The world of art remembers two figures which are especially pathetic, and
for similar reasons. One is that of Homer, the bard, living in a world the
beauties of which he loved but could not see. The other is that of
Beethoven, the musician, living in the midst of harmonies which he loved
but which were denied to his unhearing ears. A great soul may be better
able than others to fortify itself against the terrors of misfortune, but
it is at the same time more keenly sensitive to them. Blindness is more of
a tragedy to one who would more especially love and appreciate beauty,
could he see it. Deafness is more of a tragedy to one whose ears feel a
special hunger for the harmonies of sound.
Ludwig van Beethoven was not only the greatest master of the classical
school in music. He was also one of the strong and unique personalities of
his day. He was not a puppet who fell a slave to usage and custom. The
outlines of his nature were clear and bold. He acted with no uncertain
meaning and spoke with no uncertain sound. That he was wholly original and
self-reliant is shown in many incidents, the record of which has been
preserved from among his busy and eventful years.
For him mere conventionalities had no terrors. When the law of established
custom seemed just and sufficient, he observed it. When it did not, he
became a law unto himself. He placed the claims of life, right, and truth
in a place of supremacy over all other claims. One of his pupils,
Ferdinand Ries, once attempted to convince him of the impropriety of
certain use he had made of consecutive fifths in one of his compositions.
During the discussion Ries called attention to a number of composers who
had forbidden their use in the manner under discussion. When Ries had
finished, Beethoven replied with spirit, “And they have forbidden them!
Well, I allow them.”
As has been said, self-reliance was one of the strongest elements in his
nature. At one time, Moscheles, the Austrian composer, prepared a piano
arrangement of Beethoven’s “Fidelio” and sent it to him with the
inscription “With God’s help” written upon it. When it came back to the
hand of Moscheles, he found that the master had written upon it the reply,
“O man, help thyself.”
He possessed of a genial nature and a happy sense of humor. When a music
student in Vienna, he had three teachers at the same time, each one of
whom was a great name in music. Under one of them, Schuppanzigh, he
studied violin. His relations with this instructor were especially
pleasant—more so than those which prevailed between him and at least one
of the others. As time passed, the teacher revealed an increasing
tendency to corpulence, whereupon Beethoven took up the habit of
addressing him as “My Lord Falstaff.”
A high appreciation of purely personal qualities was a part of Beethoven’s
makeup. To him these constituted the only true fortune. He had a brother,
Johann, who had become wealthy, and whose worldly success had acted so
unfortunately upon his nature that his pride and arrogance had become
somewhat unduly swollen. One day this brother called on the composer and
did not find him at home. He left a card bearing this inscription,
“Johann van Beethoven, Land Proprietor.” Upon returning home and receiving
the card, the musician promptly returned it to his brother with the added
words, “Ludwig van Beethoven, Brain Proprietor.”
On another occasion, a stranger mistook the word Van in his name for the
common sign of nobility. When addressed as a nobleman, he revealed his
true spirit of democracy by laying his hand first upon his head and then
upon his heart and replying that whatever claim to nobility he had lay at
those two points.
His temper was strong but not unjust. When his heart was touched rightly,
it rose in great pity and devotion. When touched wrongly, it flamed up
like a meteor of wrath. On one occasion, at least, he threw aside all
restraint for the moment. One evening at a rehearsal, Beethoven’s patron,
Prince Lobkowitz, ventured an assertion which grated very severely upon
the composer’s sensibilities. At the end of the performance Beethoven is
said to have run into the yard of his patron’s palace and to have shouted
insult and ridicule at the man who, in his opinion, had committed so great
an impropriety.
He was not only a great composer and conductor, but a great pianist as
well. He was also keenly sensitive as to his art and highly exacting in
regard to the attitude of others toward it. Once when, in a private home,
he was playing a duet with his pupil, Ferdinand Ries, two persons
disturbed the performance by conversation. He immediately ceased playing
and would neither play nor allow Ries to do so again during the evening.
