Editor’s Note
The late Pitts Sanborn wrote this booklet under the title Beethoven and his Nine Symphonies and stated in a short preface that it made “no claim to originality and no secret of its indebtedness to the masterly treatises on the same subject.” I have left Mr. Sanborn’s pages on the symphonies virtually intact and have only expanded the work a little by incorporating here and there matter about other major works of Beethoven’s, especially some of the concertos, overtures, piano and vocal works, besides certain of the greater specimens of his chamber music. Even if this procedure probably lends the booklet a patchy character, I have followed it in order to supply a rather fuller picture of the composer’s creative achievements. No more than my predecessor do I make the slightest claim to originality of matter or treatment, or deny my indebtedness to Thayer and Paul Bekker.
Herbert F. Peyser
Printed in the United States of America
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was born on December 16, 1770, at Bonn, then one of the most important cities on the lower Rhine. Though Bonn was German and Beethoven’s mother and his father’s mother were both Germans, he was of Flemish descent through his father’s father, a native of the country that eventually became Belgium, whence the “van” in the name. Louis van Beethoven, a tenor singer, went to Bonn in his youth and promptly became a court musician to the resident archbishop-elector. His son Johann, Beethoven’s father, was also a singer in the Elector’s employ, but he was a worthless fellow, who was fortunate, however, in having as wife a woman of character. Realizing that his son Ludwig had been born with uncommon musical talent, he had the child begin to study violin and piano very early with the idea of putting him forward as a prodigy, as Mozart’s father had done. But the young Ludwig was less precocious than Mozart and rebelled strenuously against the enforced training. However, he did appear at a concert on March 26, 1778.
So strong was the boy’s musical gift that it triumphed over every obstacle, including his own childish reluctance, and the Elector thought it worth while to send him to Vienna, then the musical capital of Europe. He had now been composing for several years, and Haydn accepted him as a pupil in counterpoint, an arrangement that did not turn out altogether to Beethoven’s satisfaction. He studied with other teachers in Vienna and in March 1795, made his first public appearance in that city, playing his own piano concerto in B flat major. This date marks the beginning of a kind of recognition that could only spur the young composer on to the activity that in a nature so vigorous and energetic meant enthusiastic creation. Of course he wanted to write a symphony. Mozart, dead in 1791, had left a legacy of forty-nine symphonies. Haydn, the author of many more, was in full career at 63. They were the world’s foremost symphonists.