(OVERTURE.)

Association not only gives significancy to music, but contributes greatly to heighten its agreeable effect. We have heard it performed, some time or other, in an agreeable place, perhaps, or by an agreeable person, or accompanied with words that describe agreeable ideas; or we have heard it in our early years—a period of life which we seldom look back upon without pleasure, and of which Bacon recommends the frequent recollection, as an expedient to preserve health. Nor is it necessary that musical compositions should have much intrinsic merit, or that they should call up any distinct remembrance of the agreeable ideas associated with them. There are seasons at which we are gratified with very moderate excellence. In childhood every tune is delightful to a musical ear: in our advanced years, an indifferent tune will please, when set off by the amiable qualities of the performer, or by any other agreeable circumstance. The flute of a shepherd, heard at a distance, on a fine summer day, amidst beautiful scenery, will give rapture to the wanderer, though the tune, the instrument, and the musician be such as he could not endure in any other place. If a song, or piece of music, should call up only a faint remembrance that we were happy the last time we heard it, nothing more would be needful to make us listen to it again with peculiar satisfaction.

Well has Cowper said—

Of its influence very many anecdotes, I should rather say, facts are recorded.

Naturalists assert that animals and birds are sensible to the charms of music—take one or two instances:—

An officer was confined in the Bastile; he begged the governor to permit him the use of his lute, to soften by the harmonies of his instrument, the rigours of his prison. At the end of a few days, this modern Orpheus, playing on his lute, was greatly astonished to see frisking out of their holes, great numbers of mice, and descending from their woven habitations crowds of spiders, who formed a circle about him, while he continued breathing his soul-subduing instrument. He was petrified with astonishment. Having ceased to play, the assembly who did not come to see him, but to hear his instrument, immediately broke up. As he had a great dislike to spiders, it was two days before he ventured again to touch his instrument. At length, having overcome, for the novelty of his company, his dislike of them, he recommenced his concert, when the assembly was by far more numerous than at first; and in the course of further time, he found himself surrounded by a hundred musical amateurs. Having thus succeeded in attracting this company, he treacherously contrived to get rid of them at his will. For this purpose he begged the keeper to give him a cat, which he put in a cage, and let loose at the very instant when the little hairy people were most enchanted by the Orphean skill he displayed.

Haydyn tells the following story:—

Marville gives us the following curious account:—

One of the best descriptions of the influence of music I consider to be Wordsworth's lines on the Blind Fiddler of Oxford Street. Many of you, doubtless, are familiar with them; but for the information of those who may not, I shall quote them.

But why should I occupy your time by quotations from celebrated poets or prose writers, to prove the influence of music, when I have it in my power to verify the saying of that eminent composer whose life I have undertaken to sketch?

"The effect of music on a man should be to strike fire from his soul."

(SONATA PATHETIQUE.)

Ludwig Von Beethoven was born on the 17th December, 1770, at Bonn. His father and grandfather were both musicians by profession. The former occupied the situation of principal vocal tenor, and the latter that of first bass singer in the chapel of the Elector of Cologne.

From the earliest age Beethoven evinced a disposition for music; or, in other words, he learnt the language of music and his mother tongue both at the same time; and as modulated sounds seldom fail to make a deep impression on a young, fervid mind, when they are almost constantly presented to it, as was the case in the present instance, he soon acquired, and as speedily manifested, a taste for the art of which they are the foundation.

His father began to instruct him when he was only in his fifth year. An anecdote is told of his early performances, which corroborates what I have already said on the influence of music. It is said that, whenever little Ludwig was playing in his closet on the violin, a spider would let itself down from the ceiling and alight upon the instrument. The story, I am sorry, goes on to say that his mother one day, discovering her son's companion, destroyed it, whereupon little Ludwig dashed his violin to shatters.

