"Your
Beethoven."
The year 1800 found Beethoven already busy with his "Mount of Olives," which, however, was not produced till 1803. This, the master's first and last attempt at oratorio writing, "is a striking instance of the insufficiency of even the highest powers to accomplish that to which the special call has not been given. It was impossible for Beethoven to feel himself so inspired by his task as the composer of a time when the mind of the people was almost exclusively occupied by religious convictions; the man of the revolutionary period could not see or think out a Christ like that of Bach and Handel before him. Even the pure spring, out of which we Protestants of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries draw our ideas of Christ—the Bible—flowed not for him; his Christ must first be poetically made for him. And how? The poet had no other aim but that of making verses for a composer; the latter no other motive than the ordinary creative impulse prompting him to try his powers in a different and important sphere. The result on both sides could not, therefore, be other than Phrases, although the better of the two proceeded from the composer, and that composer was Beethoven. To conceal or palliate this would be derogatory to the reverence which we all owe to Beethoven,—he stands too high to be in need of extenuation."
So far Marx; but in addition to the miserable libretto (which imparted unreality, artificiality, to the whole work, and especially gave to the part of the Saviour a theatrical air which Beethoven afterwards deplored) many peculiarities of the oratorio—with all deference to the able critic just quoted—may be traced to the period in which it was composed. The very choice of subject reveals the convulsion that was taking place in Beethoven's volcanic nature. It is a question whether Beethoven would ever have asserted his sovereignty in this branch of composition; it may be, as Marx hints, that the peculiar tone of thought and feeling necessary to the successful treatment of sacred subjects was wanting in him; but there can be no doubt that had the master's attention been devoted to the subject in happier days, when his tempest-tossed natures had attained to some degree of peace and serenity, the result would have been very different. Let him who would see Beethoven as a devotional writer, turn to his Gellert songs, which breathe the very depths of true religious feeling.
The greater part of the oratorio, and also of "Fidelio," was composed at Hetzendorf, a pretty little village near the imperial summer palace of Schönbrunn. Here Beethoven passed several summers in the greatest retirement—wandering all day long, from early dawn to nightfall, amid the leafy glades of the park. His favourite seat was between two immense boughs of an old oak, which branched out from the parent stem about two feet from the ground. This memorable tree, endeared to Beethoven as the birthplace of many a thought, was afterwards visited by him, in Schindler's company, in 1823.
In 1802 a gleam of hope dawned upon the sufferer; his deafness was for a time cured by the skilful treatment of Dr. Schmidt (to whom, out of gratitude, he dedicated his Septet arranged as a Trio), by whose advice he went for the summer to the village of Heiligenstadt, in the hope that the calm, sweet influence of nature, to which he was at all times most sensitive, might act beneficially upon his troubled mind.
This spot—this consecrated town—must always be an object of veneration to those who cherish the name of Beethoven, for here it was that he wrote his remarkable will, or promemoria, a document which excites our warmest sympathy, revealing, as it does, the depths of that great heart.
"To my Brothers, Carl and —— Beethoven.[28]—O ye who consider or represent me as unfriendly, morose, and misanthropical, how unjust are you to me! you know not the secret cause of what appears thus to you.
"My heart and mind have been from childhood given up to the tender feeling of benevolence, and I have ever been disposed to accomplish something great. But only consider that for six years I have been afflicted by a wretched calamity, which was aggravated by unskilful physicians—deceived from year to year by the hope of amendment—now forced, at length, to the contemplation of a lingering disease (the cure of which will, perhaps, last for years, if indeed it be not an impossibility).
"Born with a passionate, lively temperament, keenly susceptible to the pleasures of society, I was obliged at an early age to isolate myself, and to pass my life in loneliness.
"When I at times endeavoured to surmount all this, oh, how rudely was I thrust back again by the experience—the doubly painful experience—of my defective hearing! and yet it was impossible for me to say to people, Speak louder, shout; for I am deaf! Alas! how could I proclaim the weakness of a sense which ought to have been with me in a higher degree than with others—a sense which I once possessed in the greatest perfection—and to an extent which few of my profession enjoy, or ever have enjoyed! Oh, this I cannot do! Forgive me, therefore, when you see me turn away where I would gladly mingle with you. My misfortune is doubly painful to me, inasmuch as it causes me to be misunderstood. For me there can be no relaxation in human society, no refined conversations, no mutual outpourings of thought. Like an exile must I live. Whenever I come near strangers, I am seized with a feverish anxiety from my dread of being exposed to the risk of betraying my condition.