The Austrian imperial couple, their daughter, the Empress of France, the King of Saxony, the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, and a great many Princes were there. The company already in the place was joined by Goethe, the jurist Savigny and his brother-in-law, A. von Arnim, together with his charming wife, Bettina. Beethoven himself writes on the 12th of August, 1812, to his Archduke in Vienna:
“I was in Goethe’s company a great deal.” And the poet, writing to Zelter, passes the following judgment on Beethoven: “I became acquainted with Beethoven in Teplitz. His wonderful talent astounded me. But, unfortunately, he is an utterly untamed character. He is not, indeed, wrong in finding the world detestable. Still, his finding it detestable does not make it any more enjoyable either to himself or to others. But he is very excusable and much to be pitied. His hearing is leaving him. He is by nature laconic, and this defect is making him doubly so.”
The remarkable incident related in the third letter to Bettina, a letter which has been widely read and the authenticity of which has been much contested—for the original does not seem to be extant—Bettina herself describes in a letter to Pueckler-Muskau. Goethe, she says, who had received many marks of attention from the Princes present, was desirous of testifying his special devotion to the Empress, and in “solemn, unassuming expressions” signified to Beethoven that he should do the same. But Beethoven replied: “What! You must not do so. You must let them clearly understand what they possess in you; for if you do not, they will never find it out. I have taken quite a different course.” And then he told how his Archduke once sent him word to wait, and how, instead of doing so, he went away. Princes might indeed, he said, decorate one with the insignia of an order, or make a man a court counsellor, but they could never make a Goethe or a Beethoven. To such men they owed respect. The whole court now came in. Beethoven said to Goethe: “Keep my arm; they must make way for us.” But Goethe left him and stood aside with his hat in his hand, while Beethoven, with folded arms, went through the midst of them and only touched his hat. The court party separated to make place for him, and they had all a friendly greeting for our artist. He stood and waited at the other end for Goethe, who bowed profoundly as the court party passed him. Now Beethoven said: “I have waited for you, because I honor and respect you, as you deserve, but you have done them too much honor.” Then, it is said, Beethoven ran to them, and told them all that had happened.
That his behavior, on this occasion, was not by any means dictated by any over-estimation of himself, but by a deep human feeling of equality—an equality which the artist finds it harder than any one else to assert and acquire—the whole course of Beethoven’s life, as well as his intercourse with people at this bathing place at Teplitz, proves. He there found Miss Sebald again. A series of very tender notes written to her tells us of his heartfelt and good understanding with this refined and clever North German lady, who made greater allowances for his natural disposition than were wont to be made. He writes in 1816: “I found one whom, I am sure, I shall never possess.” His admission that, for five years—that is from 1811,—he had known a lady to be united to whom he would have esteemed it the greatest happiness he could have on earth, was made in this same year. But, he added, that was a happiness not to be thought of; union with her was an impossibility, a chimera! And yet he closed with the words: “It is still as it was the first day I saw her. I cannot dismiss the thought of her from my mind.” He did not know that Amalie Sebald had been the wife of a councillor of justice named Krause. Again did he give vent to his feeling in the songs An die ferne Geliebte—“to the distant loved one”—which bear the date; “in the month of April, 1816.”
This was the last time that Beethoven seriously concerned himself about marriage. Fate would indeed have it that he should soon become a “father,” but without a wife. Yet no matter what the personal wishes of our artist through the rest of his life may have been, or what the wants he felt, his eye was ever fixed on a lofty goal; and it was in the ideal world that he found his real friends. He finished the seventh symphony, and after it the eighth, in this fall of 1812. The coquettish allegretto scherzando of the latter was suggested by the Maelzl metronome invented a short time before, and the strange minuet with its proud step is a hit at the high court society whom Beethoven so solemnly warned that the times of the old regime, when the principle l’état c’est moi obtained in society, were passed. These works are clearly expressive of the free and progressive spirit of a new and better age. It was the seventh symphony especially that, in the broadest sense, opened to Beethoven himself the hearts of that age. This symphony helped celebrate the newly-won peace established by the Congress of Vienna. Beethoven now entered a new stage of development, and rose to his full height as an artist and a man. Other works composed by Beethoven during this period are the following: 82 variations (1806-7); In questa tomba (1807); Sonatine (op. 79); variations op. 76 and Lied aus der Ferne (composed 1809); Die laute Klage (probably 1809); Sextett op. 8b. Andenken, Sehnsucht by Goethe; Der Liebende, Der Juengling in der Fremde (appeared in 1810); three songs by Goethe, op. 83, (composed in 1810); Scotch songs (commenced in 1810); four ariettes, op. 82, (appeared 1811); trio in one movement and three equale for four trombones, (composed in 1812) the latter of which was re-arranged as a dirge for Beethoven’s burial.
CHAPTER IV.
1813-1823.
THE MISSA SOLEMNIS AND THE NINTH SYMPHONY.
Resignation—Pecuniary Distress—Napoleon’s Decline—The Battle-Symphony—Its Success—Beethoven’s Own Estimate of It—Wellington’s Victory—Strange Conduct—Intellectual Exaltation—His Picture by Letronne—The Fidelio Before the Assembled Monarchs—Beethoven the Object of Universal Attention—Presents from Kings—Works Written in 1814 and 1815—The Liederkreis—Madame von Ertmann—His Nephew—Romulus and the Oratorio—His “Own Style”—Symphony for London—Commission from London—Opinion of the English People—His Songs—His Missa Solemnis—His Own Opinion of It—Its Completion—Characteristics—The Ninth Symphony.
“Resignation, the most absolute and heartfelt resignation to thy fate! Thou shouldst not live for thyself, but only for others. Henceforth there is no happiness for thee, but in thy art. O God, grant me strength to conquer myself. Nothing should now tie me to life.” With this cry of the heart, taken verbatim from his diary of 1812, Beethoven consecrated himself to the noble task which after this he never lost sight of—of writing “for the honor of the Almighty, the Eternal, the Infinite.”