Beethoven’s Character and Personality--His Disposition--Love of
Nature--Relations with the Opposite Sex--Literary Tastes--His
Letters--Manner of Composing--The Sketchbooks--Origin of His
Deafness.
The year 1800 is an important era in Beethoven’s history. It is the
year in which, cutting loose from the pianoforte, he asserted his
claims to a position with Mozart and the still living and productive
Haydn in the higher forms of chamber and orchestral composition--the
quartet and the symphony. It is the year, too, in which the bitter
consciousness of an increasing derangement of his organs of hearing
was forced upon him and the terrible anticipation of its incurable
nature and of its final result in almost total deafness began to
harass and distress him. The course of his life was afterwards so
modified, on the one hand, by the prosperous issue of these new appeals
to the taste and judgment of the public, and, on the other, by the
unhappy progress of his malady, each acting and reacting upon a nature
singularly exceptional, that for this and other reasons some points in
his personal character and habits, and a few general remarks upon and
illustrations of another topic or two must be made before resuming the
narrative of events.
A true and exhaustive picture of Beethoven as a man would present an
almost ludicrous contrast to that which is generally entertained as
correct. As sculptors and painters have each in turn idealized the
work of his predecessor, until the composer stands before us like a
Homeric god until those who knew him personally, could they return
to earth, would never suspect that the grand form and noble features
of the more pretentious portraits are intended to represent the
short muscular figure and pock-pitted face of their old friend--so
in literature evoked by the composer a similar process has gone on,
with a corresponding suppression of whatever is deemed common and
trivial, until he is made a being living in his own peculiar realm of
gigantic ideas, above and apart from the rest of mankind--a sort of
intellectual Thor, dwelling in “darkness and clouds of awful state,”
and making in his music mysterious revelations of things unutterable!
But it is really some generations too soon for a conscientious
investigator of his history to view him as a semi-mythological
personage, or to discover that his notes to friends asking for pens,
making appointments to dinner at taverns, or complaining of servants,
are “cyclopean blocks of granite,” which, like the “chops and tomato
sauce” of Mr. Pickwick, contain depths unfathomable of profound
meaning. The present age must be content to find in Beethoven, with
all his greatness, a very human nature, one which, if it showed
extraordinary strength, exhibited also extraordinary weaknesses.
INCONSISTENT TRAITS OF CHARACTER
It was the great misfortune of Beethoven’s youth--his impulses good and
bad being by nature exceedingly quick and violent--that he did not grow
up under the influence of a wise and strict parental control, which
would have given him those habits of self-restraint that, once fixed,
are a second and better nature, and through which the passions, curbed
and moderated, remain only as sources of noble energy and power. His
very early admission into the orchestra of the theatre as cembalist,
was more to the advantage of his musical than of his moral development.
It was another misfortune that, in those years, when the strict
regulations of a school would have compensated in some measure for the
unwise, unsteady, often harsh discipline of his father, he was thus
thrown into close connection with actors and actresses, who, in those
days, were not very distinguished for the propriety of their manners
and morals. Before his seventeenth or eighteenth year, when he became
known to the Breuning family and Count Waldstein, he could hardly have
learned the importance of cultivating those high principles of life
and conduct on which in later years he laid so much stress. And, at
that period of life, the character even under ordinary circumstances
is so far developed, the habits have become so far formed and fixed,
and the natural tendencies have acquired so much strength, that it is,
as a rule, too late to conquer the power of a perfect self-command.
At all events, the consequences of a deficient early moral education
followed Beethoven through life and are visible in the frequent
contests between his worse and his better nature and in his constant
tendency to extremes. To-day, upon some perhaps trivial matter, he
bursts into ungovernable wrath; to-morrow, his penitence exceeds the
measure of his fault. To-day he is proud, unbending, offensively
careless of those claims which society grants to people of high
rank; to-morrow his humility is more than adequate to the occasion.
The poverty in which he grew up was not without its effect upon his
character. He never learned to estimate money at its real value; though
often profuse and generous to a fault, even wasteful, yet at times he
would fall into the other extreme. With all his sense of nobility of
independence, he early formed the habit of leaning upon others; and
this the more, as his malady increased, which certainly was a partial
justification; but he thus became prone to follow unwise counsels, or,
when his pride was touched, to assert an equally unwise independence.
At other times, in the multitude of counsellors he became the victim
of utter irresolution, when decision and firmness were indispensable
and essential to his welfare. Thus, both by following the impulse of
the moment, and by hesitation when a prompt determination was demanded,
he took many a false step, which could no longer be retrieved when
reflection brought with it bitter regret.
It would be doing great injustice both to Beethoven and to the present
writer to understand the preceding remarks as being intended to
represent the composer’s lapses in these regards, as being more than
unpleasant and unfortunate episodes in the general tenor of his life;
but as they did occur to his great disadvantage, the fact cannot be
silently passed over.
