Beethoven: A Memoir Part 10

This spot--this _consecrated town_--must always be an object of veneration to those who cherish the name of Beethoven, for here it was that he wrote his remarkable will, or promemoria, a doc.u.ment which excites our warmest sympathy, revealing, as it does, the depths of that great heart.

"TO MY BROTHERS, CARL AND ---- BEETHOVEN.[28]--O ye who consider or represent me as unfriendly, morose, and misanthropical, how unjust are you to me! you know not the secret cause of what appears thus to you.

"My heart and mind have been from childhood given up to the tender feeling of benevolence, and I have ever been disposed to accomplish something great. But only consider that for six years I have been afflicted by a wretched calamity, which was aggravated by unskilful physicians--deceived from year to year by the hope of amendment--now forced, at length, to the contemplation of a _lingering disease_ (the cure of which will, perhaps, last for years, if indeed it be not an impossibility).

"Born with a pa.s.sionate, lively temperament, keenly susceptible to the pleasures of society, I was obliged at an early age to isolate myself, and to pa.s.s my life in loneliness.

"When I at times endeavoured to surmount all this, oh, how rudely was I thrust back again by the experience--the doubly painful experience--of my defective hearing! and yet it was impossible for me to say to people, Speak louder, shout; for I am deaf! Alas! how could I proclaim the weakness of a sense which ought to have been with me in a higher degree than with others--a sense which I once possessed in the greatest perfection--and to an extent which few of my profession enjoy, or ever have enjoyed! Oh, this I cannot do! Forgive me, therefore, when you see me turn away where I would gladly mingle with you. My misfortune is doubly painful to me, inasmuch as it causes me to be misunderstood. For me there can be no relaxation in human society, no refined conversations, no mutual outpourings of thought.

Like an exile must I live. Whenever I come near strangers, I am seized with a feverish anxiety from my dread of being exposed to the risk of betraying my condition.

"Thus it has been with me during these last six months which I have spent in the country. The orders of my sensible physician, to spare my hearing as much as possible, were quite in accordance with my present disposition; although often, overcome by my longing for society, I have been tempted into it. But what humiliation, when any one by my side heard from afar a flute, and I heard _nothing_, or when any one heard _the shepherd singing_, and I again heard _nothing_!

"Such occurrences brought me nigh to despair; but little was wanting, and I should myself have put an end to my existence.

_Art_--art alone--held me back! Ah! it seemed impossible for me to quit the world before I had done all that I felt myself destined to accomplish. And so I prolonged this miserable life; a life so truly wretched that a sudden change is sufficient to throw me from the happiest condition into the worst.

"_Patience!_ it would seem that I must now choose her for my guide! I have done so. I trust that my resolve to persevere will remain firm, until it shall please the inexorable Fates to cut the thread of life.

Perhaps I may get better; perhaps not. I am prepared. Compelled to be a philosopher in my twenty-eighth year![29] This is not easy--for the artist harder than for any one else. O G.o.d! Thou lookest down upon my heart, Thou seest that love to man and beneficent feelings have their abode in it!

"O ye who may one day read this, reflect that you did me injustice, and let the unhappy be consoled by finding one like himself, who, in defiance of all natural obstacles, has done all that lay in his power to be received into the ranks of worthy artists and men.

"My brothers, Carl and----, as soon as I am dead, if Professor Schmidt be still alive, beg him in my name to describe my disease, and then add these pages to the history of my malady, that at least, so far as possible, the world may be reconciled to me after my death.

"I also hereby declare you both heirs of my little fortune (if so it may be called). Divide it honestly, bear with and help one another.

What you did against me I have, as you know, long since forgiven. I thank you in particular, brother Carl, for the attachment which you have shown me of late. My wish is, that your life may be happier, and more free from care, than mine has been. Recommend _Virtue_ to your children; it is she alone, and not money, that can confer happiness. I speak from experience; for it was Virtue who raised me when in distress. I have to thank her, in addition to my art, that I did not put an end to my life through suicide. Farewell, and love one another!

I thank all my friends, especially Prince Lichnowski and Professor Schmidt. I should like the instruments of Prince L. to be preserved by one of you; but let no dispute arise between you on this account. As soon as you perceive that it will be more to your advantage, you have only to sell them. How shall I rejoice, if even in the grave I can serve you!

