1795-1806.
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--Disappointment 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
Lenore Overture--Other Compositions.
The golden age of music in Vienna had not passed away when Beethoven
came to that city. Not the court, but the wealthy nobility, and a great
many circles of the cultured found in music the very soul of their
intellectual life and of a nobler existence. A consequence of this was
that more attention was paid to chamber music than any other; and we
accordingly find that the greater number of Beethoven’s compositions,
written at this period, are of that style of music. Their very
dedications tell us much of the social circles of Vienna, and of the
persons who graced them.
First of all, we have the three trios op. 1, dedicated to Prince Karl
von Lichnowsky. The man who had been the pupil and friend of Mozart
might be glad, indeed, to see a substitute found so soon for that
departed genius. A quartet consisting of the able artists Schuppanzigh,
Sina, Weiss and Kraft, played at his house every Friday. Dr. Wegeler
informs us that Beethoven, in 1794, lived with the Prince, who, at a
later date, paid him a salary of twelve hundred marks. The variations
on _Seht er Kommt_, (See he comes) 1797, were dedicated to his consort,
the Princess Christiane, _nee_ Thun. She prized Beethoven very highly,
and, as he once said of her himself, would have liked to encase him in
glass, that he might be screened from the defiling breath and touch of
the unworthy. The first three sonatas op. 2 are dedicated to J. Haydn,
and they introduce us to his special patron, the Prince Esterhazy, with
whom Beethoven was not very intimate, although the commission to write
the mass op. 86 was given by Nicholas Esterhazy. The quartet op. 4, as
well as the sonatas for violin, op. 23 and 24 (1800), and the string
quintet op. 29 (1801), are dedicated to Count Fries. There is much in
Beethoven’s life to show that he was on terms of close friendship with
this rich “merchant.” The sonata op. 7 (1797), is dedicated to Countess
Keglevics. The first concerto, which was finished in 1794, is dedicated
to the same person, then known as Princess Odescalchi. The trios op. 9,
as well as the brilliant sonata op. 22, belong, by right of dedication,
to the Russian Count Browne, whom Beethoven himself called _le premier
Mecene de sa muse_, and the sonatas op. 10 (1798), to his consort. To
the Countess von Thun, he dedicated the trio op. 11, composed the same
year, and the sonatas op. 12, to Salieri, one of his teachers in Vienna.
How highly Beethoven esteemed Lichnowsky is evidenced by the dedication
to him of op. 14, the _Pathetique_ (1799). In it we find the earliest
expression of Beethoven’s view of music as a voice speaking to man’s
innermost nature, calling to him to live a higher life. To Lichnowsky,
likewise, was dedicated the sonata op. 26 with the beautiful funeral
march (1802). The two lovely sonatas op. 14 of the year 1799, as
well as the sonata for the horn, op. 17 (1800), are dedicated to the
Countess Braun, whose husband gave Beethoven, some years after, the
commission for the _Fidelio_; and the quintet op. 16 which was finished
in 1797 to Prince Schwarzenberg. When we connect the name of Prince
Lobkowitz with the first quartets op. 18, composed in 1797-1800; that
of Baron von Swieten the lover of the well-tempered clavichord with the
first symphony op. 21 (1800), that of the learned von Sonnenfels with
the so-called pastoral sonata op. 28 (1801), we can see the force of
the remark made by J. F. Reichart, that the Austrian nobility of this
period loved and appreciated music better probably than any other in
the history of the world. That they did not continue to do so is due
entirely to the fact of the general disturbance of their pecuniary
circumstances consequent on the wars which came to an end only in 1815,
and which diminished their favorable influence on the cultivation of
the art of music. But our artist had all the advantages of this noble
patronage. He spared no pains nor sacrifice to profit by it. But his
mind could not rest in the mere enjoyment of music. It sought other
and higher spheres. His art was destined to absorb into itself the
whole world of culture, to take an active part in the march of history
and co-operate in giving expression to the ideas of life. The first
real exploits of our artist were the _Eroica_ and the _Fidelio_ with
the Leonore overture; but the path which led to them was one on which
those immediately surrounding him could not very well follow him, and
one which subsequently isolated him personally more and more from his
fellow men.
It was an ill-defined longing for this starry path of a higher
intellectual existence which brought him to the north of Germany, to
Berlin, after he had finished the principal parts of the course in
music under Haydn, Schenk and Albrechtsberger. Not that he did not
meet with recognition and remuneration in his new home. But, after
all, the recognition and remuneration he met with there were such as a
virtuoso might expect. For the present, neither the public nor music
publishers would have much to do with his compositions. Writing to
Schiller’s wife, the young Bonn professor, Fischenich, says of him:
“So far as my acquaintance with him goes, he is made for the great
and the sublime. Haydn has said that he would give him great operas,
and soon be compelled himself to stop composing.” He informs her, at
the same time, that Beethoven was going to set her husband’s Hymn
to Joy--_Freude schoener Goetterfunken_--to music. We thus see that
he, even now, harbored those great ideas which engaged him at the
close of his labors, in the composition of the Ninth Symphony. There
were as yet but few traces to be found in Vienna of the intellectual
awakening to which Germany is indebted for its earliest classical
literature, and the period of its great thinkers in the west and the
north. On the other hand, Beethoven’s own mind was too full of the
“storm and stress” to be able to appreciate the beautiful harmony and
the warmth which had made such phenomena as Haydn and Mozart possible
in South-German Austria. But in the North, the memory of “old Fritz”
still lived; there the stern rule of mind and conscience, generated
by Protestantism, still prevailed, while the firm frame-work of his
own art, the counterpoint of the great Bach, the “first father of
harmony,” as he calls him himself, was there preserved, apparently, in
its full strength. In addition to all this, the court there was fond
of music, and King Frederick William II had endeavored to keep Mozart,
the greatest master of his time, in Berlin; while Beethoven, since the
Elector’s flight from Bonn, had no further prospects in his home on the
Rhine. He, therefore, decided to remove to the North.