A romantically sentimental admiration of the heroes of ancient
classic literature, having its origin in Paris, had become widely
the fashion in Beethoven’s youth. The democratic theories of the
French sentimentalists had received a new impulse from the dignified
simplicity of the foreign representatives of the young American
Republic, Franklin, Adams, Jay--from the retirement to private life
on their plantations and farms of the great military leaders in
the contest, Washington, Greene, Schuyler, Knox and others, after
the war with England was over; from the pride taken by the French
officers, who had served in America, in their insignia of the order
of the Cincinnati; and even from the letters and journals of German
officers, who, in captivity, had formed friendships with many of the
better class of the republican leaders, and seen with their own eyes
in what simplicity they lived while guiding the destinies of the
new-born nation. Thus through the greater part of Central Europe the
idea became current of a pure and sublime humanity, above and beyond
the influence of the passions, of which Cincinnatus, Scipio, Cato,
Washington, Franklin, were the supposed representatives. Zschokke makes
his Heuwen say: “Virtue and the heroes of antiquity had inspired me
with enthusiasm for virtue and heroism”; and so, also, Beethoven. He
exalted his imagination and fancy by the perusal of the German poets
and translations of the ancient and English classics, especially Homer,
Plutarch and Shakespeare; dwelt fondly upon the great characters as
models for the conduct of life; but between the sentiment which one
feels and the active principle on which he acts, there is often a wide
cleft. That Beethoven proved to be no Stoic, that he never succeeded in
governing his passions with absolute sway, was not because the spirit
was unwilling; the flesh was weak. Adequate firmness of character had
not been acquired in early years. But those who have most thoroughly
studied his life, know best how pure and lofty were his aspirations,
how wide and deep his sympathies with all that is good, how great his
heart, how, on the whole, heroic his endurance of his great calamity.
They can best feel the man’s true greatness, admire the nobility of his
nature, and drop the tear of sorrow and regret upon his vagaries and
faults. He who is morbidly sensitive, and compelled to keep constant
ward and watch over his passions, can best appreciate and sympathize
with the man, Beethoven.
Truth and candor compel the confession, that in those days of
prosperity he bore his honors with less of meekness than we could wish;
that he had lost something of that modesty and ingenuousness eulogized
by Junker ten years before, in his Mergentheim letter. His “somewhat
lofty bearing” had even been reported by the correspondent of the
“Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung.” Traces of self-sufficiency and even
arrogance--faults almost universal among young and successful geniuses,
often in a far higher degree than was true of Beethoven, and with not
a tithe of his reason--are unquestionably visible. No one can read
without regret his remarks upon certain persons not named, with whom at
this very time he was upon terms of apparently intimate friendship. “I
value them,” he writes, “only by what they do for me.... I look upon
them only as instruments upon which I play when I feel so disposed.”
His “somewhat lofty bearing” was matter for jest to the venerable
Haydn, who, according to a trustworthy tradition, when Beethoven’s
visits to him had become few and far between would inquire of other
visitors: “How goes it with our Great Mogul?” Nor would the young
nobles, whose society he frequented, take offence; but it certainly
made him enemies among those whom he “valued according to their service
and looked upon as mere instruments”--and no wonder!
Pierson, in his edition of the so-called “Beethoven’s Studien,” has
added to Seyfried’s personal sketches a few reminiscences of that
Griesinger, who was so long Saxon Minister in Vienna, and to whom we
owe the valuable “Biographische Notizen über Joseph Haydn.” One of his
anecdotes is to the purpose here and may be taken as substantially
historical.
BEETHOVEN’S SELF-ESTEEM INJURED
When he was still only an attaché, and Beethoven was little known
except as a celebrated pianoforte player, both being still young, they
happened to meet at the house of Prince Lobkowitz. In conversation with
a gentleman present, Beethoven said in substance, that he wished to
be relieved from all bargain and sale of his works, and would gladly
find some one willing to pay him a certain income for life, for which
he should possess the exclusive right of publishing all he wrote;
adding, “and I would not be idle in composition. I believe Goethe does
this with Cotta, and, if I mistake not, Handel’s London publisher held
similar terms with him.”
“My dear young man,” returned the other, “You must not complain; for
you are neither a Goethe nor a Handel, and it is not to be expected
that you ever will be; for such masters will not be born again.”
Beethoven bit his lips, gave a most contemptuous glance at the speaker,
and said no more. Lobkowitz endeavored to appease him, and in a
subsequent conversation said:
“My dear Beethoven, the gentleman did not intend to wound you. It
is an established maxim, to which most men adhere, that the present
generation cannot possibly produce such mighty spirits as the dead, who
have already earned their fame.”
“So much the worse, Your Highness,” retorted Beethoven: “but with men
who will not believe and trust in me because I am as yet unknown to
universal fame, I cannot hold intercourse!”
It is easy for this generation, which has the productions of the
composer’s whole life as the basis of its judgment of his powers,
to speak disparagingly of his contemporaries for not being able to
discover in his first twelve or fifteen works good reason for classing
him with Goethe and Handel; but he who stand upon a mountain cannot
justly ridicule him on the plain for the narrow extent of his view.
It was as difficult then to conceive the possibility of instrumental
music being elevated to heights greater than those reached by Haydn
and Mozart, as it is for us to conceive of Beethoven being hereafter
surpassed.
