to life so, that I would willingly have given mine," he wrote to Antonia Brentano.
* ↑ Except for his intimate friendship with Countess Maria von Erdödy, a constant sufferer like himself, afflicted with an incurable malady. She lost her only son suddenly in 1816. Beethoven dedicated to her in 1809 his two Trios Op. 70; and in 1815-17, his two great Sonatas for Violoncello Op. 102.
* ↑ Besides his deafness, his health grew worse from day to day. During October, 1816, he was very ill. In the summer of 1817 his doctor said he had a chest complaint. During the winter, 1817-18, he was tormented with his so-called phthisis. Then he had acute rheumatism in 1820-21, jaundice in 1821, and several maladies in 1823.
* ↑ A change of style in his music, beginning with the Sonata Op: 101, dates from this time.
* ↑ Beethoven's conversation-books form more than 11,000 manuscript pages, and can be found bound to-day in the Imperial Library at Berlin.
* ↑ Schindler, who had been intimate with Beethoven since 1819, had known him slightly since 1814; but Beethoven had found it very difficult to be friendly; he treated him at first with disdainful haughtiness.
* ↑ See the admirable notes of Wagner on Beethoven's deafness (Beethoven, 1870).
* ↑ He loved animals and pitied them. The mother of the historian, von Frimmel, says that for a long while she had an involuntary dislike for Beethoven, because when she was a little girl he drove away with his handkerchief all the butterflies that she wanted to catch.
* ↑ He was always uncomfortable in his lodgings. In thirty-five years in Vienna, he changed his rooms thirty times.
* ↑ Beethoven had written personally to Cherubini, who was "of all his contemporaries the one whom he most esteemed." Cherubini did not reply.
* ↑ "I never avenge myself," he wrote besides to Madame Streicher. "When I am obliged to act against others, I only do what is necessary to defend myself or to prevent them from doing one harm."
* ↑ A letter which has been found in Berlin to M. Kalischer, shews with what deep feeling Beethoven wished to make his nephew" a citizen useful to the state" (February 1st, 1819).
* ↑ Schindler, who saw him then, says that he suddenly became an old man of seventy, utterly crushed and broken of will. He would have died had Carl died. He died soon afterwards.
* ↑ The dilettantism of our time has not failed to seek to re- instate this scoundrel. This is not surprising.
* ↑ Letter from Fischenich to Charlotte Schiller (January, 1793). Schiller's Ode was written in 1785. The actual theme appeared in 1808 in the Fantasy for piano, orchestra and Choir. Ор. 80, and in 1810 in the Song on Goethe's words: Kleine Blumen, Kleine Blaetter. I have seen in a note book of 181a belonging to Dr Erich Prieger at Bonn, between the sketches of the Seventh Symphony and a plan for an Overture to Macbeth, an attempt to adopt some words of Schiller to the theme which he used later on in the Overture Op. 115 (Namensfeier). Several instrumental motives of the Ninth Symphony appeared before 1815. Thus the definite theme of Joy was put down in notes in 1822, also all the other airs of the Symphony, except the Trio, which came a little after, then the andante moderato, and later the adagio, which appeared last of all. For references to Schiller's poem and the false interpretation which is given nowadays by substituting for the word Joy the word Liberty, see an article by Charles Andler in Pages Libres (July 8, 1905).
* ↑ Berlin Library.
* ↑ Exactly as if it had words beneath.
* ↑ The Mass in D, Op: 123.
* ↑ Harassed by domestic quarrels, misery, cares of all kinds, Beethoven only wrote during the five years from 1816 to 1821, three pieces for the piano (Op., 101, 102, and 106). His enemies said he was exhausted. He began to work again in 1821.
* ↑ February, 1824. Signed Prince C. Lichnovsky, Count Maurice Lichnovsky, Count Maurice de Fries, Count M. de Dietrichstein, Count F. de Palfy, Count Czernin, Ignace Edler de Mosel, Charles Czerny, Abbé Stadler, A. Diabelli, Artari & Co., Steiner & Co., A. Streicher, Zmeskall, Kiesewetter, etc.
* ↑ "My moral character is publicly recognised," Beethoven proudly said to the Vienna Municipality, on February 1st, 1819, to vindicate his right to the guardianship of his nephew. Even distinguished writers like Weisenbach have considered him worthy of the dedication of their works.
* ↑ In August, 1824, he was haunted with the fear of sudden death "like my grandfather to whom I bear so much resemblance," he wrote on August 16th, 1824, to Dr. Bach.
* ↑ The Ninth Symphony was given for the first time in Germany at Frankfurt on April 1st, 1825; in London on March 25th, 1825; in Paris at the Conservatoire on March 27th, 1831. Mendelssohn, then aged seventeen, gave a performance of it on the piano at the Jaegerhalle in Berlin on November 14th, 1826. Wagner, a student at Leipzig, re-copied it entirely by hand; and in a letter, dated October 6th, 1830, to the publisher, Schott, offered him a reduction of the Symphony for pianoforte duet. One can say that the Ninth Symphony decided Wagner's career.
