OPTIMISTIC TREND
Thus, with what has hitherto been effected, the clue to the
labyrinth of what is yet to be done is given us.
--HERDER: _Apotheosis of Humanity_.
Beethoven visited quite a number of places during the summer of 1812 in
quest of health. While at Carlsbad he gave a concert in aid of the
people of Baden, who had lost heavily through a disastrous fire there,
on which occasion he extemporized. It seems to have been a success
financially, but not artistically. In a letter to the Archduke he cites
it as being "a poor concert for the poor." "Es war eigentlich ein armes
Koncert für die Armen." This was owing to lack of time for rehearsals,
and to the fact that only one other person, Herr Polledro, a violinist
of Turin, took part in it. The concert was given within twelve hours
from its inception, because many noteworthy guests were on the point of
leaving town, and their presence was desired to insure a good
attendance. The necessity must have been great to induce him to
undertake it at all. His dislike for improvising for others was
deep-seated, and was increased by his deafness.
In the fall we find him visiting his brother Johann at Linz, where he
made quite a long stay. It was not alone Johann whom he was visiting; he
had good friends there, among them Kapellmeister Glöggl, whom he saw
nearly every day. At the latter's request the master composed three
equali for trombones for All Souls' Day, then near at hand. These
equali, as it turned out, were eventually used for Beethoven's funeral.
The Kapellmeister's son, then a lad of fourteen, relates an incident of
this time with Beethoven as the central figure. A resident of Linz, a
certain Herr Graf von Dönhoff, who was a great admirer of Beethoven,
gave an entertainment in his honor. After some of his music had been
rendered by others, Beethoven was asked to extemporize, which he
declined absolutely to do. Shortly after he disappeared. Supper being
ready a search for him was instituted, but he was not to be found, so
the company, after some delay, repaired to the adjoining room. They had
hardly seated themselves at the table, when they heard some one at the
piano. Gradually, one by one, they found themselves in the other room,
where Beethoven was extemporizing. This he kept up for nearly an hour,
when, suddenly coming to a realization of the circumstances, and looking
around, he saw the entire company listening in rapt attention. He at
once got up from the instrument and hastily left the room, either
through anger or embarrassment. Such was his haste that he ran against a
table containing fine porcelain bric-a-brac, which, of course, was
shattered. The Count, with easy good nature, made some reassuring
remark, upon which they all made another essay at the supper.
His object in going to Linz was not altogether for the purpose of making
visits. A disagreeable duty had to be performed; Johann's relations
with a young woman, whom he had taken as housekeeper, had become a
scandal; the good repute of the family was at stake, and Beethoven went
there with the express design of putting an end to the matter. Johann
was not at all amenable to argument, and contested the elder brother's
right to interfere. The dispute became so bitter that a personal combat
between the brothers occurred. It finally required the combined
ecclesiastical and secular authority of Linz (bishop, magistrate and
police), to effect the expulsion of the lady from town. At this turn of
affairs, Johann, bound to have his own way, married her.
This year saw the completion of the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies
besides other important compositions; not so bad an achievement for a
sick man, this record of two years' work. Sick or well, at home or
abroad, his work went on; it was a part of his life, as necessary,
apparently, as eating or sleeping. In size the Seventh Symphony exceeds
any of the preceding ones. "Eine meiner vorzüglichsten" (one of my
best), is Beethoven's statement in regard to it. Here the composer's
meaning is not so readily elucidated as in the Pastoral, for instance.
It means all things to all people. He usually had a clearly defined
purpose or idea before him when composing, particularly in the case of
his large orchestral works. Of the creations of such a man, it was to be
expected that they would increase in grandeur with each succeeding one.
Every great thing achieved is only an earnest of still greater in
reserve. The fertility of his mind was exhaustless. As he penetrated
deeper into this new world of the imagination, wider vistas were
constantly being opened before his mental vision. "What I have in my
heart must come out when I write," he stated to Czerny. "I never thought
of writing for fame and honor." Grandeur and simplicity are prominent
traits in Beethoven's character and these are exemplified in the Seventh
Symphony. Wagner calls it the Apotheosis of the dance. "Der in Tönen
idealisch verkörperten Leibesbewegung," [an ideal embodiment in tones of
the movements of the human form]. This dance element is the
characteristic trait of the symphony; the dance element on a colossal
scale. Listen to Wagner's summary: "But one Hungarian peasant dance in
the final movement of his Symphony in A (the Seventh) he played for the
whole of nature; so played that who could see her dancing to it in
orbital gyrations must deem he saw a planet brought to birth before his
very eyes." In these later symphonies we see the beginnings of the
mysticism which so profoundly influenced Beethoven in his last years,
reaching its consummation in the Mass in D, the last Quartets, and the
Ninth Symphony. From this period on, the picture to be drawn of him is
of a man retiring more and more into himself as his growing experience
with the world shows him his unfitness for it. Only in his work did he
have any real reason for living. His every-day life became, for the most
part, a phantasmagoria, wherein persons and events continually changed
from grotesque to sublime, where nothing was stable or to be depended
upon. The only reality was in his art. The consciousness that he was
composing works that would go down the ages and delight many generations
to come, was probably satisfaction enough to him to compensate him for
anything he was called on to endure. With the progress of his deafness
his inability to cope with even the ordinary affairs of life increased,
and this also had the effect of withdrawing him from the world. The
spiritual insight gained by years of introspection, of communion with
the higher part of his nature enabled him to discover truths hidden to
the consciousness of the ordinary man. "That power of shaping the
incomprehensible now grows with him; the joy in exercising this power
becomes humor. All the pain of existence is wrecked upon the immense
pleasure derived from the play with it; the creator of worlds, Brahma,
laughs to himself as he perceives the illusion with reference to
himself; regained innocence plays jestingly with the thorns of expiated
guilt; the emancipated conscience banters itself with the torments it
has undergone. And all his seeing and his fashioning is steeped in that
marvellous gayety (_Heiterkeit_) which music first acquired through
him." (Wagner.)
