It is near the close of 1770. Helena has experienced "the pleasing punishment that women bear," but "remembereth no more the anguish for joy that a man is born into the world." Her joy is the greater, because last year, in April, she buried, in less than a week after his birth, her first-born, Ludwig Maria,—as the name still stands upon the baptismal records of the parish of St. Remigius, with the names of Kapellmeister Beethoven, and the next-door neighbor, Frau Loher, as sponsors. This second-born is a strong, healthy child, and his baptism is recorded in the same parish-book, Dec. 17, 1770,—the day of, possibly the day after, his birth,—by the name of Ludwig. The Kapellmeister is again godfather, but Frau Gertrude Müller, née Baum, next door on the other side, is the godmother. The Beethovens had neither kith nor kin in Bonn; the families Ries and Salomon, their intimate friends, were Israelites; hence the appearance of the neighbors, Frauen Loher and Müller, at the ceremony of baptism;—a strong corroborative evidence, that No. 515, Bonngasse, was the actual birth-place of Beethoven.
The child grew apace, and in manhood his earliest and proudest recollections, save of his mother, were of the love and affection lavished upon him, the only grandchild, by the Kapellmeister. He had just completed his third year when the old man died, and the bright sun which had shone upon his infancy, and left an ineffaceable impression upon the child's memory, was obscured. Johann van Beethoven had inherited his mother's failing, and its effects were soon visible in the poverty of the family. He left the Bonngasse for quarters in that house in the Rheingasse, near the upper steamboat-landing, which now erroneously bears the inscription, Ludwig van Beethovens Geburtshaus.
His small inheritance was soon squandered; his salary as singer was small, and at length even the portrait of his father went to the pawnbroker. In the April succeeding the Kapellmeister's death, the expenses of Johann's family were increased by the birth of another son,—Caspar Anton Carl; and to this event Dr. Wegeler attributes the unrelenting perseverance of the father in keeping little Ludwig from this time to his daily lessons upon the piano-forte. Both Wegeler and Burgomaster Windeck of Bonn, sixty years afterward, remembered how, as boys, visiting a playmate in another house across the small court, they often "saw little Louis, his labors and sorrows." Cecilia Fischer, too, a playmate of Beethoven in his early childhood, and living in the same house in her old age, "still saw the little boy standing upon a low footstool and practising his father's lessons," in tears.
What indications, if any, the child had given of remarkable musical genius, we do not know,—not one of the many anecdotes bearing upon this point having any trustworthy foundation in fact. Probably the father discovered in him that which awakened the hope of some time rivalling the then recent career of Leopold Mozart with little Wolfgang, or at least saw reason to expect as much success with his son as had rewarded the efforts of his neighbor Ries with his Franz; at all events, we have the testimony of Beethoven himself, that "already in his fourth year music became his principal employment,"—and this it continued to be to the end. Yet, as he grew older, his education in other respects was not neglected. He passed through the usual course of boys of his time, not destined for the universities, in the public schools of the city, even to the acquiring of some knowledge of Latin. The French language was, as it still is, a necessity to every person of the Rhine provinces above the rank of peasant; and Beethoven became able to converse in it with reasonable fluency, even after years of disuse and almost total loss of hearing. It has also been stated that he knew enough of English to read it; but this is more than doubtful. In fact, as a schoolboy, he made the usual progress,—no more, no less.
In music it was otherwise. The child Mozart seems alone to have equalled or surpassed the child Beethoven. Ludwig soon exhausted his father's musical resources, and became the pupil of Pfeiffer, chorist in the Electoral Orchestra, a genial and kind-hearted man, and so good a musician as afterward to be appointed band-master to a Bavarian regiment. Beethoven always held him in grateful and affectionate remembrance, and in the days of his prosperity in Vienna sent him pecuniary aid. His next teacher was Van der Eder, court organist,—a proof that the boy's progress was very rapid, as this must have been the highest school that Bonn could offer. With this master he studied the organ. When Van der Eder retired from office, his successor, Christian Gottlob Neefe, succeeded him also as instructor of his remarkable pupil.
