Scientific knowledge, even in its most elementary form, was hardly presented to the notice of the young musician, and if at a later period any interest in such pursuits had arisen within him, he would have been obliged to dismiss it. On the other hand, he buried himself with his whole soul in the loftiest works of poetry, that second higher world, and always came back with renewed delight upon the works of Homer, Shakspere, Goethe, and Schiller. Many and varied were the influences which they exerted upon him. They were to him "intellectual wine," as Bettina once named his music. But those are completely mistaken who expect to find, either in them or anywhere else, positive expositions or elucidations of Beethoven's compositions, as some have occasionally attempted to do, building their theory partly on utterances of the master. When the latter refers the constantly inquiring secretary, Schindler (I know not on what occasion), to Shakspere's "Tempest," it was, after all, only an answer—nothing more. The awakening of pure musical imagination is just as inexplicable as are its results. One thing alone stands firm,—that which speaks to the heart, came from the heart,—but the life-blood which pulsates at the heart of the true artist is a thousand times more richly composed than that which flows in our veins. No æsthetic physiologist will ever be able to analyze it completely. And, in life, is it only the deep thoughts, the extraordinary occurrences, which call forth all our sensations, out of which alone our happiness and our misery are formed? Is not a calm, serene autumn day enough to entrance our inmost nature? a single verse to console us? the friendly glance of a maiden to throw us into the sweetest reverie? What trifling influences affect the eternally rising and falling quicksilver of our hopes! And thus the smallest occasions may have been sufficient to cause vibration in a soul so highly strung as Beethoven's. Most powerfully, however, in such a genius, worked the pure creative impulse, that eternally glowing fire in the deepest recesses of his nature, with its volcanic—but, in this instance, blissful eruptions.
We know that Beethoven proceeded as a young man to Vienna, which he never afterwards left. He found there (at least in the first half of his residence) enthusiastic admirers, intelligent friends, admission to distinguished circles, and lastly, that most necessary evil—money. Nobody will grudge to the lively, good-humoured, imperial city the fame of being able to designate as her own a brilliant line of our greatest tone-poets. But then she ought not to take it amiss that we should wonder how, within her walls, at that time, so magnificent an artistic development as Beethoven's should ever have been accomplished. Shall we say, not because, but—in spite of her? or shall we utter the supposition that no agglomeration of men can be sufficient for genius, since it treads a way of its own, which bears no names of streets? When, however, the question comes under discussion, of the relation of a great composer to that public among whom his lot is cast, we cannot deny that it is easier to understand how a Handel created his oratorios in the so-called unmusical London, than how Beethoven composed his symphonies in the musical Vienna of the period. The former found himself in London in the midst of a grand public life,—grand were the powers over which he held sway, like the continually increasing throngs of listeners who streamed to his performances. When, on the other hand, we hear of the difficulty with which Beethoven, during the course of a quarter of a century, succeeded in giving about a dozen concerts in which his Titanic orchestral poems were performed for the first time, we become faint at heart. And I cannot do otherwise than express my conviction that, under other conditions, no inconsiderable portion of his works, which are (to use Schumann's expression) veiled symphonies, would have revealed their true nature. The world of the musician would hardly have been more enriched thereby, but the musical public would have benefited. For millions would have been edified, where now hundreds torment themselves (with quartets and sonatas) for the most part in vain.
Yes! these symphonies and overtures, with their unpretending designations, are the first poems of our time, and they are national poems in a far truer sense than the songs of the Edda, and all connected with them, ever can or will be for us, despite the efforts of littérateurs and artists. Yes! in the soul of this Rhinelander, who every day inveighed against the town and the state in which he lived, who was zealous for the French Republic, and ready to become Kapellmeister to King Jerome—in this soul was condensed the most ideal Germania ever conceived by the noblest mind. With the poet we may exclaim, "For he was ours!"—ours through what he uttered—ours through the form in which he spoke—ours, for we were true to the proverb in the way we ill-treated and misunderstood him.