A peculiarity of Beethoven's work often commented on, is the extreme
simplicity of his themes as they first appear in his sketch-books. These
are usually elaborated, thus changing their character, taking on new
meaning with the growth and development of the idea in the composer's
mind; when through with it, however, the thought appears fresh and
spontaneous, such was his consummate art, as if it had never undergone
any elaboration. But sometimes the theme maintains its original
simplicity, and the masterwork appears in the orchestration which
surrounds it; at times even this maintains an archaic simplicity. Thus
in the coda of the vivace of the Seventh Symphony, a simple melody is
reiterated eleven times in succession, with no other orchestration than
the pedal-point on E by the rest of the instruments.
The symphonies in general are the language of a buoyant, gay, blithesome
mood, as befits their design for concert use. In them, for the most
part, he addresses people in their holiday humor. His experience with
Fidelio may have impressed the fact upon his mind that sorrow and pain
should be sparingly portrayed on festive occasions. Not so with the
piano sonatas, which can be heard and studied in the privacy of one's
home. Even the quartets may be placed in the category since they do not
require an elaborate equipment and preparation for their production.
Take him all in all optimism prevails with him, or rather, in true
philosophic spirit, he demonstrates that the sorrow, the inevitable
trouble and misery of life, is more than offset by the good things the
gods have provided. Life, after all, is a precious gift, which should be
duly appreciated. A period of enjoyment, gayety, strengthens and
fortifies the mind, and enables it better to bear the burdens when they
come. The great creative genius, must perforce, in the very nature of
things, be optimistic in his chosen work. He is more alive, more
possessed with the belief that life with its opportunities is worth
while, than is the case with the ordinary man going about his petty
concerns. In common life, the busiest man is the happiest man, that is
the most satisfied; and this contentment springs from the consciousness
of doing something worth doing, the advantage of which will remain. With
the man of genius, the feeling rises to elation, to rapture, when he
considers the transcendent, imperishable nature of his work. "Dass
Hervorbringen selbst ein Vergnügen und sein eigner Lohn ist."
The Eighth Symphony which was brought out at the same time as the
Seventh is the shortest by a few bars, of the nine. It was completed in
about four months from the date of its inception. Here as in the
Seventh, the dance element is in the ascendant, commanding, swaying
everything, thus coming back to first principles, almost to the origin
of the art, as an art. The dance is the primordial, autochthonic form of
music; its foundation so to speak. The song had its origin in the dance
as indicated by its name "ballad." It is a comparatively simple matter
to trace its upward course in instrumental music, as such. It is
conceivable that people from remote times on, had the faculty of
originating tunes, and of humming and singing them, and dancing to them
long before such things as scales and notation were conceived of. Song
and dance must have come into being at the same time, and the earliest
dancing was done with a singing accompaniment. As people advanced in the
art and became able to manufacture instruments with which to produce
music to dance by, it is readily apparent that those persons who did not
dance, derived pleasure from listening to it. The next step was to play
these dance tunes without dancing. This naturally led to a collection of
dance tunes. By playing three or four in succession it was soon found
that a more agreeable effect was produced by selecting those differing
in rhythm. Here we have the suite, the earliest orchestral form. After a
while it was found that a change of key heightened the effect, and, when
composing purely orchestral music not intended for actual use in
dancing, the more original of the composers at times allowed the strict
dance form to fall into abeyance in one or two movements to enable them
to try their hand in another style, and also for contrast. A broadening
and augmenting of the different forms and we have the sonata. The
symphony is an enlargement of the sonata. All our intellectual progress
is an unfolding, like a flower from the bud. We have first an
impression, then an opinion, then demonstration.
Many years were to elapse before the next and last symphony was to
appear; years in which the ripening process was to go on, and which were
to culminate in the Mass in D, the Choral Symphony and the last
quartets,--works that are in a class by themselves in the same sense
that the works from the Third Symphony on, up to, and including the
Eighth, are in a class apart from the others. His compositions prior to
the Third Symphony are in the style of Mozart and Haydn. They are the
naïve utterances of the young musician who does not yet realize that he
has a mission to perform; whose ambition was to be ranked with his great
predecessors. Of the works of the second period, it can be said that
their most prominent characteristic is gayety (_Heiterkeit_). They are
not all in this mood, and but rarely is the mood maintained throughout a
single work, but it exists to the extent that it dominates it, just as
the key-note to his later works is to be found in his mysticism. The
works of the second period are coincident with his best years physically
and when his mental powers had reached their highest maturity. When he
found out what manner of man he was and realized the place he was
destined to occupy among the great ones of earth; when he had accepted
his destiny and had made his peace with himself it is easy to understand
how a certain gayety and serenity should have spread itself over his
life and have communicated itself to his works; and though this serenity
was alternated by periods of despair, he allowed no more of this to
appear in his work than his esthetic sense approved of. Like all highly
organized people he sounded the gamut of joy and sorrow. His journal
entries tell the story. One day, exulting in life and its possibilities
he writes, "Oh, it would be glorious to live life over a thousand
times." At another time he calls upon his God in abject despair to help
him through the passing hour. At one time life is so difficult a problem
that he sees not how it can be continued at all. Then he loses himself
in his creations and soars into regions where his troubles cannot
follow. This joyousness is the portion of many extraordinary people.
Haydn and Mozart had it. "He has among other qualities that of great
joyousness," says Carlyle, in speaking of Richter. "Goethe has it to
some extent and Schiller too. It is a deep laughter, a wild laughter,
and connected with it, there is the deepest seriousness."