[Illustration: LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN.]
_BIOGRAPHIES OF MUSICIANS._
LIFE OF BEETHOVEN
BY
LOUIS NOHL
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN
BY
JOHN J. LALOR.
“_Our age has need of vigorous minds._”
CHICAGO:
JANSEN, McCLURG & COMPANY.
1881.
COPYRIGHT.
JANSEN, McCLURG & COMPANY.
A. D. 1880.
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED
BY
THE CHICAGO LEGAL NEWS COMPANY.
INTRODUCTION.
Music is the most popular of the arts. It fills man’s breast with
a melancholy joy. Even the brute creation is not insensible to its
power. Yet, at its best, music is a haughty, exclusive being, and not
without reason are training, practice, talent, and the development
of that talent, required for the understanding of her secrets. “One
wishes to be heard with the intellect, by one’s equals; emotion becomes
only women, but music should strike fire from the mind of a man.” In
some such strain as this, Beethoven himself once spoke, and we know
how slowly the works of the great symphonist found a hearing and
recognition from the general public.
Yet, who is there to-day who does not know the name of Beethoven?
Who is there that, hearing one of his compositions, does not feel
the presence of a sublime, all-ruling power--of a power that springs
from the deepest sources of all life? His very name inspires us with
a feeling of veneration, and we can readily believe the accounts that
have come down to us; how even strangers drew back with a species of
awe, before this man of imposing appearance, spite of his smallness
of stature, with his rounded shoulders, erect head, wavy hair and
piercing glance. Who has not heard of the two charcoal-burners who
suddenly stopped their heavily laden vehicle when they met, in a narrow
pass, this “crabbed musician,” so well known to all Vienna, and who was
wont to stand and think, and then, humming, to go his way, moving about
bee-like through nature from sunrise, with his memorandum book in his
hand.
We are moved with the same feeling of respect that moved those common
men, when we hear only Beethoven’s name, but how much more powerfully
are we stirred when we hear his music! We feel in that music the
presence of the spirit that animates and sustains the world, and which
is continually calling new life into existence. Even the person who
is not a musician himself may feel, in these mighty productions, the
certainty of the presence of the Creator of all things. Their tones
sound to him like the voice of man’s heart of hearts, the joys and
sorrows of which Beethoven has laid bare to us. We feel convinced, when
we hear them, that the person who in them speaks to us has, in very
deed, something to tell us, something of our own life; because he lived
and felt more deeply than we what we all live and feel, and loved and
suffered what we all love and suffer, more deeply than any other child
of dust. In Beethoven, we meet with a personage really great, both
in mind and heart, one who was able to become a sublime model to us,
because life and art were serious things with him, and one who made it
his duty “to live not for himself, but for other men.” The high degree
of self-denying power found in this phenomenon of art, it is that has
such an elevating effect on us. The duties of life and the tasks of the
artist he discharged with equal fidelity. His life was the foundation
on which the superstructure of his works rose. His greatness as a man
was the source of his greatness as an artist. The mere story of his
life, given here in outline, reveals to us the internal springs of his
artistic creations, and we must perforce admit, that the history of
Beethoven’s life is a part of the history of the higher intellectual
life of our time and of humanity.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
BEETHOVEN’S YOUTH AND EARLIEST EFFORTS.
Birth and Baptism--His Family--Young Beethoven’s Character--His
Brothers Karl and Johann--Early Talent for Music--Appears in
Public at the Age of Seven--Errors as to His Age--Travels in
Holland--Studies the Organ in Vienna--His Fame Foretold--His
Personal Appearance--Meets Mozart--Mozart’s Opinion of
Him--Maximilian, Elector of Cologne, and Mozart--Beethoven’s
Intellectual Training--Madame von Breuning--First
Love--Beethoven and Hayden--Compositions written in Vienna 9-39
CHAPTER II.
THE EROICA AND FIDELIO.
Music in Vienna--Society in Vienna--Beethoven’s
Dedications--Lichnowsky--The Eroica and Fidelio--Beethoven’s
First Great Exploits--Plans for Future Work--Decides to
Remove to the North--New Compositions--His
Improvisations--Disappointments in North
Germany--Prince Louis Ferdinand--Makes His Home in
Austria--Neglects His Health--His Deafness--Origin of the
Eroica--Napoleon I--Bernadotte--The Symphony in C Minor--His
Deafness Again--Thoughts of Marriage--The Guicciardi
Family--Meaning of His Music--His “Will”--Disappointment--Meaning
of the Eroica and Fidelio--The Leonore Overture--Other
Compositions 40-81
CHAPTER III.