"Industry and love" Goethe claims for his countrymen. No artist ever exercised these qualities with regard to his art in a higher degree than did Beethoven. She was to him the highest good—no care, no joy of life could separate him from her. Neither riches nor honours estranged him from the ideal which he perceived and strove after so long as he breathed. He never could do enough to satisfy himself either in single works or in his whole career. He spared himself no trouble in order to work out his thoughts to the fullest maturity, to the most transparent clearness. To the smallest tone-picture he brought the fullest power. His first sketches, like the autographs of his scores, show in the plainest manner that inflexible persistency, that unwearied patience, which we presuppose in the scientific investigator, but which, in the inspired singer, fill us with astonishment and admiration. In all conflicts (and every artistic creation is a conflict) the toughest difficulty is to persevere.
Truth was a fundamental part of Beethoven's character. What he sang came from his deepest soul. Never did he allow himself to make concessions either to the multitude and its frivolity, or to please the vanity of executants. The courage which is bound up with this resembles the modest bravery of the citizen, but it celebrates even fewer triumphs than the latter.
Beethoven was proud, not vain. He had the consciousness of his intellectual power—he rejoiced to see it recognised—but he despised the small change of every-day applause. Suspicious and hasty, he gave his friends occasion for many complaints, but nowhere do we find a trace of any pretension to hero-worship. He stood too high to feel himself honoured by such proceedings; but, at the same time, he had too much regard for the independent manliness of others to be pleased with a homage which clashed against that.
What a fulness of the noblest, the sublimest conceptions must have lived and moved in him to admit of their crystallizing themselves into the melodies which transport us!—softness without weakness, enthusiasm without hollowness, longing without sentimentality, passion without madness. He is deep but never turgid, pleasant but never insipid, lofty but never bombastic. In the expression of love, fervent, tender, overflowing with happiness or with melancholy, but never with ignoble sensuality. He can be cordial, cheerful, joyful to extravagance, to excess—never to vulgarity. In the deepest suffering he does not lose himself—he triumphs over it. He has been called humorous—it is a question whether music, viewed in its immediateness and truth, be capable of expressing humour—yet it may be that he sometimes "smiles amid tears." With true majesty does he move in his power, in his loftiness, in the boldness of his action, which may rise to defiance—never to senseless licence. A little self-will shows itself here and there, but it suits him well, for it is not the self-will of obstinacy, but of striving. He can be pious, never hypocritical; his lofty soul rises to the Unspeakable; he falls on his knees with humility, but not with slavish fear, for he feels the divinity within. A trace of heroic freedom pervades all his creations, consequently they work in the cause of freedom. The expression, "Im Freien"—liberty! might serve as the inscription on a temple dedicated to his genius!
Like Nature herself, he is varied in his forms, without ever relinquishing a deep-laid, well-concerted basis; he is rich in the melodies which he produces, but never lavish; he acts in regard to them with a wise economy. In the working out of his thoughts he unites the soundest musical logic to the richest inventive boldness. Seldom only does he forget the words of Schiller,—"In what he leaves unsaid, I discover the master of style."
This wise economy does not forsake him either in the selection or the number of the organs which he employs. He avoids every superfluity, but the spirits of sound which he invokes must obey him. Nevertheless, not to slavish servitude does he reduce them; on the contrary, he raises them in their own estimation by that which he exacts from them. What might be urged against him, perhaps, is that he sometimes makes demands upon them to which they are not adequate, that his ideal conception goes beyond their power of execution.
He has spoken almost exclusively in the highest forms of instrumental music, and where, in one way or other, words are added to these, he has always been actuated by high motive. He sings of Love and Freedom with Goethe, of Joy with Schiller, of the heroism of Conjugal Love in "Fidelio;" in his solemn Mass he gives expression to all those feelings which force their way from man to his Maker.