A Popular History of the Art of Music / From the Earliest Times Until the Present

by W. S. B. Mathews

HE labors of Haydn and Mozart in the rich field of instrumental music were followed immediately by those of Ludwig van Beethoven, who was born at the little town of Bonn, on the Rhine, about twenty miles above Cologne, in 1770. He died at Vienna, 1827. The years between these dates were filled with labor and inspiration, beyond those of any other master. Beethoven's place in music is at the head. Whether he or Bach ought to be reckoned the very greatest of all the great geniuses who have appeared in music, is a question which might be discussed eternally without ever being settled. Considered merely as an artist capable of transforming musical material in an endless variety of ways, he would perhaps be placed somewhat lower than Bach; but considered as a tone poet gifted with the faculty of making hearers feel as he felt, and see as he saw (with the inner eyes of tonal sense), no master ought to be placed above him. This is the general opinion now, of all the world. Taine, the French critic, in his work on art, names four great souls belonging to the highest order of genius—Dante, Shakespeare, Michael Angelo and Beethoven. The company is a good one, and Beethoven rightfully belongs in it. His early life was wholly different from that of the gifted Mozart. He was the son of a dissipated tenor singer, and his mother was rather an incapable person. When the boy was about eleven years old he began to play the viola in the orchestra. He was already a good pianist, and it was said of him that he was able to play nearly the whole of the "Well Tempered Clavier" by heart, and at the age of eleven and a half he was left in charge during Neefe's absence, as deputy organist. His improvisations had already attracted attention, and when he was a little past twelve he was made assistant musical conductor (cembalist), having to prepare the operas, adapt them to the orchestra and the players of the theater, and sometimes to train the whole company for several months together, while Neefe, the director, was away. All this without salary. In this practical school of adversity the boy grew up, arranging continually, training the orchestra, adapting music and composing—for he began this very soon; in fact, we have certain sonatinas of his, composed while he was but ten years old.

He was direct in his speech, almost to rudeness, not, like Mozart, attractive in his personal appearance, and rather awkward in society, where he was continually breaking things, upsetting the water, the ink, or whatever liquid was in his way. Nevertheless, there must have been something attractive about this young man of independent manners, for very early in life, and all the way through it, he made friends with the aristocracy. Count Waldstein, a few years his senior, to whom he afterward dedicated the so-called "Waldstein" sonata, Opus 53, in C, early became interested in him, hired a piano for him and sent it to his room, that he might have opportunity to practice. There was a family of Von Breunings in Bonn, consisting of the mother, three boys and a daughter, where the young Beethoven often stayed for several days together. This was one of the most refined families in town, and it was here that the unfortunate young Beethoven got his first glimpses of a true home life, and his first realization of the refining influence of woman's society. He learned English in order that he might be able to read Shakespeare in the original. He also learned a little Italian and French. In short, the boy appears at good advantage from every point of view, except from that of mere appearance. This life of labor and responsibility was broken in upon when he was about seventeen (in 1787). He was sent to Vienna, and there is a tradition that he played there before Mozart, who is reported to have prophesied favorably concerning him. There is very little left us concerning his first visit to the great Austrian capital, then, as ever since, the home of music. He was soon back again in Bonn, and there for yet another year and a half he went on with his work. His mother dying, he had no longer any responsibility to retain him there, so when he was about twenty-one he set out again for Vienna, where all the remainder of his life was spent. At Vienna he immediately began to give concerts, in which his piano playing was the main feature, and his improvising upon themes presented by the audience. This art always remained one of his great distinctions—the surest proof of genius, the possession of musical fantasy, in which every thought immediately suggests something else. He devoted himself to serious study of counterpoint and composition under the instruction of Haydn at first, but later with Albrechtsberger. His two great elements of power at this period were his playing and his improvising. Czerny says: "His improvisation was most brilliant and striking; in whatever company he might chance to be, he knew how to produce such an effect upon every hearer that frequently not an eye remained dry, while many would break out into loud sobs; for there was something wonderful about his expression, in addition to the beauty and originality of his ideas, and his spirited manner of rendering them."

