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[Illustration: BEETHOVEN AT THE AGE OF 48.]
_From a Painting by Kloeber._
_To face page 40._
BEETHOVEN
BY
ROMAIN ROLLAND
TRANSLATED BY
B. CONSTANCE HULL
WITH A BRIEF ANALYSIS OF THE SONATAS, THE
SYMPHONIES, AND THE QUARTETS BY
A. EAGLEFIELD HULL
MUS. DOC. (OXON).
WITH 24 MUSICAL ILLUSTRATIONS AND 4 PLATES
and an Introduction by EDWARD CARPENTER,
Author of _Towards Democracy_, &c.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1917
PREFACE
"_I want to prove that whoever acts rightly and
nobly, can by that alone bear misfortune."_
BEETHOVEN.
(To the Municipality of Vienna, Feb. 1, 1819.)
The air is heavy around us. The world is stifled by a thick and
vitiated atmosphere--an undignified materialism which weighs on the
mind and heart hindering the work of governments and individuals alike.
We are being suffocated. Let us throw open the windows that God's free
air may come in, and that we may breathe the breath of heroes.
Life is stern. It is a daily battle for those not content with an
unattractive mediocrity of soul. And a sad battle it is, too, for
many--a combat without grandeur, without happiness, fought in solitude
and silence. Weighed down by poverty and domestic cares, by excessive
and senseless tasks which waste the strength to no purpose, without a
gleam of hope, many souls are separated from each other, without even
the consolation of holding out a hand to their brothers in misfortune
who ignore them and are ignored by them. They are forced to rely on
themselves alone; and there are moments when even the strongest give
way under their burden of trouble. They call out--for a friend.
Let them then gather around themselves the heroic friends of the
past--the great souls who suffered for the good of universal humanity.
The lives of great men are not written for the proud or for the
ambitious; they are dedicated rather to the unhappy. And who really is
not? To those who suffer, we offer the balm of their sacred sufferings.
No one is alone in the fight. The darkness of the world is made clear
by the guiding light of the souls of the heroes.
I do not give the name hero to those who have triumphed by infinite
thought or by sheer physical strength--but only to those made great
by goodness of heart. Beethoven wrote, "I recognise no sign of
superiority in mankind other than goodness." Where the character is
not great, there is no great man, there is not even a great artist,
nor a great man of action; there are only idols unearthed for the
cheap and short-lived applause of the multitude; time will efface them
altogether. Outward success matters little. The only thing is to be
great, not to appear so.
The lives of the great heroes were lives of one long martyrdom; a
tragic destiny willed their souls to be forged on the anvil of physical
and moral grief, of misery and ill-health. They were made great through
their misfortune. Because these mighty souls complained little of their
unhappiness, the best of humanity is with them. Let us gather courage
from them; for torrents of quiet strength and inspiring goodness issued
from their great hearts. Without even consulting their works or hearing
their voices, we read in their eyes the secret of their lives--that it
is good to have been in trouble, for thence the character acquires even
more greatness, happiness and fruition.
* * * * *
The strong and pure Beethoven himself hoped in the midst of his
sufferings that his example would give help to other unfortunate
ones ... "that the unhappy being may be consoled in finding another
as unfortunate as himself, who in face of all obstacles has done
everything possible to become worthy of the name, MAN." After years
of battling with almost superhuman efforts to rise superior to his
sufferings and accomplish his life's work--to breathe a little more
courage into poor weak humanity, this conquering Prometheus observed to
a friend who called too much on God, "O man, help thyself!"
May we be inspired by his noble words. Animated by the example of this
man's faith in life and his quiet confidence in himself, let us again
take heart.
ROMAIN ROLLAND.
INTRODUCTION
By EDWARD CARPENTER
It is not very generally recognised that Beethoven was not only a
great musician, but a great leader and teacher. He freed the human
spirit from innumerable petty bonds and conventions, he recorded
the profoundest experiences of life, and gave form and utterance to
emotions hardly guessed--certainly not definitely expressed--before his
time. Personally I feel I owe much more to Beethoven in these respects
than I do to Shakespeare: and though this, of course, may be a purely
personal or accidental matter, yet I mention it in order to show that
the music of such a man has, after all, the closest bearing on actual
life.
M. Romain Rolland in his excellent little study has brought this
prophetic and inspiring quality of Beethoven's life and music out
very strongly. He has traced the tragedy of Beethoven's life and
experience, and its culmination in a kind of liberation of his spirit
from the bonds of mortality; he has shown how this connects up with
the composer's strong sentiment of democracy and sympathy with the
suffering masses; and how it leads to the utterance of that strange
sense of joy which penetrates and suffuses his later work. In all
these respects M. Rolland regards Beethoven as one of the greatest
benefactors of humanity.
On the other hand our author builds in the picture of Beethoven's life
and character with a great number of small touches derived from all
sorts of writers and biographers--and so succeeds in giving a life-like
impression of his personality.
EDWARD CARPENTER.
* * * * *
As bearing on the subject of M. Romain Rolland's book, Mr. Carpenter
has kindly given permission to insert the following few extracts from
his own book, "Angels' Wings."
