CHAPTER IX
CONCLUSION
CHAPTER IX
CONCLUSION
The third and last period of Beethoven’s life, from 1813 to 1827, during which he produced the remarkable later pianoforte sonatas and string quartets, the Quintet, opus 104, the Wind Octet, opus 103, the noble Missa Solemnis, which he considered his greatest work, and the immortal Ninth or Choral Symphony, was a time of affliction and wretchedness. The record of these bitter years of the deaf, lonely, poverty-hounded master, surrounded by unfeeling relatives and indifferent and dishonest servants, stricken with disease, and laboring through all to realize his grand artistic conceptions, is relieved only by his unflinching fortitude and grim humor. The heroic spirit of the man matched his misfortunes. For him, if for any one, the boast of the stoic poet would have been justifiable:
“In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud;
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody but unbowed.”