(January 28, to Gottfried Hartel, who had undertaken to make changes in
the book of “The Mount of Olives” despite the prohibition of Beethoven.)
29. “Goethe’s poems exert a great power over me not only because of their contents but also because of their rhythms; I am stimulated to compose by this language, which builds itself up to higher orders as if through spiritual agencies, and bears in itself the secret of harmonies.”
(Reported as an expression of Beethoven’s by Bettina von Arnim to
Goethe.)
30. “Schiller’s poems are difficult to set to music. The composer must be able to rise far above the poet. Who can do that in the case of Schiller? In this respect Goethe is much easier.”
(1809, after Beethoven had made his experiences with the “Hymn to Joy”
and “Egmont.”)
ON COMPOSING
Wiseacres not infrequently accused Beethoven of want of regularity in his compositions. In various ways and at divers times he gave vigorous utterance to his opinions of such pedantry. He was not the most tractable of pupils, especially in Vienna, where, although he was highly praised as a player, he took lessons in counterpoint from Albrechtsberger. He did not endure long with Papa Haydn. He detested the study of fugue in particular; the fugue was to him a symbol of narrow coercion which choked all emotion. Mere formal beauty, moreover, was nothing to him. Over and over again he emphasizes soul, feeling, direct and immediate life, as the first necessity of an art work. It is therefore not strange that under certain circumstances he ignored conventional forms in sonata and symphony. An irrepressible impulse toward freedom is the most prominent peculiarity of the man and artist Beethoven; nearly all of his observations, no matter what their subject, radiate the word “Liberty.” In his remarks about composing there is a complete exposition of his method of work.
31. “As regards me, great heavens! my dominion is in the air; the tones whirl like the wind, and often there is a like whirl in my soul.”
(February 13, 1814, to Count Brunswick, in Buda.)