THE SYMPHONY C MINOR.--THE PASTORALE, AND THE SEVENTH,
SYMPHONIES.
The Pastorale--Meaning of the Apassionata--Beethoven’s Letter
to His “Immortal Loved One”--His Own Opinion of the
Apassionata--Thinks of Writing Operas--Court Composer--Overture
to Coriolanus--The Mass in C, op. 86--His Sacred Music--The
Fidelio In Prague--Music for Goethe’s Faust--“Power, the Moral
Code”--Character of His Works about this Period--Intercourse
with the Malfattis--The Cello Sonata, op. 69--Improvement in
His pecuniary Circumstances--Joseph Bonaparte--Vienna fears to
lose Him--Contemplated Journey to England--The Seventh
Symphony--His _Heirathspartie_--His Letter to Bettina--His
Estimate of Genius 82-121
CHAPTER IV.
THE MISSA SOLEMNIS AND THE NINTH SYMPHONY.
Resignation--Pecuniary Distress--Napoleon’s Decline--The
Battle-Symphony--Its Success--Wellington’s Victory--Strange
Conduct--Intellectual Exaltation--His Picture by Letronne--The
Fidelio Before the Assembled Monarchs--Beethoven the Object
of Universal Attention--Presents from Kings--The
Liederkreis--Madame von Ertmann--Romulus and the Oratorio--His
“Own Style”--Symphony for London--Opinion of the English
People--His Missa Solemnis--His Own Opinion of it--Its
Completion--Characteristics--The Ninth Symphony 122-162
CHAPTER V.
THE LAST QUARTETS
Berlioz on the Lot of Artists--Beethoven Misunderstood--The
Great Concert of May, 1821--Preparation for It--Small
Returns--Beethoven Appreciated--The Quartets--An “Oratorio
for Boston”--Overture on B-A-C-H--Influence of His Personal
Experience on His Works--His Brother Johann--Presentiment of
Death--The Restoration of Metternich and Gentz--His
“Son”--Troubles with the Young Man Debility--Calls for Dr.
Malfatti--Poverty--The “Magnanimous” English--Calls a
Clergyman--His Death 163-201
LIFE OF BEETHOVEN.
CHAPTER I.
1770-1794
BEETHOVEN’S YOUTH AND EARLIEST EFFORTS.
Birth and Baptism--His Family--Young Beethoven’s Character--His
Brothers Karl and Johann--Early Talent for Music--Appears in
Public at the Age of Seven--Error as to His Age--Travels in
Holland--Studies the Organ in Vienna--His Fame Foretold--His
Personal Appearance--Meets Mozart--Mozart’s Opinion of
Him--Maximilian, Elector of Cologne, and Mozart--Beethoven’s
Intellectual Training--Madame von Breuning--First Love--Beethoven
and Haydn--Compositions written in Vienna.
Ludwig van Beethoven was baptized in Bonn on the 17th of December,
1770. We know only this the date of his baptism, with any certainty,
and hence the 17th of December is assumed to be his birthday likewise.
His father, Johann van Beethoven, was a singer in the chapel of the
Elector, in Bonn. The family, however, had come originally from the
Netherlands. Beethoven’s grandfather came to Bonn in 1732 after
willfully leaving the parental roof in consequence of a quarrel. He
had attracted attention as a bass singer in the church and the theater,
and was made director of the court band in 1763. By his industry, he
had founded a family, was earning a respectable livelihood, and had
won for himself the personal regard of the community. He did, besides,
a small business in wines, but this, which was only accessory to his
calling as a musician, contributed to undermine both his own happiness
and his son’s. His wife, Josepha Poll, fell a victim to the vice of
intemperance, and, in consequence, it at last became necessary to
confine her in a convent in Cologne. Unfortunately, the only surviving
son inherited the vice of his mother.
“Johann van Beethoven was given to the tasting of wine from a very
early age,” says the account of his playmates. It was not long before
this weakness got the upper hand to such an extent that his family
and home suffered greatly. It finally led to his discharge from his
position. Stephan van Breuning, our own Beethoven’s friend in youth,
saw him, on one occasion, liberate the drunken father out of the hands
of the police in the public streets.
We here get a glimpse at a period in Beethoven’s youth, which put the
strength of his mind as well as the goodness of his heart to the test.