We find him on his journey thither at the beginning of 1796. “My
music secures me friends and regard--what more do I want?” he writes
from Prague to his brother Johann, who, in the meantime, had entered
into the employment of an apothecary in Vienna. He here composed the
aria _Ah Perfido_ (op. 65). On his way to Berlin he passed through
Dresden and Leipzig, but of his stay in these two cities, we have no
information. The king received him very graciously; he played a few
times at court and composed the sonatas for cello, op. 5, because
the king himself played the violincello. The very first impression
received by Beethoven seems to have been decisive. K. Czerny, to whom
he taught the piano, tells us something from his own recollection and
observation about him, which is very characteristic of the man, and
shows how sorely disappointed he felt in his most ardent expectations
in Berlin. He says: “His improvisation was very brilliant, astonishing
in the highest degree.... No matter in what society he was thrown, he
made such an impression on all his hearers that it frequently happened
that not a dry eye was to be seen, while many broke into sobs. There
was something wonderful in his expression, besides the beauty and
originality of his ideas, and the highly intellectual way he had of
presenting them. When he had finished an improvisation of this kind he
could break out into a fit of loud laughter and ridicule his hearers
on the emotions he had excited. At times he even felt injured by those
signs of sympathy. ‘Who,’ he asked, ‘can live among such spoiled
children?’ and for that reason alone he once declined an invitation
extended to him by the king of Prussia, after an improvisation of this
kind.”
Beethoven was doomed to a disappointment of a very peculiar kind
here. Instead of the manliness of character which he, coming from the
softer South, expected to find in the North, he was confronted with
a voluptuous luxury to which his art was only a handmaid, and with
an apparent surfeit of music, the natural outgrowth of the French
influence due to Voltaire’s residence in Berlin. Such was not the
spirit of the new era which animated himself, and for the operation
of which he was seeking a proper theater of action. The king himself
did all in his power to make Gluck and Mozart settle in Berlin, and
Handel’s oratorios were played even at the court concerts. But how
could a man like Beethoven have worked side by side with the ruling
leaders in music--with a Himmel and a Rhigini? The only person in
Berlin who seemed to Beethoven a man, in the full sense of the word,
was Prince Louis Ferdinand. With genuine frankness, he remarked of the
prince’s playing that “it was not kingly or princely, but only that
of a good piano player.” But it is probable that from the prince he
borrowed the chivalric and, at the same time, poetico-enthusiastic
character found in his third concerto (op. 37), which was finished in
1800 and dedicated to the prince, “the most human of human beings.”
He played twice in the Singing Academy before its conductor, Fasch,
and his successor, Zelter, Goethe’s well-known friend, when he again
brought the tears to the eyes of his hearers. But he clearly saw from
the example of these two principal representatives of the more serious
taste for music in Berlin, that it was not Bach’s spirit which he was
in search of that ruled there, but only a caricature of it; and this
last was by no means a counterpoise to the Italian style of music,
which still held absolute sway. He returned to Vienna disappointed
in every respect, but with all the greater confidence in himself. He
never again left Austria for good. It became the scene of his grandest
achievements, and it was not long before their history began.
In a small memorandum book used by Beethoven on his journey from Bonn
to Vienna, we find the following passage: “Take courage. Spite of all
physical weakness, my mind shall rule. I have reached my twenty-fifth
year, and must now be all that I can be. Nothing must be left undone.”
The father always represented Beethoven to be younger than he really
was. Even in 1810, the son would not admit that he was forty years
of age. The words quoted above must, therefore, have been written in
the winter of 1796 or 1797; and this fact invests them with a greater
significance than they would otherwise possess; for our artist now saw
that, without the shadow of a doubt, Austria and Vienna were to be his
abiding places; and he, therefore, strained every nerve, regardless
of what the consequences might be, “to be a great man sometime;” that
is, to accomplish something really good in music. This regardlessness
of consequences manifested itself especially in the little care he
seemed to take of his physical well-being. A friend, who had every
opportunity to observe him, Baron von Zmeskall, informs us that “in
the summer of 1796, he came home almost overpowered by the heat, tore
open the doors and windows of the house, took off his coat and vest and
seated himself at an open window to cool himself. The consequence of
his imprudence was a dangerous illness, which ultimately settled on the
organs of hearing. From this time his deafness kept on increasing.”
