Ein Engel, Leonoren, der Gattin so gleich,
Der führt mich zur Freiheit ins himmlische Reich.”
“What I now tell you,” he continues, “will never fade from my memory. Beethoven came to me in the evening. He read, ran up and down the room, murmured, growled, as he usually did instead of singing, and tore open the pianoforte. My wife had frequently begged him in vain to play. To-day he placed the text before him and began playing wonderful melodies, which unfortunately no charm could preserve. The hour passed. Beethoven, however, continued his improvisation. Supper was served but he would allow no one to disturb him. It grew quite late. He then put his arms about me and hurried home. A few days after the piece was finished.”
At this time he wrote to Brunswick: “My kingdom is in the air. My soul trills as the winds warble;” to Treitschke: “In short I assure you, the opera will win the crown of martyrdom for me.” Thus Leonore’s sorrows and victory found expression a second time; for now the so-called Fidelio overture (E major) was composed. At its performance on the 23d of May, 1814, Beethoven was after the very first act, enthusiastically called for and enthusiastically greeted. The applause increased with every succeeding performance.
Beethoven was now one of the best known characters in Vienna. He had, even before this, given several concerts of his own, and at several others music composed by him had been performed. His picture by Letronne appeared at this time. “It is as natural as life,” said Dr. Weissenbach. He had, on the 26th of September, received with his music of the Fidelio, the assemblage of monarchs who had come to attend the Congress of Vienna; and what was more natural than that he should now greet them with something new in the nature of festal music? He did this with the cantata, Der glorreiche Augenblick (“the glorious moment”) op. 136. The production of it took place in the ever memorable Academy, on the 29th of November, 1814, when Beethoven, before a “parterre of kings,” and what was more, before the educated of Europe, by the mere assistance of his art, helped celebrate the solemn moment which did away with oppression and tyranny and marked the beginning of a new and happier period. His audience was numbered by thousands, and “the respectful absence of all loud signs of applause gave the whole the character of worship. Every one seemed to feel that never again would there be such a moment in his life.” This extract is from Schindler’s account, yet, at certain places “the ecstasy of all present found expression in the loudest applause, applause which drowned the powerful accompaniment of the composer.” The Schlachtsymphonie (battle-symphony) as well as the seventh symphony, contributed to the achievement of this victory. After it was over, he wrote to the archduke: “I am still exhausted by fatigue, vexation, pleasure and joy.” But to get an idea of the overpowering impression made on him by those days, we must refer to his diary of the following spring, when all that he had then experienced took a definite form in his feelings and consciousness. He then writes:
“May all my life be sacrificed to the sublime. May it be a sanctuary of art.... Let me live, even if I have to have recourse to ‘assistance,’ and such means can be found. Let the ear apparatus be perfected if possible, and then travel! This you owe to man and the Almighty. Only thus can you develop what is locked up within you. The court of a prince, a little orchestra to write music for, and to produce it, for the honor of the Almighty, the Eternal, the Infinite. Thus may my last years pass away, and to future humanity....”
He breaks off here as if he did not need to express an opinion on what he aimed at achieving and left after him as an inheritance. But the reputation which he had acquired is correctly described as “one of the greatest ever won by a musician.” And now, more than ever before, he was the object of universal attention, especially at the brilliant entertainments given by the Russian ambassador, count Rasumowsky, to the monarchs present, on one of which occasions he was presented to them. The Empress of Russia wished to pay him a special “compliment.” She did so at the palace of Archduke Rudolph, who thus helped celebrate the triumph of his honored teacher. At a court concert on the 25th of January, 1815, he accompanied the Adelaide for Florestan Wild himself; and Schindler closes his account of it with the words: “The great master recalled those days with much feeling, and with a certain pride once said that he had made the great pay their court to him, and that with them he had always preserved his dignity.” He thus verified what, as we saw alone, he had said to Goethe: “You must let them clearly understand what they possess in you.”
The “assistance” he longed for came in the form of presents from monarchs, especially of the “magnanimous” one of the Empress of Russia, for whom he, at that time, wrote the polonaise, op. 89. These presents enabled him to make a permanent investment of twenty thousand marks, which his friends were very much surprised to find he owned, after his death. But, although by “decree” he drew yearly the sum of 2,700 marks, his principal source of income continued to be derived from his intellectual labor; for his dearly beloved brother Karl died and left him, as an inheritance, so to speak, his eight-year-old son, named after his father—the mother not being a fit person to take care of the child, and, besides, not enjoying the best of reputations. Beethoven’s struggles for his “son,” the unfortunate nephew, with the mother, whom he was wont to call the “queen of the night,” filled the next succeeding years of his life with legal controversies and negotiations to such an extent that they seem to have hindered him in his work. Extreme trouble of mind, brought about by the social and political degeneration of Vienna immediately after the Congress, soon entirely obscured the lustre of the days we have just described; and it was only for short moments of time, as on the occasion of the celebrated concert of the year 1824, that we see his old pride and fame revive. The works performed at that concert were the Missa Solemnis and the Ninth Symphony. The former was a token of gratitude and devotion to the Archduke Rudolph, but at the same time a reflection of the soul of the artist himself as we have heard him describe it above. The symphony was written “for London;” whither in these saddening times his eyes were directed, and which, although he never undertook the contemplated journey thither, became the incentive to the composition of many important works.
Among the works which date from 1814 and 1815, we may mention the sonata, op. 90, a “struggle between the head and the heart,” addressed in the summer of 1814 to Count Moritz Lichnowsky on the occasion of his marriage to a Vienna singer; the song Merkenstein (op. 100), composed in the winter of 1814; Tiedge’s Hoffnung (op. 94), composed after the last court concert for the singer Wild; the chorus Meeresstille und Glueckliche Fahrt (op. 112), which was written in 1815, and in 1822, “most respectfully dedicated to the immortal Goethe;” lastly, the magnificent cello sonatas, op. 102, dedicated to Countess Erdoedy, who became reconciled with him once more during this winter, after there had been a variance between them for a time. He calls the first of these sonatas the “free sonata,” and, indeed, freedom now became the characteristic of his higher artistic pictures. The adagio of the second discloses to us, in the choral-like construction of its theme, the prevailing religious direction taken by his thoughts, which is also apparent in very many expressions and quotations to be found in his diary.
We have already mentioned the Liederkreis, op. 98. Beethoven worked at it and at the sonata op. 101 at the same time. The latter, an expression of the deepest poetry of the soul, was ready the following year, and was dedicated to Madame von Ertmann, his “dear Dorothea Caecilia,” who, because she thoroughly understood the meaning of Beethoven’s music, became a real propagandist of his compositions for the piano. In 1831, Mendelssohn could say that he had “learned much” from her deeply expressive execution. The noble lady had lost her only son during the absence of her husband in the wars of emancipation; and Beethoven had rescued her from a condition of mind bordering on melancholy, by coming to her and playing for her until she burst into tears. “The spell was broken.” “We finite creatures with an infinite mind are born only for suffering and for joy; and we might almost say that the best of human kind obtain joy only through their sorrow.” Thus spoke Beethoven to Countess Erdoedy, and this little incident confirms its truth. His own sufferings gave our artist the tones of his musical creations, and these creations were to him “the dearest gift of heaven,” and, as it were, a consolation from on high.