As a natural consequence of his affliction, he soon became unable to conduct his own orchestral works. This, however, was no great loss, for he had never possessed either the self-possession or the experience necessary to wield the bâton satisfactorily. Knowing thoroughly as he did what every instrument had to say, he listened excitedly for each in detail—without calmly attending to the effect of the whole; at each crescendo he would rise as if about to fly, gesticulating so rapidly and energetically that the members of the orchestra (who had enough to do to follow such new and peculiar music) were often more bewildered than guided by his directions. At the same time be it distinctly understood that, however low the performance might fall beneath his "ideal," however vexatious the mistakes of individual performers might be, he never lost his temper so far as to act in the manner related by Ries in his Notices, of which the following is a specimen:—
"Beethoven was present at the first performance of his Fantasia for pianoforte, orchestra, and chorus. The clarinettist, in a passage where the beautiful subject of the finale has already entered, made by mistake a repetition of eight bars. As very few instruments are heard at this point, the error in the execution was torturing to the ear. Beethoven rose furiously, turned round, and insulted the musicians in the grossest manner, and so loudly that it was heard by the whole audience. Then, resuming his seat, he exclaimed, "From the beginning!" The movement was recommenced, and this time all went well, and the success was brilliant. But when the concert was over, the artists recollected only too well the honourable titles by which Beethoven had publicly addressed them; and, as if the matter had but that moment occurred, became excessively angry, and vowed never to play again when Beethoven was in the orchestra, &c., &c."
That the clarinettist did make a mistake is true, but that Beethoven behaved in the outrageous way described was most positively denied by all who were present on the occasion, including the conductor, Franz Clement. Where Ries got the story from is difficult to imagine, since he was himself in St. Petersburg at the time. On the contrary, the members of the orchestra were all on excellent terms with Beethoven, who prized their approval far more than that of the general public; and was wont, when particularly pleased with a performance, to turn round, his face beaming with delight, and exclaim, "Bravi, tutti!" But woe betide those who dared to question the effect of the new and somewhat startling combinations which he introduced! Ries found this out to his cost. At the unexpected entrance of the horn in the Allegro of the Eroica, he—as usual, beside his master in the orchestra—exclaimed, "How abominably wrong!" for which outburst he was nearly rewarded by a box on the ear.
Pianoforte playing, improvisation, and orchestral conducting were given up one after the other—not suddenly, for Beethoven was resolved to defy his fate as long as possible,—but henceforth it is with Beethoven the composer alone that we have to do.
The autumn of 1802 saw him so far restored as to be able to commence his great work on Napoleon, which, however, on account of many interruptions, was not finished until the year 1804.
In 1802 he writes thus to his publisher, Hofmeister, who had requested him to compose a sonata of a revolutionary tendency:—"Are you riding to the devil in a body, gentlemen, that you propose to me to write such a sonata? At the time of the revolutionary fever it might have done, but now, when everything is once more in the beaten track, when Bonaparte has signed the Concordat with the Pope—now such a sonata! If it had been a missa pro Sancta Maria a tre voci, or a Vesper, I would immediately have taken pen in hand and written in ponderous notes a Credo in unum,—but, good heavens! such a sonata in these fresh, dawning Christian times! Ho! ho! I'll have nothing to do with it!" and yet at this very time he must have been busy with a work destined to the honour of the great Disturber of the Peace of Europe. The idea for this emanated originally from General Bernadotte, the French Ambassador at Vienna—a great admirer of the composer,—and was in reality warmly entered into by Beethoven, who, with his red-hot Republicanism and love for Plato, was an enthusiastic supporter of the First Consul, and imagined nothing less than that it was Napoleon's intention to remodel France according to the Platonic method, and inaugurate a golden age of universal happiness. With the news of the empire came the destruction of this elysian prospect,—Beethoven in a fury tore to pieces the title-page of his symphony on which was written simply,—
"Bonaparte.
"Luigi v. Beethoven;"
and stamping it under foot, showered a volley of imprecations on the head of the tyrant who had played so false a game.
No persuasion could induce him at first to publish the work, but after the lapse of some years this masterpiece of ideal writing was given to the world under the title of "Sinfonia Eroica per festegiare il sovvenire d'un grand' uomo." Great man as Napoleon had been in Beethoven's estimation, he never could think of him otherwise than with detestation, till the sudden collapse of the Napoleonic idea in 1815, and the death of its promoter in 1821, changed his wrath into a kind of grim commiseration, which he showed by remarking that he had "seventeen years before composed the music suited to this catastrophe!" meaning the Funeral March in the Eroica.
This, the first great manifesto of the Sovereign of the World of Sound, was a wonderful advance on the first two symphonies, produced somewhere about the years 1800-1802. In these he took up the art where Haydn and Mozart had left it; but, "though he could dally and tarry awhile with them, he would not remain with them;" his greater earnestness impelled him on to realms unknown to them, to conquest compared with which theirs faded into comparative insignificance.