"Thus has it happened:--with joy I hasten to meet Death. Should he come before I have had opportunity to develop all my artistic powers, he will have come too soon, notwithstanding my hard fate, and I shall wish that he had tarried a little longer; but even then I shall be content, for he will set me free from a state of endless suffering.

Come when thou wilt--I go courageously to meet thee!

"Farewell, and do not quite forget me even in death. I have deserved this of you, since in my life I often thought of you, and wished to make you happy.

"So be it!

"LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN."

_Heiligenstadt, 6th October, 1802._"

"_Heiligenstadt, 10th October, 1802._

"Thus I bid farewell to thee, mournfully enough. Even the dearest hope that I brought hither with me, the hope of being to a certain degree restored, has utterly forsaken me. As the leaves of autumn fall and wither, so has my hope faded. Almost as I came do I depart; even the lofty courage which inspired me during the lovely days of summer has vanished. Oh, Providence! vouchsafe to me one more day of pure happiness! The responsive echo of pure joy has been so long a stranger to my heart. When, when, O G.o.d! shall I again feel it in the temple of nature and man? Never? Ah! that would be too hard!"

(On the outside.)

"For my brothers Carl and----, to be read and fulfilled after my death."

Several writers have maintained that the consequences of Beethoven's deafness are plainly discernible in his compositions; that he lost all idea of harmonic relations, that his later works are mere incongruous, erratic fancies, devoid of form and melody, and, in short, compared to his former productions, what the second part of "Faust" is to the first.

Happily, such ideas--promulgated by theorists of the old school like Fetis, and dilettanti of the Mozart-Italian school like Oulib.i.+.c.heff--have now exploded, and the service rendered to Art by Beethoven's latest works--especially his pianoforte sonatas--is fully recognised. It is these which have brought the pianoforte to its present eminence as the most intellectual and ideal of all instruments, and which, by their depth of thought and loftiness of aim, have raised an insuperable barrier between the dilettante who trifles with music for amus.e.m.e.nt, and the artist who devotes his life to its cultivation as a G.o.d-appointed means of developing the divine in man.

At the same time we come upon pa.s.sages here and there which Beethoven would, perhaps, have written otherwise, had his ear, as well as his mind, been sensitive to their effect.

It is not posterity that has been the loser by Beethoven's deafness; we, at least, ought to appreciate the "precious jewel" which his adversity carried within it, and has handed down to us. His contemporaries, however, had cause to lament, for in a few years it put a stop to all improvising and playing in public. We read, indeed, of a plan for an artistic tour with his pupil Ries, when the latter was to make all arrangements for concert-giving, and to play the pianoforte Concertos and other works, while Beethoven conducted and improvised--but the project never came to maturity. It was, in fact, impossible. Beethoven entirely lost the sensitiveness of touch which had once distinguished his playing from that of all contemporaries; and, in his efforts to extract some nourishment for his hungering ear, used to hammer the pianoforte so unmercifully as generally to break several strings. Nor could it be obviated by a special instrument constructed for himself, nor by a sound-conductor invented for him by the ingenious Graff.

A curious feature of his deafness was the gradual manner in which the auricular nerve decayed; he first lost the power of catching the higher notes of singers or instruments, as we have seen, while deep, low sounds were long audible to him; this may account for the prevalence of those deep-lying tones in almost all his later works, especially the Second Ma.s.s and the Ninth Symphony.

As a natural consequence of his affliction, he soon became unable to conduct his own orchestral works. This, however, was no great loss, for he had never possessed either the self-possession or the experience necessary to wield the _baton_ satisfactorily. Knowing thoroughly as he did what every instrument had to say, he listened excitedly for each in detail--without calmly attending to the effect of the whole; at each _crescendo_ he would rise as if about to fly, gesticulating so rapidly and energetically that the members of the orchestra (who had enough to do to follow such new and peculiar music) were often more bewildered than guided by his directions. At the same time be it distinctly understood that, however low the performance might fall beneath his "ideal," however vexatious the mistakes of individual performers might be, he never lost his temper so far as to act in the manner related by Ries in his Notices, of which the following is a specimen:--

"Beethoven was present at the first performance of his Fantasia for pianoforte, orchestra, and chorus. The clarinettist, in a pa.s.sage where the beautiful subject of the finale has already entered, made by mistake a repet.i.tion of eight bars. As very few instruments are heard at this point, the error in the execution was torturing to the ear. Beethoven rose furiously, turned round, and insulted the musicians in the grossest manner, and so loudly that it was heard by the whole audience. Then, resuming his seat, he exclaimed, "From the beginning!" The movement was recommenced, and this time all went well, and the success was brilliant.