In the short personal sketches of Beethoven’s friends which have been
introduced, the dates of their births have been noted so far as known,
that the reader may observe how very large a proportion of them were
of the same age as the composer, or still younger--some indeed but
boys--when he came to Vienna. And so it continued. As the years pass
by in our narrative and names familiar to us disappear, the new ones
which take their places, with rare exceptions, are still of men much
younger than himself. The older generation of musical amateurs at
Vienna, van Swieten and his class, had accepted the young Bonn organist
and patronized him, as a pianist. But when Beethoven began to press his
claims as a composer, and, somewhat later, as his deafness increased,
to neglect his playing, some of the elder friends had passed away,
others had withdrawn from society, and the number was few of those
who, like Lichnowsky, could comprehend that departures from the forms
and styles of Mozart and Haydn were not necessarily faults. With the
greater number, as perfection necessarily admits of no improvement and
both quartet and symphony in _form_ had been carried to that point by
Haydn and Mozart, it was a perfectly logical conclusion that farther
progress was impossible. They could not perceive that there was still
room for the invention or discovery of new elements of interest,
beauty, power; for such perceptions are the offspring of genius. With
Beethoven they were instinctive.
One more remark: Towards the decline of life, the masterpieces of
literature and art, on which the taste was formed, are apt to become
invested in the mind with a sort of nimbus of sanctity; hence, the
productions of a young and daring innovator, even when the genius and
talent displayed in them are felt and receive just acknowledgement,
have the aspect, not only of an extravagant and erring waste of
misapplied powers, but of a kind of profane audacity. For these and
similar reasons Beethoven’s novelties found little favor with the
veterans of the concert-room.
THE HOMAGE OF YOUNG DISCIPLES
The criticism of the day was naturally ruled and stimulated by the
same spirit. Beethoven’s own confession how it at first wounded him,
will come in its order; but after he felt that his victory over it was
sure--was in fact gained with a younger generation--he only laughed
at the critics; to answer them, except by new works, was beneath him.
Seyfried says of him (during the years of the “Eroica,” “Fidelio,”
etc.): “When he came across criticisms in which he was accused of
grammatical errors he rubbed his hands in glee and cried out with a
loud laugh: ‘Yes, yes! they marvel and put their heads together because
they do not find it in any school of thoroughbass!’” But for the
young of both sexes, Beethoven’s music had an extraordinary charm.
And this not upon technical grounds, nor solely for its novelties,
always an attractive feature to the young, but because it appealed to
the sensibilities, excited emotions and touched the heart as no other
purely instrumental compositions had ever done. And so it was that
Beethoven also in his quality of composer soon gathered about him a
circle of young disciples, enthusiastic admirers. Their homage may well
have been grateful to him--as such is to every artist and scholar of
genius, who, striking out and steadfastly pursuing a new path, subjects
himself to the sharp animadversions of critics who, in all honesty,
really can see little or nothing of good in that which is not to be
measured and judged by old standards. The voice of praise under such
circumstances is doubly pleasing. It is known that, when Beethoven’s
works began to find a just appreciation from a new generation of
critics, who had indeed been schooled by them, he collected and
preserved a considerable number of laudatory articles, whose fate
cannot now be traced. When, however, the natural and just satisfaction
which is afforded by the homage of honest admirers and deservedly
eulogistic criticism, degenerates into a love of indiscriminate
praise and flattery, it becomes a weakness, a fault. Of this error in
Beethoven there are traces easily discernible, and especially in his
later years; there are pages of fulsome eulogy addressed to him in the
Conversation Books, which would make the reader blush for him, did not
the mere fact that such books existed remind him of the bitterness of
the composer’s lot. The failing was also sometimes his misfortune;
for those who were most profuse in their flatteries, and thus gained
his ear, were by no means the best of his counsellors. But aside from
the attractive force of his genius, Beethoven possessed a personal
magnetism, which attached his young worshippers to him and, all things
considered, to his solid and lasting benefit in his private affairs.
Just at this time, and for some years to come, his brothers usually
rendered him the aid he needed; but thenceforth to the close of his
life, the names of a constant succession of young men will appear in
and vanish from our narrative, who were ever necessary to him and ever
ready at his call with their voluntary services.
Beethoven’s love of nature was already a marked trait of his character.
This was indulged and strengthened by long rambles upon the lofty hills
and in the exquisitely beautiful valleys which render the environs of
Vienna to the north and west so charming. Hence, when he left the city
to spend the hot summer months in the country, with but an exception
or two in a long series of years, his residence was selected with a
view to the indulgence of this noble passion. Hence, too, his great
delight in the once celebrated work of Christian Sturm: “Beobachtungen
über die Werke Gottes,” which, however absurd much of its natural
philosophy (in the old editions) appears now in the light of advanced
knowledge, was then by far the best manual of popular scientific truth,
and was unsurpassed in fitness to awaken and foster a taste for, and
the understanding of, the beauties of nature. Schindler has recorded
the master’s life-long study and admiration of this book. It was one
which cherished his veneration for the Creator and Preserver of the
universe, and yet left his contempt for procrustean religious systems
and ecclesiastical dogmas its free course. “To him, who, in the love of
Nature, holds communion with her visible forms, she speaks a various
language,” says Bryant. Her language was thoroughly well understood by
Beethoven; and when, in sorrow and affliction, his art, his Plutarch,
his “Odyssey,” proved to be resources too feeble for his comfort, he
went to Nature for solace, and rarely failed to find it.
