Doubtless, Herr Junker, judging from the enthusiasm with which you have written, it would have been so; and for our sake, as well as your own, we heartily wish you had remained!
Again in Bonn,—the young master's last year in his native city,—that petite perle. It was a fortunate circumstance for the development of a genius so powerful and original, that the place was not one of such importance as to call thither any composer or pianist of very great eminence,—such a one as would have ruled the musical sphere in which he moved, and become an object of imitation to the young student. Beethoven's instructors and the musical atmosphere in which he lived and wrought were fully able to ground him firmly in the laws and rules of the art, without restraining the natural bent of his genius. His taste for orchestral music, even, was developed in no particular school, formed upon no single model,—the Electoral band playing, with equal care and spirit, music from the presses of Vienna, Berlin, Munich, Mannheim, Paris, London. Mozart, however, was Beethoven's favorite, and his influence is unmistakably impressed upon many of the early compositions of his young admirer.
But the youthful genius was fast becoming so superior to all around him, that a wider field was necessary for his full development. He needed the opportunity to measure his powers with those of the men who stood, by general consent, at the head of the art; he felt the necessity of instruction by teachers of a different and higher character, if any could be found. Mozart, it is true, had just passed away, but still Vienna remained the great metropolis of music; and thither his hopes and wishes turned. An interview with Haydn added strength to these hopes and wishes. This was upon Haydn's return, in the spring of 1792, after his first visit to London, where he had composed for and directed in the concerts of that Johann Peter Salomon in whose house Beethoven first saw the light. The veteran composer, on his way home, came to Bonn, and there accepted an invitation from the Electoral Orchestra to a breakfast in Godesberg. Here Beethoven was introduced to him, and placed before him a cantata which he had offered for performance at Mergentheim, the preceding autumn, but which had proved too difficult for the wind-instruments in certain passages. Haydn examined it carefully, and encouraged him to continue in the path of musical composition. Neefe also hints to us that Haydn was greatly impressed by the skill of the young man as a piano-forte virtuoso.
Happily, Beethoven was now, as we have seen, free from the burden of supporting his young brothers, and needed but the means for his journey.
"In November of last year," writes Neefe, in 1793, "Ludwig van Beethoven, second court organist, and indisputably one of the first of living pianists, left Bonn for Vienna, to perfect himself in composition under Haydn. Haydn intended to take him with him upon a second journey to London, but nothing has come of it."
A few days or weeks, then, before completing his twenty-second year, Beethoven entered Vienna a second time, to enjoy the example and instructions of him who was now universally acknowledged the head of the musical world; to measure his powers upon the piano-forte with the greatest virtuosos then living; to start upon that career, in which, by unwearied labor, indomitable perseverance, and never-tiring effort,—alike under the smiles and the frowns of fortune, in sickness and in health, and in spite of the saddest calamity which can befall the true artist, he elevated himself to a position, which, by every competent judge, is held to be the highest yet attained in perhaps the grandest department of pure music.
Beethoven came to Vienna in the full vigor of youth just emerging into manhood. The clouds which had settled over his childhood had all passed away. All looked bright, joyous, and hopeful. Though, perhaps, wanting in some of the graces and refinements of polite life, it is clear, from his intimacy with the Breuning family, his consequent familiarity with the best society at Bonn, the unchanging kindness of Count Waldstein, the explicit testimony of Junker, that he was not, could not have been, the young savage which some of his blind admirers have represented him. The bare supposition is an insult to his memory. That his sense of probity and honor was most acute, that he was far above any, the slightest, meanness of thought or action, of a noble and magnanimous order of mind, utterly destitute of any feeling of servility which rendered it possible for him to cringe to the rich and the great, and that he ever acted from a deep sense of moral obligation,—all this his whole subsequent history proves. His merit, both as an artist and a man, met at once full recognition.
And here for the present we leave him, moving in Vienna, as in Bonn, in the higher circles of society, in the full sunshine of prosperity, enjoying all that his ardent nature could demand of esteem and admiration in the saloons of the great, in the society of his brother artists, in the popular estimation.
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