"Everything conspired in Beethoven to make his utterance authentic,
strong, unqualified--like a gushing spring which leaps from the
inaccessible depths of the mountain. His solitary habits kept his
mind clear from the mud and sediment which the market-place and the
forum mistake for thought; his deafness coming on at so early an age
(twenty-eight), increased this effect, it left him fancy-free in the
world of music; Wagner even mentions the excessive thickness of his
skull (ascertained long after his death), as suggesting the special
isolation of his brain. From a boy Beethoven was a great reader. He
fed his mind in his own way. Unlike the musicians who went before
him, he could brook no dependence upon condescending nobilities. He
was not going to be a Court fool. The man who could rush into the
courtyard of his really sincere friend and 'patron,' Prince Lobkowitz,
and shout 'Lobkowitz donkey, Lobkowitz donkey,' for all the valets and
chambermaids to hear; or who could leave his humble lodgings because
the over-polite landlord of the house would insist on doffing his
hat each time they passed on the stairs; must have had 'something of
the devil in him!' (This was the verdict of Hummel, Vogler, Gelinck,
and others when they first heard him improvise on his arrival at
Vienna). In politics, in a quite general way, he evolved radicalism or
republicanism as his creed; in religion, though nominally a Catholic,
he was quite informal. A pantheist one might perhaps call him, or a
mystic after Eckhardt and Tauler. Finally, one may mention, as an
indication of the great range and strength of his personality, its
exceedingly slow growth. While Mozart at the age of twenty-three had
written a great number of Operas, Symphonies, Cantatas and Masses--many
of them of quite mature character--Beethoven at the same age had little
or nothing to show. His first Symphony and his Septet, which he always
looked back upon as childish productions, were not written till about
the age of twenty-seven; and his first great Symphony (the _Eroica_)
not till he was thirty-two."--_Angels' Wings_, pp. 141-2.
"Beethoven came at the culmination of a long line of musical tradition.
He also came at a moment when the foundations of society were breaking
away for the preparation of something new. His great strength lay in
the fact that he united the old and the new. He was epic and dramatic,
and held firmly to the accepted outlines and broad evolution of his
art, like the musicians who went before him; he was lyrical, like those
who followed, and uttered to the full his own vast individuality. And
so (like the greatest artists) he transformed rather than shattered the
traditions into which he was born.
"Beethoven was always trying to express _himself_; yet not, be it
said, so much any little phase of himself or of his feelings, as the
total of his life-experience. He was always trying to reach down and
get the fullest, deepest utterance of which his subject in hand was
capable, and to relate it to the rest of his experience. But being such
as he was, and a master-spirit of his age, when he reached into himself
for his own expression, he reached to the expression also of others--to
the expression of all the thoughts and feelings of that wonderful
revolutionary time, seething with the legacy of the past and germinal
with the hopes and aspirations of the future. Music came to him rich
already with gathered voices; but he enlarged its language beyond all
precedent for the needs of a new humanity."--_Ibid_, pp. 146-7.
"Bettina Brentano, writing to Goethe of Beethoven, says: 'I am, indeed,
only a child, but I am not on that account wrong in saying (what
perhaps no one yet perceives and believes) that he far surpasses the
measure of other men. Shall we ever attain to him? I doubt it. May
he but live till the lofty problem of his spirit be fully solved;
let him but reach his highest aim, and he will put into our hands
the key to a glorious knowledge which shall bring us a stage nearer
to true blessedness.... He said himself, "I have no friend, I must
live alone; but I know that in my heart God is nearer to me than to
others. I approach him without fear, I have always known him. Neither
am I anxious about my music, which no adverse fate can overtake, and
which _will free him who understands it from the misery which afflicts
others_".'
"These are wonderful words which are put into Beethoven's mouth.
Though their authenticity has been doubted, it is difficult, almost
impossible, to suppose that the 'child' or any one else invented them.
On the other hand, they agree strangely with those authentic words of
his already quoted, 'Every day I come nearer to the object which I can
feel though I cannot describe it.'
"Beethoven is the prophet of the new era which the nineteenth
century ushers in for mankind. As things must be _felt_ before they
can be acted out; so they may be expressed in the indefinite emotional
forms of music, before they can be uttered and definitely imaged forth
in words or pictorial shapes. Beethoven is the forerunner of Shelley
and Whitman among the poets, of J. W. Turner and J. F. Millet among
the painters. He is the great poet who holds Nature by the one hand
and Man by the other. Within that low-statured, rudely-outlined figure
which a century ago walked hatless through the fields near Mödling or
sat oblivious in some shabby restaurant at Vienna, dwelt an emotional
giant--a being who--though his outer life by deafness, disease,
business-worries, poverty, was shattered as it were into a thousand
squalid fragments--in his great heart embraced all mankind, with
piercing insight penetrated intellectually through all falsehoods to
the truth, and already in his art-work gave outline to the religious,
the human, the democratic yearnings, the loves, the comradeship, the
daring individualities, and all the heights and depths of feeling of
a new dawning era of society. He was in fact, and he gave utterance
to, a new type of Man. What that struggle must have been between his
inner and outer conditions--of his real self with the lonely and mean
surroundings in which it was embodied--we only know through his music.
When we listen to it we can understand the world-old tradition that
now and then a divine creature from far heavens takes mortal form and
suffers in order that it may embrace and redeem mankind."--_Ibid_, pp.