His music was to him an absorbing passion. No matter in what capacity he
might be ministering at its shrine, he always did so with entire devotion.
About 1813 an incident occurred in which his entire self-forgetfulness in
his work caused him to play a ludicrous part. He was playing one of his
own compositions in a public concert when he so far forgot himself as to
think he conducting instead of playing. Leaving his seat, he began
violently directing. He knocked the lights from the piano. Two boys were
directed to hold the lights while the managers and audience waited for the
seemingly mad man to become quiet. One of the boys, light and all, was
soon floored by a blow in the mouth from the swinging arm of the musician.
The other boy dodged and ducked in his efforts to escape a like fate,
while the audience roared with mirth.
Beethoven had a certain admiration for Napoleon Bonaparte as a soldier and
statesman. The symphony now known as “Eroica” was written in Napoleon’s
honor and was to bear his name. About the time of the completion of the
first score, which was to be sent to the Corsican, the word came that its
subject had proclaimed itself emperor. Beethoven at once tore the title
from the score and changed the name of the composition to “Eroica.” Upon
Napoleon’s death, he remarked that the symphony contained the funeral
march of the conqueror.
During most of the active years of his life, Beethoven had been planning a
musical setting for Schiller’s “Ode to Joy.” In the evening of his life it
was at last completed. In 1824, just about two years before his death,
Beethoven directed a rendering of this music in Vienna. During this
performance a pathetic scene was enacted. At the close the applause became
so deafening and was so prolonged that a serious public disturbance was
feared, and the police were called in. Beethoven, who could hear no sound
of all that was transpiring, stood with his back to the audience, wholly
unconscious of the situation. At length someone touched him and caused him
to turn around. When the people saw the look of surprise that spread over
his face and realized the pathos of the situation, they broke out in a
fresh demonstration, during which many faces were wet with tears.
By the time he was thirty years of age Beethoven had begun to be a victim
of failing hearing. The dawn of this realization, which would have broken
the spirit of many a man and which was a deep grief to him, did not daunt
him nor greatly interfere with the completion of a great musical career.
He did not dwell unduly upon his misfortune and, for a time, he even kept
it a secret. Through the remaining years of his life, he patiently endured
the difficulty, hindrance, and poverty of musical enjoyment which it
brought him. That it had been to him a constant source of mental anguish,
however, is indicated in the closing hour of his life. That hour came at
the close of an illness which had been brought on by an undue exposure. It
was while a severe thunderstorm was in progress outside that the great
master lay surrounded by a group of friends who had been very faithful to
him during his last illness, and some of whom were themselves eminent men.
He indicated to them his knowledge that the end was near and then, after a
silence, he said, “I shall hear in heaven,” and in a little time he
was gone.
This was the ending of an unselfish life. Nothing but real devotion can
leave the record that is his self-sacrifice. For the reckless and
undeserving son of a dead brother, he denied himself real necessities for
years, a sacrifice which met with neither appreciation nor effort to be
worthy. The uncle remained true, however, and after his death when he was
found to have held some unsuspected wealth in the form of bonds, it was
supposed that he had kept it intact through his own days of severe
personal need in order that it might go to his unworthy charge.
Beethoven was deeply religious. His ideas of religion were not weak and
sentimental but were characterized by the same strength which pervaded
his life in general. He had a keen sense of the Divine Power, but he did
not allow it to destroy his companion sense of human responsibility. His
pastor was a trusted friend. It was with that friend that he first shared
the secret of his growing deafness and who helped him for a time to keep
that secret from the ears of the world. Interesting and often illuminating
correspondence between the two is still preserved. It is doubtful whether
a mastery so great of an art so heavenly could have been possible to a man
who did not have a strong sense of the Divine. The majesty of his music
came from a majesty within, which probably knew better than it could tell
the sweetness of that music which was breaking on his newly-opened ears in
the moment of his assurance that he should “hear in heaven.”