It is possible that the first symptoms of his deafness did not appear
as early as 1796; but certain it is, that it dates back into the last
decade of the last century, that it was brought about by heedlessness
of his health, and that it became a severe tax on his moral courage.
His genius was so absorbed in his music, that he too frequently forgot
to take care of the physical man. In November, 1796, Stephan von
Breuning remarked of him, that “his travels had contributed to mature
his character; that he was a better judge of men, and had learned
to appreciate the value, but, at the same time, the rarity of good
friends.” The hard trials of life had added to the earnestness of his
disposition, and he was awakening to a full sense of what his own duty
in this world was. This leads us to the first great and memorable work
of his genius--to the _Eroica_, followed soon after by the symphony in
C minor.
When, in the year 1806, one of his friends informed Beethoven of
Napoleon’s victory at Jena, he exclaimed: “It’s a pity that I do not
understand the art of war as well as I do the art of music. If I did
I certainly would conquer him.” These words express a rivalry almost
personal in its nature, and could have been spoken only by a fool or
by a man of power not unlike that of Napoleon himself. And, indeed,
leaving out of consideration men of genius like Goethe and Schiller,
whose fame had been long established on a firm foundation, there were
among his contemporaries men of sovereign ambition, only one person,
Napoleon Bonaparte, able to make any great impression on a man who had
chosen for his motto: “Power is the moral code of men who distinguish
themselves above others; and it is mine, too.” A series of the most
brilliant victories was achieved up to 1798 by the General of the
glorious French Republic, who was of the same age as Beethoven. General
Bernadotte, whose descendants occupy the throne of Sweden in our
day, had participated in those victories. Bernadotte was the French
Ambassador to Vienna in the beginning of 1798. He was young; by his
origin he belonged to the middle class; he was the representative of
the Republic, and could, therefore, indulge, unconstrained, in personal
intercourse with whomsoever he pleased.
The celebrated violinist, Rudolph Kreutzer, to whom Beethoven’s
_Kreutzer Sonata_ (op. 47) is dedicated, was one of his retinue. It
was very natural that once Bernadotte and Kreutzer became acquainted
with Beethoven, their intercourse with him and their friendship for
him, should have been more than usually intimate. Bernadotte, who was
sincerely devoted to Napoleon, and who must have felt himself drawn
still more closely to Beethoven, because of his enthusiasm for the
general, suggested to him the idea of celebrating the exploits of his
hero by a symphony. Beethoven so informed his amanuensis, Schindler, in
1823, and his account is corroborated by other facts, that such was the
first impulse to the composition of the _Eroica_.
But the advocate of power was destined soon to swell to the proportions
of the hero of intellectual courage. “For thus does fate knock at
the gates.” Beethoven used these words in 1823, in speaking “with
uncontrollable enthusiasm” of that wonderful _motive_ at the opening
of the symphony in C minor. The last movement of the work, the
fanfare-like _finale_, so expressive of the joy of victory, shows that
he here described a victory indeed, the surmounting of the obstacles
and darkness of life, even if those obstacles and that darkness
consisted only of “the infirmities of the body.” The sketches of this
movement, however, occur in the draft of the quartet op. 18, and hence
must have been noted down before the year 1800! But the fact that the
melody of the _adagio_ was also found in that sketch shows that he
was even then as certain of mastering sorrow, as he was conscious of
the presence of the “demon in his ears,” and of the sad prospect of a
“wretched” and lonely future--a prospect which stirred him to the very
depths of his soul.
But it was years before these _motives_ took shape in his mind. To
do justice to the great ideas to which they give expression, to the
heroic victory of power and will over whatever opposes them, he had to
concentrate and strengthen all his powers of mind and heart, and to
develop his talents by long exercise. The portraiture of the struggles
and of the artistic creations of the next succeeding years constitutes
the transition to those first great heroic deeds--a transition which
must be understood by all who would understand Beethoven’s music.
The Napoleonic way in which Beethoven, at the close of the last
century, outgeneraled all the most celebrated virtuosos of the time
in Vienna and in Europe, is attested by his triumph over the renowned
pianist Woelffl, in 1799, and his defeat of Steibelt, in 1800. But he
did still more towards achieving success by his works. His numerous
variations won over to him many a fair player of the piano, while his
_Adelaide_, which appeared in 1797, gained for him the hearts of all
persons of fine feeling; so that Wegeler may have told the simple
truth, when he wrote: “Beethoven was never, at least so long as I lived
in Vienna (1794-96), without a love affair; and he occasionally made
a conquest which it would have been very hard, if not impossible, for
many a handsome Adonis to have made.” The “ugly,” pock-marked man, with
the piercing eyes, was possessed of a power and beauty more attractive
than any mere physical charms. And then, there was the charm of his
sonatas: op. 7, with the funeral song in _adagio_, which he is said to
have written in a tempest of “passionate feeling”; of op. 10, with
its genuine masculine profile; of the revolutionary sonata in C minor,
with the mysterious struggle in the _allegretto_ in No. II., and the
brilliant exultation of victory in the _allegro_ in No. III., the
tragic song of the _largo_, the gentle grace of the minuet--here used
exceptionally in the place of the _scherzo_, as we find it already in
op. 1; and, last of all, the droll question of little Snub Nose, in the
_finale_. And yet these were followed by the _Pathetique_, with its
exquisite and enrapturing _adagio_, and the two beautiful love songs,
op. 14; by the six quartets, op. 18, in which he offered to a society
of friends of his art, true songs of the soul and pictures of life
overflowing; by the _adagio_ of No. I, another Romeo-and-Juliet grave
scene; by the _adagio_ of No. VI., descriptive of the melancholy which,
even now, began to gather its dark clouds about Beethoven himself,
whose breast was so well attuned to joy. The descriptive septet (op.