205-7.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE v
INTRODUCTION by Edward Carpenter ix
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xix
HIS LIFE 1
HIS WILL 57
LETTERS
To Carl Amenda 65
To Fräulein Gerardi 68
To Frl. Eleonore von Breuning 69
To Dr. Wegeler 72
" " " 78
To Capellmeister Hofmeister 81
Wegeler and Eleonore von Breuning to Beethoven 84
To Dr. Wegeler 91
To Sir George Smart in London 92
To I. Moscheles in London 93
" " " " 94
Schindler to Messrs. Schott 96
THOUGHTS 101
HIS WORKS (By the Editor)
The Nine Symphonies 109
The Pianoforte Sonatas 133
The Sonatas for Violin and Pianoforte 169
The String Quartets 179
BIBLIOGRAPHY 195
CLASSIFICATION OF BEETHOVEN'S PIANOFORTE SONATAS 209
LIST OF BEETHOVEN'S WORKS 213
INDEX 239
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1. BEETHOVEN AT THE AGE OF 21 _Frontispiece_
_From a miniature by Gerhard von Kügelgen._
2. BEETHOVEN AT THE AGE OF 48 _facing p._ 40
_From a painting by Kloeber._
3. BEETHOVEN AT THE AGE OF 44 " 64
_From an engraving by Blasius Hoefel
after the drawing by Louis Letronne, 1814._
4. PAGE OF AUTOGRAPH OF MOONLIGHT SONATA
IN BEETHOVEN HOUSE AT BONN " 100
[Illustration: BEETHOVEN AT THE AGE OF 21.]
_From a Miniature by Gerhard von Kügelgen._
_Frontispiece._
BEETHOVEN
Woltuen, wo man kann
Freiheit über alles lieben,
Wahrheit nie, auch sogar am
Throne nicht verleugnen.
_Beethoven_
(Album-leaf, 1792)
To do all the good one can,
To love liberty above everything,
And even if it be for a kingdom,
Never to betray truth.
HIS LIFE
He was short and thick set, broad shouldered and of athletic build. A
big face, ruddy in complexion--except towards the end of his life, when
his colour became sickly and yellow, especially in the winter after he
had been remaining indoors far from the fields. He had a massive and
rugged forehead, extremely black and extraordinarily thick hair through
which it seemed the comb had never passed, for it was always very
rumpled, veritable bristling "serpents of Medusa."[1] His eyes shone
with prodigious force. It was one of the chief things one noticed
on first encountering him, but many were mistaken in their colour.
When they shone out in dark splendour from a sad and tragic visage,
they generally appeared black; but they were really a bluish grey.[2]
Small and very deep-set, they flashed fiercely in moments of passion
or warmth, and dilated in a peculiar way under the influence of
inspiration, reflecting his thoughts with a marvellous exactness.[3]
Often they inclined upwards with a melancholy expression. His nose was
short and broad with the nostrils of a lion; the mouth refined, with
the lower lip somewhat prominent. He had very strong jaws, which would
easily break nuts, a large indentation in his chin imparted a curious
irregularity to the face. "He had a charming smile," said Moscheles,
"and in conversation a manner often lovable and inviting confidence; on
the other hand his laugh was most disagreeable, loud, discordant and
strident"--the laugh of a man unused to happiness. His usual expression
was one of melancholy. Rellstab in 1825 said that he had to summon up
all his courage to prevent himself from breaking into tears when he
looked into Beethoven's "tender eyes with their speaking sadness."
Braun von Braunthal met him in an inn a year later. Beethoven was
sitting in a corner with closed eyes, smoking a long pipe--a habit
which grew on him more and more as he approached death. A friend spoke
to him. He smiled sadly, drew from his pocket a little note-tablet,
and in a thin voice which frequently sounded cracked notes, asked him
to write down his request. His face would frequently become suddenly
transfigured, maybe in the access of sudden inspiration which seized
him at random, even in the street, filling the passers-by with
amazement, or it might be when great thoughts came to him suddenly,
when seated at the piano. "The muscles of his face would stand out, his
veins would swell; his wild eyes would become doubly terrible. His lips
trembled, he had the manner of a wizard controlling the demons which
he had invoked." " ... A Shakespearean visage--'King Lear[4]'"--so Sir
Julius Benedict described it.
* * * * *
Ludwig van Beethoven was born on December 16th, 1770, in a little
bare attic of a humble dwelling at Bonn, a small University town on
the Rhine near Cologne. He came of Flemish origin.[5] His father was
an illiterate and lazy tenor singer--a "good-for-nothing fellow" and a
confirmed drunkard. His mother was the daughter of a cook. She had been
a maidservant and by her first marriage was the widow of a _valet de
chambre_.
Unlike the more fortunate Mozart, Beethoven spent an unhappy childhood
devoid of domestic comfort. From his earliest years life was for him a
sad, even a brutal, fight for existence. His father wished to exploit
the boy's musical talents and to turn him to lucrative purposes as
a prodigy. At the age of four he compelled the boy to practise on
the harpsichord for hours together and he shut him up alone with the
violin, forcing him to work in this way. It is astonishing that the
boy was not completely disgusted with music, for the father persisted
in this treatment for many years, often resorting to actual violence.