But when the concert was over, the artists recollected only too well the honourable t.i.tles by which Beethoven had publicly addressed them; and, as if the matter had but that moment occurred, became excessively angry, and vowed never to play again when Beethoven was in the orchestra, &c., &c."

That the clarinettist did make a mistake is true, but that Beethoven behaved in the outrageous way described was most positively denied by all who were present on the occasion, including the conductor, Franz Clement. Where Ries got the story from is difficult to imagine, since he was himself in St. Petersburg at the time. On the contrary, the members of the orchestra were all on excellent terms with Beethoven, who prized their approval far more than that of the general public; and was wont, when particularly pleased with a performance, to turn round, his face beaming with delight, and exclaim, "Bravi, tutti!" But woe betide those who dared to question the effect of the new and somewhat startling combinations which he introduced! Ries found this out to his cost. At the unexpected entrance of the horn in the Allegro of the Eroica, he--as usual, beside his master in the orchestra--exclaimed, "How abominably wrong!" for which outburst he was nearly rewarded by a box on the ear.

Pianoforte playing, improvisation, and orchestral conducting were given up one after the other--not suddenly, for Beethoven was resolved to defy his fate as long as possible,--but henceforth it is with Beethoven the composer alone that we have to do.

The autumn of 1802 saw him so far restored as to be able to commence his great work on Napoleon, which, however, on account of many interruptions, was not finished until the year 1804.

In 1802 he writes thus to his publisher, Hofmeister, who had requested him to compose a sonata of a revolutionary tendency:--"Are you riding to the devil in a body, gentlemen, that you propose to me to write _such a sonata_? At the time of the revolutionary fever it might have done, but now, when everything is once more in the beaten track, when Bonaparte has signed the Concordat with the Pope--now such a sonata! If it had been a _missa pro Sancta Maria a tre voci_, or a _Vesper_, I would immediately have taken pen in hand and written in ponderous notes a _Credo in unum_,--but, good heavens! such a sonata in these fresh, dawning Christian times! Ho! ho! I'll have nothing to do with it!" and yet at this very time he must have been busy with a work destined to the honour of the great Disturber of the Peace of Europe. The idea for this emanated originally from General Bernadotte, the French Amba.s.sador at Vienna--a great admirer of the composer,--and was in reality warmly entered into by Beethoven, who, with his red-hot Republicanism and love for Plato, was an enthusiastic supporter of the First Consul, and imagined nothing less than that it was Napoleon's intention to remodel France according to the Platonic method, and inaugurate a golden age of universal happiness. With the news of the empire came the destruction of this elysian prospect,--Beethoven in a fury tore to pieces the t.i.tle-page of his symphony on which was written simply,--

"BONAPARTE.

"LUIGI V. BEETHOVEN;"

and stamping it under foot, showered a volley of imprecations on the head of the tyrant who had played so false a game.

No persuasion could induce him at first to publish the work, but after the lapse of some years this masterpiece of ideal writing was given to the world under the t.i.tle of "Sinfonia Eroica per festegiare il sovvenire d'un grand' uomo." Great man as Napoleon had been in Beethoven's estimation, he never could think of him otherwise than with detestation, till the sudden collapse of the Napoleonic idea in 1815, and the death of its promoter in 1821, changed his wrath into a kind of grim commiseration, which he showed by remarking that he had "seventeen years before composed the music suited to this catastrophe!" meaning the Funeral March in the Eroica.

This, the first great manifesto of the Sovereign of the World of Sound, was a wonderful advance on the first two symphonies, produced somewhere about the years 1800-1802. In these he took up the art where Haydn and Mozart had left it; but, "though he could dally and tarry awhile with them, he would not remain with them;" his greater earnestness impelled him on to realms unknown to them, to conquest compared with which theirs faded into comparative insignificance.

