A Symphony by Beethoven. From painting by A. Graefle.
Another German artist, Graefle, has produced an interesting work depicting Beethoven playing to his friends.
"At the pianoforte Beethoven seemed a god—at times in the humour to play, at others not. If he happened not to be in the humour, it required pressing and reiterated entreaties to get him to the instrument. Before he began in earnest, he used sportively to strike the keys with the palm of his hand, draw his fingers along the keyboard from one end to the other, and play all manner of gambols, at which he laughed heartily. Once at the pianoforte, and in a genial mood with his surroundings, he would extemporise for one and two hours at a stretch, amid the solemn silence of his listeners. He demanded absolute silence from conversation whenever he put his fingers upon the pianoforte keys to play. If this was not forthcoming, he rose up, publicly upbraided the offenders, and left the room. This mode of resenting a nuisance—one not yet extinct—was once illustrated at Count Browne's, where Beethoven and Ries were engaged in playing a duet, yet during which one of the guests started an animated conversation with a lady. Exasperated at such an affront to his artistic honour, Beethoven rose up, glared at the pair, and shouted out, 'I play no more for such hogs,'—nor would he touch another note or allow Ries to do so, although earnestly entreated by the company. 'His improvisation,' Czerny tells us, 'was most brilliant and striking; in whatever company he might chance to be, he knew how to produce such an effect upon every hearer that frequently not an eye remained dry, while many would break out into loud sobs, for there was something wonderful in his expression in addition to the beauty and originality of his ideas and his spirited style of rendering them.' Ries says: 'No artist that I ever heard came at all near the height Beethoven attained in this branch of playing. The wealth of ideas which forced themselves on him, the caprices to which he surrendered himself, the variety of treatment, the difficulties, were inexhaustible. Even the Abbé Vogler's admirers were compelled to admit as much.'"
Tomaschek was greatly impressed by Beethoven. He writes: "It was in 1798, when I was studying law, that Beethoven, that giant among players, came to Prague.… His grand style of playing, and especially his bold improvisation, had an extraordinary effect upon me. I felt so shaken that for several days I could not bring myself to touch the piano."
"His manner was to sit in a quiet way at the instrument, commanding his feelings; but occasionally, and especially when extemporising, it was hard to maintain the pose. At extreme moments he warmed into great passions, so that it was impossible for him to hide from his listeners the sacred fires that were raging within him. Czerny declares that his playing of slow movements was full of the greatest expression,—an experience to be remembered. He used the pedal largely, and was most particular in the placing of the hands and the drift of the fingers upon the keys. As a pianist, he was surnamed 'Giant among players,' and men like Vogler, Hummel, and Wölffl were of a truth great players; but as Sir George Grove aptly says, in speaking of Beethoven's tours de force in performance, his transposing and playing at sight, etc., 'It was no quality of this kind that got him the name, but the loftiness and elevation of his style, and his great power of expression in slow movements, which, when exercised on his noble music, fixed his hearers, and made them insensible to any fault of polish or mere mechanism.'"
Beethoven has often served as a subject for painters, but, among the numerous pictures dedicated to him, we recall none more impressive than Aimé de Lemud's "Beethoven's Dream." De Lemud, a Frenchman who died at the age of seventy years, in 1887, first won success as a painter, and then studied engraving. At the Salon of 1863 he received a medal for his engraving of this picture, which was then entitled, simply, "Beethoven."