Beethoven's youth was saddened by the care and anxiety of earning his
daily bread by tasks far too burdensome for his age. When he was eleven
years old he was placed in the theatre orchestra; at thirteen he became
an organist of the chapel. In 1787 he lost his mother whom he adored.
"She was so good to me, so worthy of love, the best friend I had! How
happy was I when I could utter that dear name of mother and she could
hear it!"[6] She died of consumption and Beethoven believed himself to
be affected with the same complaint. Already he suffered continually,
and a depression of spirits even more terrible than the physical pain
hung over him always.[7] When he was seventeen he was practically
the head of the family and responsible for the education of his two
younger brothers. He suffered the humiliation of being obliged to beg
for a pension for his father, that his father's pension should be
paid to himself, as the father only squandered it in drink. These sad
experiences made a profound impression on the youth. However, he found
great affection and sympathy from a family in Bonn who always remained
very dear to him--the Breuning family. The gentle "Lorchen," Eleonore
von Breuning, was two years younger than Beethoven. He taught her music
and she initiated him into the charms of poetry. She was the companion
of his youth and there may have been between them a still more tender
sentiment. Later on Eleonore married Dr. Wegeler, one of Beethoven's
best friends; and up to Beethoven's last day there existed between the
three a deep, steady friendship, amply proven by the regular and loving
epistles of Wegeler and Eleonore, and those of their old faithful
friend (_alter treuer Freund_) to the dear good Wegeler (_guter lieber
Wegeler_). These friendly bonds became all the more touching as old age
crept on all three, and still their hearts remained warm.[8] Beethoven
also found a safe guide and good friend in Christian Gottlob Neefe, his
music master, whose high moral character had no less influence on the
young musician than did his broad and his intelligent, artistic views.
Sad as was the childhood of Beethoven, he always treasured a tender
and melancholy memory of the places where it was spent. Though
compelled to leave Bonn, and destined to spend nearly the whole of his
life in the frivolous city of Vienna with its dull environs, he never
forgot the beautiful Rhine valley and the majestic river. "_Unser Vater
Rhine_" (our father Rhine) as he called it, was to him almost human in
its sympathy, being like some gigantic soul whose deep thoughts are
beyond all human reckoning. No part is more beautiful, more powerful,
more calm, than that part where the river caresses the shady and
flowered slopes of the old University city of Bonn. There Beethoven
spent the first twenty years of his life. There the dreams of his
waking heart were born--in the fields, which slope languishingly down
to the water side, with their mist-capped poplars, their bushes and
their willows and the fruit trees whose roots are steeped in the rapid
silent stream. And all along lying gently on the banks, strangely soft,
are towns, churches, and even cemeteries, whilst away on the horizon
the blue tints of the Seven Mountains show in wild jagged edges against
the sky, forming a striking background to the graceful, slender,
dream-like silhouettes of old ruined castles. His heart remained ever
faithful to the beautiful, natural surroundings of his childhood, and
until his very last moment he dreamt of seeing these scenes once again.
"My native land, the beautiful country where I first saw the light of
day; it is always as clear and as beautiful in my eyes as when I left
it."[9] He never saw it again.
* * * * *
In November, 1792, Beethoven removed to Vienna, the musical metropolis
of Germany.[10] The Revolution had broken out. It threatened to spread
over the whole of Europe. Beethoven left Bonn just at the moment when
the war reached it. On his way to Vienna he passed the Hessian armies
marching to France. In 1796 and 1797 he set the war poems of Friedberg
to music: a Song of Farewell, and a patriotic chorus; _Ein grosses
deutsches Volk sind wir_ (A great German people are we). But it was in
vain that he sang of the enemies of the Revolution; the Revolution
overcame the world--and Beethoven with it. From 1798, in spite of the
strained relations between Austria and France, Beethoven became closely
connected with the French, with the Embassy and General Bernadotte,
who had just arrived in Vienna. In this intercourse strong republican
sympathies showed themselves in Beethoven, and these feelings became
stronger and stronger with time.
A sketch which Steinhauser made of him at this time gives a good idea
of his general appearance at this period. This portrait of Beethoven
is to later ones what Guérin's portrait of Napoleon is to the other
effigies. Guérin's face is rugged, almost savage, and wasted with
ambition. Beethoven looks very young for his age, thin and straight,
very stiff in his high cravat, a defiant, strained look in his eyes; he
knows his own worth and is confident of his power. In 1796 he wrote in
his notebook, "Courage! in spite of all my bodily weakness my genius
shall yet triumph.... Twenty-five years! that is my age now.... This
very year the man I am, must reveal himself entirely."[11] Both Madame
von Bernhard and Gelinck say that he was extremely proud with rough
and clumsy ways and spoke with a strong provincial accent. Only his
intimate friends knew what exquisite talent lay hidden under this rough
exterior. Writing to Wegeler about his successes, the first thought
that springs to his mind is the following: "for example, I meet a
friend in need; if my purse does not allow me to help him at once, I
have only to go to my work table, and in a short time I have removed
his trouble.... See how charming it is to do this."[12] And a little
further on, he says: "My art shall be devoted to no other object than
the relief of the poor" (_Dann soll meine Kunst sich nur zum Besten der
Armen zeigen_).
Trouble was already knocking at the door; it entered--never more to
leave him. Between 1796 and 1800, deafness began its sad work. He
suffered from continual singing and humming in his ears.[13] His
hearing became gradually weaker.