In 1805 Ferdinand Ries left Vienna, after having enjoyed Beethoven's instruction for five years. He was, in fact, the only one whom Beethoven recognised as his pupil (with the exception of the Archduke Rudolph), and to him he entrusted the playing of his concertos, &c., for the first time, when no longer able to do so himself. The impressions which Ries has left in his Notices, of Beethoven as an instructor, are like his other statements, somewhat contradictory. In one place he declares that during the lessons the master was engaged in composition or some similar work at one end of the room, while he was playing at the other, and that he seldom sat down by him for half an hour at a time. Again, he says that Beethoven took extraordinary pains with him--sometimes extending the lesson over two hours, and making him repeat ten times--nay, oftener--any pa.s.sage with which he was not quite satisfied. Probably the truth lies between these two extremes. Beethoven, who had no settled order in his life, could not be expected to be systematic in tuition; hence the impression of desultoriness left upon the mind of the pupil. A characteristic anecdote of this period is worth quoting.

"Beethoven," says Ries, "had given me the ma.n.u.script of his third concerto, that I might appear in public with it for the first time as his pupil; Beethoven conducted and turned over the pages for me. I had begged him to compose a cadenza for me, but he directed me to write one myself. He was satisfied with my composition, and altered little; but one brilliant and very difficult pa.s.sage, which seemed to him too hazardous, I was to change. The easier one did not please me, and I could not make up my mind to play it in public. The critical moment arrived--Beethoven had seated himself quietly--but when I boldly attacked the difficult cadence, he gave his chair a violent push. The cadenza, however, succeeded, and Beethoven was so delighted that he exclaimed, 'Bravo!' which electrified the audience."

In 1805 Beethoven produced his solitary opera, "Leonora" (afterwards known as "Fidelio"), amid a series of annoyances and vexations such as probably no operatic writer, either before or since, has ever had to contend against. What between troubles arising out of the libretto, the overture, the singers, the critics, and the theatrical cabals, our poor Beethoven was well-nigh driven distracted.

The story on which the opera is founded (originally taken from the French, and so well known as to require no repet.i.tion here) is almost too slight for dramatic purposes, inasmuch as there is but one really powerful situation--that of the grave scene--in the entire piece, and the whole interest, therefore, is concentrated on the one figure, Leonora. What Beethoven has made out of these slender materials; how he has depicted, in all its intensity and tenderness, that love which he was doomed never to experience, needs no description from us.

What was Beethoven's object in choosing this theme for his labours? Was it a foreshadowing of bliss that might be his? or was it the delineation of a character which, in its earnestness and purity, should be the reverse of that "Don Juan" of Mozart, of which he once said, "The divine art ought never to be lowered to the folly of such a scandalous subject"?

The little byplay and domestic "asides" cost our soaring Beethoven infinitely more trouble than the most impa.s.sioned scenas, and he was obliged to write the little air of Marcelline, "O, war' ich schon mit Dir vereint," no less than thrice before he could attain the requisite lightness.

The composition of the four "Leonora" overtures is without a parallel in musical annals. When Beethoven had finished No. 1, in C major, he consented to its being first tried over by a small orchestra at Prince Lichnowski's, in the presence of a select number of critics and connoisseurs, by whom it was condemned as being light and almost flimsy in structure, and as affording no clue to the contents of the opera. It was therefore withdrawn, and not published till after the composer's death.

But may not the light-heartedness which distinguishes this overture have been intentional on the part of Beethoven? may he not have wished to represent his heroine before the shadow of grief had fallen upon her, in the enjoyment of the highest wedded bliss?

Marx takes this view of "Leonora" No. 1, adducing in support of it the following extract from one of the ma.n.u.script books in which Beethoven was accustomed to hold intercourse with his friends:--

"Aristotle, when he speaks of tragedy, says that the hero ought first to be represented as living in the greatest happiness and splendour. Thus we see him in 'Egmont.' When he is in the enjoyment of felicity, Fate comes and throws a noose over his head from which he is not able to extricate himself. Courage and Defiance appear upon the scene, and boldly look Destiny--aye, and death--in the face. Clarchen's fate interests us, like that of Gretchen in 'Faust,' because she was once so happy. A tragedy which begins as well as continues gloomily, is tedious."