"Heiligenstadt, 10th October, 1802.
"Thus I bid farewell to thee, mournfully enough. Even the dearest hope that I brought hither with me, the hope of being to a certain degree restored, has utterly forsaken me. As the leaves of autumn fall and wither, so has my hope faded. Almost as I came do I depart; even the lofty courage which inspired me during the lovely days of summer has vanished. Oh, Providence! vouchsafe to me one more day of pure happiness! The responsive echo of pure joy has been so long a stranger to my heart. When, when, O God! shall I again feel it in the temple of nature and man? Never? Ah! that would be too hard!"
(On the outside.)
"For my brothers Carl and——, to be read and fulfilled after my death."
Several writers have maintained that the consequences of Beethoven's deafness are plainly discernible in his compositions; that he lost all idea of harmonic relations, that his later works are mere incongruous, erratic fancies, devoid of form and melody, and, in short, compared to his former productions, what the second part of "Faust" is to the first.
Happily, such ideas—promulgated by theorists of the old school like Fétis, and dilettanti of the Mozart-Italian school like Oulibicheff—have now exploded, and the service rendered to Art by Beethoven's latest works—especially his pianoforte sonatas—is fully recognised. It is these which have brought the pianoforte to its present eminence as the most intellectual and ideal of all instruments, and which, by their depth of thought and loftiness of aim, have raised an insuperable barrier between the dilettante who trifles with music for amusement, and the artist who devotes his life to its cultivation as a God-appointed means of developing the divine in man.
At the same time we come upon passages here and there which Beethoven would, perhaps, have written otherwise, had his ear, as well as his mind, been sensitive to their effect.
It is not posterity that has been the loser by Beethoven's deafness; we, at least, ought to appreciate the "precious jewel" which his adversity carried within it, and has handed down to us. His contemporaries, however, had cause to lament, for in a few years it put a stop to all improvising and playing in public. We read, indeed, of a plan for an artistic tour with his pupil Ries, when the latter was to make all arrangements for concert-giving, and to play the pianoforte Concertos and other works, while Beethoven conducted and improvised—but the project never came to maturity. It was, in fact, impossible. Beethoven entirely lost the sensitiveness of touch which had once distinguished his playing from that of all contemporaries; and, in his efforts to extract some nourishment for his hungering ear, used to hammer the pianoforte so unmercifully as generally to break several strings. Nor could it be obviated by a special instrument constructed for himself, nor by a sound-conductor invented for him by the ingenious Graff.
A curious feature of his deafness was the gradual manner in which the auricular nerve decayed; he first lost the power of catching the higher notes of singers or instruments, as we have seen, while deep, low sounds were long audible to him; this may account for the prevalence of those deep-lying tones in almost all his later works, especially the Second Mass and the Ninth Symphony.