For several years he kept the secret to himself, even from his
dearest friends. He avoided company, so that his infliction should
not be noticed. But in 1801 he can no longer remain silent; and in
his despair he confides in two of his friends, Dr. Wegeler and Pastor
Amenda. "My dear, good, loving Amenda, how often have I longed to have
you near me! Your Beethoven is very unhappy. You must know that the
best part of me, my hearing, has become very weak. Even at the time
when we were together I was aware of distressing symptoms which I kept
to myself; but my condition is now much worse.... Can I ever be cured?
Naturally I hope so; but my hopes are very faint, for such maladies are
the least hopeful of all. How sad my life is! For I am obliged to avoid
all those I love and all that are dear to me; and all this in a world
so miserable and so selfish!... How sad is this resignation in which I
take refuge! Of course I have steeled myself to rise above all these
misfortunes. But how is this going to be possible?[14] ..." And to
Wegeler: " ... I lead a miserable life indeed. For the last two years
I have completely avoided all society, for I cannot talk with my
fellow-men. I am deaf. Had my profession been any other, things might
still be bearable; but as it is, my situation is terrible. What will my
enemies say? And they are not few!... At the theatre I always have to
be quite near the orchestra in order to understand the actor. I cannot
hear the high notes of the instruments or the voices, if I am but a
little distance off.... When anyone speaks quietly I only hear with
difficulty, ... On the other hand, I find it unbearable when people
shout to me.... Often I have cursed my very existence. Plutarch has
guided me to a spirit of resignation. If it be possible at all, I will
courageously bear with my fate; but there are moments in my life when I
feel the most miserable of all God's creatures.... Resignation! What a
sorry refuge! And yet it is the only one left to me!"
This tragic sadness is expressed in some of the works of this period,
in the _Sonate pathétique_ Op. 13 (1799), and especially in the _Largo_
of the Piano Sonata in D, Opus 10, No. 3 (1798). It is a marvel that we
do not find it in all the works; the radiant Septet (1800), the limpid
First Symphony (C Major, 1800), both breathe a spirit of youthful
gaiety. There is no doubt that he is determined to accustom his soul
to grief. The spirit of man has such a strong desire for happiness
that when it has it not, it is forced to create it. When the present
has become too painful, the soul lives on the past. Happy days are
not effaced at one stroke. Their radiance persists long after they
have gone. Alone and unhappy in Vienna, Beethoven took refuge in the
remembrances of his native land; his thoughts were always of Bonn. The
theme of the _Andante_ for the Variation in the _Septet_ is a Rhenish
Song. The Symphony in C Major is also inspired by the Rhine. It is a
poem of youth smiling over its own dreams. It is gay and languorous;
one feels there the hope and the desire of pleasing. But in certain
passages in the Introduction, in the shading of the sombre bass
passages of the _Allegro_, in this young composer, in the fantastic
_Scherzo_, one feels with emotion the promise of the great genius to
come. The expression calls to mind the eyes of Botticelli's _Bambino_
in his _Holy Families_--those eyes of a little child in which one
already divines the approaching tragedy.
Troubles of another kind were soon to be added to his physical
sufferings. Wegeler says that he never knew Beethoven to be free of a
love passion carried to extremes. These love affairs seemed to have
always been of the purest kind. With him there was no connection
between passion and pleasure. The confusion established between the
two things now-a-days only shows how little most men know of passion
and its extreme rarity. Beethoven had something of the Puritan in his
nature; licentious conversation and thoughts were abhorrent to him; he
had always unchangeable ideas on the sanctity of love.... It is said
that he could not forgive Mozart for having prostituted his genius by
writing _Don Giovanni_. Schindler, who was his intimate friend, assures
us that "he spent his life in virginal modesty without ever having to
reproach himself for any weakness." Such a man was destined to be the
dupe and victim of love; and so indeed it came about. He was always
falling violently in love and ceaselessly dreaming of its happiness,
only however to be deceived and to be plunged in the deepest suffering.
In these alternating states of love and passionate grief, of youthful
confidence and outraged pride, we find the most fruitful source of
Beethoven's inspiration, until at length his fiery, passionate nature
gradually calms down into melancholy resignation.
In 1801 the object of his passion appears to have been Giulietta
Guicciardi, whom he immortalised in the dedication of the famous
(so-called) "Moonlight" Sonata, Opus 27 (1802). "I now see things in
a better light," he writes to Wegeler, "and associate more with my
kind.... This change has been brought about by the charm of a dear
girl; she loves me and I love her. These are the first happy moments I
have had for two years."[15] He paid dearly for them. From the first,
this love made him feel more keenly the misery of the infirmity which
had overtaken him and the precarious conditions of his life which made
it impossible for him to marry the one he loved. Moreover, Giulietta
was a flirt, childish and selfish by nature; she made Beethoven suffer
most cruelly, and in November 1803, she married Count Gallenberg.[16]
Such passions devastate the soul; indeed, when the spirit is already
enfeebled by illness, as was Beethoven's, complete disaster is risked.
