When, in the year 1806, one of his friends informed Beethoven of Napoleon’s victory at Jena, he exclaimed: “It’s a pity that I do not understand the art of war as well as I do the art of music. If I did I certainly would conquer him.” These words express a rivalry almost personal in its nature, and could have been spoken only by a fool or by a man of power not unlike that of Napoleon himself. And, indeed, leaving out of consideration men of genius like Goethe and Schiller, whose fame had been long established on a firm foundation, there were among his contemporaries men of sovereign ambition, only one person, Napoleon Bonaparte, able to make any great impression on a man who had chosen for his motto: “Power is the moral code of men who distinguish themselves above others; and it is mine, too.” A series of the most brilliant victories was achieved up to 1798 by the General of the glorious French Republic, who was of the same age as Beethoven. General Bernadotte, whose descendants occupy the throne of Sweden in our day, had participated in those victories. Bernadotte was the French Ambassador to Vienna in the beginning of 1798. He was young; by his origin he belonged to the middle class; he was the representative of the Republic, and could, therefore, indulge, unconstrained, in personal intercourse with whomsoever he pleased.
The celebrated violinist, Rudolph Kreutzer, to whom Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata (op. 47) is dedicated, was one of his retinue. It was very natural that once Bernadotte and Kreutzer became acquainted with Beethoven, their intercourse with him and their friendship for him, should have been more than usually intimate. Bernadotte, who was sincerely devoted to Napoleon, and who must have felt himself drawn still more closely to Beethoven, because of his enthusiasm for the general, suggested to him the idea of celebrating the exploits of his hero by a symphony. Beethoven so informed his amanuensis, Schindler, in 1823, and his account is corroborated by other facts, that such was the first impulse to the composition of the Eroica.
But the advocate of power was destined soon to swell to the proportions of the hero of intellectual courage. “For thus does fate knock at the gates.” Beethoven used these words in 1823, in speaking “with uncontrollable enthusiasm” of that wonderful motive at the opening of the symphony in C minor. The last movement of the work, the fanfare-like finale, so expressive of the joy of victory, shows that he here described a victory indeed, the surmounting of the obstacles and darkness of life, even if those obstacles and that darkness consisted only of “the infirmities of the body.” The sketches of this movement, however, occur in the draft of the quartet op. 18, and hence must have been noted down before the year 1800! But the fact that the melody of the adagio was also found in that sketch shows that he was even then as certain of mastering sorrow, as he was conscious of the presence of the “demon in his ears,” and of the sad prospect of a “wretched” and lonely future—a prospect which stirred him to the very depths of his soul.
But it was years before these motives took shape in his mind. To do justice to the great ideas to which they give expression, to the heroic victory of power and will over whatever opposes them, he had to concentrate and strengthen all his powers of mind and heart, and to develop his talents by long exercise. The portraiture of the struggles and of the artistic creations of the next succeeding years constitutes the transition to those first great heroic deeds—a transition which must be understood by all who would understand Beethoven’s music.
The Napoleonic way in which Beethoven, at the close of the last century, outgeneraled all the most celebrated virtuosos of the time in Vienna and in Europe, is attested by his triumph over the renowned pianist Woelffl, in 1799, and his defeat of Steibelt, in 1800. But he did still more towards achieving success by his works. His numerous variations won over to him many a fair player of the piano, while his Adelaide, which appeared in 1797, gained for him the hearts of all persons of fine feeling; so that Wegeler may have told the simple truth, when he wrote: “Beethoven was never, at least so long as I lived in Vienna (1794-96), without a love affair; and he occasionally made a conquest which it would have been very hard, if not impossible, for many a handsome Adonis to have made.” The “ugly,” pock-marked man, with the piercing eyes, was possessed of a power and beauty more attractive than any mere physical charms. And then, there was the charm of his sonatas: op. 7, with the funeral song in adagio, which he is said to have written in a tempest of “passionate feeling”; of op. 10, with its genuine masculine profile; of the revolutionary sonata in C minor, with the mysterious struggle in the allegretto in No. II., and the brilliant exultation of victory in the allegro in No. III., the tragic song of the largo, the gentle grace of the minuet—here used exceptionally in the place of the scherzo, as we find it already in op. 1; and, last of all, the droll question of little Snub Nose, in the finale. And yet these were followed by the Pathetique, with its exquisite and enrapturing adagio, and the two beautiful love songs, op. 14; by the six quartets, op. 18, in which he offered to a society of friends of his art, true songs of the soul and pictures of life overflowing; by the adagio of No. I, another Romeo-and-Juliet grave scene; by the adagio of No. VI., descriptive of the melancholy which, even now, began to gather its dark clouds about Beethoven himself, whose breast was so well attuned to joy. The descriptive septet (op. 20, 1800,) and the first symphony (op. 21), sketched after the style of Haydn, but painted with Mozart’s pencil, are the last scenes in what we may call Beethoven’s older life, which closed with the eighteenth century. The beginning of the nineteenth opened a new world to our artist.
The new world thus opened to Beethoven, and the manner in which he himself conceived it, may be best described in Schiller’s magnificent verses:
“Wie schön, O Mensch, mit deinem Palmenzweige
Stehst du an des Jahrhunderts Neige,
In edler stolzer Männlichkeit!
Mit aufgeschlossnem Sinn, mit Geistesfülle,