Beethoven, the Man and the Artist, as Revealed in His Own Words

by Ludwig van Beethoven

12. On the Kahlenberg, 1812, end of September:

Almighty One
In the woods
I am blessed.
Happy every one
In the woods.
Every tree speaks
Through Thee.
O God!
What glory in the
Woodland.
On the Heights
is Peace,—
Peace to serve
Him—

(This poetic exclamation, accompanied by a few notes, is on a page of
music paper owned by Joseph Joachim.)

13. “How happy I am to be able to wander among bushes and herbs, under trees and over rocks; no man can love the country as I love it. Woods, trees and rocks send back the echo that man desires.”

(To Baroness von Drossdick.)

14. “O God! send your glance into beautiful nature and comfort your moody thoughts touching that which must be.”

(To the “Immortal Beloved,” July 6, in the morning.)

[Thayer has spoiled the story so long believed, and still spooking in the books of careless writers, that the “Immortal Beloved” was the Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, to whom the C-sharp minor sonata is dedicated. The real person to whom the love-letters were addressed was the Countess Brunswick to whom Beethoven was engaged to be married when he composed the fourth Symphony. H. E. K.]

15. “My miserable hearing does not trouble me here. In the country it seems as if every tree said to me: ‘Holy! holy!’ Who can give complete expression to the ecstasy of the woods! O, the sweet stillness of the woods!”

(July, 1814; he had gone to Baden after the benefit performance of
“Fidelio.”)