For in consequence of the very respectable position occupied by his
grandfather, of his own early appointment as court organist, and of the
rapid development of his talent, Beethoven soon enjoyed the society of
the higher classes, and was employed in the capacity of musician in
the families of the nobility and at court. Yet, we are told, whenever
it happened that he and his two younger brothers were obliged to take
their intoxicated father home, they always performed that disagreeable
task with the utmost tenderness. He was never known to utter a hard or
unkind word about the man who had made his youth so sunless, and he
never failed to resent it when a third person spoke uncharitably of his
father’s frailty. The reserve and a certain haughtiness, however, which
marked his disposition as a youth and a man, are traceable to these
early harsh experiences.
And who knows the complications which caused misfortune to get the
upper hand here! True, we are told that “Johann van Beethoven was of a
volatile and flighty disposition;” but even his playmates, when he was
a boy, had nothing bad to say of his character. Anger and stubbornness
seem, indeed, to have been the inheritance of his Netherland nature;
and these our hero also displayed to no small extent. But while the
grandfather had earned a very good position for himself, and always so
deported himself that young Beethoven might take him as an example, and
loved to speak of him as a “man of honor,” his father was never more
than a singer in the chapel, on a small salary. But, notwithstanding
his comparatively humble social position, he had made a mistake in
marrying below his station.
Johann van Beethoven took Magdalena Kewerich, of Ehrenbreitstein, to
wife, in 1763. She is described as a “pretty and slender woman.” She
had served as a chambermaid, for a time, in some of the families of the
great, had married young, and was left a widow at the age of nineteen.
Johann’s marriage to this woman was not acceptable to the court
_capellmeister_, and so it happened that he was obliged to leave the
home in which he had thus far lived with his lonely father, and move
into a wing of the house, number 515, in Bonn street, where his son
Ludwig, the subject of this sketch, was born.
The young wife brought no property to her husband. Several children
were born to the newly married couple in quick succession. Of these,
Karl, born in 1774 and Johann in 1766, play some part in Beethoven’s
life. The growth of the family was so rapid that it was not long
before they felt the burthen of pecuniary distress. The grandfather,
who was well to do, helped them, at first. His stately figure in his
red coat, with his massive head and “big eyes,” remained fixed in the
boy Ludwig’s memory, although he was only three years of age when his
grandfather died. The child was, indeed, tenderly attached to him.
As the father’s poverty increased, he made some efforts to improve
his condition. But they were of no avail; for his deportment was only
“passable” and his voice “was leaving him.” He now had recourse to
teaching, and obtained employment in the theater, for he played the
violin also. Sickness, however, soon eat up what was left of his little
fortune. Their furniture and table ware followed their silver-service
and linen--“which one might have drawn through a ring,”--to the
pawn-shop; and now the father’s poverty contributed only to make him,
more and more, the victim of his weakness for the cup.
But there was even now one star of hope in the dreary firmament of
his existence--his son Ludwig’s talent for music. This talent showed
itself in very early childhood, and could not, by any possibility,
escape the observation of the father, who, after all, was himself a
“good musician.” And, although the father was not destined to live
to see his son in the zenith of his success, it was his son’s talent
alone that saved the family from ruin and their name from oblivion,
for with the birth of Beethoven’s younger brother, Johann, and of a
sister who died shortly after, the circumstances of the family became
still more straightened. Mozart had been in Bonn a short time before,
and it occurred to the father to train his son to be a second little
Mozart, and, by traveling with him, earn the means of subsistence of
which the family stood so sorely in need. And so the boy was rigidly
kept to his lessons on the piano and violin. His daily exercises on
these instruments must have been a severer task on him than would seem
to be necessary in a regular course of musical training. He used to be
taken from his playing with other children to practice, and friends of
his youth tell us how they saw him standing on a stool before the piano
and cry while he practiced his lessons. Even the rod was called into
requisition in his education, and the expostulations of friends could
not dissuade the father from such relentless severity. But the end was
attained. Regular and persevering exercise, laid the foundation of a
skill in the art of music, which led him before the public when only
seven years of age. On the 26th of March (by a strange coincidence the
day of the month on which Beethoven died), the father announced, in a
paper published in Cologne, that “his son, aged six years, would have
the honor to wait on the public with several concertos for the piano,
when, he flattered himself, he would be able to afford a distinguished
audience a rich treat; and this all the more since he had been favored
with a hearing by the whole court, who listened to him with the
greatest pleasure.” The child, to enhance the surprise, was made one
year younger in this announcement than he was in reality; and this
led Beethoven himself into an error as to his age, which he did not
discover until he was nearly forty.
We need say but little concerning his other teachers when a youth.
