This was the time of the struggles with the mother of his “son” and of the heartfelt sorrow he had to endure on account of the moral ruin of the poor boy himself, who, always going from the one to the other, did not really know to whom he belonged, and who, therefore, deceived both. “From the heart—may it in turn appeal to hearts!” He wrote these words on the score of the mass; and Schindler, who was now his companion, says that “the moment he began this work his whole nature seemed to change.” He would sit in the eating-house sunk in deep thought, forget to order his meals, and then want to pay for them. “Some say he is a fool,” wrote Zelter to Goethe in 1819. And Schindler tells us “he actually seemed possessed in those days, especially when he wrote the fugue and the Benedictus.” That fugue, Et vitam senturi (life everlasting!) is the climax of the work, since the depiction of the imperishableness and inexhaustibleness of Being was what Beethoven’s powerful mind was most used to. The wonderful Benedictus, (Blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lord) whose tones seem to float down from heaven to earth, the bestowal of help from on high, was subsequently the model used by Wagner for his descent of the Holy Grail, the symbol of divine grace, in the prelude to the Lohengrin. “When I recall his state of mental excitement, I must confess that I never before, and never after this period of his complete forgetfulness of earth, observed anything like it in him.” So says Schindler. They had gone to visit him in Baden, near by, whither he repaired in the interest of his health, and where he loved so well to “wander through the quiet forest of firs” and think out his works. It was four o’clock in the afternoon. The door was closed, and they could hear him “singing, howling, stamping” at the fugue. After they had listened to this “almost horrible” scene, the door opened, and Beethoven stood before them, with trouble depicted on his countenance. He looked as if he had just gone through a struggle of life and death. “Pretty doings here; everybody is gone, and I have not eaten a morsel since yesterday noon,” he said. He had worked the previous evening until after midnight; and so the food had grown cold and the servants left in disgust.

His work assumed greater and greater dimensions as he himself gradually rose to the full height of the subject. He no longer thought of completing it for the installation ceremonies. It became a grand fresco painting—a symphony in choruses on the words of the mass. He now began to work more calmly, and to compose at intervals other works, in order to quiet his over-excited mind and to earn a living for his “dear” nephew. And thus, while he was composing his mass, he produced not only the Variirten Themen, op. 105 and 107, which Thompson, of Edinburg—who had sent Beethoven the Scotch songs like op. 108 to be arranged—had ordered, but also the three Last Sonatas, op. 109, dedicated to Bettina’s niece, Maximiliane Brentano, to whose excellent father he was indebted for ready assistance during these years of his pecuniary embarrassment; also op. 110, which was finished at Christmas, 1821, as op. 111 was on the 13th of January, 1822. It is said that he entertained a higher opinion himself of these sonatas than of his previous ones. They are greatly superior, however, only in some of their movements; and they are written in the grand, free style of that period, especially the arietta in the last opus, the variations of which are real pictures of his own soul. In the intervals between them, however, we find some trifles such as the Bagatellen, op. 119, which his pecuniary condition made it imperative he should compose, since, “as a brave knight by his sword, he had to live by his pen.” And even the “33 Veraenderungen” (variations), op. 120, on the works of Diabelli, of the year 1822-23, are more the intellectual play of the inexhaustible fancy of an artist than the work of the genuine gigantic creative power which Beethoven undoubtedly possessed. He had overtaxed his strength working on the mass, and thus exhausted it for a moment. The two chorus-songs, op. 121b and op. 122, the Opferlied and Bundeslied, which date from the year 1822-23, bear the stamp of occasional compositions, which they, in fact, are.

But in the meantime the lion had roused himself again. He now only needed to give the finishing touch to the Mass, and in the spring of 1823 the entire work was completed. The summer of 1822 found him fully engaged on the composition of that monument to his genius, the Ninth Symphony. Freedom from the torment of exhausting labor, and the entire surrender of himself to “his own style,” gave his fancy back its old elasticity and all its productive power. Scarcely any year of his life was more prolific of works than this year 1822.

“Our Beethoven seems again to take a greater interest in music, which, since the trouble with his hearing began to increase, he avoided almost as a woman-hater avoids the sex. To the great pleasure of all, he improvised a few tunes in a most masterly manner.” Thus do we read in the Leipzig Musikzeitung, in the spring of 1822, and the Englishman, John Russell, gives us a charming description of such an evening in the Cotta Beethovenbuch. Weisse’s droll poem, Der Kuss (the kiss) op. 128, is found among the serious sketches of this year. And now he received a whole series of commissions. An English captain, named Reigersfeld, wanted a quartet, and Breitkopf and Haertel an operatic poem worthy of his art, before he “hung up his harp forever.” Others asked for other kinds of music. “In short,” he writes to his brother Johann, “people are fighting to get works from me, happy, unhappy man that I am. If my health is good, I shall yet be able to feather my nest.” Friederich Rochlitz brought him, too, a commission from Breitkopf and Haertel to write “music for Faust.” Rochlitz gives us a very interesting account of Beethoven’s appearance and whole mode of life at this time. Not Beethoven’s neglected, almost savage exterior, he says, not his bushy black hair, which hung bristling about his head, would have stirred him; what stirred him was the whole appearance of the deaf man who, notwithstanding his infirmity, brought joy to the hearts of millions—pure, intellectual joy. But when he received the commission, he raised his hand high up and exclaimed: “That might be worth while. But I have been intending for some time to write three other great works—two great symphonies, very different from each other, and an oratorio. I shudder at the thought of beginning works of such magnitude. But once engaged on them, I shall find no difficulty.” He spoke of the Ninth Symphony, to which he had now begun to give the finishing touches, in all earnestness.

