Almighty One
In the woods
I am blessed.
Happy every one
In the woods.
Every tree speaks
Through Thee.
O God!
What glory in the
Woodland.
On the Heights
is Peace,--
Peace to serve
Him--
(This poetic exclamation, accompanied by a few notes, is on a page of
music paper owned by Joseph Joachim.)
13. “How happy I am to be able to wander among bushes and herbs, under
trees and over rocks; no man can love the country as I love it. Woods,
trees and rocks send back the echo that man desires.”
(To Baroness von Drossdick.)
14. “O God! send your glance into beautiful nature and comfort your
moody thoughts touching that which must be.”
(To the “Immortal Beloved,” July 6, in the morning.)
[Thayer has spoiled the story so long believed, and still spooking
in the books of careless writers, that the “Immortal Beloved” was the
Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, to whom the C-sharp minor sonata is
dedicated. The real person to whom the love-letters were addressed was
the Countess Brunswick to whom Beethoven was engaged to be married when
he composed the fourth Symphony. H. E. K.]
15. “My miserable hearing does not trouble me here. In the country it
seems as if every tree said to me: ‘Holy! holy!’ Who can give complete
expression to the ecstasy of the woods! O, the sweet stillness of the
woods!”
(July, 1814; he had gone to Baden after the benefit performance of
“Fidelio.”)
16. “My fatherland, the beautiful locality in which I saw the light of
the world, appears before me vividly and just as beautiful as when I
left you; I shall count it the happiest experience of my life when I
shall again be able to see you, and greet our Father Rhine.”
(Vienna, June 29, to Wegeler, in Bonn.)
[In 1825 Beethoven said to his pupil Ries, “Fare well in the Rhine
country which is ever dear to me,” and in 1826 wrote to Schott, the
publisher in Mayence, about the “Rhine country which I so long to see
again.”]