One of my schoolmates under Krengel was Luis van Beethoven, whose father held an appointment as court singer under the Elector. Apparently his mother was already dead at the time,[19] for Luis v. B. was distinguished by uncleanliness, negligence, etc. Not a sign was to be discovered in him of that spark of genius which glowed so brilliantly in him afterwards. I imagine that he was kept down to his musical studies from an early age by his father.
Wurzer entered the gymnasium in 1781; Beethoven did not. This, therefore, must have been the time at which all other studies were abandoned in favor of music. In what manner his education was otherwise pieced out is not to be learned. The lack of proper intellectual discipline is painfully obvious in Beethoven’s letters throughout his life. In his early manhood he wrote a fair hand, so very different from the shocking scrawl of his later years as to make one almost doubt the genuineness of autographs of that period; but in orthography, the use of capital letters, punctuation and arithmetic he was sadly deficient all his life long. He was still able to use the French tongue at a later period, and of Latin he had learned enough to understand the texts which he composed; but even as a schoolboy his studies appear to have been made second to his musical practice with which his hours out of school were apparently for the most part occupied. He was described by Dr. Müller as “a shy and taciturn boy, the necessary consequence of the life apart which he led, observing more and pondering more than he spoke, and disposed to abandon himself entirely to the feelings awakened by music and (later) by poetry and to the pictures created by fancy.” Of those who were his schoolfellows and who in after years recorded their reminiscences of him, not one speaks of him as a playfellow, none has anecdotes to relate of games with him, rambles on the hills or adventures upon the Rhine and its shores in which he bore a part. Music and ever music; hence the power of clothing his thoughts in words was not developed by early culture, and the occasional bursts of eloquence in his letters and recorded conversations are held not to be genuine, because so seldom found. As if the strong mind, struggling for adequate expression, should not at times break through all barriers and overcome all obstacles![20] Urged forward thus by the father’s severity, by his tender love for his mother and by the awakening of his own tastes, the development of his skill and talents was rapid; so much so that in his ninth year a teacher more competent than his father was needed.
Beethoven and van den Eeden
The first to whom his father turned was the old court organist van den Eeden, who had been in the electoral service about fifty years and had come to Bonn before the arrival there of Ludwig van Beethoven, the grandfather. One can easily imagine his willingness to serve an old and deceased friend by fitting his grandson to become his successor; and this might account for Schlosser’s story that at first he taught him gratis, and that he continued his instructions at the command and expense of the Elector. The story may or may not be true, but nothing has been discovered in the archives at Düsseldorf confirming the statement; in fact concerning the time, the subjects and the results of van den Eeden’s instruction we are thrown largely upon conjecture. “In his eighth year,” says Mäurer in his notices, “Court Organist van den Eeden took him as a pupil; nothing has been learned of his progress.” This, if Mäurer was correct in stating his age, would have been about 1778. It is after this that Mäurer refers to his study under Pfeiffer. Independently of all this Fischer says: “His father not being able to teach him more in music, and suspecting that he had talent for composition, took him at first to an aged master named Santerrini who instructed him for a while; but the father thought little of this teacher, did not consider him the right man and desired a change.” This desire resulted in securing Pfeiffer through the mediation of Grossmann. There was no musician Santerrini in the court chapel, but an actor, named Santorini, was a member of Grossmann’s troupe; he cannot be considered in this connection. There is evidently a confusion of names, and the whole context, especially the reference to the “aged master,” shows that no other than van den Eeden was meant by the teacher who gave instruction for a short time before Pfeiffer.
Schlosser does not say that this instruction was on the organ and it is unlikely that the boy, who was destined for a more systematic instruction in pianoforte playing, was put at the organ at so early an age. It was a deduction, probably, from the fact that van den Eeden was an organist and that later Beethoven displayed a great deal of dexterity upon that instrument. It is noteworthy that Wegeler (p. 11) says nothing definite as to whether or not Beethoven took lessons from van den Eeden; he merely thought it likely, because he knew no one else in Bonn from whom Beethoven could have learned the technical handling of the organ. But there were several such in Bonn irrespective of Neefe. Schindler makes certainty out of Wegeler’s conjecture and relates that Beethoven often spoke of the old organist when discoursing upon the proper position and movement of the body and hands in organ and pianoforte playing, he having been taught to hold both calm and steady, to play in the connected style of Handel and Bach. This may have been correct so far as pianoforte playing is concerned; but Schindler had little knowledge of Beethoven’s Bonn period, and the possibility of a confusion of names is not excluded even on the part of Beethoven himself, who received hints from several organists. Mäurer, after speaking of Pfeiffer, continues as follows: “Van den Eeden remained his only teacher in thorough-bass. As a man of seventy he sent the boy Louis, between eleven and twelve years old, to accompany the mass and other church music on the organ. His playing was so astonishing that one was forced to believe he had intentionally concealed his gifts. While preluding for the Credo he took a theme from the movement and developed it to the amazement of the orchestra so that he was permitted to improvise longer than is customary. That was the opening of his brilliant career.” Mäurer seems to know nothing of Neefe when he says that van den Eeden was Beethoven’s only teacher in thorough-bass. What he says, too, about the lad’s performance at the organ as substitute obviously rests upon a confounding of van den Eeden with another of Beethoven’s organ teachers—most likely Neefe.