His great school was want, which urged him to follow and practice his
art, so that he might master it, and, with its assistance, make his
way through the world. When Beethoven grew to be eight years of age,
he had as a teacher, in addition to his father, the vocalist Tobias
Pfeiffer, for a whole year. Pfeiffer lived in the Beethoven family. He
was a skillful pianist. Beethoven considered him one of the teachers
to whom he was most indebted, and was subsequently instrumental in
procuring assistance for him from Vienna. But we may form some idea of
the nature of his instruction, and of the mode of living in the family,
from the fact, attested by Beethoven’s neighbors, that it frequently
happened that Pfeiffer, after coming home with the father late in the
night from the tavern, took young Ludwig out of bed and kept him at
the piano practicing till morning. Yet the success attendant on this
instruction was such, even now, that when the boy, Beethoven and his
teacher, who performed on the flute, played variations together, the
people in the streets stopped and listened to their delightful music.
In 1781, when Ludwig was ten years old, he traveled to Holland with his
mother, played in the houses of the great, and astonished every one by
his skill. The profits from this journey, however, cannot have been
very large. When the boy was questioned about them, he replied: “The
Dutch are a niggardly set; I shall never visit Holland again.”
In the meantime, he turned his attention also to the study of the
organ. Under the guidance of a certain Brother Willibald, of a
neighboring Franciscan monastery, he soon became so proficient on that
instrument, that he was able to act as assistant organist at divine
service. But his principal teachers here were the old electoral court
organist, van den Eeden, and afterwards, his successor, Christian
Gottlob Neefe. In what regards composition the latter was the first
to exercise any real influence on Beethoven, and Beethoven, in after
years, thanked him for the good advice he had given him--advice
which had contributed so much to his success in the “divine art.” He
concludes a letter to Neefe as follows: “If I should turn out some
day to be a great man, you will have contributed to making me such.”
Neefe came originally from Saxony. As an organist, he had all the
characteristics of the North German artists; but, on the other hand,
he had, as a composer, a leaning towards the sonata-style introduced
by Ph. E. Bach. He was a man of broad general education, and the form
of his artistic productions was almost faultless. Such was young
Beethoven’s proficiency at the age of eleven, in 1782, that Neefe was
able to appoint him his “substitute,” and thus to pave the way for
his appointment as court organist. We owe to him the first published
account of Beethoven, and from that account we learn that the great
foundation of his instruction was Bach’s “well-tempered clavichord,”
that _ne plus ultra_ of counterpoint and technic. He first made a
reputation in Vienna by his masterly playing of Bach’s fugues. But the
instruction he had received in composition, bore fruit also, and some
variations to a march and three sonatas, by him, appeared at this time
in print.
In the account of Beethoven referred to above, and which was written
in 1783, Neefe said that that young “genius” was deserving of support
that he might be able to travel, and that he would certainly be another
Mozart. But the development of his genius soon took a wider scope. He
even, on one occasion, when Neefe was prevented doing so, presided at
a rehearsal in the Bonn theater, in which the best pieces of the age
were produced. This was at the age of twelve. And so it happened that
his artistic views and technic skill grew steadily greater. We are
told that when he became court organist, at the age of thirteen, he
made the very accurate vocalist Heller lose the key entirely during
the performance of divine service, by his own bold modulations. True,
the Elector forbade such “strokes of genius” in the future, but he, no
less than his _capellmeister_ Luchesi, was greatly astonished at the
extraordinary capacity of the young man.
Incidents of this kind may have suggested the propriety of giving him
the instruction appropriate for a really great master of art; and,
indeed, we find the court organist of Bonn with Mozart in Vienna, in
the spring of 1787.
Beethoven’s appearance was not what would be called imposing. He
was small of stature, muscular and awkward, with a short snub nose.
When he was introduced to Mozart, the latter was rather cool in his
praise of his musical performances, considering them pieces learned by
heart simply for purposes of parade. Beethoven, thereupon requested
Mozart to give him a subject, that he might try his powers of musical
improvisation. Charmed with the ability displayed in the execution of
the task thus imposed on his young visitor, Mozart exclaimed: “Mark
that young man! the world will hear of him some day.” Beethoven,
however, received very little instruction from Mozart, who was so
deeply engaged, just at this time, with the composition of his _Don
Giovanni_, and so sorely tried by adverse circumstances, that he played
very little for him, and could give him only a few lessons. Besides,
Beethoven’s mother was now taken seriously ill, and after a few weeks
he had to return home, where other blows of a hard fate awaited him.
