But to continue our biography.
When, after a violent contest with the mother, he was made sole guardian of his nephew, and could then call him his own, he seems, as a lady whose diary is embodied in the little book Eine stille Liebe zu Beethoven, informs us, to gain new life. He devoted himself heart and soul to the boy, and he wrote, or was unable to write, according as the care of his nephew brought him joy or sorrow. We can readily understand how it came to pass that he now penned the words found by the lady just mentioned, in a memorandum book of his: “My heart overflows at the aspect of the beauties of nature—and this without her.” His “distant loved one” was still to him the most valued possession of his life—more to him, even, than himself.
He had now in view several great projects—among them an opera, Romulus, by Treitschke, and an oratorio for the recently founded “Society of the Friends of Music,” in Vienna. The latter failed, through the niggardliness of the directors, and the former was not finished, although our artist never gave up the intention of completing it. In the autumn of 1816, an English general, Kyd, asked Beethoven to write a symphony, for two hundred ducats. But as the general wanted it written in the style of his earlier works, Beethoven himself refused to accept the commission. Yet this narrow English enthusiast had excited Beethoven’s imagination with glowing accounts of the harvest of profit he might reap in England, and as Beethoven had recently sold many of his works there, and as, besides, the new “Philharmonic Society” had handsomely remunerated him for these overtures, his intention of crossing the Channel began to assume a more definite form. His Schlachtsymphonie (battle-symphony), especially, had already met with a very flattering reception in England. And a project was on foot in that country, even now, to give him a “benefit” by the production of his own works; and such a “benefit” was actually given for him there when he was on his death-bed. He wrote in 1816 that it would flatter him to be able to write some new works, such as symphonies and an oratorio, for the Society which embraced a greater number of able musicians than almost any other in Europe.
His diary covering this period to 1818, published in the work Die Beethovenfeier und die deutsche Kunst, because of the many items of interest it has in it, contains these characteristic lines: “Drop operas and everything else. Write only in your own style.” But even the sketches of the Seventh Symphony had the remark accompanying them: “2. Symphony in D minor,” and those of the eighth: “Symphony in D minor—3. Symphony.” Belonging to the years succeeding 1812, we find drafts of the scherzo of the Ninth Symphony. The headings above given undoubtedly had reference to this last, but the sketches of the first movement, decisive of the character of such a work, are not to be found until the year 1816, but then they are found with the physiognomy so masculine and so full of character which distinguishes this “symphony for London.” He once said of Englishmen that they were, for the most part, “clever fellows;” and he—of whom Zelter wrote to Goethe, that “he must have had a man for his mother”—felt that, in England, he, as a man, had to do with men, and, as an artist, to enter the list with Handel, whose own powerful influence was due to his decided manfulness of character. And then, had not England produced a tragic poet like Shakespeare, whom Beethoven loved above all others? Deep, tragic earnestness, and a masculine struggle with fate, are here the fundamental tone and design of the whole. “And then a cowl when thou closest thy unhappy life”—such is the conclusion of the lines quoted above, in which he says that he must write “only in his own style.”
And now, in July, 1817, came from London the “direct commission” he had so long endeavored to obtain. The Society desired to send him a proof of their esteem and gratitude for the many happy moments his works had given them to enjoy, and invited him to come to London to write two great symphonies, promising him an honorarium of three hundred pounds sterling. Beethoven immediately accepted the commission, and assured them that he would do his very best to execute it—honorable as it was to him, and coming as it did from so select a society of artists—in the worthiest manner possible. He promised to go to work immediately. “He believed that he could nowhere receive the distinction which his gigantic genius—in advance of his age by several centuries—deserved, as he could in Great Britain. The respect shown him by the English people, he valued more than that of all Europe besides. The feeling he had of his own powers may, indeed, have contributed to make him prefer the English nation to all others, especially as they showered so many marks of distinction on him.” Thus writes one of his most intimate friends in Vienna, Baron Von Zmeskall, already mentioned; and certain it is that he did his very best on this work. It, as well as the symphony in C minor, is of the true Beethoven type—more so, perhaps, than any other of his works—the full picture of his own personal existence and of the tragedy of human life in general. This work was followed by the Tenth Symphony, the “poetical idea,” at least, of which we know. The first movement was intended to represent a “feast of Bacchus,” the adagio a cantique ecclesiastique, a church hymn, and the finale the reconciliation of the antique world, which he esteemed so highly with the spirit of Christianity, into the full depth of which he came to have a deeper insight every day that passed. We see that he had lofty plans, and that no poet ever soared to sublimer heights than he. We must bear these great plans and labors of Beethoven in mind if we would rightly understand his subsequent life—if we would comprehend how, in the desolate and distracted existence he was compelled henceforth to lead, he did not become a victim of torpidity, but that, on the contrary, the elasticity of his genius grew greater and greater, and that his creations gained both in depth and perfection.