BEETHOVEN’S MORAL PRINCIPLES
Art has been so often disgraced by the bad morals and shameless lives
of its votaries, that it is doubly gratifying to be able to affirm
of Beethoven that, like Handel, Bach and Mozart, he did honor to his
profession by his personal character and habits. Although irregular,
still he was as simple and temperate in eating and drinking as was
possible in the state of society in which he lived. That he was no
inordinate lover of wine or strong drinks is certain. No allusion
is remembered in any of his letters, notes, memoranda, nor in the
Conversation Books, which indicates a liking for any game of chance
or skill. He does not appear to have known one playing-card from
another. Music, books, conversation with men and women of taste and
intelligence, dancing, according to Ries (who adds that he could never
learn to dance in time--but Beethoven’s dancing days were soon over--),
and, above all, his long walks, were his amusements and recreations.
His whim for riding was of short duration--at all events, the last
allusion to any horse owned by him is in the anecdote on a previous
page.
One rather delicate point demands a word: and surely, what Franklin
in his autobiography could confess of himself, and Lockhart mention
without scruple of Walter Scott, his father-in-law, need not be here
suppressed. Nor can it well be, since a false assumption on the
point has been made the basis already of a considerable quantity
of fine writing, and employed to explain certain facts relative to
Beethoven’s compositions. Spending his whole life in a state of society
in which the vow of celibacy was by no means a vow of chastity; in
which the parentage of a cardinal’s or archbishop’s children was
neither a secret nor a disgrace; in which the illegitimate offspring
of princes and magnates were proud of their descent and formed upon
it well-grounded hopes of advancement and success in life; in which
the moderate gratification of the sexual was no more discountenanced
than the satisfying of any other natural appetite--it is nonsense to
suppose, that, under such circumstances, Beethoven could have puritanic
scruples on that point. Those who have had occasion and opportunity
to ascertain the facts, know that he had not, and are also aware that
he did not always escape the common penalties of transgressing the
laws of strict purity. But he had too much dignity of character ever
to take part in scenes of low debauchery, or even when still young to
descend to the familiar jesting once so common between tavern girls and
the guests. Thus, as the elder Simrock related, upon the journey to
Mergentheim recorded in the earlier pages of this work, it happened at
some place where the company dined, that some of the young men prompted
the waiting-girl to play off her charms upon Beethoven. He received
her advances and familiarities with repellent coldness; and as she,
encouraged by the others, still persevered, he lost his patience, and
put an end to her importunities by a smart box on the ear.
The practice, not uncommon in his time, of living with an unmarried
woman as a wife, was always abhorrent to him--how much so, a sad story
will hereafter illustrate; to a still greater degree an intrigue with
the wife of another man. In his later years he so broke off his once
familiar intercourse with a distinguished composer and conductor of
Vienna, as hardly to return his greetings with common politeness.
Schindler affirmed that the only reason for this was that the man in
question had taken to his bed and board the wife of another.
The names of two married women might be here given, to whom at a
later period Beethoven was warmly attached; names which happily have
hitherto escaped the eyes of literary scavengers, and are therefore
here suppressed. Certain of his friends used to joke him about these
ladies, and it is certain that he rather enjoyed their jests even
when the insinuations, that his affection was beyond the limit of
the Platonic, were somewhat broad; but careful enquiry has failed to
elicit any evidence that even in these cases he proved unfaithful to
his principles. A story related by Jahn is also to the point, viz.:
that Beethoven only by the urgent solicitations of the Czerny family
was after much refusal persuaded to extemporize in the presence of a
certain Madame Hofdemel. She was the widow of a man who had attempted
her life and then committed suicide; and the refusal of Beethoven to
play before her arose from his having the general belief at the time,
that a too great intimacy had existed between her and Mozart. Jahn, it
may be observed, has recently had the great satisfaction of being able
to prove the innocence of Mozart in this matter and of rescuing his
memory from the only dark shadow which rested upon it. This much on
this topic it has been deemed necessary to say here, not only for the
reason above given, but to put an end to long-prevailing misconceptions
and misconstructions of passages in Beethoven’s letters and private
memoranda and to save farther comment when they shall be introduced
hereafter.
Beethoven’s fine sense for the lyric element in poetry was already
conspicuous in the fine tact with which the texts of his songs,
belonging in date to his last years in Bonn, were selected from the
annual publications in which most of them appeared. Another fine
proof of this is afforded by a glance through the older editions of
Matthisson’s poems. In the fourth (1797), there are but two which are
really well adapted to composition in the song-form--the “Adelaide” and
“Das Opferlied.” A third Beethoven left unfinished. He had doubtless
been led to attempt its composition through the force of its appeal
to his personal feelings and sympathies, but soon discovering its
non-lyrical character abandoned it. It is the “Wunsch.”
Rochlitz in his letters from Vienna (1822) reports Beethoven’s humorous
account of his enthusiasm for Klopstock in his early life:
Since that summer in Carlsbad I read Goethe every day, that is,
when I read at all. He (Goethe) has killed Klopstock for me. You
are surprised? And now you laugh? Ah ha! It is because I have read
Klopstock. I carried him about with me for years while walking
and also at other times. Well, I did not always understand him,
of course. He leaps about so much and he begins at too lofty an
elevation. Always _Maestoso_, D-flat major! Isn’t it so? But he
is great and uplifts the soul nevertheless. When I could not
understand him I could sort of guess. If only he did not always
want to die! That will come quickly enough. Well, it always sounds
well, at any rate, etc.