This was the only time in Beethoven's life when he seems to have been
on the point of succumbing. He passed the terrible crisis, however,
and the details are given in a letter known as the _Heiligenstadt
Testament_ to his brothers Carl and Johann, with the following
direction: "To be read and carried out after my death."[17] It is an
outcry of revolt, full of the most poignant grief. One cannot hear it
without being cut to the heart. In that dark hour he was on the verge of
suicide. Only his strong moral force saved him.[18] His final hopes of
recovering his health disappeared. "Even the lofty courage which has
hitherto sustained me has now disappeared. O Providence, grant that but
a single day of real happiness may be mine once again. I have been a
stranger to the thrill of joy for so long. When, O God, when shall I
feel joy once more?... Ever again? No, that would be too cruel!"
This is indeed a cry of a torn heart, and Beethoven was destined to
live yet twenty-five years longer. His powerful nature would not refuse
to sink beneath the weight of his woe. "My physical strength improves
always with the growth of my intellectual force.... Yes, I really feel
that my youth is only just beginning. Each day brings me nearer to my
goal, which I can feel without being able to define clearly.... O, if I
were only free from my deafness I would embrace the world!... No rest!
At least, none that I know of except sleep; and I am so unhappy that I
have to give more time to it than formerly. If only I could be free of
a part of my infirmity; and then ... no, I can bear it no longer. I
will wage war against destiny. It shall not overcome me completely. Oh,
how fine it would be to live a thousand lives in one!"[19]
This love of his, this suffering, this resignation, these alternations
of dejection and pride, these "soul-tragedies" are all reflected in
the great compositions written in 1802--the Sonata with the Funeral
March, Opus 26; the _Sonata quasi una Fantasia_, Opus 27, No. 1; the
Sonata called the "Moonlight," Opus 27; the Sonata in D Minor, Opus
31, No. 2, with its dramatic recitatives which seem like some grand
yet heart-broken monologue; the Sonata in C minor for Violin, Opus
30, dedicated to the Emperor Alexander; the Kreutzer Sonata, Opus 47;
and the Six Religious Songs, heroic yet grief-laden, to the words of
Gellert, Opus 48. The Second Symphony written in 1803 reflects rather
his youthful love; and here one feels that his will is decidedly
gaining the upper hand. An irresistible force sweeps away his sad
thoughts, a veritable bubbling over of life shows itself in the finale.
Beethoven was determined to be happy. He was not willing to believe his
misfortune hopeless, he wanted health, he wanted love, and he threw
aside despair.[20]
* * * * *
In many of his works one is struck by the powerful and energetic
march rhythms, full of the fighting spirit. This is especially
noticeable in the _Allegro_ and the _Finale_ of Second Symphony,
and still more in the first movement, full of superb heroism, of
the Violin Sonata dedicated to the Emperor Alexander. The war-like
character of this music recalls the period in which it was written.
The Revolution had reached Vienna. Beethoven was completely carried
away by it. "He spoke freely amongst his intimate friends," said the
Chevalier de Seyfried, "on political affairs, which he estimated
with unusual intelligence, with a clear and well-balanced out-look.
All his sympathies leaned towards revolutionary ideas." He liked the
Republican principles. Schindler, the friend who knew him best during
the last period of his life, said, "He was an upholder of unlimited
liberty and of national independence ... he desired that everyone
should take part in the government of the State.... For France he
desired universal suffrage and hoped that Bonaparte would establish
it, thus laying down the proper basis of human happiness." A Roman
of the revolutionary type, brought up on Plutarch, he dreamt of a
triumphant Republic, founded by the god of victory, the first Consul.
And blow by blow he forged the Eroica Symphony, Bonaparte, 1804,[21]
the _Iliad_ of Empire, and the Finale of the Symphony in C minor,
1805 to 1808, the grand epic of glory. This is really the first music
breathing the revolutionary feeling. The soul of the times lives again
in it with the intensity and purity which great events have for those
mighty and solitary souls who live apart and whose impressions are not
contaminated by contact with the reality. Beethoven's spirit reveals
itself, marked with stirring events, coloured by the reflections of
these great wars. Evidences of this, (perhaps unconscious to him)
crop up everywhere in the works of this period, in the _Coriolanus_
Overture (1807), where tempests roar over the scene; in the Fourth
Quartet, Opus 18, the first movement of which shows a close relation
to this Overture; in the _Sonata Appassionata_, Op. 57 (1804), of
which Bismarck said, "If I heard that often I should always be very
valiant";[22] in the score of _Egmont_; and even in his Pianoforte
Concertos, in the one in E flat, Opus 73 (1809), where even the
virtuosity is heroic: whole armies of warriors pass by. Nor need we
be astonished at this. Though when writing the Funeral March on the
death of an hero (Sonata, Opus 26), Beethoven was ignorant that the
hero most worthy of his music, namely Hoche, the one who approximated
more closely than Bonaparte to the model of the _Eroica Symphony_,
had just died near the Rhine, where indeed his tomb stands at the top
of a small hill between Coblentz and Bonn.... He had twice seen the
Revolution victorious in Vienna itself. French officers were present
at the first production of _Fidelio_ in Vienna in November, 1805. It
was General Hulin, the conqueror of the Bastille, who stayed with
Lobkovitz, Beethoven's friend and protector, to whom he dedicated the
Eroica and the C minor Symphony. And on 10 May, 1809, Napoleon slept at
Schönbrunn.[23]
* * * * *
Beethoven suddenly broke off the C minor Symphony to write the Fourth
Symphony at a single sitting without his usual sketches. Happiness
had come to him. In May 1806, he was betrothed to Theresa von
Brunswick.[24] She had loved him for a long time--ever since as a young
girl she had taken piano lessons from him during his first stay in
Vienna. Beethoven was a friend of her brother Count Franz. In 1806 he
stayed with them at Martonvasar in Hungary, and it was there that they
fell in love. The remembrance of these happy days is kept fresh by some
stories in some of Theresa's writings.[25] "One Sunday evening" she
says, "after dinner, with the moon shining into the room, Beethoven was
seated at the piano. At first he laid his hands flat on the keyboard.