His kind, good mother, was snatched from him by death, and his father’s
unfortunate weakness for strong drink obtained such a mastery over
him that he was deprived of his position shortly after. The duty of
supporting his two younger brothers was thus imposed on Ludwig, the
eldest.
Young Beethoven was thus taught many a severe lesson early in life, in
the hard school of adversity. But his trials were not without advantage
to him. They gave to his character that iron texture which upheld him
under the heaviest burthens, nor was his recall to Bonn a misfortune.
He there found the very advantages which he had gone to seek in the
musical metropolis, Vienna; for Maximilian Francis, Elector of Cologne,
the friend and patron of Mozart, was one of the noble princes of the
preceding century, who made their courts the sanctuary of culture and
of art.
Maximilian was the youngest son of Maria Theresa. He had received the
careful training, for which that imperial house was noted, and he found
in Joseph II an example in every way worthy of imitation. He was as
faithful to his calling as an ecclesiastic as to his duties as a ruler,
and as adverse to what he looked upon as superstition in the garb of
Christianity, as to the extravagance of his predecessors, who had left
the country in a state of corruption and destitution. He everywhere
endeavored to bring order out of chaos and to spread prosperity among
his people. A pure, fresh atmosphere filled the little court as long as
he presided in it. He was still young, not much over thirty, and a man
of the truest principles. Speaking of him as “that most humane and best
of princes,” a contemporary writer says: “People had grown accustomed
to think of Cologne as a land of darkness, but when they came to the
Elector’s court, they quickly changed their mind.” The members of the
orchestra of the court especially, among whom our young court organist
is to be reckoned, were, we are told, very intelligent, right thinking
men, of elegant manners and unexceptionable conduct.
The Elector had opened the University in 1776, and established a
public reading-room, which he visited with no more ostentation than
any one else. “All these institutions, as I looked upon it, had sworn
allegiance to an unknown genius of humanity, and, for the first time in
my life, my mind had a glimmer of the meaning and majesty of science,”
writes the painter, Gerhard Kuegelgen, and how could Beethoven have
thought differently? He had, it is true, devoted himself so exclusively
to music that he had made very little progress in anything else. In
the use of figures he always found great difficulty, and his spelling
was worse than could be easily tolerated even in his own day, when
orthography was a rather rare accomplishment. He had studied a little
French and Latin. But the breezes of a higher intellectual culture
which, at this time, swept through Bonn and influenced him likewise
through his intimate intercourse with the most highly cultivated people
of the city, soon lifted him to heights unattained by other artists and
musicians of his century--heights from which he continually discerned
new fields of action. As a consequence of this intercourse with the
learned, he acquired intellectual tastes in various directions, and so
seriously occupied himself with things intellectual that they became a
necessity to his nature. He tells us himself that, without laying the
least claim to real learning, it had been his endeavor from childhood
to acquaint himself with what was best and wisest in every age. But
these intellectual leanings did not prevent him from being, as the
painter Kuegelgen said of himself, lovingly devoted to his art. And his
own beloved art of music was, at this very time, cultivated in Bonn
with a greater earnestness and devotion than any other.
The writer referred to above, speaking of the Elector, says: “Not only
did he play himself, but he was an enthusiastic lover of music. It
seemed as if he could never tire of hearing it. Whenever he went to
a concert, he was the most attentive person in the whole audience.”
And no wonder; for the musical instruction given to the children of
Maria Theresa was excellent. Indeed, the art of music in Vienna was
at that time at its height. That city was the scene of the labors of
Gluck, Haydn and Mozart. And so there was only good music to be heard
in the “cabinet” at Bonn. Our Beethoven, now a distinguished pianist,
contributed his share to this; and we need not be surprised to find him
employed by a prince who knew Mozart and loved him.
But it was not musicians alone who were benefited by prince’s
patronage. No sooner did the condition of the country leave him
the necessary leisure, and the state of its finances afford him the
necessary means, than he turned his best attention to the theater and
the orchestra. As far back as 1784, Maximilian Francis had organized
an orchestra, and our young court organist took a place in it as
a player of the tenor violin. The violinist, Ries, and Simrock, a
performer on the French horn, were also members of it. Ries and Simrock
had henceforth much to do with Mozart. The following year, a troupe
visited Bonn, and gave Italian operas, French vaudevilles, as well
as Gluck’s _Alceste and Orpheus_. They were followed by Grossmann,
a person of rare intellect, and one who holds a distinguished place
in the history of German dramatic art. His repertory included the
plays of Shakespeare, Lessing, Schiller and Goethe, with all of whom
Beethoven thus became acquainted early in life. In 1788, Maximilian
Francis established a national theater, and, dating from this, dramatic
poetry and music began to flourish in Bonn, so that it took its place,
in this respect, side by side with Mannheim, Vienna and Weimar, and
became a school well calculated to foster the great abilities of
Beethoven. In the orchestra we find such men as Andreas, Bernhard
Romberg and Anton Reicher, afterwards so celebrated as a writer on
the theory of music. The latter was, at this time, Beethoven’s most
intimate friend and companion in art. Actors, too, come upon the
stage, many of whom subsequently filled all Germany with their fame.
