Two trifles which kept company with the Quartets in this year were a Waltz in D and an Écossaise in E-flat for pianoforte, which were published in a collection of light music by C. F. Müller. There are several allusions to the oratorio commissioned by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in the Conversation Books of 1825, in one of which Grillparzer is mentioned as a likely author for another book; but so far as is known no work was done on “The Victory of the Cross,” though Bernard shortened the book. Before the end of the year the principal theme of the Quartet in C-sharp minor, Op. 131, is noted, accompanied by the words written by Beethoven: “Only the praise of one who has enjoyed praise can give pleasure”;—it is, no doubt, a relic of some of the composer’s classic readings.[146]
Chapter VIII
A Year of Sickness and Sorrow: 1826—The Quartets in B-Flat, C-Sharp Minor and F Major—Controversy with Prince Galitzin—Dedication of the Ninth Symphony—Life at Gneixendorf—Beethoven’s Last Compositions.
A Request for the German Bible
The year which witnessed the last of Beethoven’s completed labors, and saw what by general consent might be set down as the greatest of his string quartets, that in C-sharp minor, Op. 131, beheld also the culmination of the grief and pain caused by the conduct of his nephew. The year 1826 was a year of awful happenings and great achievements; a year of startling contradictions, in which the most grievous blows which an inscrutable Providence dealt the composer as if utterly to crush him to earth, were met by a display of creative energy which was amazing not only in its puissance but also in its exposition of transfigured emotion and imagination. The history of the year can best be followed if it be told in two sections, for which reason we have chosen to group the incidents connected with the nephew in a chapter by themselves and review first the artistic activities of the composer. After the history of the year has been set forth there will remain to be told only the story of the gathering of the gloom which early in the next year shut down over his mortal eyes forever. The figure which stands out in highest relief throughout the year beside that of the composer is that of Holz, whose concern for his welfare goes into the smallest detail of his unfortunate domestic life and includes also the major part of the labors and responsibilities caused by the tragical outcome of the nephew’s waywardness—his attempt at self-destruction. Schindler appears at intervals, but with jealous reserve, chary of advice, waiting to be asked for his opinion and pettishly protesting that after it once has been given it will not be acted upon. Stephan von Breuning appears in all the nobility of his nature; and in the attitude and acts of Brother Johann, though they have been severely faulted and, we fear, maligned, there is evidence of something as near affectionate sympathy and interest as Beethoven’s paradoxical conduct and nature invited of him. Among the other persons whom the Conversation Books disclose as his occasional associates are Schuppanzigh, Kuffner, Grillparzer, Abbé Stadler and Mathias Artaria, whose talk is chiefly about affairs in which they are concerned, though Kuffner at one time entertains Beethoven with a discourse on things ancient and modern which must have fascinated the artist whose mind ever delighted to dwell on matters of large moment. Beethoven was troubled with a spell of sickness which began near the end of January and lasted till into March. Dr. Braunhofer was called and we read the familiar injunctions in the Conversation Book. The composer has pains in the bowels, gouty twinges, and finds locomotion difficult. He is advised to abstain from wine for a few days and also from coffee, which he is told is injurious because of its stimulating effect on the nerves. The patient is advised to eat freely of soups, and small doses of quinine are prescribed. There are postponed obligations of duty—the oratorio, the opera, a Requiem—upon the composer which occupy him somewhat, but his friends and advisers more. His thoughts are not with such things but in the congenial region of the Quartets; for the little community of stringed instruments is become more than ever his colporteur, confidant, comforter and oracle. Kuffner tells him through Holz that he has read Bernard’s oratorio book but cannot find in it even the semblance of an oratorio, much less half-good execution. Perhaps there is something of personal equation in this judgment, for Kuffner is ready to write not only one but even two oratorio texts if Beethoven will but undertake their composition. He presents the plan of a work to be called “The Four Elements,” in which man is to be brought into relationship with the imposing phenomena of nature, but Beethoven has been inspired by a study of Handel’s “Saul” with a desire to undertake that subject and Kuffner submits specimens of his poetical handiwork to him. He had become interested in the ancient modes (as his Song of Thanksgiving in the Lydian mode in the A minor quartet had already witnessed) and was now eager to read up on the ancient Hebrews. He sends Holz to get him books on the subject and to a visitor, who to us is a stranger (so far as the handwriting in the C. B. is concerned), he expresses a desire to get Luther’s translation of the Bible. He is also interested in religious questions, as a long talk with his nephew shows. Kuffner intended in his treatment of the story of Saul to make it a representation of the triumph of the nobler impulses of man over untamed desire, and said that he would be ready to deliver the book in six weeks. Holz shows Beethoven some of the specimen sheets and points out a place in which Beethoven might indulge in an excursion into antique art. “Here you might introduce a chorus in the Lydian mode,” he says. He also explains that Kuffner intended to treat the chorus as an effective agent in the action, for which purpose it was to be divided into two sections, like the dramatic chorus of the Greek tragedians. Kuffner was sufficiently encouraged to write the book and Holz says that Beethoven finished the music of the first part “In his head”; if so, it staid there, so far as the sketchbooks bear testimony.
