A few notes upon certain young women to whom Beethoven dedicated compositions at this period of his life may form no inappropriate close to this chapter. It was much the custom then for teachers of music to dedicate their works to pupils, especially to those who belonged to the higher social ranks—such dedications being at the same time compliments to the pupils and advertisements for the instructors, with the farther advantage often of being sources of pecuniary profit. When, therefore, we read the name of Baroness Albini on the title-page of certain sonatas by Sterkel, of Julia Countess Guicciardi on one by Kleinheinz, of Anna Countess Mailath on songs by Teyber, we assume at once the probability in these and like instances that the relation of master and pupil existed. Beethoven also followed the custom; and the young ladies, subjects of the following notices, are all known or supposed to have taken lessons of him.
Anna Louisa Barbara (“La Comtesse Babette”) was the daughter of Karl Count Keglevics de Busin, of Hungarian Croatian lineage, and Barbara Countess Zichy. She married Prince Innocenz d’Erba Odescalchi on the 10th of February, 1801 (another authority gives 1800). Beethoven’s dedications to her are the Sonata, Op. 7 (published in 1797), the Variations “La stessa la stessissima” (1799), and the Pianoforte Concerto, Op. 15, 1801—the last to her as Princess Odescalchi. A note by the composer to Zmeskall—which, judging both from its contents and the handwriting, could not have been written later than 1801-2—shows that the Odescalchi palace was one of those at which he took part in musical soirées.
“Countess Henriette Lichnowsky,” writes Count Amade, “was the sister of the ruling Prince Carl, and was doubtless married to the Marquis of Carneville after the dedication to her of the Rondo (G major, Op. 51, No. 2, published in September, 1802); she lived in Paris after her marriage and died about 1830.” The Rondo was first dedicated to Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, but Beethoven asked it back in exchange for the C-sharp minor Sonata; to which fact we shall recur presently. Countess Thun, to whom Beethoven dedicated the Clarinet Trio, Op. 11, in 1797, was the mother of Prince Carl Lichnowsky and Countess Henriette Lichnowsky. She died May 18, 1800. The Sonata in E-flat, Op. 27, No. 1, was dedicated to Josepha Sophia, wife of Prince Johann Joseph von Liechtenstein, daughter of Joachim Egon, Landgrave of Fürstenberg-Weitra. She was born on June 20, 1776, married on April 22, 1792 and died February 23, 1848. Whether her father was related at all, and if so, how, to the Fürstenberg in whose house Beethoven gave lessons in Bonn, is not known. Her husband, however, was first cousin to Count Ferdinand von Waldstein. The Baroness Braun to whom Beethoven dedicated the two Pianoforte Sonatas Op. 14 and the Sonata for Horn in 1801, was the wife of Baron Peter von Braun, lessee of the Nationaltheater and afterwards of the Theater an der Wien. The dedications disclose an early association which eventually led to Beethoven’s being asked to compose an opera. It is not known that Beethoven was a social visitor in the house of Baron Braun, but he was a highly respected guest in the house of Count Browne, to whose wife Beethoven dedicated the “Waldmädchen” Variations and the three Pianoforte Sonatas, Op. 10.
Chapter XVII
Beethoven’s Character and Personality—His Disposition—Love of Nature—Relations with the Opposite Sex—Literary Tastes—His Letters—Manner of Composing—The Sketchbooks—Origin of His Deafness.
The year 1800 is an important era in Beethoven’s history. It is the year in which, cutting loose from the pianoforte, he asserted his claims to a position with Mozart and the still living and productive Haydn in the higher forms of chamber and orchestral composition—the quartet and the symphony. It is the year, too, in which the bitter consciousness of an increasing derangement of his organs of hearing was forced upon him and the terrible anticipation of its incurable nature and of its final result in almost total deafness began to harass and distress him. The course of his life was afterwards so modified, on the one hand, by the prosperous issue of these new appeals to the taste and judgment of the public, and, on the other, by the unhappy progress of his malady, each acting and reacting upon a nature singularly exceptional, that for this and other reasons some points in his personal character and habits, and a few general remarks upon and illustrations of another topic or two must be made before resuming the narrative of events.
A true and exhaustive picture of Beethoven as a man would present an almost ludicrous contrast to that which is generally entertained as correct. As sculptors and painters have each in turn idealized the work of his predecessor, until the composer stands before us like a Homeric god until those who knew him personally, could they return to earth, would never suspect that the grand form and noble features of the more pretentious portraits are intended to represent the short muscular figure and pock-pitted face of their old friend—so in literature evoked by the composer a similar process has gone on, with a corresponding suppression of whatever is deemed common and trivial, until he is made a being living in his own peculiar realm of gigantic ideas, above and apart from the rest of mankind—a sort of intellectual Thor, dwelling in “darkness and clouds of awful state,” and making in his music mysterious revelations of things unutterable! But it is really some generations too soon for a conscientious investigator of his history to view him as a semi-mythological personage, or to discover that his notes to friends asking for pens, making appointments to dinner at taverns, or complaining of servants, are “cyclopean blocks of granite,” which, like the “chops and tomato sauce” of Mr. Pickwick, contain depths unfathomable of profound meaning. The present age must be content to find in Beethoven, with all his greatness, a very human nature, one which, if it showed extraordinary strength, exhibited also extraordinary weaknesses.
Inconsistent Traits of Character
It was the great misfortune of Beethoven’s youth—his impulses good and bad being by nature exceedingly quick and violent—that he did not grow up under the influence of a wise and strict parental control, which would have given him those habits of self-restraint that, once fixed, are a second and better nature, and through which the passions, curbed and moderated, remain only as sources of noble energy and power. His very early admission into the orchestra of the theatre as cembalist, was more to the advantage of his musical than of his moral development. It was another misfortune that, in those years, when the strict regulations of a school would have compensated in some measure for the unwise, unsteady, often harsh discipline of his father, he was thus thrown into close connection with actors and actresses, who, in those days, were not very distinguished for the propriety of their manners and morals. Before his seventeenth or eighteenth year, when he became known to the Breuning family and Count Waldstein, he could hardly have learned the importance of cultivating those high principles of life and conduct on which in later years he laid so much stress. And, at that period of life, the character even under ordinary circumstances is so far developed, the habits have become so far formed and fixed, and the natural tendencies have acquired so much strength, that it is, as a rule, too late to conquer the power of a perfect self-command. At all events, the consequences of a deficient early moral education followed Beethoven through life and are visible in the frequent contests between his worse and his better nature and in his constant tendency to extremes. To-day, upon some perhaps trivial matter, he bursts into ungovernable wrath; to-morrow, his penitence exceeds the measure of his fault. To-day he is proud, unbending, offensively careless of those claims which society grants to people of high rank; to-morrow his humility is more than adequate to the occasion. The poverty in which he grew up was not without its effect upon his character. He never learned to estimate money at its real value; though often profuse and generous to a fault, even wasteful, yet at times he would fall into the other extreme. With all his sense of nobility of independence, he early formed the habit of leaning upon others; and this the more, as his malady increased, which certainly was a partial justification; but he thus became prone to follow unwise counsels, or, when his pride was touched, to assert an equally unwise independence. At other times, in the multitude of counsellors he became the victim of utter irresolution, when decision and firmness were indispensable and essential to his welfare. Thus, both by following the impulse of the moment, and by hesitation when a prompt determination was demanded, he took many a false step, which could no longer be retrieved when reflection brought with it bitter regret.