Life of Beethoven

by Ludwig Nohl

Our artist’s life, like that of a thousand others, thus proves the truth of the old saying: the course of true love never did run smooth. In his earlier biographies this episode has been treated as a great and even tragic event, because that remarkable letter to his “immortal love,” of which we shall yet have occasion to speak, was erroneously supposed to be addressed to Countess Guicciardi and to refer to this circumstance in his life. But although no more than an episode, Beethoven could here have mastered his feelings only by the full consciousness he now possessed of the duty he owed to his genius. As Liszt says, le genie oblige, and Beethoven felt that it was a duty genius owed to mankind to sacrifice mere ambition and even the heartfelt happiness that is born of love. The day before Guilietta’s wedding, he wrote to Macco, the painter: “You paint, and I shall compose music. In this way, we shall be immortal; yes, perhaps live forever.” And that our artist had some right to lay claim to such immortality is proved not only by his sonatas, which are little poems in themselves, by his songs and quartets, but by mighty and memorable works which reflect the world-soul. He was working on that grand creation, the Eroica. This sacrifice of his feelings may have been, and most likely was, forced upon him by the accident of the uncertainty of his position in life, but that it was not made without a struggle is manifest from his expression of contempt for Giulietta—mais je la méprisais but still more from the ideal of the value of faithful love which now became rooted in his soul, and which we see reflected in the Fidelio, that immediately followed the Eroica, and which presents us with the most beautiful of all female characters. In its composition, we find united that warmth of heart and that intellectual in sight so peculiarly Beethoven’s own, and which he so beautifully embodied in his art. On the golden background of his enthusiasm for “nobler and better things,” the sweet face of Leonore stands out in bold relief as the perfect type of human beauty.

Beethoven borrowed the tones of the Eroica from the elevating nature of humanitarian ideas transferred to the region of public life. The hero enters, touching with giant hands the foundations of human existence, which he wants to ameliorate by renewing them. And, indeed, the First Consul of the French Republic might very well suggest to him, at the beginning of this century, how heroes act, the jubilation with which nations greet them, how great existing institutions oppose their progress, and, finally, overthrow them in their might. The first movement of the Eroica describes the most varied events in the life of such a hero with a fullness of episode almost destructive of its form. In its climax, the real work of the hero is seen; the old order of things is heard crumbling and falling to pieces in its powerful and terrific syncopations and dissonant chords, to make place for a new existence, one more worthy of human beings. But, at the close of the movement, the victorious hero exultingly yokes the new order of things to his chariot. This is history, the world’s history in tones; and, for its sake, we may for the moment shroud the dearest longings of the heart in the dark robes of resignation.

Beethoven’s fancy as an artist fully comprehended the genius of liberty, at this time newly born into the world, and a new factor in the history of mankind. He understood, too, the tragic fate of all heroes—that they are destined, like all other mortals, to fall, and, though God-commissioned, to die, that their works may live and prosper. Bonaparte’s history also suggested the rhythm of the sublime and solemn step of the funeral march; for, since the days of Cæsar and Alexander, no man had stepped as did he through the spaces of the existing order of things. But Beethoven’s poetic fancy soared even now far beyond the reality that surrounded him. As early as 1802, he wrote to the music dealers in Leipzig, now so well known as the publishers of the Edition Peters: “Away with you all, gentlemen! To propose to me to write such a sonata! That might have done in the time when the Revolution was at fever heat, but now that everything has returned to the old beaten path, that Bonaparte has concluded a concordat with the Pope, to write such a sonata—away with you!” It is not Napoleon, therefore, who is here interred. It is not Napoleon for whom mankind weeps in the tones of this funeral march. It is the ever-living, ever-awakening hero of humanity, the genius of our race, that is solemnly borne to the grave to the rhythm of this wonderful march—a march which has in it something of the tragic pathos of a Shakespeare or an Æschylus. Beethoven in this march became a tragic writer of purely instrumental music, and gave evidence of that quality of soul which made him indifferent to “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”

