To view the Lilypond source file, click [here].
The sonata in D major, composed six years later, opens with an interesting Allegro. The second movement, in B minor, bears the superscription "Wehklage" (Lamentation). Rust's eldest son, a talented youth, who was studying at Halle University, was drowned in the river Saale, 23rd March 1794. Matthisson, the "Adelaide" poet, sent to the disconsolate father a poem entitled "Todtenkranz für ein Kind," to which Rust sketched music, and on that sketch is based this pathetic movement, which sounds like some tone-poem of the nineteenth century. Here is the impressive coda:—
To hear this music (MIDI), click [here].
To view the Lilypond source file, click [here].
There follows a dainty, old-fashioned Minuet, and a curious movement entitled "Schwermuth und Frohsinn" (Melancholy and Mirth);[93] though after the "Wehklage" these make little impression.
During four years (1792-96), Rust was occupied with a sonata in C minor and major. The work is a remarkable one. It opens with an energetic Recitativo in C minor, interrupted for a few bars by an Arioso Adagio in C major. Then comes a Lento in six-four time based on the celebrated Marlbrook song, a dignified movement containing, among other canonic imitations, one in the ninth. It leads by means of a stringendo bar to a brilliant Allegro con brio, a movement of which both the music and the technique remind one of Beethoven's bravoura style. A second section of the sonata commences with the recitative phrase of the opening of the work, only in A minor. This leads to a highly characteristic Andante, which Dr. Rust, the editor, in a preface to the published sonata, likens to the "mighty procession" in Lenau's Faust. The Finale consists of an animated Allegro, with a clever fugato by way of episode; there is still an Allegro maestoso, which, except for its length and the fact that it contains a middle section, Cantabile e religioso, we should call a long coda. The whole, evidently programme-music, is a sonata worked out somewhat on Kuhnau lines.
Now, was Beethoven acquainted with Rust's music? Dr. Prieger, in the pamphlet mentioned above, remarks as follows:—"During the years 1807-27 Wilhelm Karl Rust (b. 1787, d. 1855), the youngest son of our master, was in Vienna, and had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of Beethoven, who was pleased with his playing, and recommended him as teacher. Among Rust's lady pupils were Baroness Dorothea Ertmann and Maximiliane Brentano, both of whom belonged to Beethoven's most intimate circle of friends, and had been honoured by having works dedicated to them. The younger Rust was gifted with an extraordinary memory, and therefore it seems more than probable that he occasionally performed some of his father's works in that circle. On the other hand, we have Beethoven's energetic nature holding aloof from anything which might influence his own individuality."
There, in a few words, is the answer to our question. And it is about the only one we can ever hope to obtain. Rust was altogether a remarkable phenomenon, a musician born, as it were, out of due time. If Beethoven, as seems quite possible, was acquainted with his music, then Rust exerted an influence over the master quite equal to that of Clementi. It almost seems as if we ought to say, greater.