This was interrupted for a short time by the overture, Zur Weihe des Hauses (op. 124), for the opening of the renovated Josephstadt theater with the “Ruins of Athens,” of 1812. It is the portal to the temple in which art is praised as something consecrated to the service of mankind—as a thing which may lift us for blissful moments into the region of the purifying and elevating influences of higher powers. Even in this work, which dates from September, 1822, we may hear the solemn sound and rhythm of the Ninth Symphony. And, indeed, after a memorandum on the “Hungarian Story,” we find in the sketches of it the words, “Finale, Freude schoener Goetterfunken,” together with the wonderfully simple melody itself, which sounds to humanity’s better self like the music of its own redemption. Beethoven’s own nature was deeply moved at this time. Weber’s Freischuetz, with Wilhelmine Schroeder, afterwards so celebrated, had excited the greatest enthusiasm. Rossini’s reception in Vienna was “like an opeotheosis;” and Beethoven was determined to let the light of his genius shine forth, which he could do only by writing a work “in his own style.” The world was “his for another evening,” and he was anxious to turn that evening to account. And, indeed, had he not a world of sorrows to paint—sorrows which actual life had brought to him? He had also a world of joys—joys vouchsafed to him by his surrendering of himself to a higher life.

An incident which occurred during this fall of 1822 tells us something of this gloomy night of his personal existence. Young Schroeder-Devrient, encouraged by her success with Pamina and Agathe, had chosen the Fidelio for her benefit, and Beethoven himself was to wield the baton. Schindler tells us how, even during the first scene of the opera, everything was in confusion, but that no one cared to utter the saddening words: “It’s impossible for you, unfortunate man.” Schindler finally, in response to Beethoven’s own questioning, wrote something to that effect down. In a trice, Beethoven leaped into the parterre, saying only: “Quick, out of here!” He ran without stopping to his dwelling, threw himself on the sofa, covered his face with his two hands, and remained in that position until called to table. But, even at table, he did not utter a word. He sat at it, the picture of the deepest melancholy. Schindler’s account of the incident closes thus: “In all my experience with Beethoven, this November day is without a parallel. It mattered not what disappointments or crosses misfortune brought him, he was ill-humored only for moments, sometimes depressed. He would, however, soon be himself again, lift his head proudly, walk about with a firm step, and rule in the workshop of his genius. But he never fully recovered from the effect of this blow.”

The performance itself brought out, for the first time, in all its completeness, musico-dramatic art, in the representation of the scene, “Kill first his wife.” Richard Wagner, who has so highly developed this musico-dramatic art, admits that he acquired the real idea of plastic shaping for the stage from Schroeder-Devrient. To it, also, Beethoven, owed it that he was invited, during the same winter (1822-23), to compose a new opera. It was Grillparzer’s Melusine, but the intention to compose it was never carried into effect.

We have now reached the zenith of the life of Beethoven as an artist. Besides the Ninth Symphony, he finished only the five last quartets which beam in their numerous movements like “the choir of stars about the sun.” The welcome incentive to the composition of these last came to him just at this time from the Russian, Prince Gallitizin, who gave him a commission to write them, telling him at the same time to ask what remuneration he wished for his work. But the Symphony filled up the next following year, 1823. Nothing else, except the “fragmentary ideas” of the Bagatellen, op. 126, engaged him during that time.

“To give artistic form only to what we wish and feel, that most essential want of the nobler of mankind,” it is, as he wrote himself to the Archduke at this time, that distinguishes this mighty symphony, and constitutes, so to speak, the sum and substance of his own life and intuition. This symphony was soon connected in popular imagination with Goethe’s Faust, as representing the tragic course of human existence.

And when we hear in mind how closely related just here the musician was to the poet, this interpretation of the work, given first by Richard Wagner on the occasion of its presentation in 1846 in Dresden, seems entirely warranted. What was there of which life had not deprived him? The words it had always addressed to him were these words from Faust: Entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren (renounce thou must, thou must renounce). He now wished to paint a full picture of this vain struggle with relentless fate in tones, and what he had just gone through in his own experience enabled him to do it in living colors. All the recollections of his youth crowded upon him. There were the “pretty lively blonde” whom he had met in Bonn; Countess Giulietta, who had a short time before returned to Bonn with her husband; and his “distant loved one” in Berlin! A promenade through the lovely Heiligenstadt valley, in the spring of 1823, brought to his mind anew pictures of the reconciling power of nature, as well as of the Pastorale and the C minor symphony. He was now able to form an idea of their common meaning, and to put an interpretation on them very different from his first idea and first interpretation of them. He began to have a much deeper insight into the ultimate questions and enigmas of existence.