Dramatic works of every description appeared. There was Martin’s _Tree
of Diana_, Mozart’s _Elopement from the Seraglio_, Salieri’s _Grotto
of Trophonius_, Dittersdorf’s _Doctor and Apothecary_, and _Little Red
Riding Hood_, Gluck’s _Pilgrim of Mecca_, besides Paisiello’s _King
Theodore_, and greatest of all, _Don Giovanni_. The music “pleased
connoisseurs;” and _Figaro’s Marriage_ greatly charmed both singers and
the members of the orchestra, who vied with one another to do justice
to that beautiful opera. “The strength of our theater,” says a writer
of the time, characteristically and simply, “lay in our opera.”
This continual contemplation of “characters in tone” played a decided
part in the development of an artist who was destined to infuse into
instrumental music so much of poetical and even of dramatic life.
We are informed that Beethoven’s power of delineating character in
the language of music was so great, even at this time, that when
improvising, which he was very fond of doing, he was frequently
asked “to describe the character of some well-known person.” One
distinguishing peculiarity of the Bonn orchestra had a marked
influence in the development of the great symphonist of the future,
Beethoven. We refer to what has been called “the accurate observation
of musical light and shade, or of the _forte_ and _piano_.” This
musical peculiarity was introduced into the Bonn orchestra by a former
_capellmeister_, Mattioli, “a man full of fire and refined feeling,”
who had learned orchestral accentuation and declamation from Gluck,
and whose musical enthusiasm caused him to be considered the superior
of Cannabich of Mannheim, who played such a part in Mozart’s life, and
who had originated this mode of musical delivery in Germany. He was
succeeded by Joseph Reicha, under whose energetic leadership the Bonn
orchestra reached its highest point of perfection. In the autumn of
1791, we find that entire orchestra in Mergentheim, the seat of the
German order of which Maximilian Francis was Grand Master; and we have
an account of it from Mergentheim which gives us a very clear idea of
Beethoven’s life as a student.
Our informant tells us, in the first place, that he was very much
impressed by an octet of wind instruments. All eight players were, he
says, masters who had reached a high degree of truth and perfection,
especially in the sustaining of tones. Does not this remind one of
Beethoven’s exquisite septet op. 20? How Ries infused life and spirit
into all by his sure and vigorous bowing in the orchestra! What once
could be heard only in Mannheim, we are told, was now heard here--the
close observance of the _piano_ and the _forte_ and the _rinforzando_,
the swell and gradual growth of tone, followed by the dropping of the
same from the utmost intensity to the merest breath. Bernhard Romberg’s
playing is lauded for “perfection of expression and its fine shades of
feeling which appeal to the heart;” his cousin Andreas’s for “taste in
delivery,” and the true art of his “musical painting.” Can we wonder
that Beethoven’s emulation of, and struggling for the mastery with
such men contributed constantly to develop his genius? He is praised
for the peculiar expression of his playing, and above all for the
speaking, significant, expressive character of his fancy. Our informant
says, in closing his account: “I found him wanting in nothing which
goes to make the great artist. All the superior performers of this
orchestra are his admirers. They are all ears when he plays, but the
man himself is exceedingly modest and without pretension of any kind.”
We have now seen what was Beethoven’s technical training both by
practice and example, on the organ and the piano, in the theater and
the orchestra, and how all these were to him a school of musical
composition; for the Bonn orchestra was as conversant with Mozart
and Haydn as we of to-day are with Beethoven. How thoroughly he
comprehended and appreciated Mozart especially, is attested by what
he once said to John Cramer, the only piano player to whom Beethoven
himself applied terms of high praise. The two were walking, in 1799, in
the park in Vienna, listening to Mozart’s concert in C minor. “Cramer!