Works which were Never Written
Grillparzer still hopes that the breath of musical life will be breathed into “Melusine”; Duport, having secured the Court Opera, asks for it, and Brother Johann and Karl urge that an opera is the most remunerative enterprise to which he can now apply himself. Schlesinger, in Berlin, had told Count von Brühl that Beethoven was disposed to write an opera for the Royal Opera at the Prussian capital and Brühl had written to the composer that he would be glad to have an opera from him and expressed a desire that he collaborate with Grillparzer in its making; but he did not want “Melusine,” because of the resemblance between its subject and that of de la Motte-Fouqué’s “Undine.” An adaptation to operatic uses of Goethe’s “Claudine von Villa Bella” was discussed, apparently with favor, but Kanne, who was designated to take the adaptation in hand, was afraid to meddle with the great poet’s drama. So nothing came of the Berlin project or of “Melusine,” though Grillparzer talked it over again with Beethoven and told Holz that though he was not inclined to attach too great importance to it, he yet thought it would be hard to find an opera text better adapted to its purpose than it, from a musical and scenic point of view. To Schindler, Beethoven once held out a prospect that “something would come” of the idea of music for “Faust” which Rochlitz had implanted in Beethoven’s mind; but it shared the fate of opera and oratorio. His friends also urged him to compose a Requiem mass and such a composition belongs in the category with the oratorio as a work which he had been paid to undertake. Among the ardent admirers of Beethoven and most zealous patrons of the Schuppanzigh Quartets was Johann Nepomuk Wolfmayer, a much respected cloth merchant. One of the methods chosen by Wolfmayer to show his appreciation of the composer was occasionally to have a new coat made for him which he would bring to Beethoven’s lodgings, place upon a chair and then see to it that an old one disappeared from his wardrobe. We have already heard a similar story from Mayseder. It is said that Wolfmayer sometimes had difficulty in getting the composer’s consent to the exchange, but always managed to do it. Early in the second decade of the century Wolfmayer commissioned Beethoven to write a Requiem for him and paid him 1,000 florins as an advance on the honorarium. Beethoven promised, but never set to work: though Holz says that he was firmly resolved to do so and, in talking about it, said that he was better satisfied with Cherubini’s setting of the text of the Mass for the Dead than with Mozart’s. A Requiem, he said, should be a sorrowful memorial of the dead and have nothing in it of the noises of the last trump and the day of judgment.
The sketchbooks bear witness, though not voluminously, to two other works of magnitude which were in Beethoven’s thoughts in this year but never saw completion. These were a symphony and a string quintet. In a book used towards the end of 1825, containing sketches for the last movement of the Quartet in B-flat, there is a memorandum of a Presto in C minor, 3-4 time, and of a short movement in A-flat, Andante, which Schindler marked as belonging to “the tenth symphony.” There are also some much longer sketches for an overture on B-a-c-h, in the midst of which Beethoven has written: “This overture together with the new symphony and we shall have a new concert (Akademie) in the Kärnthnerthor.” Schindler published the sketches of the symphony in Hirschbach’s “Musikalisch-kritisches Repertorium” of January, 1844, and started the story of an uncompleted tenth symphony. Nottebohm, in his “Zweite Beethoveniana” (p. 12), scouts the idea that Beethoven occupied himself seriously with the composition of such a work. “It is not necessary,” he says, “to turn over many leaves of the sketchbooks to prove the untenableness of the view that if Beethoven had written a Tenth Symphony it would have been on the basis of these sketches. We see in them only such momentary conceits as came to Beethoven by the thousand and which were as much destined to be left undeveloped as the multitude of other abandoned sketches in the other books. To be big with a symphony argues persevering application to it. Of such application there can be no talk in this case. The sketches in question were never continued; there is not a vestige of them in the books which follow. If Beethoven had written as many symphonies as he began we should have at least fifty.” Nottebohm’s argument does not dispose of the matter, though we shall presently find occasion to think well of it. Lenz says that Holz wrote to him that Beethoven had played “the whole of the Tenth Symphony” for him on the pianoforte, that it was finished in all of its movements in the sketches, but that nobody but Beethoven could decipher them. Holz, however, made no such broad statement to Otto Jahn, a much more conscientious reporter than Lenz. To Jahn he said that there was an introduction in E-flat major, a soft piece, and then a powerful Allegro in C minor, which were complete in Beethoven’s head and which he had played to him (Holz) on the pianoforte. This is very different from an entire symphony. But in the letter to Moscheles which Schindler says Beethoven dictated to him on March 18, 1827, bearing a message of thanks to the Philharmonic Society of London, Beethoven says: “An entire sketched symphony lies in my desk, also a new overture and other things”; and a few days later Schindler writes to Moscheles: “Three days after receiving your letter he was greatly excited and demanded the sketches of the Tenth Symphony, concerning the plan of which he told me a great deal. He has now definitely decided that it shall go to the Philharmonic Society.” The reader is familiar with Beethoven’s habit of speaking of works as finished though not a note of them had been put on paper (as in the case of the additional movements for the Mass in D, for instance), and if there were sketches for a finished symphony in Beethoven’s desk when he died, it is passing strange that Schindler did not produce them when he started the world to talking about its loss of a successor to the Ninth. What Nottebohm saw in the books deposited by Schindler in the Royal Library in Berlin seems to justify what he said, at least. Moreover, Schindler says that the sketches for the Symphony dated back to 1824, and the incorrectness of this statement can be shown beyond all peradventure by Nottebohm’s study of the sketchbooks. Of the other works which play a part in the story of 1826, something will be said hereafter.
Beethoven’s Favorite Quartet