Beethoven was primarily and permanently a composer of sonatas; for "the great majority and most excellent of his instrumental compositions, the fundamental form of the sonata was the veil-like tissue through which he gazed into the realm of tones, or, also, through which, emerging from that realm, he made himself intelligible to us—while other forms, the mixed ones of vocal music especially, were, after all, only transitorily touched upon by him, as if by way of experiment." (Wagner.)
And one has only to reflect upon the magical and matchless beauty of his best-known work in sonata form, to be surrounded at once by a multitude of gorgeous memories. The opening movement of the "Pathétique," transfused with gloomy majesty; the Scherzo of the "Moonlight" Sonata, wherein a troop of glimmering fairy forms come dancing through the midnight forest: the magnificent verve and vigour of the "Waldstein:" and that unapproachable Andante of the "Appassionata," which some have declared they would wish to hear in dying, that the solemn glory of its pensive chords might companion them into the rest of God .... These, and innumerable other instances, each dear to the individual heart, identify Beethoven as the true lord of the Sonata.
The reader will doubtless feel some wonder that all this while the master was composing so rigorously at his desk, leaving the pianoforte untouched. But there were three very adequate reasons for this mode of action. First—that he was in the habit of writing everything, as he composed it, in notebooks; mostly out of doors in solitary rambles away from any instrument, where he would "hum to himself, and beat the air with an accompaniment of extraordinary vocal sounds." Secondly—that, being a consummate master of the science of music, and the best pianist, perhaps, of his day, he had no occasion to put to proof in actual performance, as the amateur does, the constructions of his fertile brain. Thirdly—and chiefly, and sorrowful to relate—when he had just been composing, his deafness for a while would deepen into stone-deafness: and "because of the inner world of harmony at work within his brain," said Bettine Brentano, "the external world seemed all confusion to him." Beethoven's greatest works, as years went on, were "conceived, produced and given complete to the world ... when not one of those wondrous succession of of phrases could by any possibility reach his ears:" when, in a "splendid isolation" beyond the average power to understand, he and Music dwelt alone in an inner shrine together. "Never has an earthly art created anything so serene as the symphonies in A, and F major, and all those works of the Master which date from the period of his complete deafness."
It is therefore open to doubt whether an affliction, which in an ordinary man would command our pity, was so much to be deprecated in the case of Ludwig van Beethoven as at first thoughts one might imagine. He was full of self-commiseration on its account: yet assuredly the compensations which were awarded him were such as never before fell to mortal man. By the entire exclusion of external sounds, and the entire concentration of his mind upon his work, which resulted, he was enabled to enter those unexplored altitudes whither none has followed, as none had preceded him. "He elevated music (which had been degraded, as regards its proper nature, to the rank of a merely diverting art), to the height of its sublime calling." And it must be remembered that his works were very much more remarkable, as offsprings of the early nineteenth century; than they now appear to us who are familiar with them,—to us, who are heirs of the progress of composition. For Music is the youngest of all the arts,—as compared to all others, a mere babe in arms, whose potentialities and possibilities are still but in the bud. And that Beethoven should stand where he does, on a pinnacle that none may deny, is one more proof of that isolation of genius which makes him twin with Shakespeare. These columnar intellects rise like obelisks in the midst of the ages: not to be accounted for by any rule of circumstance, or education, or heredity: and "What Beethoven's melodies produce, Shakespeare's spirit-shapes also project."
So absorbed was the master in the elaboration and evolution of his "tone-poem," that he did not see, much less hear, the timid entrance of a very shy young man. It was one Charles Neate, an English pianist, who had come, armed with a letter of introduction, to beseech the great Beethoven to receive him as a pupil for the piano.
The great Beethoven was for a moment inclined to be exceedingly bearish and inhospitable. To come on a morning when he was busy—to interrupt a man in the full flow of composition—these were unpardonable crimes! But soon his native kindliness prevailed—above all, when he discovered that his visitor was of "the noble English nation." For he held England and the English to be of an incomparable excellence: and his darling wish was to visit that favoured land, and to win a hearing there, and if possible secure an offer from some London publishing firm.
He, therefore, accepted the young man with unwonted graciousness and alacrity: looked through his compositions and gave him sound advice: and finally, thrusting away his own MSS., proposed that they two should take a little walk, to get a breath of fresh air before further operations. They passed out into the sunlit fields.
Never in all his life had Neate met a man so wholly taken up with nature, so enwrapt with the contemplation of trees, flowers, cloud, and sward. "Nature seemed his nourishment," Neate said afterwards. "He seemed to live upon and by her." The parable of the Presto of the C sharp minor Quartet, here was openly fulfilled,—the master, rendered, from within, completely happy, cast a glance of indescribable serenity upon the outer world. There it once more stands before him as in the Pastoral Symphony: everything is rendered luminous to him by his inner happiness.
They seated themselves upon a grassy bank, and Beethoven discoursed freely of the things dearest to his heart: his keen desire to visit England, and his fear lest his deafness might prove a hopeless obstacle to this. Neate, speaking to him in slow German, close to his left ear, managed to make himself intelligible; while the master expressed his unbounded admiration for everything English, especially Shakespeare, who was his favourite poet.