Franz and I always understood this, for it was his usual preparation.
Then he struck some chords in the bass and slowly with an air of
solemnity and mystery drifted into a song of John Sebastian Bach: '_If
thou wilt give me thy heart, first let it be in secret, that our hearts
may commingle and no one divine it_.[26] My mother and the priest had
fallen asleep and my brother was dream gazing whilst I who understood
his song and his expression, felt life come to me in all its fullness.
The following morning we met in the park and he said to me, 'I am
now writing an opera; the principal character is in me and around me
wherever I go. Never before have I reached such heights of happiness; I
feel light, purity and splendour all around me and within. Until now I
have been like the child in the fairy story, picking up pebbles along
the road without seeing the beautiful flower blossoming close by.' ...
It was in May, 1806, that I became betrothed to him with the ready
consent of my dear brother Franz."
The _Fourth Symphony_ composed in this year is a pure fragrant flower
which treasures up the perfume of these days, the calmest in all his
life. It has been justly remarked that at this time "Beethoven's desire
was to reconcile his genius as far as possible with what was generally
known and admired in the forms handed down by his predecessors.[27]"
The same conciliating spirit springing from this love re-acted on
his manners and his way of living in general. Ignaz von Seyfried and
Grillparzar say that he was full of life, bright, happy and witty,
courteous in society, patient with tedious people and careful in his
dress. Even his deafness was not noticed, and they say that he was
in good health with the exception of his eyesight, which was rather
weak.[28] This strikes one in looking at Mahler's portrait of him
painted at this time, in which he is represented with an elegance
unusual for him and a romantic, even slightly affected look. Beethoven
wishes to please, and rather fancies himself in doing so. The lion is
in love; he draws in his claws. But one feels deep beneath under all
this playfulness, the imagination and tenderness of the Symphony in B
flat, the tremendous force, the capricious humour and the passionate
temper of his nature.
This profound peace was not destined to last although love exercised
its soothing influence until 1810. Beethoven doubtless owed to it
the self-mastery which at this period enabled him to produce some of
the most perfect fruits of his genius; that great classical tragedy,
the Symphony in C minor and that delicious idyll of a summer's day:
the Pastoral Symphony, 1808.[29] The Sonata Appassionata, inspired by
Shakespeare's _Tempest_,[30] the Sonata which he himself regarded as
his most powerful one, appeared in 1807 and was dedicated to Theresa's
brother. To Theresa herself he dedicated the dreamy and fantastic
Sonata in F sharp, Opus 78 (1809). An undated letter[31] addressed to
his "Immortal Beloved" expresses the intensity of his love no less
strongly than does the _Sonata Appassionata_.
July (1801).
"My Angel, my all, my very self.
Just a few words to-day--and indeed in pencil (with thine). Only till
to-morrow is my room definitely engaged. What an unworthy waste of
time in such matters! Why this deep sorrow where necessity speaks? Can
our love endure otherwise than through sacrifices, through restraint
in longing? Canst thou help not being wholly mine? Can I, not being
wholly thine? Oh! gaze at nature in all its beauty, and calmly accept
the inevitable--love demands everything, and rightly so. Thus is it
for me with thee, for thee with me, only thou so easily forgettest
that I must live for myself and for thee. Were we wholly united, thou
wouldst feel this painful fact as little as I should. My journey was
terrible. I arrived here only yesterday morning at four o'clock, and
as they were short of horses, the mail-coach selected another route;
but what an awful road! At the last stage but one, I was advised not
to travel by night; they warned me against the wood, but that only
spurred me on, and I was wrong; the coach must needs break down,
the road being dreadful, a swamp, a mere country road; without the
postillions I had with me I should have stuck on the way. Esterhazi,
by the ordinary road, met the same fate with eight horses as I with
four--yet it gave me some pleasure, as successfully overcoming any
difficulty always does. Now for a quick change from without to within;
we shall probably soon see each other; besides, to-day I cannot tell
thee what has been passing through my mind during the past few days
concerning my life. Were our hearts closely united I should not do
things of this kind. My heart is full of the many things I have to
say to thee. Ah! there are moments in which I feel that speech is
powerless. Cheer up. Remain my true, my only treasure, my all!!! As I
to thee. The gods must send the rest; what is in store for us must be
and ought to be.
Thy faithful
LUDWIG."
It is difficult to divine what was the barrier which separated these
two from the consummation of their love. Was it the lack of fortune or
the difference in social position? Perhaps Beethoven rebelled against
the long period of probation which was imposed on him or resented
the humiliation of keeping his love secret for an indefinite period.
