“What mortification when someone, standing beside me, caught from afar the sound of a flute and I heard nothing!
“Such incidents brought me to the verge of madness, and little more was wanted to make me put an end to my existence.
RELICS OF BEETHOVEN.
“Only my art held me back. Ah, I felt that it was impossible to leave the world before I had accomplished my mission!
“Great God, Thou who lookest down upon me, Thou seest my heart and Thou knowest that love and goodwill abide there.”
Immediately after this will, the six sacred songs, to words by Gellert (op. 48), were composed.
There is something infinitely pathetic in the thought of this great, lonely man, so profoundly ashamed of his bodily infirmity, and so conscious that he was misunderstood by all his fellow-men, turning thus in the hour of his sorest need to the One whom he could trust. The first of the six songs is a Prayer, the last a Song of Repentance. They are all very simple, as such songs should be, and through them the strong, personal note is unmistakable.
The quiet life at Heiligenstadt had another beneficial effect upon Beethoven. Both the Pastoral Symphony and the Pastoral Sonate trace the source of their inspiration to the pine forests, the rustic surroundings and Sabbath stillness of this picturesque village. The Symphony of course was a later work, but it was also composed at this, Beethoven’s favourite holiday resort.
But ardent lover of Nature though he was, he was not the sort of man who could pass his days in sylvan solitude. He was extremely sociable, even, in his way, extremely domestic.