20, 1800,) and the first symphony (op. 21), sketched after the style of
Haydn, but painted with Mozart’s pencil, are the last scenes in what
we may call Beethoven’s older life, which closed with the eighteenth
century. The beginning of the nineteenth opened a new world to our
artist.
The new world thus opened to Beethoven, and the manner in which he
himself conceived it, may be best described in Schiller’s magnificent
verses:
“Wie schön, O Mensch, mit deinem Palmenzweige
Stehst du an des Jahrhunderts Neige,
In edler stolzer Männlichkeit!
Mit aufgeschlossnem Sinn, mit Geistesfülle,
Voll milden Ernsts, in thatenreicher Stille,
Der reifste Sohn der Zeit.
Frei durch Vernunft, stark durch Gesetze,
Durch Sanftmuth gross und reich durch Schätze,
Die lange Zeit dein Busen dir verschwieg.”
And now began for Beethoven a period of severe trials, brought upon him
by himself. Absorbed in work, he neglected to take sufficient care of
his physical health. His trouble with his hearing was increasing, but
he paid no attention to it. His carelessness in this regard reduced him
to a condition in which he would have found no alleviation and no joy,
were it not for the inexhaustible resources he possessed within himself.
But to understand him fully, we must read what he wrote himself,
in June, 1801, to the “best of human kind,” his friend Amenda, in
Kurland, who had left Vienna two years before. He says:
“Your own dear Beethoven is very unhappy. He is in conflict with
nature and with God. Many and many a time have I cursed Him because
He has made His creatures the victims of the smallest accidents in
nature, and this to such an extent that what promises to be best and
most beautiful in life, is destroyed. You must know that what was
most precious to me, my hearing, has been, in great part, lost. How
sad my life is! All that was dear to me, all that I loved is gone!
How happy would I now be, if I could only hear as I used to hear!
If I could, I would fly to thee; but as it is, I must stay away. My
best years will fly, and I shall not have fulfilled the promise of my
youth, nor accomplish in my art what I fondly hoped I would. I must
now take refuge in the sadness of resignation.”
We have here the words to the long-drawn funereal tones of a song as we
find it at the beginning of the celebrated C sharp minor (_Mondschein_)
sonata op. 27 No. II, which belongs to this period. The direct
incentive to its composition was Seume’s poem, _die Beterin_ in which
he gives us a description of a daughter praying for her noble father,
who has been condemned to death. But in this painful struggle with
self, we also hear the storm of passion, in words as well as in tones.
Beethoven’s life at this time was one of sorrow. He writes: “I can say
that I am living a miserable life. I have more than once execrated my
existence. But if possible I shall bid defiance to fate, although there
will be, I know, moments in my life when I shall be God’s most unhappy
creature.” The thunders of power may be heard in the _finale_ of that
sonata. When it was published, the following year, its dedication
ran: _Alla damigella contessa Giulietta Guicciardi_. The celebrated
Giulietta! Her friendship was, indeed, a cheering ray of sunshine in
Beethoven’s “wretched life” at this time. As he writes himself in the
fall of the year 1801:
“My life is somewhat pleasanter now. I move about among men more than
I used to. I am indebted for this change for the better to a lovely,
charming girl who loves me and is loved by me. For two years now I
have had once more some moments of happiness, and for the first time
in my life I feel that marriage might make one happy. Unfortunately,
she does not belong to my social circle. But if I cannot get married
at the present time, I shall have to mix more among men.”
The family of the imperial counsellor, Count Guicciardi, originally
from Modena, was one of the families of the higher class with whom
Beethoven had formed an intimate acquaintance through his art.
Guicciardi’s wife belonged to the Hungarian family of the Brunswicks,
who were likewise very friendly to Beethoven. We shall yet have
something to say of the Countess Theresa Brunswick, for whom and whose
sister, the charming Countess Deym, the variations for four hands on
_Ich denke dein_, were written in 1800. Countess Giulietta was in
her sixteenth year, and as good as betrothed to Count Gallenberg,
a musician and composer of ballet music. He was, however, in such
pecuniary straits that Beethoven had, on one occasion, to come to his
assistance through a friend. The young girl did not give any serious
thought to a union with the Count, although he belonged to her own
social circle. The attractions of a genuine love had more charms for
her. This same true, genuine love possessed Beethoven’s soul. He writes
to his friend Wegeler:
“I feel that my youth is only now beginning. Was I not always a
sickly man? But, for a time, my physical strength has been increasing
more than ever before, and the same is true of my mental power. With
every succeeding day I approach nearer to the goal which I feel, but
cannot describe. Thus only can I live. No rest! I know of no repose
but sleep, and it sorely pains me that I have now to allot more time
to sleep than was once necessary. Let me be only half freed from my
trouble and then, a perfectly mature man, I shall come to you and
renew our old friendship. You must see me as happy as it is given me
to be here below. You must not see me unhappy; that is more than I
could bear. I shall struggle manfully with fate, and be sure, it will
not overcome me entirely. O, how beautiful it would be to live life
over a thousand times! But I am not made for a quiet life.”
