Ist zu empfendlich für mein Herz!”[A]
His favored rival in Jeannette’s affections was a captain in the Austrian army, by the name of Greth. His name occurs, in 1823, in the written conversations of our deaf master. He was just as much taken with the sweet and beautiful Miss W. (Westherhold), but to no purpose. He called his love for her a “young Werther’s love,” and, many years after, he told B. Romberg a great many anecdotes about it. What he thought of his acquaintance with the Breuning family and these two young persons may be inferred from the words in which he dedicated the variations Se vuol ballare, to his friend Lorchen (Eleonore Breuning) in 1793: “May this work,” he says, “serve to recall the time when I spent so many and such happy hours in your home.”
Besides the home of the Breunings, in which Beethoven was always so welcome, we may mention another—that of Count Waldstein, to whom the sonata op. 23 is dedicated. The count was very friendly to Beethoven. He was aware of his genius, and, on that account, afforded him pecuniary assistance. Yet, to spare the artist’s feelings, this assistance was made to have the appearance of coming from the Elector. It may be that it was this same amiable and art-loving young Austrian who endeavored to keep Beethoven’s eye fixed on the one place in the world in which he could receive the final touch to his musical education,—Vienna. The very multitude of Beethoven’s ideas, and the height to which his intellect had soared, showed him that he was far from having reached perfection in the artistic representation of those ideas. His readiness of execution and his wonderful power of improvisation, even now, assured him victory wherever he went. But the small number of compositions which he wrote at this time, in Bonn, is sufficient proof that he did not feel sure of himself as a composer. And yet he had now reached an age at which Mozart was celebrated as a composer of operas.
In March, 1790, Haydn, on his journey to London, passed through Bonn, and was presented to the orchestra by Maximilian Francis, in person. He returned in the summer of 1792, and as Mozart had died in the meantime, nothing was more natural than that Beethoven should apply to the greatest living musician for instruction. The Elector assisted him; and we may divine how the young musician’s heart must have swelled, now that he had entered the real wrestling-place in his art, from what, as we stated before, he said to his teacher Neefe: “If I ever become a great man,” etc. But what was there that is not expected from such a person? Waldstein expressed the “realization of his long contested wishes” by writing in Beethoven’s album: “By uninterrupted industry, thou wilt acquire the mind of Mozart from the hands of Haydn.” When the wars of the Revolution swept over the boundaries of France, the excitement produced was great and universal. Beethoven was affected only by its ideal side. He was spared the sight of the grotesque ridiculousness of the sans culottes and the blood of the guillotine. After a short journey, in November, 1792, Vienna afforded him a safe retreat which he never afterwards left. It was not long before the French were masters of the Rhine. Maximilian Francis was obliged to flee, and thus every prospect of Beethoven’s returning home was lost.
It now became imperative that he should take care of himself. His two brothers were provided for—Karl was a musician and Johann an apothecary. They soon followed him to Vienna, where it was not long before they renewed the scenes of his home life in Bonn. But his own constant endeavor was to be the creative artist that, as he became more firmly convinced every day, he was born to be. His studies under Haydn, then under Schenk, with whom the readers of the Life of Mozart are familiar from his connection with the opera of the Magic Flute, afterwards under the dry-as-dust Albrechtsberger, the teacher of counterpoint, and even under Mozart’s deadly enemy, Salieri—were earnestly and zealously pursued, as is evident from what he has left after him. But even now his mind was too richly developed and his fancy too lofty to learn anything except by independent action. Ten of Beethoven’s works date from the time he lived in Bonn; but, during his first sojourn in Vienna, compositions flowed in profusion from his pen, and we cannot but suppose that the germs of many of these last were sown during the period of his virtuosoship in Bonn. We conclude this chapter with a list of the works here referred to.
Besides his first attempts at musical composition already mentioned, a concerto for the piano written in 1784, and three quartets for the piano written in 1785, which were afterwards made use of in the sonatas op. 2, we must add, as certainly dating from this period of Beethoven’s life in Bonn, a ballet by Count Waldstein (1791), a trio for the piano in E flat, the eight songs of op. 52, which appeared in 1805, two arias, one of which occurs in this op. as Goethe’s Mailied, a part of the Bagatellen op. 33 which appeared in 1803, the two preludes op. 39, a minuet published in 1803, the variations Vieni Amore (1790), a funeral cantata on the death of Joseph II. (1790), and one on that of Leopold II. (1792), the last of which was submitted to Haydn and which he thought a great deal of—both of these latter compositions are lost—an allegro and minuet for two flutes, a rondino for reed instruments and the string trio op. 3 which appeared in 1796.
In addition to these, there are, in all probability, many other compositions which were completed during Beethoven’s first sojourn in Vienna, and published at a still later date; the octet op. 103, after which the quintet op. 4 was patterned before 1797, the serenade op. 8, which contained the germ of his nocturne op. 42; the Variations op. 66, on Ein Maedchen oder Weibchen, from the Magic Flute (published in 1798); the variations on God Save the King, the Romance for the violin, both of which appeared in 1805, when Beethoven’s brother secretly published much of his music; the variation on Se vuol ballare from Mozart’s Figaro; the Es War Einmal from Dittersdroff’s Little Red Riding Hood, the “See He Comes,” the Messias, and a theme by Count Waldstein (appeared 1793, 1797), the Easy Sonata in C major, dedicated to Eleonore von Breuning; the prelude in F minor (appeared in 1805), and the sextet for wind instruments, op. 71, which appeared in 1810.
In his twenty-third year, Mozart could point to three hundred works which he had composed, among them the poetical sonatas of his youth. How little of sunshine and leisure must there have been in a life which, spite of its extraordinary intellectual wealth and activity, reaped so little fruit! And even if we fix the date when the three trios op. 1, were composed in this period, when Beethoven was for the first time taught the meaning of the world and history, by the stormy movements of the last decade of the last century; and admit that the two concertos for the piano (op. 19 and op. 15) owe their origin to the wonderful fantasias with which he charmed the hearts and minds of the people of Bonn at that time, yet how little did he achieve! This fact is the most convincing proof of the truth of Beethoven’s own assertion, that fortune did not favor him in Bonn. Leaving his musical training out of consideration, Beethoven’s youth was not a very happy one. Seldom was it brightened for any length of time by the smiles of joy.
CHAPTER II.
1795-1806.