It is our conjecture that van den Eeden taught the boy chiefly and perhaps exclusively pianoforte playing, he being a master in that art; but his influence was small. It must be remembered that van den Eeden was a very old man, as whose successor Neefe had been chosen in 1781, and who died in June, 1782. Nowhere does he, like the other teachers of Beethoven, disclose individual traits; he is a totally colorless picture in the history of Beethoven’s youth. Nor does it appear that there was any intimacy between him and the Beethoven family, since otherwise he would not have been missing in the notices of Fischer, who does not even know his name. The judgment of the father that his instruction was inefficient was probably correct.
Other Teachers of the Boy Beethoven
A fitter master, it was thought, was obtained in Tobias Friedrich Pfeiffer, who came to Bonn in the summer of 1779, as tenor singer in Grossmann and Helmuth’s theatrical company. Mäurer, the violoncellist, in some reminiscences of that period communicated to this work by Professor Jahn, says that Pfeiffer was a skillful pianist and gave the boy lessons, but not at any regular hours. Often when he came with Beethoven, the father, from the wine-house late at night, the boy was roused from sleep and kept at the pianoforte until morning;—a course not particularly favorable to his progress at school, but one which may be readily credited in the light of what is known of Pfeiffer and Johann Beethoven, and one, moreover, which would cause the lessons to make an enduring impression upon the memory. There is some reason to think that the former was an inmate of the latter’s family, which adds probability to the story. Although Pfeiffer was in Bonn but one year, Wegeler affirms that “Beethoven owed most of all to this teacher, and was so appreciative of the fact that he sent him financial help from Vienna through Simrock.” To what extent Wegeler’s opinion as to Beethoven’s obligations is correct, it would be difficult to decide; but the utter improbability that a single year’s lessons from this man would profit a boy eight and a half to nine and a half years old, more than those from any other of his teachers, much longer and systematically continued, is manifest. About this time the young court musician Franz Georg Rovantini lived in the same house with Beethoven. He was the son of a violinist Johann Conrad Rovantini who had been called to Bonn from Ehrenbreitstein and who died in 1766. He was related to the Beethoven family. The young musician was much respected and sought after as teacher. According to the Fischer document the boy Beethoven was among his pupils, taking lessons on the violin and viola. But these lessons, too, came to an early end; Rovantini died on September 9, 1781, aged 24.
A strong predilection for the organ was awakened early in the lad and he eagerly sought opportunities to study the instrument, apparently even before he became Neefe’s pupil. In the cloister of the Franciscan monks at Bonn there lived a friar named Willibald Koch, highly respected for his playing and his expert knowledge of organ construction. We have no reason to doubt that young Ludwig sought him out, received instruction from him and made so much progress that Friar Willibald accepted him as assistant. In the same way he made friends with the organist in the cloister of the Minorites and “made an agreement” to play the organ there at 6 o’clock morning mass. It would seem that he felt the need of familiarity with a larger organ than that of the Franciscans. On the inside of the cover of a memorandum book which he carried to Vienna with him is found the note: “Measurements (Fussmass) of the Minorite pedals in Bonn.” Plainly he had kept an interest in the organ. Still another tradition is preserved in a letter to the author from Miss Auguste Grimm, dated September, 1872, to the effect that Heinrich Theisen, born in 1759, organist at Rheinbreitbach near Honneck on the Rhine, studied the organ in company with Beethoven under Zenser, organist of the Münsterkirche at Bonn, and that the lad of ten years surpassed his fellow student of twenty. The tradition says that already at that time Ludwig composed pieces which were too difficult for his little hands. “Why, you can’t play that, Ludwig,” his teacher is said to have remarked, and the boy to have replied: “I will when I am bigger.”
When Beethoven’s studies with van den Eeden began and ended, whether they were confined to the organ or pianoforte, or partook of both—these are undecided points. It does not appear that any instruction in composition was given him until he became the pupil of Neefe. In the facsimile which follows the part devoted to thorough-bass in the so-called “Studien,” the composer says: “Dear Friends: I took the pains to learn this only that I might write the figures readily and later instruct others; for myself I never had to learn how to avoid errors, for from my childhood I had so keen a sensibility that I wrote correctly without knowing it had to be so, or could be otherwise.” This lends plausibility, at least, to another anecdote related by Mäurer concerning an alleged precocious composition by Beethoven: