Connecticut western news., 1877-01-12
SOME TRAITS OF BEETHOVEN.

Beethoven used to sit for hours at | the piano, improVising the thoughts | which he afterwards jotted down on | paper, and subsequently, elaborated | into the music with which he aston ished the world. If he discovered that | he had been overheard at such times i as happened once when Cipriana Potter called upon the great composer and was shown into an adjoining room-he was incensed to the highest degree. In another mood, and es- pecially after he had become deaf, while working out 9 subject in his mind, he would leave his house at night or in the early morning, and walk for many hours through the most remote. and solitary places, through woods and by lakes and tor rents, silent and distracted. In this way he sometimes made the circuit of Vienna twice 8 day, or, if he were at Baden, long excursions across the country. When engaged on his mag nificent "Sonata Appassionata," he one day took a long walk with Ferdi- nand Ries, his pupil. They walked for hours, but during the whole time, Beethoven spoke not word, but kept humming, or, rather, howling up and down the scale. It was the process of incubation. On reaching home he seated himself at the piano without taking off his hat, and dashed into the splendid finale of that noble work. Once there he remained for some time, totally regardless of the dark ness, or the fact that he and Ries had had nothing to eat for hours. His ap- pearance became perfectly we'll known to people of all classes, who exclaim- ed, "There is Beethoven" when they saw him; and it is related that once, when troop of charcoal burners met him on 8 country path, they stood on one side, heavily-laden as they were, to let him pass, for fear of troubling the great masters meditations. When composing in his own room at home, he would sometimes walk
 about in reverie, pouring cold water over his hands alternately, from jug after jug, till the floor of the room was inundated, and the people came running upstairs to know the cause of the deluge. At his death he left, besides his finished works, quantity of rough sketches, containing, doubt less, the germs of many more works, which never passed the stage in which they appear there. The first draughts of his well-l1nown compositions show the successive alterations which their 1 subjects suffered before they pleased i him; and these form most interest ing study, as exposing his manner of working. One of his sketch books has been published i'o ertenso, and
 besides host Of matters of minor in- terest, it contains three separate
 draughts, at length, of the finale of one of his symphonies-a striking , proof of the patience with which this
 great and fiery genius perfected his masterpieces. Even when completely
 finished and perfected to his own sat-
 isfaction, his manuscript presented
 many difficulties to the reader, and
 his copyists and engravers are said to
 have had a hard time of it.. In one oi
 his letters, in which he gives his pub
 fishers the corrections of some proofs
 of stringed quartet, he concludes
 by saying that " It is four o'clock.
 must post this; and I am quite hoarse
 with stamping and swearing. .-Mac-
 neiHan's IHGgdzine.