Thus, whatever scattered hints bearing upon the point come under our
notice combine to impart a noble idea of Beethoven’s poetic taste and
culture, and to show that the allusions to the ancient classic authors
in his letters and conversation were not made for display, but were the
natural consequence of a love for and a hearty appreciation of them
derived from their frequent perusal in translations.
BEETHOVEN AS A LETTER-WRITER
Beethoven’s correspondence forms so important a portion of his
biography that something must be said here upon his character as a
letter-writer. A few of his autograph letters bear marks of previous
study and careful elaboration; but, in general, whatever he wrote in
the way of private correspondence was dashed off on the spur of the
moment, and with no thought that it would ever come under any eye but
that for which it was intended. It is therefore easy to imagine how
energetically he would have protested could he have known that his most
insignificant notes were preserved in such numbers, and that the time
would come when they would all be made public; or, still worse, that
some which were but the offspring of momentary pique against those with
whom he lived in closest relations would be used after his death to
their injury; and that outbursts of sudden passion--when the wrong was
perhaps as often on his side as on the other--after all the parties
concerned had passed away, would have an almost judicial authority
accorded to them.
In studying a collection of some eight hundred of his letters and
notes,[89] originals and copies in print or manuscript, the most
striking fact is the insignificance of by far the greater number--that
so few bear marks of any care in their preparation, or contain matter
of any intrinsic value. In fact, perhaps the greater part of the short
notes to Zmeskall and others owe their origin to Beethoven’s dislike of
entrusting oral messages to his servants. For the most part it is in
vain to seek in his correspondence anything bearing upon the theory or
art of music; very seldom is any opinion expressed upon the productions
of any contemporary composer; no vivid sketches of men and manners
flow from his pen, like those which render the letters of Mozart
and Mendelssohn so charming. The proportion of their correspondence
which possesses more than a merely biographical value was large; of
Beethoven’s very small.
His letters, of course, exhibit the usual imperfections of a hasty
and confidential correspondence; sometimes, indeed, of an aggravated
character. Some of them contain loose statements of fact, such as
all men are liable to make through haste or imperfect knowledge;
others contain passages of which the only conceivable explanation is
Schindler’s statement that Beethoven sometimes amused himself with
the harmless mystification of others; but, taken together, the more
important letters--while they usually evince his difficulty in finding
the best expressions of his thoughts and his constant struggle with
the rules of his mother tongue--place his truth and candor in a very
favorable light and sometimes rise into a rude eloquence. The reader
feels that when the writer is unjust he is under the influence of a
mistake or passion--and, as a rule, it is not too late to detect such
injustice; that his errors of fact are simply mistakes, honestly made
and easily corrected; that if, in the mass, a few paragraphs occur
which can be neither fully justified nor excused, it is not to be
forgotten that they were not intended for our eyes and that they were
written under the constant pressure of a great calamity, which made him
doubly sensitive and irritable; and so it will be easy, like Sterne’s
Recording Angel, to blot such passages with a tear.
Another striking fact of Beethoven’s correspondence, when viewed as a
whole, is the proof it affords that, except in his hours of profound
depression, he was far from being the melancholy and gloomy character
of popular belief. He shows himself here--as he was by nature--of a
gay and lively temperament, fond of a jest, an inveterate though not
always a very happy punster, a great lover of wit and humor. It is a
cause for profound gratitude that it was so; since he thus preserved
an elasticity of spirits that enabled him to escape the consequences
of brooding in solitude over his great misfortune; to rise superior to
his fate and concentrate his great powers upon his self-imposed tasks;
and to meet with hope and courage the cruel fortune which put an end to
so many well-founded expectations and ambitious projects, and confined
him to a single road to fame and honor--that of composition. It happens
that several of the more valuable and interesting of his letters
belong to the period immediately following that now before us, and in
them we are able to trace, with reasonable accuracy, the effect which
his incipient and increasing deafness produced upon him--first, the
anxiety caused by earliest symptoms; then the profound grief bordering
upon despair when the final result had become certain; and at last his
submission to and acceptance of his fate. There is in truth something
nobly heroic in the manner in which Beethoven at length rose superior
to his great affliction. The magnificent series of works produced
in the ten years from 1798 to 1808 are no greater monuments to his
genius than to the godlike resolution with which he wrought out the
inspirations of that genius under circumstances most fitted to weaken
its efforts and restrain its energies.
BEETHOVEN AND HIS SKETCHBOOKS
Beethoven was seldom without a folded sheet or two of music paper in
his pocket upon which he wrote with pencil in two or three measures of
music hints of any musical thought which might occur to him wherever he
chanced to be. Towards the end of his life his Conversation Books often
answered the same purpose; and there are traditions of bills-of-fare at
dining-rooms having been honored with ideas afterwards made immortal.
This habit gave Abbé Gelinek a foundation for the following amusing
nonsense as related by Tomaschek: “He (Gelinek) declared,” says
Tomaschek,
as if it were an aphorism, that all of Beethoven’s compositions
were lacking in internal coherency and that not infrequently they
were overloaded. These things he looked upon as grave faults of
composition and sought to explain them from the manner in which
Beethoven went about his work, saying that he had always been
in the habit of noting every musical idea that occurred to him
upon a bit of paper which he threw into a corner of his room, and
that after a while there was a considerable pile of the memoranda
which the maid was not permitted to touch when cleaning the room.
Now when Beethoven got into a mood for work he would hunt a few
musical _motivi_ out of his treasure-heap which he thought might
serve as principal and secondary themes for the composition in
contemplation, and often his selection was not a lucky one. I
(Tomaschek) did not interrupt the flow of his passionate, yet
awkward speech, but briefly answered that I was unfamiliar with
Beethoven’s method of composing but was inclined to think that the
aberrations occasionally to be found in his compositions were to
be ascribed to his individuality, and that only an unprejudiced
and keen psychologist, who had had an opportunity to observe
Beethoven from the beginning of his artistic development to its
maturity in order gradually to familiarize himself with his views
on art, could fit himself to give the musical world an explanation
of the intellectual cross-relationships in Beethoven’s glorious
works, a thing just as impossible to his blind enthusiasts as to
his virulent opponents. Gelinek may have applied these last words
to himself, and not incorrectly.
This conversation took place in 1814, the day after a rehearsal of
Beethoven’s Symphony in A--the Seventh! Gelinek’s pile of little bits
of paper in the corner of the room, when touched by the wand of truth,
resolves itself into blank music books, to which his new ideas were
transferred from the original slight pencil sketches, and frequently
with two or three words to indicate the kind of composition to which
they were suited. Divers anecdotes are current which pretend to give
the origin of some of the themes thus recorded and afterwards wrought
out, but few judicious readers will attach much weight to most of
them. For although conceptions can sometimes be traced directly to
their exciting causes, the musical composer can seldom say more than
that they occurred to him at such a time and place--and often not
even that. It is certainly not improbable that Beethoven’s admirers
may have questioned him upon this point, as Schindler did upon the
“Pastoral” Symphony, and that he was able to satisfy them; but Handel’s
“Harmonious Blacksmith” may be taken as the type of most of the current
stories, which only need truth to make them interesting.
To return to the sketchbooks--which performed a twofold office;
being not alone the registers of new conceptions, but containing
the preliminary studies of the instrumental works into which they
were wrought out. The introduction to the excellent pamphlet, “Ein
Skizzenbuch von Beethoven, beschrieben und in Auszügen dargestellt von
Gustav Nottebohm,” though properly confined by him to the single book
which he was describing, is equally true of so many that have been
examined with care as to warrant its general application. The following
extracts may be taken as true of the greater part of the sketchbooks:
HOW THE SKETCHING WAS DONE
Before us (he says) lies a volume in oblong folio (_Teatro_)
of 192 pages and bearing 16 staves on each page, and, save a
few empty places, containing throughout notes and sketches in
Beethoven’s handwriting for compositions of various sorts. The
volume is bound in craftsman’s style, trimmed, and has a stout
pasteboard cover. It was bound thus before it was used or received
the notes. [Excepting the number of pages this description
applies to most of the true sketchbooks.] The sketches are for
the greater part one-part; that is, they occupy but a single
staff, only exceptionally are they on two or more staves. [In
some of the later books the proportion of sketches in two or
more parts is much greater than in this.] It is permissible to
assume in advance that they were written originally and in the
order in which they follow each other in the sketchbook. When a
cursory glance over the whole does not seem to contradict this
assumption, a careful study nevertheless compels a modification
at times. It is to be observed that generally Beethoven began a
new page with a new composition; and, moreover, that he worked
alternately or simultaneously at different movements. As a result,
different groups of sketches are crowded so closely together
that in order to find room he was obliged to make use of spaces
which had been left open, and thus eventually sketches for the
most different compositions had to be mixed together and brought
into companionship. [In some of the books “vi-” not infrequently
meets the eye. It was the one of Beethoven’s modes of keeping
the clue in the labyrinth of sketches, being part of the word
_vide_. The second syllable, “-de,” can always be found on the
same or a neighboring page.] “N.B.,” “No. 100,” “No. 500,” “No.
1000,” etc., and in later sketches “meilleur,” are common, all
which signs are explained by Schindler as being a whimsical mode
of estimating the comparative value of different musical ideas,
or of forms of the same. Again Nottebohm continues: In spite of
this confused working it is plain that Beethoven, as a rule,
was conscious from the beginning of the goal for which he was
striving, that he was true to his first concept and carried out
the projected form to the end. The contrary is also true at times,
and the sketchbook (like others) disclosed a few instances in
which Beethoven in the course was led from the form originally
conceived into another, so that eventually something different
appeared from what was planned in the first instance. (Once more.)
In general it may be observed that Beethoven in all his work begun
in the sketchbook proceeded in the most varied manner, and at
times reached his goal in a direction opposite to that upon which
he first set out. [At times] the thematic style dominates; the
first sketch breaks off abruptly with the principal subject and
the work that follows is confined to transforming and reshaping
the thematic kernel at first thrown on the paper until it appears
to be fitted for development; then the same process is undertaken
with intermediary sections; everywhere we find beginnings, never
a whole; a whole comes before us only outside of the sketchbook,
in the printed composition where sections which were scattered in
the sketchbook are brought together. [In other cases] the thematic
manner is excluded; every sketch is aimed at a unity and is
complete in itself; the very first one gives the complete outline
for a section of a movement; those that follow are then complete
reshapings of the first, as other readings directed towards a
change in the summary character, or a reformation of the whole,
an extension of the middle sections, etc. Naturally, the majority
of the sketches do not belong exclusively to either of the two
tendencies, but hover between them, now leaning toward one, now
toward the other.