To this, Beethoven’s elasticity of soul, which lifted him to the height
of joy and of intellectual delight, we are indebted for those works of
his which are models of poetic creation. What became of the traditional
form of the sonata after Beethoven began to tell in song the meaning of
joy and pain and of their wonderful admixture, as he did in the sonata
op. 31, No. II, the first movement of which looks as if thrown off
with a single stroke of the pen? There are the thoughtful questionings
of fate in the opening chord; the jubilant, tempestuous enjoyment
of pleasure; the expression of woe, more terrible in anticipation
than realization, when misery wrings a cry of pain from him, and he
breaks out in recitative--a form of art never before coupled with an
instrument, but which is here more eloquent than words. Sorrow, joy
and genius have now transformed the mere musician into the artist and
the poet. Beethoven, as the master of the intellectual world of tones,
began his career with this sonata in D minor. From this time forward,
his every piece is a psychological picture of life. The form of the
sonata had now fully developed the intellectual germ which in it lay.
It is no longer mere form, but a finite vessel holding an infinite
intellectual treasure as its contents. Even the separate parts of it,
although retained as usual, are henceforth only phases and stages of
the development of that intellectual treasure. They are acts of a drama
played in the recesses of a human soul--in the soul of a man who is
forced to taste, while still he laughs in his melancholy, the tragic
contents of the cup of human life during every moment of his existence.
For thus it was now with Beethoven. The deepest sorrow endows him with
untrammeled serenity of mind. Darkness becomes to him the parent of a
higher light. A humor that weeps through its smiles is henceforth his.
On this sonata followed a symphony with the real Beethoven flavor, the
second symphony (op. 36). It had its origin in the “sublime feeling”
which “animated” him in the beautiful summer days of 1802; as had
also the brilliant _Kreutzer Sonata_ (op. 47). This summer of 1802 is
a memorable one in Beethoven’s life. It brought with it the severest
trials of his courage as a man. These trials transformed him into a
hero, and were the incentives to the composition of the _Eroica_. To
this period belongs the so-called “Heiligenstadt Will,” which discloses
to us the inmost depths of Beethoven’s soul.
His physician had ordered him in October, 1802, to the village of
Heiligenstadt, near Vienna, in a condition of the utmost hopelessness.
Beethoven thought that death was not far off, and, anxious to justify
himself before posterity, he wrote from that place: “O, you men, who
think or say that I am malignant, obstinate or misanthropic, what an
injustice you do me! You know not the secret cause of what you think
you see. From childhood up, my heart and mind have been bent upon the
accomplishment of great deeds; I was ever moved thereto by the feeling
of benevolence. To accomplish such deeds I was always disposed. But
consider that for six--yes, six whole years, I have been in a most
unfortunate condition--a condition which has been made worse by the
stupidity of my physicians; that my hopes, from year to year, of being
cured have been disappointed, and that at last there lies before me
the prospect of permanent ill. Born with an active and even fiery
temperament, a lover of the distractions of society, I had to live in
a state of isolation from all men. How humbled I felt when a person
standing near me could hear a flute that was playing in the distance,
while I could hear nothing! Experiences like this brought me to the
very verge of despair, and I came very near ending my own life. Art
alone held me back. It seemed to me impossible that I should leave
the world until I had accomplished all for which I felt myself so
well fitted. O God, thou seest my heart. Thou seest that it harbors
beneficence and love for human kind. O you men, when you read this,
remember that you have wronged me, and let the unfortunate rejoice to
find one of their number who, spite of the obstacles put in his way by
nature, did all in his power to be admitted into the ranks of artists
and men worthy of the name.”
And now, too, we find in his music the first traces of such appeals
to the Godhead. The text of the six songs of Gellert, op. 48, which
appeared in 1803, are of a religious nature. But, in the domain of
religion, our artist had not yet risen to his full height. He is still
preponderantly the musician of life, force and of the brilliant play
of the intellect; and his compositions are still pre-eminently works
of art and of the fancy. The _Eroica_ (op. 55), which was finished
in 1803, possessed these characteristics in the highest sense of the
word. And now we may understand what he felt himself, as he said in his
“Will,” fitted to accomplish, as well as the mysterious conversation
he had in 1823, with his amanuensis, Schindler, in which he speaks of
this period of his life, and of Giulietta, who had now long been the
Countess Gallenberg, and who had, a short time before, returned from
Naples, where her husband had acted as director of the theater for
years. The conversation in question begins thus: It was held in the
French language--
Beethoven--“She was mine before she was her husband’s or Italy’s, and
she paid me a visit, bathed in tears; but I despised her.”
Schindler--“By Hercules!”
Beethoven--“If I had parted in that way with my strength, as well as my
life, what would have remained to me for nobler and better things?”
