The outward appearance was far from beautiful, which belied the really lofty heart of the great composer as he sat indefatigably at work. His thick, dark, upstanding hair, already turning grey, crowned a pitted, swarthy face; his looks were rugged, gloomy, forbidding; his chin bore evidence of the most superficial shaving; his hands were covered with thick black hair; his small, deeply set, fiery eyes alone redeemed him from ugliness. For the rest, he had cotton wool in his ears, and his rough, shabby, hairy clothes gave him a Crusoesque look, almost comic in its incongruity with his occupation.
The housekeeper brought in his breakfast: he paid no attention to her. He had punctiliously counted out sixty coffee-beans overnight, and handed them to her in readiness for the morning; but now, after he had dipped his pen in the coffee-cup instead of the ink some three or four times, he pushed away the discoloured mixture, and absently nibbled his crusty roll. He was composing a Polonaise, to be dedicated to the Empress of Russia, for which he was to receive fifty ducats. This seemed an absurdly small remuneration, but although Beethoven was "really forced" (to quote Richard Wagner) "to support himself from the proceeds of his musical labours," yet, as life had no allurements for him in the ordinary sense, he had less necessity laid on him to make much money; and "the more confident he became in the employment of his inner wealth, so much the more confidently did he make his demands outward; and he actually required from his benefactors, that they should no longer pay him for his compositions, but so provide for him that he might work altogether for himself, unconcerned as to the rest of the world. And it really happened—a thing unprecedented in the lives of musicians—that a few benevolent men of rank pledged themselves to keep Beethoven independent in the sense demanded."
So it was not with any misgivings that he set aside the score of the Polonaise, still unfinished, and turned to something which he justly regarded as holding promise of his best vocal work; that which is still, perhaps, the greatest love-song in the world—the unequalled Adélaide. Its words, though above the average of the German lyrist of that period, served merely as a peg upon which to hang the music.
"Lonely strays thy friend in April's garden,
Lovely fairy lights around are gleaming
Through the tremulous boughs of rosy blossom,
Adélaide!
In the stream, and on the snowy mountain,
In the dying day all gold-beclouded,
In the starry fields, thy likeness lingers,
Adélaide!
Evening breezes through the leaves are lisping,
Silver May-bells in the grasses chiming,
Waves are rustling, nightingales are fluting—
Adélaide!
Soon, O wonder! on my grave a floweret,
From the ashes of my heart upspringing,
Shall reveal, on every purple petal—
Adélaide!"
(Matthisson.)
Beethoven had qualified himself for vocal writing to a degree which is rarely attempted by the instrumental composer. Although his father and grandfather had been vocalists, his own early studies had been in other branches of music; he knew little of the capabilities of the voice. So he took singing lessons from the Italian composer Salieri; and notwithstanding that his own voice was shrill and harsh, increasingly so as his deafness grew upon him, he was thus enabled to pour forth liquid and melodious phrases, such as those of Adélaide, which seem so absolutely adapted to the requirements of a singer that they could, so to speak, sing themselves.
"Adélaide," he said, "came entirely from my heart;" and therefore its pure ardour goes straight to the heart of the hearer. But he was not contented with his work, upon which he had already spent much time and thought. A frown gathered heavily upon his overhanging brows, as, humming the air and playing an imaginary accompaniment on the desk, he went over it again and again in the endeavour to "gild refined gold."
"The more one achieves in art," he grumbled, "the less contented is one with former works." And this, indeed, was characteristic of Ludwig van Beethoven: never to be satisfied with what he had accomplished, but to go on continually, as it were, from strength to strength. That "divine discontent which is at the root of all improvement," perpetually impelled him towards higher things, and made him at once haughtily conscious of his own powers, and yet the most modest and laborious of men.