The two last movements of the work do not convey so powerful an idea of heroic action. Was it that his powers of imagination flagged, or that the change in Napoleon’s career made him disgusted with the hero? We know that when, in the spring of 1804, the copy of the symphony was finished—the title, proudly and characteristically enough bearing only two names, “Buonaparte” at the top and “Luigi van Beethoven” at the bottom—and Beethoven heard of Napoleon’s elevation, he said: “Can it be that he is no more than an ordinary man? Now he, like others, will trample all human rights under foot, serve only his ambition and become a tyrant.” He tore the title page in two, threw the work on the floor and did not again look at it for a long time. When it appeared in 1806, it was under the name of the Sinfonia Eroica, “composed to celebrate the memory of a great man.” It was dedicated to Prince Lobkowitz, who purchased it and caused it to be performed before Prince Louis Ferdinand, in the fall of 1804. The Prince was so delighted with it that he had it played three times the same evening in immediate succession, which was a very great satisfaction to Beethoven.

There is a oneness of spirit in this instrumental fresco painting of a hero who strives and suffers for the sake of what is most precious to man, and in Beethoven’s only opera, the Fidelio, which made the latter the natural successor of the Eroica. Florestan dared “boldly to tell the truth,” and this, his entering the lists for right and freedom, incites his faithful wife, Leonore, to a truly heroic deed. Disguised in male attire, she enters the prison, and, just in the nick of time, casts herself between her beloved husband and his murderer. Her cry—which has in it much of the heroism of death—“kill first his wife,” is a bit of history showing the enthusiasm of the ideally great, as it is also the most intense dramatic representation, in tones, of the full energy of a woman’s love.

In a letter to Amenda, in 1801, he wrote: “I have composed music of every description, except operas and church music.” But even, a short time before this, he had something to do with the theater. He had written the ballet Prometheus, which represents in a sense, the history of the creation of man in choreographic pictures. The success of this work determined Schikaneder, well known to the readers of the life of Mozart, and who, at this time, had the direction of the newly-built theater in Vienna, to engage Beethoven at a large annual stipend. When this man, Schikaneder, in the same spring of 1803, saw that the oratorio Christus am Oelberge (Christ on the Mount of Olives) met with good success, although more theatrical than spiritual in its character, he commissioned him to write an opera also. The subject was, probably, Alexander—a very suitable one, considering Beethoven’s own heroic style, and his feeling at the time. But nothing came of it. There can be no doubt, however, that a piece which he had sketched and intended to make a part of it, the duet, O Namenlose Freude (O Nameless Joy), was afterwards embodied in the Fidelio. Beethoven had received a commission to write the latter from Baron von Braun, who had taken charge of the theater in Vienna, in the year 1804.

At this time, both the Abbe Vogler and Cherubini were writing for the Viennese. The compositions of the latter met with great success, and made a powerful impression on Beethoven. In these men he met with foes worthy of his steel, and inducements great enough to lead him to do his very best. His severe heart trials and consequent disappointment had taught him how lonely he was in the world. Breuning wrote of him in 1804: “You have no idea, my dear Wegeler, how indescribable, and, I might say, horrible an impression his partial loss of hearing has made on him.... What must be the feelings of one with such a violent temper, to meet with such a misfortune! And then his reserve, and his distrust frequently of his best friend!” A subject like that of the Fidelio must, of itself, have taken strong hold of a man like Beethoven, because of the powerful scene in which Leonore holds her mortal enemy, Pizarro, spell-bound, with the pistol in her hand. What must have most affected him here, however, was the ideal background of suffering for truth and freedom—for Pizarro was a tyrant—and the fact that a woman had the power that comes of genuine fidelity to avert every danger from her beloved husband, even at the risk of her own life. And Beethoven endowed the work with his exalted and almost transfigured background of feeling, by means of his music, which here depicts the constitution of his own nature, and his whole intellectual build. He accurately hits the decisive climax of the conflict, and gives to the principal actors so much of real personal character, that we cannot fail to recognize them, and to understand their action from their inner feelings. This, in connection with a very powerful declamation, is the continuation of the dramatic characteristics which we greet in the Fidelio. The development of the operatic form as such is not further carried on in this work. In his pure instrumental music, even more than in the Fidelio, Beethoven has given form to the language of the soul and to the great hidden springs of action of the world and human nature.