Beethoven had said of himself that he had something to do in the
world besides marrying. His ideal was not to live in such cramped
circumstances. He knew of “nobler and better things.” Yet it seems
that he offered his hand to the “lovely, charming girl” in this year
1803, when he began to have a prospect of permanently bettering his
condition, and that Giulietta was not disinclined to marry him.
But family considerations prevented the decisive step; and she was
married in the fall of the same year to Count Gallenberg. “Despising”
her--whether rightly or wrongly we have no means of determining, but we
do know that she was not happy--Beethoven turned to the performance of
the great tasks for which he felt himself fitted.
Our artist’s life, like that of a thousand others, thus proves the
truth of the old saying: the course of true love never did run
smooth. In his earlier biographies this episode has been treated as
a great and even tragic event, because that remarkable letter to his
“immortal love,” of which we shall yet have occasion to speak, was
erroneously supposed to be addressed to Countess Guicciardi and to
refer to this circumstance in his life. But although no more than an
episode, Beethoven could here have mastered his feelings only by the
full consciousness he now possessed of the duty he owed to his genius.
As Liszt says, _le genie oblige_, and Beethoven felt that it was a
duty genius owed to mankind to sacrifice mere ambition and even the
heartfelt happiness that is born of love. The day before Guilietta’s
wedding, he wrote to Macco, the painter: “You paint, and I shall
compose music. In this way, we shall be immortal; yes, perhaps live
forever.” And that our artist had some right to lay claim to such
immortality is proved not only by his sonatas, which are little poems
in themselves, by his songs and quartets, but by mighty and memorable
works which reflect the world-soul. He was working on that grand
creation, the _Eroica_. This sacrifice of his feelings may have been,
and most likely was, forced upon him by the accident of the uncertainty
of his position in life, but that it was not made without a struggle
is manifest from his expression of contempt for Giulietta--_mais je
la méprisais_ but still more from the ideal of the value of faithful
love which now became rooted in his soul, and which we see reflected
in the _Fidelio_, that immediately followed the _Eroica_, and which
presents us with the most beautiful of all female characters. In its
composition, we find united that warmth of heart and that intellectual
in sight so peculiarly Beethoven’s own, and which he so beautifully
embodied in his art. On the golden background of his enthusiasm for
“nobler and better things,” the sweet face of Leonore stands out in
bold relief as the perfect type of human beauty.
Beethoven borrowed the tones of the _Eroica_ from the elevating nature
of humanitarian ideas transferred to the region of public life.
The hero enters, touching with giant hands the foundations of human
existence, which he wants to ameliorate by renewing them. And, indeed,
the First Consul of the French Republic might very well suggest to
him, at the beginning of this century, how heroes act, the jubilation
with which nations greet them, how great existing institutions oppose
their progress, and, finally, overthrow them in their might. The first
movement of the _Eroica_ describes the most varied events in the life
of such a hero with a fullness of episode almost destructive of its
form. In its climax, the real work of the hero is seen; the old order
of things is heard crumbling and falling to pieces in its powerful and
terrific syncopations and dissonant chords, to make place for a new
existence, one more worthy of human beings. But, at the close of the
movement, the victorious hero exultingly yokes the new order of things
to his chariot. This is history, the world’s history in tones; and,
for its sake, we may for the moment shroud the dearest longings of the
heart in the dark robes of resignation.
Beethoven’s fancy as an artist fully comprehended the genius of
liberty, at this time newly born into the world, and a new factor in
the history of mankind. He understood, too, the tragic fate of all
heroes--that they are destined, like all other mortals, to fall, and,
though God-commissioned, to die, that their works may live and prosper.
Bonaparte’s history also suggested the rhythm of the sublime and solemn
step of the funeral march; for, since the days of Cæsar and Alexander,
no man had stepped as did he through the spaces of the existing order
of things. But Beethoven’s poetic fancy soared even now far beyond the
reality that surrounded him. As early as 1802, he wrote to the music
dealers in Leipzig, now so well known as the publishers of the _Edition
Peters_: “Away with you all, gentlemen! To propose to me to write
such a sonata! That might have done in the time when the Revolution
was at fever heat, but now that everything has returned to the old
beaten path, that Bonaparte has concluded a concordat with the Pope,
to write such a sonata--away with you!” It is not Napoleon, therefore,
who is here interred. It is not Napoleon for whom mankind weeps in the
tones of this funeral march. It is the ever-living, ever-awakening
hero of humanity, the genius of our race, that is solemnly borne to
the grave to the rhythm of this wonderful march--a march which has in
it something of the tragic pathos of a Shakespeare or an Æschylus.
Beethoven in this march became a tragic writer of purely instrumental
music, and gave evidence of that quality of soul which made him
indifferent to “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”
The two last movements of the work do not convey so powerful an idea
of heroic action. Was it that his powers of imagination flagged, or
that the change in Napoleon’s career made him disgusted with the hero?
