In the same Series.
Schubert.
Mendelssohn.
A DAY WITH BEETHOVEN
At daybreak, on a summer morning, in the year 1815, a short, thick-set, sturdily-built man entered his sitting-room, and at once set to work to compose music. Not that he disturbed the slumbers of the other inhabitants by untimely noises upon the pianoforte: a course which, at three in the morning, might be resented by even the most enthusiastic admirer of his genius. No: he sat down at his table, with plenty of music paper, and addressed himself to his usual avocation of writing assiduously till noon or thereabouts.
The untidy, uncomfortable condition of his room did not distress Ludwig van Beethoven in the least. True, it was scattered all over with books and music; here the remains of last night's food, there an empty wine bottle; on the piano, the hasty sketch of some immortal work; on the floor, uncorrected proofs, business letters, orchestral scores, and MSS. in a chaotic pile.
But he thoroughly enjoyed casting a glance, from time to time, at the sunny scene without; at the vista towards the Belvedere Garden, the Danube, and the distant Carpathians,—the view for the sake of which he had taken up his lodgings at this house in the Sailer-stätte, Vienna. For if there was one thing which still could afford a unique and cloudless pleasure to this sensitive, unhappy man, it was Nature in all her varied forms of light and loveliness. Nature, that "never did betray the heart that loved her," still held out open arms of help and solace for the healing of his afflicted soul.
Beethoven, in his various migrations from lodging to lodging—and they were very numerous, and inspired by the most trivial causes—always endeavoured to select an airy, sunshiny spot, where he could at least feel the country air blowing to him, and so keep in touch with his beloved green fields. If the supply of sunshine proved insufficient, that was quite a valid reason for another removal. But his restless, sensitive mind was apt to magnify molehills into mountains, and the most trifling inconvenience into a serious obstacle to work. Work was his starting point, his course, his goal; work was his whole raison-d'-être, the very meaning and object of his existence.
It has been observed that if we would represent to ourselves a day in the life of Beethoven, one of the Master's own wonderful compositions would serve as the best counterpart. Wagner instances the great Quartet in C sharp minor as a notable instance of this allegoric music,—designating the rather long introductory Adagio, "than which, probably, nothing more melancholy has ever been expressed in tones, as the awaking of a day
'Which through its tardy course
No single longing shall fulfil—not one!'
And yet the Adagio is in itself a prayer, a period of conference with God, in faith, in eternal goodness." And it was in a state of mind which one may term unconsciously devotional, that the great composer now ascended into regions where few could follow him,—where, his senses deaf and blind to earthly sights and sounds, he could hold intercourse with a pure and celestial art. For Music contains, within its inexhaustible treasuries, not only all that we conceive of best, all those highest and most ennobling emotions which thrill us as at a touch of the Divine finger, but it also possesses all the characteristic beauties of other arts. The composer shares Form and Colour with the painter—a much more elastic variety of Form—and an incomparably wider use of Colour, in the magnificent paintbox of the orchestra. The composer's art, moreover, is not stationary at one fixed point—one moment, so to speak, seized and immortalised upon canvas: but has the fluidity and onward movement of actual life, passing with bewildering rapidity of transition from one phase of thought to another, even as life does. And the composer, while he shares with the great prose writer and the poet the power of expressing things marvellously well,—of uttering in beautifully poised and balanced rhythm the whole gamut of human emotion,—yet has a greater power than theirs. For he can put into a single phrase, with an exquisite intimacy of intuition, a meaning which could hardly be denoted in a hundred words: he can condense into a couple of bars the essence of a whole chapter.