While reading Beethoven’s views on the subject of how music ought to be
performed, it is but natural to inquire about his own manner of playing.
On this point Ries, his best pupil, reports:
“In general Beethoven played his own compositions very capriciously, yet
he adhered, on the whole, strictly to the beat and only at times, but
seldom, accelerated the tempo a trifle. Occasionally he would retard
the tempo in a crescendo, which produced a very beautiful and striking
effect. While playing he would give a passage, now in the right hand,
now in the left, a beautiful expression which was simply inimitable; but
it was rarely indeed that he added a note or an ornament.”
Of his playing when still a young man one of his hearers said that it
was in the slow movements particularly that it charmed everybody. Almost
unanimously his contemporaries give him the palm for his improvisations.
Ries says:
“His extemporizations were the most extraordinary things that one could
hear. No artist that I ever heard came at all near the height which
Beethoven attained. The wealth of ideas which forced themselves on him,
the caprices to which he surrendered himself, the variety of treatment,
the difficulties, were inexhaustible.”
His playing was not technically perfect. He let many a note “fall under
the table,” but without marring the effect of his playing. Concerning
this we have a remark of his own in No. 75. Somewhat critical is
Czerny’s report:
“Extraordinary as his extempore playing was it was less successful in
the performance of printed compositions; for, since he never took the
time or had the patience to practice anything, his success depended
mostly on chance and mood; and since, also, his manner of playing
as well as composing was ahead of his time, the weak and imperfect
pianofortes of his time could not withstand his gigantic style. It was
because of this that Hummel’s purling and brilliant manner of play, well
adapted to the period, was more intelligible and attractive to the great
public. But Beethoven’s playing in adagios and legato, in the sustained
style, made an almost magical impression on every hearer, and, so far
as I know, it has never been surpassed.” Czerny’s remark about the
pianofortes of Beethoven’s day explains Beethoven’s judgment on his
own pianoforte sonatas. He composed for the sonorous pianoforte of the
future,--the pianoforte building today.
The following anecdote, told by Czerny, will be read with pleasure.
Pleyel, a famous musician, came to Vienna from Paris in 1805, and
had his latest quartets performed in the palace of Prince Lobkowitz.
Beethoven was present and was asked to play something. “As usual, he
submitted to the interminable entreaties and finally was dragged almost
by force to the pianoforte by the ladies. Angrily he tears the second
violin part of one of the Pleyel quartets from the music-stand where it
still lay open, throws it upon the rack of the pianoforte, and begins
to improvise. We had never heard him extemporize more brilliantly, with
more originality or more grandly than on that evening.
“But throughout the entire improvisation there ran in the middle voices,
like a thread, or cantus firmus, the insignificant notes, wholly
insignificant in themselves, which he found on the page of the quartet,
which by chance lay open on the music-stand; on them he built up the
most daring melodies and harmonies, in the most brilliant concert style.
Old Pleyel could only give expression to his amazement by kissing his
hands. After such improvisations Beethoven was wont to break out into a
loud and satisfied laugh.”
Czerny says further of his playing: “In rapidity of scale passages,
trills, leaps, etc., no one equaled him,--not even Hummel. His attitude
at the pianoforte was perfectly quiet and dignified, with no approach to
grimace, except to bend down a little towards the keys as his deafness
increased; his fingers were very powerful, not long, and broadened at
the tips by much playing; for he told me often that in his youth he had
practiced stupendously, mostly till past midnight. In teaching he laid
great stress on a correct position of the fingers (according to the
Emanuel Bach method, in which he instructed me); he himself could barely
span a tenth. He made frequent use of the pedal, much more frequently
than is indicated in his compositions. His reading of the scores of
Handel and Gluck and the fugues of Bach was unique, inasmuch as he put a
polyphony and spirit into the former which gave the works a new form.”
In his later years the deaf master could no longer hear his own playing
which therefore came to have a pitifully painful effect. Concerning his
manner of conducting, Seyfried says: “It would no wise do to make our
master a model in conducting, and the orchestra had to take great care
lest it be led astray by its mentor; for he had an eye only for his
composition and strove unceasingly by means of manifold gesticulations
to bring out the expression which he desired. Often when he reached a
forte he gave a violent down beat even if the note were an unaccented
one. He was in the habit of marking a diminuendo by crouching down lower
and lower, and at a pianissimo he almost crept under the stand. With a
crescendo he, too, grew, rising as if out of a stage trap, and with
the entrance of a fortissimo he stood on his toes and seemed to take on
gigantic proportions, while he waved his arms about as if trying to soar
upwards to the clouds. Everything about him was in activity; not a
part of his organization remained idle, and the whole man seemed like a
perpetuum mobile. Concerning expression, the little nuances, the equable
division of light and shade, as also an effective tempo rubato, he was
extremely exact and gladly discussed them with the individual members of
the orchestra without showing vexation or anger.”
62. “It has always been known that the greatest pianoforte players
were also the greatest composers; but how did they play? Not like the
pianists of today who prance up and down the key-board with passages
in which they have exercised themselves,--putsch, putsch, putsch;--what
does that mean? Nothing. When the true pianoforte virtuosi played it
was always something homogeneous, an entity; it could be transcribed and
then it appeared as a well thought-out work. That is pianoforte playing;
the other is nothing!”
(In conversation with Tomaschek, October, 1814.)
63. “Candidly I am not a friend of Allegri di bravura and such, since
they do nothing but promote mechanism.”
(Hetzendorf, July 16, 1823, to Ries in London.)