The Life of Ludwig van Beethoven, Volume III

by Alexander Wheelock Thayer

Out of the wide circle of reverent admirers surrounding your genius in this your second native city, there approach you to-day a small number of the disciples and lovers of art to give expression to long-felt wishes, timidly to prefer a long-suppressed request.

But as the number of spokesmen bears but a small proportion to the many who joyfully acknowledge your worth and what you have grown to be to the present as well as the future, so the wishes and requests are by no means restricted to the number of those who are like-minded with themselves and who, in the name of all to whom art and the realization of their ideals are something more than means and objects of pastime, assert that their wish is also the wish of an unnumbered multitude, their request is echoed loudly or in silence by every one whose bosom is animated by a sense of the divine in music.

It is the wish of those of our countrymen who reverence art to which we desire more especially to give expression; for though Beethoven’s name and creations belong to all contemporaneous humanity and every country which opens a susceptible bosom to art, it is Austria which is best entitled to claim him as her own. Among her inhabitants appreciation for the great and immortal works which Mozart and Haydn created for all time within the lap of their home still lives, and they are conscious with joyous pride that the sacred triad in which these names and yours glow as the symbol of the highest within the spiritual realm of tones, sprang from the soil of their fatherland. All the more painful must it have been for you to feel that a foreign power has invaded this royal citadel of the noblest, that above the mounds of the dead and around the dwelling-place of the only survivor of the band, phantoms are leading the dance who can boast of no kinship with the princely spirits of those royal houses; that shallowness is abusing the name and insignia of art, and unworthy dalliance with sacred things is beclouding and dissipating appreciation for the pure and eternally beautiful.

For this reason they feel a greater and livelier sense than ever before that the great need of the present moment is a new impulse directed by a powerful hand, a new advent of the ruler in his domain. It is this need which leads them to you to-day, and following are the petitions which they lay before you in behalf of all to whom these wishes are dear, and in the name of native art.

Do not withhold longer from the popular enjoyment, do not keep longer from the oppressed sense of that which is great and perfect, a performance of the latest masterworks of your hand. We know that a grand sacred composition has been associated with that first one in which you have immortalized the emotions of a soul, penetrated and transfigured by the power of faith and superterrestrial light. We know that a new flower glows in the garland of your glorious, still unequalled symphonies. For years, ever since the thunders of the Victory at Vittoria ceased to reverberate, we have waited and hoped to see you distribute new gifts from the fulness of your riches to the circle of your friends. Do not longer disappoint the general expectations! Heighten the effect of your newest creations by the joy of becoming first acquainted with them through you! Do not allow these, your latest offspring, some day to appear, perhaps, as foreigners in their place of birth, introduced, perhaps, by persons to whom you and your mind are strange! Appear soon among your friends, your admirers, your venerators! This is our nearest and first prayer.

Other claims on your genius have been made public. The desires expressed and offers made to you more than a year ago by the management of our Court Opera and the Society of Austrian Friends of Music had too long been the unuttered wish of all admirers of art, and your name stimulated the hopes and expectations of too many not to obtain the quickest and widest publicity, not to awaken the most general interest. Poetry has done her share in giving support to these lovely hopes and wishes. Worthy material from the hand of a valued poet waits to be charmed into life by your fancy. Do not let that intimate call to so noble an aim be made in vain. Do not delay longer to lead us back to those departed days when the song of Polyhymnia moved powerfully and delighted the initiates in art and the hearts of the multitude!

Need we tell you with what regret your retirement from public life has filled us? Need we assure you that at a time when all glances were hopefully turned towards you, all perceived with sorrow that the one man whom all of us are compelled to acknowledge as foremost among living men in his domain, looked on in silence as foreign art took possession of German soil, the seat of honor of the German muse, while German works gave pleasure only by echoing the favorite tunes of foreigners and, where the most excellent had lived and labored, a second childhood of taste threatens to follow the Golden Age of Art?

You alone are able to insure a decisive victory to the efforts of the best amongst us. From you the native Art Society and the German Opera expect new blossoms, rejuvenated life and a new sovereignty of the true and beautiful over the dominion to which the prevalent spirit of fashion wishes to subject even the eternal laws of art. Bid us hope that the wishes of all who have listened to the sound of your harmonies will soon be fulfilled! This is our most urgent second prayer.

May the year which we have begun not come to an end without rejoicing us with the fruits of our petition and may the coming Spring when it witnesses the unfolding of one of our longed-for gifts become a twofold blooming-time for us and all the world of art!