One readily sees that, when the general plan of a work is clear and
distinct before the mind, it is quite indifferent in what order the
various parts are studied; and that Beethoven simply adopted the
method of many a dramatic and other author, who sketches his scenes
or chapters not in course but as mood, fancy or opportunity dictates.
It is equally evident that the composer could have half a dozen works
upon his hands at the same time, not merely without disadvantage to
any one of them, but to the gain of all, since he could turn to one
or another as the spirit of composition impelled; like the author
of a profound literary work, who relieves and recreates his mind
by varying his labors, and executes his grand task all the more
satisfactorily, because he, from time to time, refreshes himself by
turning his attention to other and lighter topics. When Beethoven
writes to Wegeler: “As I am writing now I often compose three or four
pieces at once,” he could have referred only to the preliminary studies
of the sketchbooks. Sometimes, it is true, works were laid aside
incomplete after he had begun the task of writing them out in full,
and finished when occasion demanded; but as a rule his practice was
quite different, viz.: All the parts of a work having been thus studied
until he had determined upon the form, character and style of every
important division and subdivision, and recorded the results in his
sketchbook by a few of the first measures, followed by “etc.” or “and
so on,” the labor of composition may be said to have been finished,
and there remained only the task of writing out the clean copy of what
now existed full and complete in his mind, and of making such minor
corrections and improvements as might occur to him on revision. The
manuscripts show that these were sometimes very numerous, though they
rarely extend to any change in the form or to any alteration in the
grand effect except to heighten it, or render it more unexpected or
exciting. When upon reflection he was dissatisfied with a movement
as a whole he seems rarely to have attempted its improvement by mere
correction, choosing rather to discard it at once and compose a new one
based either upon the same themes or upon entirely new motives. The
several overtures to “Fidelio” are illustrations of both procedures.
The sketches of the greater part of Beethoven’s songs, after the Bonn
period, are preserved, and prove with what extreme care he wrought out
his melodies. The sketchbook analysed by Nottebohm affords a curious
illustration in Matthison’s “Opferlied,” the melody being written out
in full not less than six times, the theme in substance remaining
unchanged. Absolute correctness of accent, emphasis, rhythm--of
prosody, in short--was with him a leading object; and various papers,
as well as the Conversation Books, attest his familiarity with metrical
signs and his scrupulous obedience to metrical laws. Since the shameful
mutilation and dispersion of Beethoven’s manuscripts at the time of
their sale, probably no one person has been able to trace and examine
half of the sketchbooks; still, enough have come under observation
during the researches for this work to establish with reasonable
certainty these points:
I. That each sketchbook was filled in pretty regular course from
beginning to end before a new one was taken.
II. That had the collection been kept entire it would have afforded the
means of determining with a good degree of certainty the chronology of
most of his instrumental works, after coming to Vienna, as to their
first conception and studies--excluding, of course, those which, in one
form or another, he brought with him from Bonn.
III. That the more important vocal compositions were studied separately.
IV. That only from the sketchbooks can an adequate idea of the vast
fertility of Beethoven’s genius be formed. They are in music, like
Hawthorne’s “Notebooks” in literature, the record of a never ceasing
flow of new thoughts and ideas, until death sealed the fountain
forever. There are themes and hints, never used, for all kinds
of instrumental compositions, from the trifles, which he called
“Bagatelles,” to symphonies, evidently intended to be as different from
those we know as they are from each other; and these hints are in such
numbers, that those which can be traced in the published works are
perhaps much the smaller proportion of the whole. Whoever has the will
and opportunity to devote an hour or two to an examination of a few of
these monuments of Beethoven’s inventive genius, will easily comprehend
the remark which he made near the close of his life: “It seems to me
that I have just begun to compose!”[90]
SYMPTOMS OF APPROACHING DEAFNESS
One topic more demands brief notice before closing this chapter. In the
“Merrymaking of the Countryfolk” of Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony, at
the point where the fun grows most fast and furious and the excitement
rises to its height, an ominous sound, as of distant thunder, gives
the first faint warning of the coming storm. So in the life of the
composer at the moment of that highest success and prosperity, which
we have labored to place vividly before the mind of the reader, just
when he could first look forward with well-grounded confidence to
the noblest gratification of a musician’s honorable ambition, a new
and discordant element thrust itself into the harmony of his life.
This was the symptoms of approaching deafness. His own account fixes
their appearance in the year 1799; then they were still so feeble and
intermittent, as to have caused him at first no serious anxiety; but
in another year they had assumed so much the appearance of a chronic
and increasing evil, as to compel him to abandon plans for travel
which he had formed, and for which he was preparing himself, with
great industry and perseverance, to appear in the twofold capacity of
virtuoso and composer. Instead, therefore, in 1801, of having “long
since journeyed through half the world,” he, for two years, had been
confined to Vienna or its immediate vicinity, vainly seeking relief
from surgeons and physicians.