Perhaps, impulsive and afflicted as he was, a misanthrope too, he
caused his loved one to suffer without wishing it and gave himself up
to despair in consequence. The fact remains that the engagement was
broken off, although neither seems ever to have proved faithless.
Even to her last day (she lived till 1861) Theresa von Brunswick loved
Beethoven, and Beethoven was no less faithful. In 1816 he remarked,
"When I think of her my heart beats as violently as on the day when I
first saw her." To this year belong the six songs, Opus 98, which have
so touching and profound a feeling. They are dedicated "To the loved
one far away" (_An die ferne Geliebte_). He wrote in his notes, "My
heart overflows at the thought of her beautiful nature; and yet she is
not here, not near me!" Theresa had given her portrait to Beethoven,
inscribed, "To the rare genius, the great artist, the generous man.
T.B."[32] Once during the last year of his life a friend surprised
Beethoven alone, and found him holding this portrait and speaking to
himself through his tears: "Thou wert so lovely and great, so like to
an angel!" The friend withdrew, and returning a little later found
him at the piano, and said "To-day, my old friend, there are no black
looks on your face." Beethoven replied "It is because my good angel has
visited me." The wound was deep. "Poor Beethoven" he said to himself,
"there is no happiness for you in this world; only in the realms of the
ideal will you find strength to conquer yourself."[33]
In his notebook he wrote, "submission, complete submission to your
destiny. You can no longer live for yourself, only for others. For you
there is happiness only in your art. O God, give me strength to conquer
"myself"."...
* * * * *
Love then abandoned him. In 1810 he was once more alone; but joy had
come to him and the consciousness of his power. He was in the prime of
life. He gave himself up to his violent and wild moods regardless of
results, and certainly without care for the opinions of the world and
the usual conventions of life. What, indeed, had he to fear or to be
careful of? Gone are love and ambition. Strength and the joy of it, the
necessity for using it, almost abusing it, were left to him. "Power
constitutes the morality of men who distinguish themselves above the
ordinary." He returned to his neglect in matters of dress, and his
manners now became even freer than before. He knew that he had the
right to speak freely even to the greatest. "I recognise no sign of
superiority in mankind other than goodness," he writes on 17 July,
1812.[34] Bettina Brentano, who saw him at that time, says that "no
king or emperor was ever so conscious of his power." She was fascinated
by his very strength. "When I saw him for the first time," she wrote to
Goethe, "the whole exterior world vanished from me. Beethoven made me
forget the world, and even you, O Goethe.... I do not think I am wrong
in saying this man is very far ahead of modern civilisation." Goethe
attempted to make Beethoven's acquaintance.[35]
They met at a Bohemian spa, Töplitz, in 1812, but did not agree well.
Beethoven passionately admired Goethe's genius; but his own character
was too free and too wild not to wound the susceptibilities of Goethe.
Beethoven himself has told us of this walk which they took together, in
the course of which the haughty republican gave the courtly councillor
of the Grand-duke of Weimar a lesson in dignity which he never forgot.
"Kings and princes can easily make professors and privy councillors;
they can bestow titles and decorations, but they cannot make great
men, or minds which rise above the base turmoil of this world ... and
when two men are together such as Goethe and myself these fine
gentlemen must be made conscious of the difference between ourselves
and them. Yesterday, as we were returning home on foot, we met the
whole of the Imperial family. We saw them approaching from a distance.
Goethe let go my arm to take his stand by the road side with the
crowd. It was in vain that I talked to him. Say what I would I could
not get him to move a single step. I drew my hat down upon my head,
buttoned up my overcoat, and forced my way through the throng. Princes
and courtiers stood aside. Duke Rudolph raised his hat to me, the
Empress bowing to me first. The great of the earth know me and
recognise me. I amused myself in watching the procession pass by
Goethe. He remained on the road side bowing low, hat in hand. I took
him to task for it pretty severely and did not spare him at all."[36]
Nor did Goethe forget the scene.[37]
In 1812 the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies were written during a
stay of several months at Töplitz. These works are veritable orgies
of rhythm and humour; in them he is perhaps revealing himself in
his most natural and as he styled it himself, most "unbuttoned"
(_aufgeknöpft_) moods, transports of gaiety contrasting unexpectedly
with storms of fury and disconcerting flashes of wit followed by those
Titanic explosions which terrified both Goethe and Zelter[38] and
caused the remark in North Germany that the _Symphony in A_ was the
work of a drunkard. The work of an inebriated man indeed it was, but
one intoxicated with power and genius; one who said of himself, "I
am the Bacchus who crushes delicious nectar for mankind. It is I who
give the divine frenzy to men." Wagner wrote, "I do not know whether
Beethoven wished to depict a Dionysian orgy[39] in the Finale of his
Symphony, though I recognise in this passionate _kermesse_ a sign of
his Flemish origin, just as we see it likewise in his bold manner of
speech and in his bearing so free and so utterly out of harmony with
a country ruled by an iron discipline and rigid etiquette. Nowhere is
there greater frankness or freer power than in the _Symphony in A_. It
is a mad outburst of superhuman energy, with no other object than for
the pleasure of unloosing it like a river overflowing its banks and
flooding the surrounding country. In the Eighth Symphony the power is
not so sublime, though it is still more strange and characteristic of
the man, mingling tragedy with farce and a Herculean vigour with the
games and caprices of a child."[40]