While at Vienna he met the great pianists and played far better than any of them. No one played with such expression, with such power or seemed worthy even to compete with him. Mozart and others had been charming players and composers, but Beethoven was powerful and deep, even most humorous when he wanted to be.
He worked well during these years, and with his usual extreme care changed and rechanged the themes he found in his little sketch books into which, from boyhood he had put down his musical ideas. Those marvelous sketch books! What an example they are! They show infinite patience and “an infinite capacity for taking pains” which has been given by George Eliot as a definition of genius.
The Three Periods
At his first appearance as a pianist in Vienna he played his own C major Concerto in 1795. From 1795 to 1803 he wrote all the works from opus 1 to 50. In these were included symphonies 1 and 2, the first three piano concertos, and many sonatas for piano, trios and quartets, a septet and other less important works.
This is the first period of Beethoven’s life. His second period in which his deafness grew worse and caused him real physical illness, extended to 1815—in this the trouble with his nephew and the deceit of his two brothers preyed on his mind, to such an extent, that he became irascible and unapproachable. His lodgings were the scene of distressing upheavals and Beethoven was like a storm-beaten mountain!
For consolation, he turned to his music, and in the storm and stress he wrote the noble opera Fidelio, and the third symphony, Eroica, concertos, sonatas and many other things.
Someone once asked him, “Why don’t you write opera?” He replied, “Give me a libretto noble enough for my music.” Evidently this is the reason why he wrote only one opera. We find another example of his patience and self-criticism, as he wrote four overtures for Fidelio. Three of them are called Leonore overtures and one Fidelio. The third Leonore seems to be the favorite, and is often played.
By 1822, the beginning of the third period, the great music maker was stone deaf! Yet he wrote the magnificent Mass in D and his last symphony, the Ninth, with the “Hymn of Joy,” two of the great masterpieces of the world, although he was unable to hear one note of what he had composed as he could not hear his beloved violin even when he held it close to his ears.
Imagine Beethoven—stone deaf, attending a performance of the Ninth Symphony in a great hall—not knowing that it had had a triumphal success until one of the soloists turned him around to see the enthusiastic faces and the hands clapping and arms waving, for he could hear not a sound! He who had built such beautiful things for us to hear, knew them only in his mind!
Beethoven was a great lover of nature. He used to stroll with his head down and his hands behind his back, clasping his note book in which he jotted down the new ideas as they came to him. He wrote to a friend, “I wander about here with music paper among the hills and dales and valleys and scribble a bit; no man on earth could love the country as I do.”