One of Beethoven's peculiarities may as well be referred to here in passing. Although living in the same town with many of his friends—nay, within a few minutes walk of them,—years would elapse without their coming in contact, unless they continually presented themselves to his notice, and so would not let themselves be forgotten. Absorbed in his creations, the master lived in a world of his own; consequently, many little circumstances in his career, in reality proceeding from this abstraction, were at the time attributed to very different motives.
His connection with Schenk is an instance of this. Though both inhabited Vienna, they had not met for many years, when in 1824 Beethoven and his friend Schindler encountered Schenk—then almost seventy years of age—in the street. If his old teacher had spent the intervening years in another world, and suddenly alighted from the clouds, Beethoven could not have been more surprised and delighted. To drag him into the quietest corner of the "Jägerhorn" (a tavern close at hand) was the work of a moment, and there for hours the old friends mutually compared notes, and reviewed the ups and downs of fortune that had befallen them since the days when the Great Mogul used to storm Schenk's lodgings and abuse his master. When they parted it was in tears, never to meet again.
The opportune departure of Haydn allowed Beethoven to place himself under the instruction of Albrechtsberger, the cathedral organist. This man, who counted among his pupils not only Beethoven, but Hummel and Seyfried, was a walking treatise on counterpoint; but far from investing the science with any life or brightness, it was his delight to render it, if possible, more austere and stringent than he had found it, and to lay down rules which to a fiery, impulsive nature were positively unbearable. Nevertheless, Pegasus can go in harness if need be. Beethoven, who, like every true genius, was essentially modest in his estimate of himself, and had already felt the want of a thoroughly grounded knowledge, submitted to Albrechtsberger's routine for a period of about fifteen months—beginning almost at the elements of the science, and working out the dry-as-dust themes in his master's Gradus ad Parnassum, until he had gained for himself an insight into the mysteries of fugue and canon.
This is not the commonly received notion of Beethoven's student-days. Ries in his "Notices" has the following:—
"I knew them all well [i.e., Haydn, Albrechtsberger, and Salieri, who gave Beethoven instruction in writing for the voice]; all three appreciated Beethoven highly, but were all of one opinion regarding his studies. Each said Beethoven was always so obstinate and self-willed that he had afterwards much to learn through his own hard experience, which he would not accept in earlier days as the subject of instruction. Albrechtsberger and Salieri especially were of this opinion."
But this testimony ought not to be accepted for more than it is worth. Haydn, absorbed in his own pursuits, and utterly unable to fathom Beethoven's nature—the very reverse of his own; Albrechtsberger, the formal contrapuntist, far more concerned about the outside of the cup, the form of a composition, than about its contents; Salieri, the superficial composer of a few trashy operas long since forgotten,—how were these men competent to pass judgment on a Feuerkopf like Beethoven?
A little further examination of the question in the light of recent researches will enable the reader to judge for himself whether the master was an earnest, willing student, or not.
Until very lately, the main source whence biographers drew their accounts of the Lehrjahre was the work published by the Chevalier von Seyfried, which purported to be a correct transcription of Beethoven's "Studies in Thorough-bass." This volume, as given to the world, was garnished with a number of sarcastic annotations, professedly emanating from Beethoven himself, wherein the theoretical rule under consideration at the moment is held up to ridicule. It is this circumstance, coupled with the assertion of Ries above alluded to, which has chiefly produced the prevalent impression regarding Beethoven as a student. We suppose that nine readers out of ten will have pictured to themselves the master receiving instruction in much the same spirit as that in which he was wont to give it in Bonn, namely, like the rebellious colt described by Wegeler!—Now what are the real facts of the case?—Thanks to the unwearied exertions of Gustav Nottebohm, we are in a position to answer the question. In his admirable book, "Beethoven's Studien," the actual work done by Beethoven under Haydn and Albrechtsberger is at length laid before the public, and the falsity of Seyfried's compilation fully proved.[6] Nottebohm has no hesitation in affirming that Beethoven was a willing rather than a mutinous scholar, and that he was always intent on his subject, and strove hard to obtain a clear conception of it.
As for the "sarcastic" marginal remarks which for nearly half a century have been treasured up and smiled over by every admirer of the master as eminently "characteristic" of him, will the reader believe that they turn out to be characteristic of—nothing but the unblushing impudence of Kapellmeister Ritter von Seyfried? They have no existence except in his imagination. The running commentary which accompanies the exercises is of a very different description from that supplied by him; it contains one instance, and one only, of an ironical tendency, and this is amusing enough in its simplicity to have extorted a smile from Albrechtsberger himself. One of the text-books employed appears to have been that of Türk, who makes use of the term "galant" to designate the free as opposed to the strict style of composition. Now what Beethoven saw lurking beneath the title galant, or what stumblingblock it presented to him, is hard to discover; but we find the expression, as often as it occurs, invariably altered to one that suits his notions better; and once he breaks out with, "Laugh, friends, at this galanterie!" Perhaps we may arrive at an appreciation of his distaste to the phrase, if we translate it by the word genteel,—imagine Beethoven writing in a genteel style!!
But in addition to thus clearing away the haze of misapprehension that had settled round our master's character as a learner, the efforts of Thayer and Nottebohm have also thrown much light on two questions which have proved more or less perplexing to all students, and to the brief consideration of which we would now ask the reader's attention.