"When I came to him, on the morning of the 24th of March, (relates Anselm Hüttenbrenner, a musical friend and composer of Grätz, who had hastened thither to see Beethoven once more,) I found his whole countenance distorted, and him so weak, that, with the greatest exertions, he could bring out but two or three intelligible words." Anselm Hüttenbrenner!
Throughout those volumes we find a certain vagueness of statement in connection with the names of musicians with whom Beethoven came in contact, which raises the question, whether Marx has no biographical dictionary in his house, not even a copy of Schilling's Encyclopædia, for which he wrote so many biographies, and "indeed all the articles signed A. B. M."? At times, however, the statements are not so vague. For instance,—in the anecdote already referred to, Marx makes the two Rombergs and Franz Ries introduce the "fifteen-year-old virtuoso" to Sterkel,—that is, in 1785 or '86. At that date, (see Schilling,) Andreas Romberg was a boy of eighteen, Bernard a boy of fifteen; moreover, they did not come to Bonn until 1790, when Beethoven was nearly twenty years old. In 1793-4 Marx makes Schenck "the to him [Beethoven] well-known and valued composer of the 'Dorfbarbier,'" —which opera was not written until some years later. In 1815 died Beethoven's "friend and countryman, Salomon of Bonn, in London." It is possible that Beethoven may have occasionally seen Salomon at Bonn, but that violinist went to London at least as early as 1781, after having then been for several years in Prince Henry's chapel in Berlin.
These things may, perhaps, strike the reader as of minor importance, mere blemishes. So be it then; we will turn to a vexed question, which has a literary importance, and see what light Marx throws upon it. We refer to Bettine's letters to Goethe upon Beethoven, and the composer's letters to her, the authority of which has been strongly questioned. Marx gives them, Vol. II. pp. 121-135, and we turned eagerly to them, expecting to find, from one who has for thirty years or more lived in the same city with the authoress, the questio vexata fully put to rest Nothing of the kind. He quotes them from Schindler with Schindler's remarks upon them, to which he gives his assent. As to the letters of Beethoven to Bettine, he has not even done that lady the justice to give them as she has printed them, but rests satisfied with a copy confessedly taken from the English translation! Of these Marx says,—"These letters,—one has not the right, perhaps, to declare them outright creations of fancy; at all events, there is no judicial proof of this, no more than of their authenticity,—if they are not imagined, they are certainly translated… from Beethoven into the Bettine speech. Never—compare all the letters and writings of Beethoven which are known with these Bettine epistles—never did Beethoven so write….. If he wrote to Bettine, then she has poetized [überdichtet] his letters,—and she has not done even this well; we have in them Beethoven as seen in the mirror Bettine." He adds in a note, "In the highest degree girl-like and equally un-Beethovenlike are these constant repetitions: 'liebe, liebste,—liebe, liebe,—liebe, gute,—bald, bald'!"
What does Marx say to this beginning of a letter to Tiedge,—"Jeden Tag schwebte mir immer folgende Brief an Sie, Sie, Sie, immer vor"? Or to these repetitions from a series of notes written also from Töplitz in the summer of 1812? "Leben Sie wohl liebe, gute A." "Liebe, gute A., seit ich gestern," etc. "Scheint der Mond …. so sehen Sie den kleinsten, kleinsten aller Menschen bei sich," etc.
And so on this point Marx leaves us just as wise as we were before. There is a gentleman who can decide by a word as to the authenticity of these letters of Beethoven, since he originally furnished them for publication in the English translation of Schindler's "Biography." We refer to Mr. Chorley, of the "London Athenaeum." Meantime we venture to give Marx's opinion as much weight as we think it deserves, and continue to believe in the letters; more especially because, as published by Bettine herself in 1848, each is remarkable for certain peculiarly Beethoven-like abuses of punctuation, orthography, and capital letters, which carry more weight to our minds than the unsupported opinions of a dozen Professors Marx.
Justice requires that we pass from merely biographical topics, which are evidently not the forte of Professor Marx, to some of those upon which he has bestowed far more space, and doubtless far more labor and pains, and upon which, in this work, he doubtless also rests his claims to our applause.
On page 199 of Vol. I. begins a division of the work, entitled by the author "Chorische Werke." In previous chapters, Beethoven's pianoforte compositions-sonatas, trios, the quintett, etc., up to Op. 54, exclusive of the concertos for that instrument and orchestra-have been treated. In this we have a very pleasing account of the gradual progress of the composer from the concerto to the full splendor of the grand symphony.
"The composer Beethoven," says Marx, "was, as we have seen, also a virtuoso. No one can be both, without feeling himself drawn to the composition of concertos. These works then follow, and in close relation to the pianoforte compositions of Beethoven, with and without the accompaniment of solo instruments; and to them others, which may just here be best brought under one general head for notice. From them we look directly upward to orchestral and symphonic works. To all these we give the general name of 'choral' works, for want of a better,—a term which in fact belongs but to vocal music, and is exceedingly ill adapted to a part of the compositions now under consideration. The term, however, is used here as pointing at the significance of the orchestra to Beethoven."
Marx's theory of Beethoven's progress, taking continually bolder and loftier flights until he reaches the symphony, must necessarily be based upon the chronology of the works in question,—a basis which he adopts, but evidently, in the case of two or three of them, with some hesitation; yet the theory has too great a charm for him to be lightly thrown aside.
We will bring into a table the compositions which he is now considering, together with his dates of their composition, that we may obtain a clearer view of their bearings upon the point in question.