9. “In the country I know no lovelier delight than quartet music.”
(To Archduke Rudolph, in a letter addressed to Baden on July 24, 1813.)
10. “Nothing but art, cut to form like old-fashioned hoop-skirts. I never feel entirely well except when I am among scenes of unspoiled nature.”
(September 24, 1826, to Breuning, while promenading with Breuning’s
family in the Schonbrunner Garden, after calling attention to the alleys
of trees “trimmed like walls, in the French manner.”)
11. “Nature knows no quiescence; and true art walks with her hand in hand; her sister—from whom heaven forefend us!—is called artificiality.”
(From notes in the lesson book of Archduke Rudolph, following some
remarks on the expansion of the expressive capacity of music.)
LOVE OF NATURE
Beethoven was a true son of the Rhine in his love for nature. As a boy he had taken extended trips, sometimes occupying days, with his father “through the Rhenish localities ever lastingly dear to me.” In his days of physical health Nature was his instructress in art; “I may not come without my banner,” he used to say when he set out upon his wanderings even in his latest years, and never without his note books. In the scenes of nature he found his marvelous motives and themes; brook, birds and tree sang to him. In a few special cases he has himself recorded the fact.
But when he was excluded more and more from communion with his fellow men because of his increasing deafness, until, finally, he could communicate only by writing with others (hence the conversation-books, which will be cited often in this little volume), he fled for refuge to nature. Out in the woods he again became naively happy; to him the woods were a Holy of Holies, a Home of the Mysteries. Forest and mountain-vale heard his sighs; there he unburdened his heavy-laden heart. When his friends need comfort he recommends a retreat to nature. Nearly every summer he leaves hot and dusty Vienna and seeks a quiet spot in the beautiful neighborhood. To call a retired and reposeful little spot his own is his burning desire.