Thus do we see with our own eyes at least one of his works born of his own life.
The songs Ruf von Berge and So oder so, were composed in the winter of 1816-17; and in the following spring, after the sudden death of one of his friends, the chorus Rasch tritt der Tod, from Schiller’s Tell. “O God, help me! Thou seest me forsaken by all mankind. O hard fate, O cruel destiny! No, no, no, my unhappy condition will never end. Thou hast no means of salvation but to leave here. Only by so doing canst thou rise to the height of thy art. Here thou art immersed in vulgarity. Only one symphony, and then away, away, away!” Thus does he write in his diary. He next, in 1817, finished the quintet fugue, op. 137, and, in 1818, the great sonata for the Hammer-clavier, op. 106. The adagio of the latter is the musical expression of earnest prayer to God. Its first movement shows how he had soared once more to the heights of his art. “The sonata was written under vexatious circumstances,” he says to his friend Ries; and to a younger fellow-artist, the composer Schnyder von Wartensee: “Go on. There is no calmer, more unalloyed or purer joy than that which arises from ascending higher and higher into the heaven of art.” Such, too, was his mood in those days when he promised his friend Zmeskall the trio for the piano in C minor, his op. 1, worked over into the quintet op. 104; for he wrote: “I rehearse getting nearer the grave, without music, every day.” In keeping with this is the song, Lisch aus, mein Licht, “Put out my light,” which also belongs to this period. The supplication: “O hear me always, Thou unspeakable One, hear me, thy unhappy creature, the most unfortunate of all mortals,” found in his diary, belongs to this same time. It is now easy to see that he was in a very suitable frame of mind when he resolved, in 1818, to write a solemn mass for the occasion of the inauguration of his distinguished pupil as Archbishop of Olmutz. It was the “little court,” the “little orchestra” for which he wished to write the music “for the honor of the Almighty, the Eternal, the Infinite;” for the Archduke thought of making him his capellmeister there. After four years’ labor, the Missa Solemnis, op. 123, was finished. Beethoven called it “l’œuvre le plus accompli, my most finished work.” And, like the Fidelio, it is deserving of this characterization, but more on account of the pains taken with it and the labor expended on it than of its matter.
“Sacrifice again all the trivialties of social life to thy art. O, God above all! For Providence eternal omnisciently orders the happiness or unhappiness of mortal men.” With these words from the Odyssey, he resolved to consecrate himself to this great work. And it was a resolve in very deed. For, as in opera, he knew that he was here bound by traditionary forms—forms which, indeed, in some details afforded rich food to his own thoughts, but which, on the whole, hindered the natural flow of his fancy. We now approach a period in Beethoven’s life in which he was strangely secluded from the world. The painter, Kloeber, the author of the best known portrait of Beethoven, and which is to be found in Beethoven’s Brevier—it was painted during the summer of 1818—once saw him throw himself under a fir tree and look for a longtime “up into the heavens.” In some of the pages of his written conversations—for it was now necessary for him to have recourse to putting his conversations on paper more frequently on account of his increasing deafness—he wrote in the winter of 1819-20: “Socrates and Jesus were patterns to me;” and after that: “The moral law within us and the starry heavens above us.—Kant!!!” Just as on the 4th of March, 1820, he wrote:
“Ernte bald an Gottes Thron
Meiner Leiden schoenen Lohn.”