It is not difficult to imagine calamities greater than that which
now threatened Beethoven--as, the loss of sight to a Raphael or
Rubens in the height of their fame and powers; a partial paralysis or
other incurable disease of the brain cutting short the career of a
Shakespeare or Goethe, a Bacon or Kant, a Newton or Humboldt. Better
the untimely fate of a Buckle, than to live long years of unavailing
regret over the blasted hopes and promise of early manhood. In such
cases there remains no resource; hope itself is dead. But to Beethoven,
even if his worst fears should prove prophetic and his infirmity at
length close all prospects of a career as virtuoso and conductor, the
field of composition still remained open. This he knew, and it saved
him from utter despair. Who can say that the world has not been a
gainer by a misfortune which stirred the profoundest depths of his
being and compelled the concentration of all his powers into one
direction?
As the disease made progress and the prospect of relief became less,
notwithstanding a grief and anxiety which caused him such mental agony
as even to induce the thought of suicide, he so well succeeded in
keeping it concealed from all but a few intimate and faithful friends,
that no notice whatever is to be found of it until 1802 except in
papers from his own hand. They form a very touching contrast to his
letters to other correspondents. Neither the head nor the heart is to
be envied of the man who can read them without emotion. The two most
important are letters to Wegeler giving full details of his case;
doubly valuable because they are not merely letters to a friend, but
an elaborate account of the symptoms and medical treatment of his
disease, made to a physician of high standing who thoroughly understood
the constitution of the patient. They are therefore alike significant
for what they contain and for what they omit. No hypothesis as to the
cause of the evil can be entertained, which is discordant with them.
Reserving them, however, for their proper places in the order of time,
a story or two inconsistent with them may here be disposed of.
The so-called Fischoff Manuscript says:
THEORIES AS TO THE LOSS OF HEARING
In the year 1796, Beethoven, on a hot summer day, came greatly
overheated to his home, threw open doors and windows, disrobed
down to his trousers and cooled himself in a draft at the open
window. The consequence was a dangerous sickness which, on his
convalescence, settled in his organs of hearing, and from this
time his deafness steadily increased.
In this passage both the date and the averment are irreconcilable with
the letters to Wegeler.
Dr. Weissenbach, in his “Reise zum Congress” (1814), gives what appears
to be the same story but in fewer words. “He (Beethoven) once endured a
fearful attack of typhus. From this time dates the decay of his nervous
system, and probably also the, to him, great misfortune of the loss of
hearing.” Neither a typhus nor a typhoid fever is a matter of a few
days or weeks if severe; and the chronology of our narrative is, to
say the least, so far fixed and certain as to exclude the possibility
of his having passed through any very serious illness of that nature
since he came to Vienna. But it is not at all improbable that, in 1784
or 1785, he may have been a victim to this frightful disorder, and that
it may have been the cause of his melancholy condition of health at
the time of his mother’s death, and of the chronic diarrhœa with which
he was so long troubled. True, there is no record of such an illness;
but that proves nothing. There is no record that he passed through an
attack of small-pox, except that which the disease left upon his face.
But the most extraordinary and inexplicable account of the origin
of his deafness is that given by Beethoven himself to the English
pianist, Charles Neate, in 1815. Mr. Neate was once urging Beethoven
to visit England and mentioned as a farther inducement the great
skill of certain English physicians in treating diseases of the ear,
assuring him that he might cherish hopes of relief. Beethoven replied
in substance as follows: “No; I have already had all sorts of medical
advice. I shall never be cured--I will tell you how it happened. I was
once busy writing an opera--
Neate: “Fidelio?”
Beethoven: “No. It was not ‘Fidelio.’ I had a very ill-tempered,
troublesome _primo tenore_ to deal with. I had already written two
grand airs to the same text, with which he was dissatisfied, and now
a third which, upon trial, he seemed to approve and took away with
him. I thanked the stars that I was at length rid of him and sat down
immediately to a work which I had laid aside for those airs and which
I was anxious to finish. I had not been half an hour at work, when I
heard a knock at my door, which I at once recognized as that of my
_primo tenore_. I sprang up from my table under such an excitement
of rage, that, as the man entered the room, I threw myself upon the
floor as they do upon the stage (here B. spread out his arms and made
a gesture of illustration), coming down upon my hands. When I arose I
found myself deaf and have been so ever since. The physicians say, the
nerve is injured.”
That Beethoven really related this strange story cannot be questioned;
the word of the venerable Charles Neate to the author is sufficient on
that point. What is to be thought of it, is a very different matter.
Here at least it may stand without comment.
FOOTNOTES:
[89] The number of known letters and documents has grown greatly since
Thayer wrote these words. Kalischer’s Collection numbers over 1200
and Emerich Kastner gives the first lines of 1380 in Frimmel’s second
“Beethoven Jahrbuch” published in 1909.
[90] Opportunities for studying Beethoven’s sketchbooks have greatly
increased since Mr. Thayer wrote these words. Nottebohm who rendered
an incalculable service to all students of the great composer after
the book from which our author quotes, published a volume entitled
“Beethoveniana” in 1872, and a second entitled “Zweite Beethoveniana”
in 1887. To these the revisors of this biography have repeatedly
referred in tracing the history of Beethoven’s compositions. A
collection of sketches formerly owned by J. N. Kafka and now in the
British Museum was described by Mr. J. S. Shedlock in “The Musical
Times” (July to December, 1892). A volume containing sketches for
the last quartets is at the present writing in the possession of Mr.
Cecilio de Roda of Madrid and was described by the “Rivista Italiana”
(Nos. XI-XIV, 1907) and also published in pamphlet form under the title
“Un Quadrena di autografi di Beethoven del 1825.”