The limits of the present work do not admit of following the career of this great master in the detail which would otherwise be desirable. It must suffice to mention the more salient features. Contrary to the precedent established by Mozart, Beethoven was in no hurry to appear as a composer of ambitious pieces. After the early practical experiences above described, and the further advantage of studies in Vienna under the best teachers at that time living, it was not until 1795 that he appeared as composer of his first concerto for pianoforte and orchestra, a Mozart-like work, but with an Adagio of true Beethovenish flavor. A year later he published his first three sonatas for pianoforte, dedicated to Haydn. These three works are in styles totally unlike each other, and there is little or no doubt that each one of them was modeled after some existing work, which at that time was highly esteemed in Vienna. The first in F minor, is plainly after one by Emanuel Bach in the same key. The Adagio of this is especially interesting, not only because it shows a freedom and a pure lyric quality totally foreign to Emanuel Bach, and beyond Mozart even, but because it was taken out of a quartette which he had written when he was fifteen years old. This shows that even at that early age Beethoven had arrived at the conception of his peculiar style of slow movements, which differed from those of Mozart in having a more song-like quality, and a deeper and more serious expression. The impression of a deep soul is very marked in the Largo of the first concerto, and there are few of his later works which carry it more plainly. In all, some sixty works precede this Opus 2, which is the modest mark affixed to these three sonatas. The third, in C, is still different from the other two, and was fashioned apparently after some composition of Clementi or Dussek. The Adagio takes a direction which must have been regarded as not entirely successful, for nowhere else does the composer follow it out. Then followed a succession of pieces of every sort, not rapidly, like Mozart's compositions, as if they represented the overflowing of an inexhaustible spring, but deliberately, as if the world were not ready for them too rapidly, one after another, each in succession carrying the treatment of the pianoforte to a finer point, and each different from its predecessor, whether of contemporaneous publication or of a former year, until by the end of the century he had reached the "Sonata Pathetique," a work which marked a prodigious advance in expression and boldness over anything that can be shown from any other master of the period. Mention having been made of the slow movements in these works, in which point they were perhaps more strikingly differentiated from those of the composers previous—the Largo of the sonata in D major, Opus 10, may be mentioned as an example of a peculiarly broad and dramatic, almost speaking rhapsody, or reverie, for piano, which not only calls for true feeling in the interpreter, but also for technical qualities of touch and breadth of tone, such as must have been distinctly in advance of the instruments of the day. Meanwhile a variety of chamber pieces had been composed, many of them of decided merit. This was a great period of activity with the young composer. He had found his voice. Within two years from the "Sonata Pathetique," he had composed all the sonatas up to the two numbered Opus 27, in which the so-called "Moonlight" stands second, and between these a variety of variations, and several important chamber pieces, not forgetting the oratorio, "Christ on the Mount of Olives"—a work which although not fully successful, nevertheless contained many beautiful ideas, and one chorus which must be ranked among the best which the repertory of oratorio can show—"Hallelujah to the Father." The year 1800 also saw the first performance of the beautiful and romantic third concerto for pianoforte and orchestra. The first symphony had been performed in 1800, and by 1804 we have the great heroic symphony, the "Kreutzer Sonata," and the "Appassionata" with all that lie between. Never did tone poet give out great inspirations like these so freely. Each is an advance upon the previous, distancing all works of similar composers, and each one surpassing his own previous efforts. This activity continued with little or no interruption until 1812, after which there is quite a break, Beethoven occupying himself with pot-boilers for the English market, in the way of arrangements of songs for instrumental accompaniment. Of these there are many, Scotch and other, besides masses, canons for voices and the like. In 1814 we have the lovely sonata in E minor for piano, Opus 90, and in 1818 the great sonata for hammer klavier, Opus 106. Then in 1821 and 1822 the last of the sonatas, which carry this form of pianoforte writing to a point which it had never previously reached, if since; and then the "Messe Solennelle," and the ninth symphony, the latter having been composed in 1822-1823. After this came the last quartettes for strings, compositions which have been much written about, but which time has shown to be among the most beautiful and understandable of all that great master produced.

Fig. 57.

BEETHOVEN.

Meanwhile, as a man Beethoven had been subject to his vicissitudes, but upon the whole, while no longer the popular composer of the day (his seriousness prevented that) he was in comfortable circumstances, but annoyed by the care of a nephew of irregular habits and reprehensible character. For many years now Beethoven had been getting deaf, and for the past ten or twelve he had been unable to hear ordinary conversation, so that communication had to be carried on with him by writing. Superficial observers inferred from this fact that the inability to hear his compositions must have reacted unfavorably upon them, and probably accounted for many passages which were unlike his early works, and unintelligible or unlovely to the critics aforesaid. It is true that between the early and the latest compositions of Beethoven there is a greater difference in intelligibility than between the early and the late compositions of any other master. But the difference is not one of judgment on his part, but purely one of different conception, different melodic structure and deeper effect. The ninth symphony, which the first players called impossible, has lived to be counted not simply the greatest of all of Beethoven's works, but the greatest of all instrumental music. It has been named as an impassable barrier beyond which no later composer might pass and compose an instrumental symphony. Nothing could be more unjust or mistaken. Every composition of Beethoven is a fantasia, which in his earlier work indeed has the form of the sonata, the accepted serious form of the day; but in the works of the middle period, the limits of the sonata form were crossed in many directions, and in the latest the sonata is forsaken entirely. But this is not to say that Beethoven had gone beyond the sonata form. Beethoven was an improviser in music, quite as surely as his wildest successor, Schumann, and he wrote as he felt at the time. He lost nothing in being deaf. His inner tonal sense was as acute as ever, and had been trained as the tonal sense of few composers ever was. In point of fact the compositions of the later period are as sweet as those of any former period whatever. The last sonata for the pianoforte is one of the most advanced compositions that exist for the instrument. It is a tone poem which will outlast most other things that Beethoven wrote for this instrument. In fact, the accuracy with which the capacity of the instrument is gauged is one of the most striking peculiarities of the last sonatas and other late works of this master. Meanwhile, piano technique has advanced to a point where these great works no longer present the insurmountable difficulties that they did when first composed. Their general acceptance has been delayed by the foolish notion that there was about them something sacred and secluded from the apprehension of ordinary readers. This is not the case. They are within reach, and repay study.

Beethoven's last days were not pleasant. He lived the life of a bachelor, and his nephew was a source of trouble. It is thought by many that the neglect of his nephew to order a physician in time, when requested to do so by his uncle, was the immediate occasion of the death of the great man. Beethoven died March 27, 1827, after a serious illness, in which dropsical symptoms were among the most troublesome. There was a grand funeral, in which impressive exercises were held, and the body was deposited in consecrated ground in the cemetery at Wahring, near Vienna.

The allusions to the compositions of this composer in the preceding pages are very fragmentary, and, in fact, are expected merely to direct attention to those mentioned. There are many others almost equally worthy of attention. But upon the whole, the reputation of Beethoven as a tone poet must rest first upon the nine symphonies; then upon the string quartettes and other chamber music; next upon the concertos, of which the third and fourth for pleasing beauty, and the fifth for deep poetical meaning, have never been equaled by those of any other composer. There remain the sonatas for pianoforte and for piano and violin, three large volumes, containing a multitude of exquisite strains, which the world would be poor indeed to lose.