We know that when, in the spring of 1804, the copy of the symphony was
finished--the title, proudly and characteristically enough bearing
only two names, “Buonaparte” at the top and “Luigi van Beethoven” at
the bottom--and Beethoven heard of Napoleon’s elevation, he said: “Can
it be that he is no more than an ordinary man? Now he, like others,
will trample all human rights under foot, serve only his ambition and
become a tyrant.” He tore the title page in two, threw the work on the
floor and did not again look at it for a long time. When it appeared
in 1806, it was under the name of the _Sinfonia Eroica_, “composed
to celebrate the memory of a great man.” It was dedicated to Prince
Lobkowitz, who purchased it and caused it to be performed before Prince
Louis Ferdinand, in the fall of 1804. The Prince was so delighted with
it that he had it played three times the same evening in immediate
succession, which was a very great satisfaction to Beethoven.
There is a oneness of spirit in this instrumental fresco painting of
a hero who strives and suffers for the sake of what is most precious
to man, and in Beethoven’s only opera, the _Fidelio_, which made the
latter the natural successor of the _Eroica_. Florestan dared “boldly
to tell the truth,” and this, his entering the lists for right and
freedom, incites his faithful wife, Leonore, to a truly heroic deed.
Disguised in male attire, she enters the prison, and, just in the nick
of time, casts herself between her beloved husband and his murderer.
Her cry--which has in it much of the heroism of death--“kill first
his wife,” is a bit of history showing the enthusiasm of the ideally
great, as it is also the most intense dramatic representation, in
tones, of the full energy of a woman’s love.
In a letter to Amenda, in 1801, he wrote: “I have composed music of
every description, except operas and church music.” But even, a short
time before this, he had something to do with the theater. He had
written the ballet _Prometheus_, which represents in a sense, the
history of the creation of man in choreographic pictures. The success
of this work determined Schikaneder, well known to the readers of
the life of Mozart, and who, at this time, had the direction of the
newly-built theater in Vienna, to engage Beethoven at a large annual
stipend. When this man, Schikaneder, in the same spring of 1803, saw
that the oratorio _Christus am Oelberge_ (Christ on the Mount of Olives)
met with good success, although more theatrical than spiritual in its
character, he commissioned him to write an opera also. The subject was,
probably, _Alexander_--a very suitable one, considering Beethoven’s
own heroic style, and his feeling at the time. But nothing came of it.
There can be no doubt, however, that a piece which he had sketched
and intended to make a part of it, the duet, _O Namenlose Freude_ (O
Nameless Joy), was afterwards embodied in the _Fidelio_. Beethoven had
received a commission to write the latter from Baron von Braun, who had
taken charge of the theater in Vienna, in the year 1804.
At this time, both the Abbe Vogler and Cherubini were writing for the
Viennese. The compositions of the latter met with great success, and
made a powerful impression on Beethoven. In these men he met with foes
worthy of his steel, and inducements great enough to lead him to do
his very best. His severe heart trials and consequent disappointment
had taught him how lonely he was in the world. Breuning wrote of him
in 1804: “You have no idea, my dear Wegeler, how indescribable, and, I
might say, horrible an impression his partial loss of hearing has made
on him.... What must be the feelings of one with such a violent temper,
to meet with such a misfortune! And then his reserve, and his distrust
frequently of his best friend!” A subject like that of the _Fidelio_
must, of itself, have taken strong hold of a man like Beethoven,
because of the powerful scene in which Leonore holds her mortal enemy,
Pizarro, spell-bound, with the pistol in her hand. What must have most
affected him here, however, was the ideal background of suffering for
truth and freedom--for Pizarro was a tyrant--and the fact that a woman
had the power that comes of genuine fidelity to avert every danger from
her beloved husband, even at the risk of her own life. And Beethoven
endowed the work with his exalted and almost transfigured background of
feeling, by means of his music, which here depicts the constitution of
his own nature, and his whole intellectual build. He accurately hits
the decisive climax of the conflict, and gives to the principal actors
so much of real personal character, that we cannot fail to recognize
them, and to understand their action from their inner feelings. This,
in connection with a very powerful declamation, is the continuation
of the dramatic characteristics which we greet in the _Fidelio_. The
development of the operatic form as such is not further carried on
in this work. In his pure instrumental music, even more than in the
_Fidelio_, Beethoven has given form to the language of the soul and to
the great hidden springs of action of the world and human nature.
A period may come when stricter demands may be made on dramatic art,
and when, as a consequence, this work may not have as much charm as
it has for us, because of its fragmentary character. But be this as
it may, in some of its details it will always appeal irresistibly to
the finest feeling. We find in it passages like those in Beethoven’s
improvisation which never failed to draw from his hearers tears of
real happiness. The greater part of this language was, like Mozart’s
Cantilene, rich in soul. Yet melodies like _Komm, Hoffnung, lass
den letzten Stern_, _In des Lebens Fruehlingstagen_ and _O namen,
namenlose Freude_, are of such a character that “humanity will never
forget them.” Like the Holy Grail, they furnish food and light at
the same time, and, like certain forces, produce a greater yield in
proportion as greater demands are made upon them. We frequently find
in it expressions that are simply inimitable, and when this work is
contemplated we see that it bears evidence of a profundity of soul and
of a development of mind which separate--_toto coelo_--Beethoven from
his predecessors, Mozart not excepted. Whole pieces in it are full of
the deepest and warmest dramatic life, made up of the web and woof of
the human soul itself. Such, for instance, are _Wir muessen gleich zu
Werke schreiten_, the chorus of prisoners, the picture of Florestan’s
dungeon, the digging of the grave, and above all the thrilling _Toet’
erst sein Weib!_ (kill first his wife). But the center of all is,
as may be seen from the innumerable and most refined traits of the
music, Leonore, the pattern of heroic fidelity. Her character stirred
Beethoven to the very depths of his soul, for her power of hope and
her devotion to freedom were his own. The work itself was to be called
_Leonore_, as, indeed, the first piano-score was called in 1810.
