"No one can conceive," Beethoven wrote to the Baroness Droszdick, "the
intense happiness I feel in getting into the country, among the woods,
my dear trees, shrubs, hills, and dales. I am convinced that no one
loves country life as I do. It is as if every tree and every bush
could understand my mute inquiries and respond to them." It was this
rage for fresh air and fields which made him such a bad stay-at-home
bird, whether he was sheltered amid the palatial surroundings of some
princely patron, or whether sojourning in the less luxurious and
comfortless atmosphere of some one of his frequently changed lodgings.
He disliked any control, and truly meant it when, at intervals, growing
impatient with the constant requests for his company, he complained
outright that he was forced too much into society. His favourite
places for ruralising were Mödling, Döbling, Hentzendorf, and Baden;
while there is still cherished in the royal garden of Schönbrunn a
favourite spot, between two ash-trees, where the master is reputed to
have composed some of the music of "Fidelio."
A French artist, Paul Leyendecker, has painted the master thus at work
amid nature's peace. Beethoven is sitting on the outskirts of a wood
near his native city of Bonn, absorbed in composition. A funeral
procession is coming up the road, with the coffin borne upon the
shoulders of the mourners, and preceded by the priest, who recognises
the composer and bids the choristers cease chanting for a while in
order not to disturb his labours. Turning from the master at work in
the open air to him at home, we find that Carl Schloesser, a German
painter long settled in London, exhibited at the Royal Academy, a few
years ago, a striking picture showing Beethoven at the piano absorbed
in composition, amid a litter of manuscripts and music-sheets. It was
thus he must have looked when Weber called upon him in 1823.
[Illustration: Beethoven at Bonn. From painting by Paul Leyendecker.]
"All lay in the wildest disorder--music, money, clothing, on the
floor--linen from the wash upon the dirty bed--broken coffee-cups upon
the table. The open pianoforte was covered thickly with dust.
Beethoven entered to greet his visitors. Benedict has thus described
him: 'Just so must have looked Lear, or one of Ossian's bards. His
thick gray hair was flung upwards, and disclosed the sanctuary of his
lofty vaulted forehead. His nose was square, like that of a lion; his
chin broad, with those remarkable folds which all his portraits show;
his jaws formed as if purposely to crack the hardest nuts; his mouth
noble and soft. Over the broad face, seamed with scars from the
smallpox, was spread a dark redness. From under the thick, closely
compressed eyebrows gleamed a pair of small flashing eyes. The square,
broad form of a Cyclops was wrapped in a shabby dressing-gown, much
torn about the sleeves.' Beethoven recognised Weber without a word,
embraced him energetically, shouting out, 'There you are, my boy; you
are a devil of a fellow! God bless you!' handed him at once his famous
tablets, then pushed a heap of music from the old sofa, threw himself
upon it, and, during a flow of conversation, commenced dressing himself
to go out. Beethoven began with a string of complaints about his own
position; about the theatres, the public, the Italians, the talk of the
day, and, more especially, about his own ungrateful nephew. Weber, who
was nervous and agitated, counselled him to tear himself from Vienna,
and to take a journey through Germany to convince himself of the
world's judgment of him, and more especially to go to England, where
his works were more reverenced than in any other country. 'Too late!
too late!' cried Beethoven, making the pantomime of playing on the
piano, and shaking his head sadly. Then he seized on Weber's arm, and
dragged him away to the Sauerhof, where he was wont to dine. 'Here,'
wrote Weber afterward, 'we dined together in the happiest mood. The
rough repulsive man paid me as much attention as if I were a lady to
whom he was making court, and served me at table with the most delicate
care. How proud I felt to receive all this kindness and affectionate
regard from the great master spirit! The day will remain for ever
impressed on my mind, as well as on that of all who were present.'"
[Illustration: Beethoven in His Study. From painting by Carl
Schloesser.]
Three years later the Swedish poet, Atterbom, being in Vienna, went to
visit Beethoven. Atterbom was accompanied by his friend, Doctor
Jeitteles, who has left this account of their odd experience. He says:
"We went one hot afternoon to the Alservorstadt, and mounted to the
second story of the so-called Schwarzspanier house. We rang, no one
answered; we lifted the latch, the door was open, the anteroom empty.
We knocked at the door of Beethoven's room, and, receiving no reply,
repeated our knock more loudly. But we got no answer, although we
could hear there was some one inside. We entered, and what a scene
presented itself! The wall facing us was hung with huge sheets of
paper covered with charcoal marks; Beethoven was standing before it,
with his back turned toward us, but in what a condition! Oppressed by
the excessive heat, he had divested himself of everything but his
shirt, and was busily employed writing notes on the wall with a
lead-pencil, beating time, and striking a few chords on his stringless
pianoforte. He did not once turn toward the door. We looked at each
other in amused perplexity. It was no use trying to attract the deaf
master's attention by making a noise; and he would have felt
embarrassed had we gone up to him. I said to Atterbom, 'Would you, as
a poet, like to take away with you to the north the consciousness of
having, perhaps, arrested the loftiest flight of genius? You can at
least say, "I have seen Beethoven create." Let us leave, unseen and
unheard!' We departed."
