Beethoven, a character study; together with Wagner's indebtedness to Beethoven

by George Alexander Fischer

SENSE OF HUMOR

In tristitia hilaris, in hilaritate tristis.

—Motto of Giordano Bruno.

eethoven did not have much in the way of enjoyment, as the word is generally understood, to compensate him for the pain of existence. The resources vouchsafed others in this respect, family affection, love, friendship, generally failed him when put to the test. Out of harmony with the general order of things in the material world, the point in which he could best come to an understanding with his fellow-creatures was by the exercise of his sense of humor. The circumstances of his life tended to make a pessimist of him. He did not understand the world and was misunderstood in return. To counteract the tendency toward pessimism, his resource was to develop his sense of humor, to create an atmosphere of gayety, by which he was enabled to meet people on a common plane. But not only in the ordinary affairs of life does it stand him in good stead, this sense of humor. It comes out finely in his creative work in the sonatas and the Scherzo movements of his symphonies. He originated, invented the Scherzo, developing it from the simple minuet of the earlier composers. The primary object of the Scherzo was recreation pure and simple. It was introduced with the object of resting the mind.

The evolution of humor in music is an interesting subject of study. It is something foreign to it, an exotic, of slow growth, gaining but little in the hands of the earlier composers from Bach on. Even with Haydn it never advanced much beyond geniality. They had essayed it chiefly in the minuet, but succeeded only in producing something stately, in which the element of fun or humor, to modern ways of thinking is hardly appreciable. It found a sudden and wonderful expansion, an efflorescence in Beethoven, with whom every phase of the art was developed to colossal proportions. He has made of the Scherzo a movement of such importance that it lends a distinctive character to his symphonies. In this form he is unapproachable. In the whole range of music there is nothing like it elsewhere. It is peculiar to Beethoven, and is another example of the many-sidedness of the great composer. "Happiness is a new idea in Europe," said St. Just, speaking of the period immediately following the French Revolution. Whether or not Beethoven ever met with this remark, its significance at least was taken to heart. The word Scherz—joke, sport, is sufficiently obvious. He goes much farther at times than simply to play pranks, however. A wide range of expression is possible in the Scherzo when manipulated by a master-mind like that of Beethoven. The satirical, sarcastic humor which escaped him in social intercourse at times, is vented on a colossal scale in the Scherzo, in which he often makes sport of humanity itself, making it the subject of his jest, his ridicule—its foibles being shown up, its follies exposed. When projected in this mood, the movement calls for intellectual co-operation, and is of equal importance with the others.

Humor has been defined as the outcome of simplicity and philosophy in the character. It can exist independently of genius we know, but genius is never without humor. In other words, wherever there is a work of genius, it transpires that the author has a fund of humor with which he occasionally enriches his work. The profoundest philosophical treatises have it. It is a part of the stock in trade of every great novelist; Fielding, Thackeray, George Eliot, Walter Scott. It frequently comes to the surface in Schopenhauer pessimist though he be; it pervades Shakespeare. Few men regarded life with greater seriousness than Thoreau, but humor sparkles all over his works. It is only where this is in excess that it detracts from the value of the work. Not important in itself when separated from the deeper work which it accompanies, it is yet, all in all, one of the infallible tests, though a minor one, of the work of any man of genius. A sense of humor exists in the man even though he keep it out of his work, if he is good for anything.

Beethoven's humor was titanic, heroic, on a grand scale, always with what might be called a certain seriousness about it like that of a lion at play. Mozart gives many instances of humor in his compositions, but with a great difference in the character. His disposition was all gentleness and sweetness, and his humor is characterized by these attributes. It is on a small scale, and though enjoyable, has nothing commanding about it. The musician, more than any artist, reflects his character and trend of life in his work.

This sense of humor, inherent in the mental equipment of Beethoven, enabled him to enjoy a joke as well as give it, to perceive a ridiculous situation and extract due amusement from it, to appropriate it wherever he found it. But singularly enough, when the point of a joke was turned against himself, his sense of humor failed him utterly. He would often become angry in such cases and the perpetrator would come in for a round of abuse which made him chary of attempting it again.

Very bad music of which there was a sufficiency already in those times, gave him great amusement, which he manifested by roars of laughter, we are informed by Seyfried, who saw more or less of him during a period covering a quarter of a century. "All his friends," says Seyfried, "recognized that in the art of laughter, Beethoven was a virtuoso of the first rank." He often laughed aloud when nothing had occurred to excite laughter, and would in such case ascribe his own thoughts and fancies as the cause. Naïve and simple as a child himself, he could only see the naïveté in the worthless compositions above referred to, and could not understand the small ambition back of the pitiful effort. He often unintentionally afforded equally great amusement to others by his own naïveté. Thus he once told Stein, of the noted family of pianoforte makers that some of the strings in his Broadwood were out of order or lacking, and to illustrate it, caught up a bootjack and struck the keys with it. Ries states that Beethoven several times in his awkwardness emptied the contents of the ink-stand into the piano. On this same piano the master was often begged to improvise. The instrument was a present from the manufacturers, and when made, was probably the best example of its kind extant. It later came into the possession of Liszt.