There is nothing decisive as to the time when the musical education of Ludwig van Beethoven began, nor any positive evidence that he, like Handel, Haydn or Mozart, showed remarkable genius for the art at a very early age. Schlosser has something on this point, but he gives no authorities, while the particulars which he relates could not possibly have come under his own observation. Müller[16] had heard from Franz Ries and Nicholas Simrock that Johann van Beethoven gave his son instruction upon the pianoforte and violin “in his earliest childhood.... To scarcely anything else did he hold him.” In the dedication of the pianoforte sonatas (1783) to the Elector, the boy is made to say: “Music became my first youthful pursuit in my fourth year,” which might be supposed decisive on the point if his age were not falsely given on the title-page. This much is certain: that after the removal to the Fischer house the child had his daily task of musical study and practice given him and in spite of his tears was forced to execute it. “Cäcilia Fischer,” writes Hennes (1838), “still sees him, a tiny boy, standing on a little footstool in front of the clavier to which the implacable severity of his father had so early condemned him. The patriarch of Bonn, Head Burgomaster Windeck, will pardon me if I appeal to him to say that he, too, saw the little Louis van Beethoven in this house standing in front of the clavier and weeping.” To this writes Dr. Wegeler:
I saw the same thing. How? The Fischer house was, perhaps still is, connected by a passage-way in the rear with a house in the Giergasse, which was then occupied by the owner, a high official of the Rhenish revenue service, Mr. Bachen, grandfather of Court Councillor Bachen of this city. The youngest son of the latter, Benedict, was my schoolmate, and on my visits to him the doings and sufferings of Louis were visible from the house.
It must be supposed that the father had seen indications of his son’s genius, for it is difficult to imagine such an one remaining unperceived; but the necessities of the family with the failure of the petition for a better salary—sent in just at the time when the Elector was so largely increasing his expenditures for music by the engagement of Lucchesi and Mattioli and in other ways—are sufficient reasons for the inflexible severity with which the boy was kept at his studies. The desire to say something new and striking on the part of many who have written about Beethoven has led to such an admixture of fact and fancy that it is now very difficult to separate them. One (Schlosser) tells his readers that “the greatest joy of the lad was when his father took him upon his knees and permitted him to accompany a song on the clavier with his tiny fingers,” while others tell the tale of his childhood in a manner to convey the idea that the father was a pitiless tyrant, the boy a victim and a slave—an error which a calm consideration of what is really known of the facts in the case at once dispels. There is but one road to excellence, even for the genius of a Handel or a Mozart—unremitted application. To this young Ludwig was compelled, sometimes, no doubt, through the fear or the actual infliction of punishment for neglect; sometimes, too, the father, whose habits were such as to favor a bad interpretation of his conduct, was no doubt harsh and unjust. And such seems to be the truth. At any rate, the boy at an early date acquired so considerable a facility upon the clavier that his father could have him play at court and when he was seven years old produce him with one of his pupils at a concert in Bonn. Here is the announcement of the concert as it was reproduced in the “Kölnische Zeitung” of December 18, 1870, from the original:
AVERTISSEMENT
To-day, March 26, 1778, in the musical concert-room in the Sternengasse the Electoral Court Tenorist, Beethoven, will have the honor to produce two of his scholars, namely, Mlle. Averdonck, Court Contraltist, and his little son of six years. The former will have the honor to contribute various beautiful arias, the latter various clavier concertos and trios. He flatters himself that he will give complete enjoyment to all ladies and gentlemen, the more since both have had the honor of playing to the greatest delight of the entire Court.
Beginning at five o’clock in the evening.
Ladies and gentlemen who have not subscribed will be charged a florin. Tickets may be had at the aforesaid Akademiesaal, also of Mr. Claren auf der Bach in Mühlenstein.
Unfortunately we learn nothing concerning the pieces played by the boy nor of the success of his performance. That the violin as well as the pianoforte was practised by him is implicitly confirmed by the terms in which Schindler records his denial of the truth of the well-known spider story: “The great Ludwig refused to remember any such incident, much as the tale amused him. On the contrary, he said it was more to be expected that everything would have fled from his scraping, even flies and spiders.”
Paucity of Intellectual Training
The father’s main object being the earliest and greatest development of his son’s musical genius so as to make it a “marketable commodity,” he gave him no other school education than such as was afforded in one of the public schools. Fischer says he first attended a school in the Neugasse taught by a man named Huppert[17] and thence went to the Münsterschule. Among the lower grade schools in Bonn was the so-called Tirocinium, a Latin school, which prepared pupils for the gymnasium but was not directly connected with it, but had its own corps of teachers, like the whole educational system of the period, under the supervision of the Academic Council established by Max Friedrich in 1777. The pupils learned, outside of the elementary studies (arithmetic and writing are said to have been excluded), to read and write Latin up to an understanding of Cornelius Nepos. Johann Krengel, a much respected pedagogue, was teacher at the time and was appointed municipal schoolmaster in 1783 by the Academic Council. In 1786 he transferred the school to the Bonngasse. To this school young Beethoven was sent; when, is uncertain. His contemporary and schoolfellow Wurzer, Electoral Councillor and afterwards president of the Landgericht, relates the following in his memoirs:[18]