This work has a meaning in the life of our artist himself, greater,
almost, than its importance as a work of art.
The work required, for its completion, only the spring and summer of
the year 1805. The sketches of it show how carefully the file was used
on its every part. Only the fire of enthusiastic devotion was able to
smelt the ore of the separate arias, duets and terzettoes which make
up the matter of the whole; but this it could not do here fully enough
to produce that natural flow which dramatic taste even now demanded.
Moreover, the storm of war broke upon Vienna and deprived Beethoven’s
hearers of even the calm of devotion. The result was that only the
prima donna Milder-Hauptmann satisfied the public in the character
of Leonore. Besides, Beethoven, as a composer of purely instrumental
music, had not paid sufficient attention to the demands of the human
voice. On the 13th of October, 1805, Napoleon entered Vienna, and after
the 20th the _Fidelio_ was repeated three times; not, however, before
the art lovers of Vienna, but before an audience composed of French
officers. It was received with little applause, and after the first
performance the house remained empty. Beethoven withdrew the work. But
even the critics missed in it at this time “that certain splendor of
originality characteristic of Beethoven’s works.” Our artist’s friends
now gathered about him to induce him to make some abbreviations in the
opera. This was at the house of Lichnowsky. Beethoven was never before
seen so much excited, and were it not for the prayers and entreaties
of the gentle and tender Princess Christiane, he would certainly have
agreed to nothing. He consented at last to drop a few numbers, but
it took six full hours to induce him to do even this. It is easy to
explain this fact: the work was the pet child of his brain. Breuning
now re-arranged the libretto. He made the acting more vivacious and
Beethoven shortened the several pieces still more. The work proved more
acceptable to the public, but Beethoven thought himself surrounded by
a network of intrigue, and, as he had agreed only for a share in the
profits, he once more withdrew the work. We hear no more of it until
1814. We shall see what effect its production had when we reach that
date in Beethoven’s life.
But this re-arrangement led to a new overture and to a new poetical
expression of the subject, to the great _Leonoren-Overture_, known
as No. 3, but which is properly No. 2. Beethoven, in this overture,
lets us hear, as if in the voices of thousands, the depth of pain in
Florestan’s dungeon; the glance of hope that flashes across his mind
when he thinks of his Leonore; the struggle of love with native fear
in the heart of the woman; her daring risk of her own life for her
beloved husband, and in the signal of trumpets, the coming of her
rescuer; the calm joy of the unutterably happy husband, as well as the
boisterous, stormy joy of the prisoners, all of whom get their liberty
with this one slave; and, last of all, the loudest song of praise of
freedom and happiness. The symphonic poem, _Leonore_, as a whole, far
surpasses the dramatic work itself. Together with the _Eroica_, it is
the second monumental work of Beethoven’s genius in this early period
of his musical creations, and proves him a matured master in his art.
The proud path thus entered on, he never left.
Besides the works already mentioned, we may, for the sake of
completeness, mention the following likewise: The _Opferlied_ (1st
arrangement), _Seufzer eines Ungeliebten_, variations _quant’è più
bello_, about 1795; variations to _Nel cor più_ and minuet _a la
Vigano_ which appeared in 1796; sonata op. 49, I, about 1796; sonata
for four hands op. 6, the rondo op. 51, I, and variations to a Russian
dance, in 1797; variations to a Swiss song and _Mich brennt_, 1798;
_Gretels Warnung_, _La partenza_, composed in 1798; variations to
the _La stessa_, _Kind, willst du_ and _Taendeln und Scherzen_, which
appeared in 1799; sonata op. 49, I, composed in 1799; variations in G
major, composed in 1800, serenade op. 25; rondo, op. 51, I; variations,
_Bei Maennern_ which appeared in 1802; terzetto op. 116, sonatas for
violin, op. 30, variations op. 34 and 35, composed in 1802; _Glueck der
Freundschaft_, op. 88 and _Zaertliche Liebe_ which appeared in 1803;
trio variations op. 44 and romance for the violin, op. 40, composed in
1803; three marches op. 45, variations to “Rule Brittannia,” and the
_Wachtelschlag_, 1804; sonata op. 53, together with the _andante_ in F
major, originally belonging to it, the _triple concerto_ op. 56, and
the sonata op. 57, begun in 1804, _An die Hoffnung_, op. 32 and trio
op. 38, which appeared in 1805; fourth concerto op. 58, composed in
1805; trio op. 36, sonata op. 34, which appeared in 1806; _Empfindungen
bei Lydiens Untreue_ belonging probably to 1806.