The name and memory of this composer awaken, in the heart of the lover
of music, sentiments of the deepest reverence and admiration. His life
was so marked with affliction and so isolated as to make him, in his
environment of conditions as a composer, a unique figure.
The principal fact which made the exterior life of Beethoven so bare of
the ordinary pleasures that brighten and sweeten existence, his total
deafness, greatly enriched his spiritual life. Music finally became to
him a purely intellectual conception, for he was without any sensual
enjoyment of its effects. To this Samson of music, for whom the ear was
like the eye to other men, Milton's lines may indeed well apply:
"Oh! dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon!
Irrecoverably dark--total eclipse,
Without all hope of day!
Oh first created Beam, and thou, great Word,
'Let there be light,' and light was over all,
Why am I thus bereaved thy prime decree?
The sun to me is dark."
To his severe affliction we owe alike many of the defects of his
character and the splendors of his genius. All his powers, concentrated
into a spiritual focus, wrought such things as lift him into a solitary
greatness. The world has agreed to measure this man as it measures
Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare. We do not compare him with others.
Beethoven had the reputation among his contemporaries of being harsh,
bitter, suspicious, and unamiable. There is much to justify this in the
circumstances of his life; yet our readers will discover much to show,
on the other hand, how deep, strong, and tender was the heart which was
so wrung and tortured, and wounded to the quick by--
"The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune."
Weber gives a picture of Beethoven: "The square Cyclopean figure attired
in a shabby coat with torn sleeves." Everybody will remember his noble,
austere face, as seen in the numerous prints: the square, massive head,
with the forest of rough hair; the strong features, so furrowed with the
marks of passion and sadness; the eyes, with their look of introspection
and insight; the whole expression of the countenance as of an ancient
prophet. Such was the impression made by Beethoven on all who saw him,
except in his moods of fierce wrath, which toward the last were not
uncommon, though short-lived. A sorely tried, sublimely gifted man, he
met his fate stubbornly, and worked out his great mission with all his
might and main, through long years of weariness and trouble. Posterity
has rewarded him by enthroning him on the highest peaks of musical fame.