Cramer!” Beethoven exclaimed, when he heard the simple and beautiful
theme near the close: “We shall never be able to accomplish anything
like that.” “What a modest man!” was the reply. This leads us to say
something of the few beautiful, purely human gifts which were the fruit
Beethoven enjoyed through life, of his youth in Bonn.
In Bonn, lived Madame von Breuning, with her four children, who were
only a little younger than our court organist. Beethoven and one of
the sons, Stephan, received instruction in music from Ries, and were
thus thrown together. But it was not long before our young artist
himself was called upon to teach the piano in the family of Madame von
Breuning. How lonely Beethoven felt after his good mother had succumbed
to her many sufferings and sorrows, we learn from the first letter
of his that has come down to us. We there read: “She was so good and
amiable a mother to me! She was my best friend. O, who was happier
than I while I could yet pronounce the sweet name of mother! There
was once some one to hear me when I said ‘mother!’ But to whom can I
address that name now? Only to the silent pictures of her which my
fancy paints.” But Madame von Breuning became a second mother to him;
and what her home was, we are informed by Doctor Wegeler, afterwards
husband of Madame von Breuning’s daughter Eleonore, for a time one of
Beethoven’s pupils. He writes: “Her home was pervaded by an atmosphere
of unconstrained refinement, spite of an occasional outburst of the
petulance of youth. The boy, Christoph, took very early to the writing
of little poems. Stephan did the same thing at a much later date, and
successfully. The useful and agreeable were found combined in the
little social entertainments of family friends. It was not long before
Beethoven was treated as one of the children. He spent the greater part
of the day in Madame Bruening’s home, and not unfrequently, the night.
He felt at home in the family, and everything about him contributed to
cheer him and to develop his mind.” When it is known, on the authority
of the same Doctor Wegeler, that it was at Madame von Breuning’s home
that Beethoven first became acquainted with German literature, that
there he received his first lessons in social etiquette, it is easy to
estimate the value to him of the friendship of the Breuning family--a
friendship which was never interrupted for a moment during his long
life.
It was while in the enjoyment of this intercourse with the Breuning
family that he felt the first, charming intimations of the tender
passion. Wegeler makes mention of two young ladies, one of whom, a
pretty, cheerful and lively blonde, Jeannette d’Honrath, of Cologne,
was a frequent visitor at the Breuning’s. She took delight in teasing
our young musician, and playfully addressed him, singing:
“Mich heute noch von dir zu trennen,
Und dieses nicht verhindern koennen,
Ist zu empfendlich für mein Herz!”[A]
His favored rival in Jeannette’s affections was a captain in the
Austrian army, by the name of Greth. His name occurs, in 1823, in the
written conversations of our deaf master. He was just as much taken
with the sweet and beautiful Miss W. (Westherhold), but to no purpose.
He called his love for her a “young Werther’s love,” and, many years
after, he told B. Romberg a great many anecdotes about it. What he
thought of his acquaintance with the Breuning family and these two
young persons may be inferred from the words in which he dedicated the
variations _Se vuol ballare_, to his friend Lorchen (Eleonore Breuning)
in 1793: “May this work,” he says, “serve to recall the time when I
spent so many and such happy hours in your home.”
Besides the home of the Breunings, in which Beethoven was always
so welcome, we may mention another--that of Count Waldstein, to
whom the sonata op. 23 is dedicated. The count was very friendly to
Beethoven. He was aware of his genius, and, on that account, afforded
him pecuniary assistance. Yet, to spare the artist’s feelings, this
assistance was made to have the appearance of coming from the Elector.
It may be that it was this same amiable and art-loving young Austrian
who endeavored to keep Beethoven’s eye fixed on the one place in
the world in which he could receive the final touch to his musical
education,--Vienna. The very multitude of Beethoven’s ideas, and
the height to which his intellect had soared, showed him that he was
far from having reached perfection in the artistic representation of
those ideas. His readiness of execution and his wonderful power of
improvisation, even now, assured him victory wherever he went. But the
small number of compositions which he wrote at this time, in Bonn, is
sufficient proof that he did not feel sure of himself as a composer.
And yet he had now reached an age at which Mozart was celebrated as a
composer of operas.
In March, 1790, Haydn, on his journey to London, passed through Bonn,
and was presented to the orchestra by Maximilian Francis, in person.