[Illustration: A Symphony by Beethoven. From painting by A. Graefle.]
Another German artist, Graefle, has produced an interesting work
depicting Beethoven playing to his friends.
"At the pianoforte Beethoven seemed a god--at times in the humour to
play, at others not. If he happened not to be in the humour, it
required pressing and reiterated entreaties to get him to the
instrument. Before he began in earnest, he used sportively to strike
the keys with the palm of his hand, draw his fingers along the keyboard
from one end to the other, and play all manner of gambols, at which he
laughed heartily. Once at the pianoforte, and in a genial mood with
his surroundings, he would extemporise for one and two hours at a
stretch, amid the solemn silence of his listeners. He demanded
absolute silence from conversation whenever he put his fingers upon the
pianoforte keys to play. If this was not forthcoming, he rose up,
publicly upbraided the offenders, and left the room. This mode of
resenting a nuisance--one not yet extinct--was once illustrated at
Count Browne's, where Beethoven and Ries were engaged in playing a
duet, yet during which one of the guests started an animated
conversation with a lady. Exasperated at such an affront to his
artistic honour, Beethoven rose up, glared at the pair, and shouted
out, 'I play no more for such hogs,'--nor would he touch another note
or allow Ries to do so, although earnestly entreated by the company.
'His improvisation,' Czerny tells us, 'was most brilliant and striking;
in whatever company he might chance to be, he knew how to produce such
an effect upon every hearer that frequently not an eye remained dry,
while many would break out into loud sobs, for there was something
wonderful in his expression in addition to the beauty and originality
of his ideas and his spirited style of rendering them.' Ries says: 'No
artist that I ever heard came at all near the height Beethoven attained
in this branch of playing. The wealth of ideas which forced themselves
on him, the caprices to which he surrendered himself, the variety of
treatment, the difficulties, were inexhaustible. Even the Abbé
Vogler's admirers were compelled to admit as much.'"
Tomaschek was greatly impressed by Beethoven. He writes: "It was in
1798, when I was studying law, that Beethoven, that giant among
players, came to Prague. . . . His grand style of playing, and
especially his bold improvisation, had an extraordinary effect upon me.
I felt so shaken that for several days I could not bring myself to
touch the piano."
"His manner was to sit in a quiet way at the instrument, commanding his
feelings; but occasionally, and especially when extemporising, it was
hard to maintain the pose. At extreme moments he warmed into great
passions, so that it was impossible for him to hide from his listeners
the sacred fires that were raging within him. Czerny declares that his
playing of slow movements was full of the greatest expression,--an
experience to be remembered. He used the pedal largely, and was most
particular in the placing of the hands and the drift of the fingers
upon the keys. As a pianist, he was surnamed 'Giant among players,'
and men like Vogler, Hummel, and Wölffl were of a truth great players;
but as Sir George Grove aptly says, in speaking of Beethoven's _tours
de force_ in performance, his transposing and playing at sight, etc.,
'It was no quality of this kind that got him the name, but the
loftiness and elevation of his style, and his great power of expression
in slow movements, which, when exercised on his noble music, fixed his
hearers, and made them insensible to any fault of polish or mere
mechanism.'"
Beethoven has often served as a subject for painters, but, among the
numerous pictures dedicated to him, we recall none more impressive than
Aimé de Lemud's "Beethoven's Dream." De Lemud, a Frenchman who died at
the age of seventy years, in 1887, first won success as a painter, and
then studied engraving. At the Salon of 1863 he received a medal for
his engraving of this picture, which was then entitled, simply,
"Beethoven."
[Illustration: Beethoven's Dream. From painting by Aimé de Lemud.]
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, in her story of "The Silent Partner," tells
how "a line engraving after De Lemud could make a 'forgetting' in the
life of a factory girl.
"An engraving that lay against a rich easel in a corner of the room
attracted the girl's attention presently. She went down on her knees
to examine it. It chanced to be Lemud's dreaming Beethoven. Sip was
very still about it.
"'What is that fellow doing?' she asked, after a while. 'Him with the
stick in his hand.'
"She pointed to the leader of the shadowy orchestra, touching the baton
through the glass, with her brown fingers.
"'I have always supposed,' said Perley, 'that he was only floating with
the rest; you see the orchestra behind him.'
"'Floating after those women with their arms up? No, he isn't.'
"'What is he doing?'
"It's riding over him--the orchestra. He can't master it. Don't you
see? It sweeps him along. He can't help himself. They come and come.
How fast they come! How he fights and falls! Oh, I know how they
come! That's the way things come to me; things I could do, things I
could say, things I could get rid of if I had the chance; they come in
the mills mostly; they tumble over me just so; I never have the chance.
How he fights! I didn't know there was any such picture in the world.
I'd like to look at that picture day and night. See! Oh, I know how
they come!'
"'Miss Kelso--' after another silence, and still upon her knees before
the driving dream and the restless dreamer. 'You see, that's it.
That's like your pretty things. I'd keep your pretty things if I was
you. It ain't that there shouldn't be music anywhere. It's only that
the music shouldn't ride over the master. Seems to me it is like
that.'"