Beethoven’s earliest works in each branch of his art are purely classical. During their composition he was leaning on Haydn and Mozart. Life had not yet become to him a matter of absorbing interest, for he still regarded it from the standpoint of the student.
The Fantasie Sonate, Op. 27, No. 2 (ignorantly called the “Moonlight Sonata”), opens to us the first page of the tone-poet’s life. It was written in 1801, when Beethoven was thirty-one.
Thirty-one! At this age a man feels life at its best; it is then that his pulse beats strongest, that, his powers being fully developed, he sees the years stretch smiling before him, like the vision of a promised land. All this Beethoven felt, and he was fully conscious of his power. “The Eroica,” the great ‘C Minor,’ “The Choral Symphony,” “Fidelio,” locked within that mighty brain, awaited only the master’s bidding to come forth and delight a world.
But between him and this glorious future there fell a shadow which was destined to rob life of all that made life dear. He plainly saw that shadow.
In a letter to a friend, written at this time, he says, “How sadly must I live! All that I love I must avoid. The years will pass without bringing that which my talent and my art had promised. Mournful resignation, in which alone I can find refuge!”
Already the gates of his ears were closing, and deafness was shutting him out from the world which he had just begun to love.
Then he met the beautiful Countess Julie Guicciardi. She was sixteen, she was poor, and he gave her music lessons without payment, accepting only in return linen which her pretty fingers had stitched.
She was flattered by his homage (what girl would not be flattered by the homage of a Beethoven!) and she encouraged his attentions. Perhaps even she really loved him.
Again he wrote to a friend: “Somewhat more agreeably I live now, going more among people. This change has been wrought by a dear, bewitching girl, who loves me and whom I love. At last after two years’ misery, some happy moments have come, and I feel for the first time that marriage could make me happy.”
Poor Beethoven! Countess Julie’s father had other plans for his young daughter, and her music master was scornfully dismissed.