He returned in the summer of 1792, and as Mozart had died in the
meantime, nothing was more natural than that Beethoven should apply to
the greatest living musician for instruction. The Elector assisted him;
and we may divine how the young musician’s heart must have swelled, now
that he had entered the real wrestling-place in his art, from what,
as we stated before, he said to his teacher Neefe: “If I ever become
a great man,” etc. But what was there that is not expected from such
a person? Waldstein expressed the “realization of his long contested
wishes” by writing in Beethoven’s album: “By uninterrupted industry,
thou wilt acquire the mind of Mozart from the hands of Haydn.” When
the wars of the Revolution swept over the boundaries of France, the
excitement produced was great and universal. Beethoven was affected
only by its ideal side. He was spared the sight of the grotesque
ridiculousness of the _sans culottes_ and the blood of the guillotine.
After a short journey, in November, 1792, Vienna afforded him a safe
retreat which he never afterwards left. It was not long before the
French were masters of the Rhine. Maximilian Francis was obliged to
flee, and thus every prospect of Beethoven’s returning home was lost.
It now became imperative that he should take care of himself. His
two brothers were provided for--Karl was a musician and Johann an
apothecary. They soon followed him to Vienna, where it was not long
before they renewed the scenes of his home life in Bonn. But his own
constant endeavor was to be the creative artist that, as he became
more firmly convinced every day, he was born to be. His studies
under Haydn, then under Schenk, with whom the readers of the Life of
Mozart are familiar from his connection with the opera of the _Magic
Flute_, afterwards under the dry-as-dust Albrechtsberger, the teacher
of counterpoint, and even under Mozart’s deadly enemy, Salieri--were
earnestly and zealously pursued, as is evident from what he has left
after him. But even now his mind was too richly developed and his
fancy too lofty to learn anything except by independent action. Ten of
Beethoven’s works date from the time he lived in Bonn; but, during his
first sojourn in Vienna, compositions flowed in profusion from his pen,
and we cannot but suppose that the germs of many of these last were
sown during the period of his virtuosoship in Bonn. We conclude this
chapter with a list of the works here referred to.
Besides his first attempts at musical composition already mentioned,
a concerto for the piano written in 1784, and three quartets for the
piano written in 1785, which were afterwards made use of in the
sonatas op. 2, we must add, as certainly dating from this period of
Beethoven’s life in Bonn, a ballet by Count Waldstein (1791), a trio
for the piano in E flat, the eight songs of op. 52, which appeared
in 1805, two arias, one of which occurs in this op. as Goethe’s
_Mailied_, a part of the Bagatellen op. 33 which appeared in 1803, the
two preludes op. 39, a minuet published in 1803, the variations _Vieni
Amore_ (1790), a funeral cantata on the death of Joseph II. (1790),
and one on that of Leopold II. (1792), the last of which was submitted
to Haydn and which he thought a great deal of--both of these latter
compositions are lost--an allegro and minuet for two flutes, a rondino
for reed instruments and the string trio op. 3 which appeared in 1796.
In addition to these, there are, in all probability, many other
compositions which were completed during Beethoven’s first sojourn
in Vienna, and published at a still later date; the octet op.
103, after which the quintet op. 4 was patterned before 1797, the
serenade op. 8, which contained the germ of his nocturne op. 42; the
Variations op. 66, on _Ein Maedchen oder Weibchen_, from the _Magic
Flute_ (published in 1798); the variations on _God Save the King_,
the Romance for the violin, both of which appeared in 1805, when
Beethoven’s brother secretly published much of his music; the variation
on _Se vuol ballare_ from Mozart’s _Figaro_; the _Es War Einmal_
from Dittersdroff’s _Little Red Riding Hood_, the “See He Comes,”
the Messias, and a theme by Count Waldstein (appeared 1793, 1797),
the _Easy Sonata_ in C major, dedicated to Eleonore von Breuning;
the prelude in F minor (appeared in 1805), and the sextet for wind
instruments, op. 71, which appeared in 1810.
In his twenty-third year, Mozart could point to three hundred works
which he had composed, among them the poetical sonatas of his youth.
How little of sunshine and leisure must there have been in a life
which, spite of its extraordinary intellectual wealth and activity,
reaped so little fruit! And even if we fix the date when the three
trios op. 1, were composed in this period, when Beethoven was for the
first time taught the meaning of the world and history, by the stormy
movements of the last decade of the last century; and admit that the
two concertos for the piano (op. 19 and op. 15) owe their origin to the
wonderful fantasias with which he charmed the hearts and minds of the
people of Bonn at that time, yet how little did he achieve! This fact
is the most convincing proof of the truth of Beethoven’s own assertion,
that fortune did not favor him in Bonn. Leaving his musical training
out of consideration, Beethoven’s youth was not a very happy one.
Seldom was it brightened for any length of time by the smiles of joy.