A period may come when stricter demands may be made on dramatic art, and when, as a consequence, this work may not have as much charm as it has for us, because of its fragmentary character. But be this as it may, in some of its details it will always appeal irresistibly to the finest feeling. We find in it passages like those in Beethoven’s improvisation which never failed to draw from his hearers tears of real happiness. The greater part of this language was, like Mozart’s Cantilene, rich in soul. Yet melodies like Komm, Hoffnung, lass den letzten Stern, In des Lebens Fruehlingstagen and O namen, namenlose Freude, are of such a character that “humanity will never forget them.” Like the Holy Grail, they furnish food and light at the same time, and, like certain forces, produce a greater yield in proportion as greater demands are made upon them. We frequently find in it expressions that are simply inimitable, and when this work is contemplated we see that it bears evidence of a profundity of soul and of a development of mind which separate—toto coelo—Beethoven from his predecessors, Mozart not excepted. Whole pieces in it are full of the deepest and warmest dramatic life, made up of the web and woof of the human soul itself. Such, for instance, are Wir muessen gleich zu Werke schreiten, the chorus of prisoners, the picture of Florestan’s dungeon, the digging of the grave, and above all the thrilling Toet’ erst sein Weib! (kill first his wife). But the center of all is, as may be seen from the innumerable and most refined traits of the music, Leonore, the pattern of heroic fidelity. Her character stirred Beethoven to the very depths of his soul, for her power of hope and her devotion to freedom were his own. The work itself was to be called Leonore, as, indeed, the first piano-score was called in 1810.

This work has a meaning in the life of our artist himself, greater, almost, than its importance as a work of art.

The work required, for its completion, only the spring and summer of the year 1805. The sketches of it show how carefully the file was used on its every part. Only the fire of enthusiastic devotion was able to smelt the ore of the separate arias, duets and terzettoes which make up the matter of the whole; but this it could not do here fully enough to produce that natural flow which dramatic taste even now demanded. Moreover, the storm of war broke upon Vienna and deprived Beethoven’s hearers of even the calm of devotion. The result was that only the prima donna Milder-Hauptmann satisfied the public in the character of Leonore. Besides, Beethoven, as a composer of purely instrumental music, had not paid sufficient attention to the demands of the human voice. On the 13th of October, 1805, Napoleon entered Vienna, and after the 20th the Fidelio was repeated three times; not, however, before the art lovers of Vienna, but before an audience composed of French officers. It was received with little applause, and after the first performance the house remained empty. Beethoven withdrew the work. But even the critics missed in it at this time “that certain splendor of originality characteristic of Beethoven’s works.” Our artist’s friends now gathered about him to induce him to make some abbreviations in the opera. This was at the house of Lichnowsky. Beethoven was never before seen so much excited, and were it not for the prayers and entreaties of the gentle and tender Princess Christiane, he would certainly have agreed to nothing. He consented at last to drop a few numbers, but it took six full hours to induce him to do even this. It is easy to explain this fact: the work was the pet child of his brain. Breuning now re-arranged the libretto. He made the acting more vivacious and Beethoven shortened the several pieces still more. The work proved more acceptable to the public, but Beethoven thought himself surrounded by a network of intrigue, and, as he had agreed only for a share in the profits, he once more withdrew the work. We hear no more of it until 1814. We shall see what effect its production had when we reach that date in Beethoven’s life.