* ↑ "Apollo and his Muses would not wish to deliver me up to death yet, for I still owe them so much. Before I go to the Elysian fields I must leave behind me what the spirit inspires and tells me to finish. It seems to me that I have scarcely written anything." (To the brothers Schott, Sept. 17th, 1829.)
* ↑ Beethoven wrote to Moscheles on March 18th, 1827: "The complete sketch of a Symphony is in my desk with a new overture." This sketch has never been found. One only reads in his notes: Adagio cantique." Religious song for a symphony in the old modes (Herr Gott dich loben wir.—Alleluja), may be in an independent style, may be as introduction to a fugue. This Symphony might be characterised by the entrance of voices, perhaps in the finale, perhaps in the adagio. The violins in the orchestra, etc., increased ten times for the last movements. The voices to enter one by one; or to repeat the adagio somehow in the last movements. For words for the adagio, a Greek myth or an ecclesiastical canticle, in the allegro, Bacchus' Feast (1818). As has been seen the choral conclusion was intended to be reserved for a Tenth Symphony and not for the Ninth Symphony. Later he said that he wished to accomplish in his Tenth Symphony "the reconciliation of the modern world with the ancient, which Goethe had attempted in his Second Faust."
* ↑ The subject is the legend of a horseman who is loved and captured by a fairy, and who suffers from nostalgia and lack of liberty. There are analogies between this poem and that of Tannhauser. Beethoven worked at it between 1823 and 1826. (See A. Ehrhard Frans Grillparzer, 1900).
* ↑ Since 1808 Beethoven had made plans for writing the music to Faust. (The first part of Faust appeared under the title of Tragedy in the autumn of 1807). It was then his dearest plan.
* ↑ "The South of France! It is there, there!" (from a note- book in the Berlin Library). "To go away from here. Only on this sole condition will you be able to rise again to the high level of your art. . . A Symphony, then to go away, away, away. The summer to work during a voyage. . . . . Then to travel in Italy and Sicily with some other artist."
* ↑ In 1819 he was followed by the police for having said aloud "That, after all, Christ was only a crucified Jew." He was then writing the Mass in D. That work alone is enough to show the freedom of his religious inspirations. (For the religious opinions of Beethoven, see Theodor von Frimmel; Beethoven, 3rd Edition, Verlag Harmonie; and Beethovenia, edited by Georg Müller, Vol. 11, Blöchinger). No less free in politics, Beethoven boldly attacked the vices of the government. He attacked amongst other things, the administration of justice, hindered by the slowness of its process, the stupid police regulations, the rude and lazy clerks in office, who killed all individual initiative and paralysed all action the unfair privileges of a degenerative aristocracy, the high taxation, etc. His political sympathies seemed to be with England at that time.
* ↑ The suicide of his nephew.
* ↑ See an article by Dr. Klotz Forest on the last illness and death of Beethoven in the Chronique Médicale of April 1st and 15th, 1906. There is also exact information in the conversation books where the doctor's questions are written down, and in the article of the doctor himself (Dr. Wawruch) in the Vienna Times, in 1842.
* ↑ The recollections of the singer, Ludwig Cramolini, which have been published, relate a touching visit to Beethoven during his last illness. He found Beethoven possessed of a calm serenity, a touching kindness. (See the Frankfurter Zeitung, of September 29th, 1907).
* ↑ The operations took place on December 20th, January 8th, February and, and February 27th.
* ↑ The young musician, Anselm Huttenbrenner. "God be praised," said Breuning. "Let us thank Him for having put an end to this long and pitiful martyrdom." All Beethoven's MSS. books and furniture were sold by auction for 1,575 florins. The catalogue contained 252 lots of manuscripts and musical books which did not exceed the sum of 98a florins 37 kreutzer. The conversation-books and the Tagebucher were sold for florin 20 kreutzer. Amongst his books Beethoven possessed: Kant's Natural Science and Astronomy: Bode's Knowledge of the Heavens; Thomas à Kempis The Imitation of Christ. The Censor confiscated Seum's Walks round Syracuse Kotzebue's Over the Adel, and Fessler's Views on Religion and Theology.
* ↑ "I am always happy when I have to master some difficulty" (Letter to the Immortal Loved One). "I should like to live a thousand lives . . . I am not suited for a quiet life." (To Wegeler, November 16th, 1801).
* ↑ "Beethoven talked to me on the science of nature and helped me with this study as with music. It was not the laws of nature but its elementary powers that attracted him." (Schindler).
* ↑ "Oh, how good life is; but mine is for ever embittered." (Letter to Wegeler, May and, 1810).