Wegeler and Schindler, writing several years after the great composer's death, state, that, of these three instructors, he considered himself most indebted to Pfeiffer, declaring that he had profited little or nothing by his studies with Neefe, of whose severe criticisms upon his boyish efforts in composition he complained. These statements have hitherto been unquestioned. Without doubting the veracity of the two authors, it may well be asked, whether the great master may not have relied too much upon the impressions received in childhood, and thus unwittingly have done injustice to Neefe. The appointment of that musician as organist to the Electoral Court bears date February 15, 1781, when Ludwig had but just completed his tenth year, and the sixth year of his musical studies. These six years had been divided between three different instructors,—his father, Pfeiffer, and Van der Eder; and during the last part of the time, music could have been but the extra study of a schoolboy. That the two or three years, during which at the most he was a pupil of Pfeiffer, and that, too, when he was but six or eight years of age, were of more value to him in his artistic development than the years from the age of ten onward, during which he studied with Neefe, certainly seems an absurd idea. That the chorist may have laid a foundation for his future remarkable execution, and have fostered and developed his love for music, is very probable; but that the great Beethoven's marvellous powers in higher spheres of the art were in any great degree owing to him, we cannot credit. Happily, we have some data for forming a judgment upon this point, unknown both to Wegeler and Schindler, when they wrote.
Neefe was, if not a man of genius, of very respectable talents, a learned and accomplished organist and composer, as a violinist respectable, even in a corps which included Reicha, Romberg, Ries. He had been reared in the severe Saxon school of the Bachs, and before coming to Bonn had had much experience as music director of an operatic company. He knew the value of the maxim, Festina lente, and was wise enough to understand, that no lofty and enduring structure can be reared, unless the foundations are broad and deep,—that sound and exhaustive study of canon, fugue, and counterpoint is as necessary to the highest development of musical genius as mathematics, philosophy, and logic are to that of the scientific and literary man. He at once saw and appreciated the marvellous powers of Johann van Beethoven's son, and adopted a plan with him, whose aim was, not to make him a mere youthful prodigy, but a great musician and composer in manhood. That, with this end in view, he should have criticized the boy's crude compositions with some severity was perfectly natural; equally so that the petted and bepraised boy should have felt these criticisms keenly. But the severity of the master was no more than a necessary counterpoise to the injudicious praise of others. That Beethoven, however he may have spoken of Neefe to Wegeler and Schindler, did at times have a due consciousness of his obligations to his old master, is proved by a letter which he wrote to him from Vienna, during the first transports of joy and delight at finding himself the object of universal wonder and commendation in the musical circles of the great capital. He thanks Neefe for the counsels which had guided him in his studies, and adds, "Should I ever become a great man, it will in part be owing to you."
The following passage from an account of the virtuosos in the service of the Elector at Bonn, written in 1782, when Beethoven had been with Neefe but little more than a year, and which we unhesitatingly, attribute to the pen of Neefe himself, will give an idea of the course of instruction adopted by the master, and his hopes and expectations for the future of his pupil. It is, moreover, interesting, as being the first public notice of him who for half a century has exercised more pens than any other artist. The writer closes his list of musicians and singers thus:—
"Louis van Beethoven, son of the above-named tenorist, a boy of eleven years, and of most promising talents. He plays the piano-forte with great skill and power, reads exceedingly well at sight, and, to say all in a word, plays nearly the whole of Sebastian Bach's 'Wohltemperirtes Klavier,' placed in his hands by Herr Neefe. Whoever is acquainted with this collection of preludes and fugues in every key (which one can almost call the non plus ultra of music) knows well what this implies. Herr Neefe has also, so far as his other duties allowed, given him some instruction in thorough-bass. At present he is exercising him in composition, and for his encouragement has caused nine variations composed by him for the piano-forte upon a march[A] to be engraved at Mannheim. This young genius certainly deserves such assistance as will enable him to travel. He will assuredly become a second Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, should he continue as he has begun.
[Footnote A: The variations upon a march by Dressler.]