CHAPTER I.
1770-1794
BEETHOVEN’S YOUTH AND EARLIEST EFFORTS.
Birth and Baptism—His Family—Young Beethoven’s Character—His Brothers Karl and Johann—Early Talent for Music—Appears in Public at the Age of Seven—Error as to His Age—Travels in Holland—Studies the Organ in Vienna—His Fame Foretold—His Personal Appearance—Meets Mozart—Mozart’s Opinion of Him—Maximilian, Elector of Cologne, and Mozart—Beethoven’s Intellectual Training—Madame von Breuning—First Love—Beethoven and Haydn—Compositions written in Vienna.
Ludwig van Beethoven was baptized in Bonn on the 17th of December, 1770. We know only this the date of his baptism, with any certainty, and hence the 17th of December is assumed to be his birthday likewise.
His father, Johann van Beethoven, was a singer in the chapel of the Elector, in Bonn. The family, however, had come originally from the Netherlands. Beethoven’s grandfather came to Bonn in 1732 after willfully leaving the parental roof in consequence of a quarrel. He had attracted attention as a bass singer in the church and the theater, and was made director of the court band in 1763. By his industry, he had founded a family, was earning a respectable livelihood, and had won for himself the personal regard of the community. He did, besides, a small business in wines, but this, which was only accessory to his calling as a musician, contributed to undermine both his own happiness and his son’s. His wife, Josepha Poll, fell a victim to the vice of intemperance, and, in consequence, it at last became necessary to confine her in a convent in Cologne. Unfortunately, the only surviving son inherited the vice of his mother.
“Johann van Beethoven was given to the tasting of wine from a very early age,” says the account of his playmates. It was not long before this weakness got the upper hand to such an extent that his family and home suffered greatly. It finally led to his discharge from his position. Stephan van Breuning, our own Beethoven’s friend in youth, saw him, on one occasion, liberate the drunken father out of the hands of the police in the public streets.
We here get a glimpse at a period in Beethoven’s youth, which put the strength of his mind as well as the goodness of his heart to the test. For in consequence of the very respectable position occupied by his grandfather, of his own early appointment as court organist, and of the rapid development of his talent, Beethoven soon enjoyed the society of the higher classes, and was employed in the capacity of musician in the families of the nobility and at court. Yet, we are told, whenever it happened that he and his two younger brothers were obliged to take their intoxicated father home, they always performed that disagreeable task with the utmost tenderness. He was never known to utter a hard or unkind word about the man who had made his youth so sunless, and he never failed to resent it when a third person spoke uncharitably of his father’s frailty. The reserve and a certain haughtiness, however, which marked his disposition as a youth and a man, are traceable to these early harsh experiences.
And who knows the complications which caused misfortune to get the upper hand here! True, we are told that “Johann van Beethoven was of a volatile and flighty disposition;” but even his playmates, when he was a boy, had nothing bad to say of his character. Anger and stubbornness seem, indeed, to have been the inheritance of his Netherland nature; and these our hero also displayed to no small extent. But while the grandfather had earned a very good position for himself, and always so deported himself that young Beethoven might take him as an example, and loved to speak of him as a “man of honor,” his father was never more than a singer in the chapel, on a small salary. But, notwithstanding his comparatively humble social position, he had made a mistake in marrying below his station.