At the early age of thirteen, Beethoven published at Mannheim, in his own name, Variations on a March, Sonatas, and Songs. But at this time his genius displayed itself more decidedly in musical improvisations. His extempore fantasias are mentioned by Gerber, in his Lexicon, as having excited the admiration of the most accomplished musicians of the time.

The fame of his youthful genius attracted the attention of the Elector of Cologne, who sent him at his own expense to Vienna, in character of his Court organist, to study under the celebrated Haydyn, in order to perfect himself in the art of composition.

Vienna was at this time (1792), the central point of every thing great and sublime, that music had till then achieved on the soil of Germany.

Mozart, the source of all light in the region of harmony, whose acquaintance Beethoven had made on his first visit to Vienna in 1786, who when he heard Beethoven extemporize upon a theme that was given him, exclaimed to those present, "This youth will some day make a noise in the world"—Mozart, though he had been a year in his grave, yet lived freshly in the memory of all who had a heart susceptible of his divine revelations, as well as in Beethoven's. Gluck's spirit still hovered around the inhabitants of the old city—F. Haydyn and many other distinguished men in every art, and in every branch of human knowledge, yet lived and worked together harmoniously. In short, no sooner had Beethoven, then but twenty-two, looked around him in this favoured abode of the Muses, and made a few acquaintances, than he said to himself, "Here will I stay, and not return to Bonn even though the Elector should cut off my pension."

Beethoven did not long enjoy the instructions of his master, for Haydyn handed him over to the care and instructions of the learned Allrechtsberger. It appears, that the character of Beethoven was marked by great singularity from his earliest years. Both Haydyn and Allrechtsberger, but particularly the latter, have recorded that he was not willing to profit by good advice. Beethoven has himself been heard to confess, that among other peculiarities which he prided himself on displaying, when a young man, was that of refusing to acknowledge himself as the pupil of Haydyn, at which this master took great offence.

The consequence of this self-confident spirit was, that at this period, he made but little progress in composition, and was more ambitious to become a brilliant performer. Hence by the periodicals of that day, he is not allowed to possess the ability of composition; harshness of modulation, melodies more singular than pleasing, and a constant struggle to be original, are among the principal faults of which he was accused. As to the latter charge it may be remarked, that it is the besetting sin which has adhered to Beethoven through life; and who can help wishing that with it, he had also possessed the power of spreading the vice among his contemporaries, and of bequeathing it to his successors. But if this indefatigable search after originality be a sin, to what new and extraordinary effects, to what wonders, has it not given birth? To whom so justly than to this author can these lines be applied—

Beethoven never defended himself against criticisms or attacks, he never suffered them to have more than a superficial effect upon him. Not indifferent to the opinions of the good, he took no notice of the attacks of the malicious, and allowed them to go on unchecked, even when they proceeded so far as to assign him a place, sometimes in one madhouse, sometimes in another. "If it amuses people to say or to write such stuff concerning me, let them continue so to do as long as they please."

(This may remind you of an anecdote of the Earl of Derby; being once attacked in the House of Lords by the Duke of Argyle, the Earl in his reply said, "A certain navvy, who happened to be married to a very violent woman, a regular virago, was asked why he allowed his wife to abuse him, or use such intemperate language. 'Poor creature,' said the navvy, 'it amuses her, and does not hurt me.' So say I, the attack of the noble duke may amuse him but cannot injure me.")

As in that classic period of musical activity, Beethoven was the sun which all strove to approach, and rejoiced if they could but catch a glance of his brilliant eyes, it was natural that he should converse much with ladies, several of whom were always contending for his affections at once, as it is well known, and he more than once found himself like Hercules in a dilemma. Dr. Wegeler, in his life of Beethoven says, "He was never without an attachment, and that mostly he was very deeply smitten." This is quite true. How could any rational person who is acquainted with Beethoven, or ever heard his compositions, maintain the contrary. Whoever is capable of feeling how powerfully the pure flame of love operates upon the imagination, more especially of the sensitive and highly endowed artist, and how in all his productions it goes before him like a light sent down from Heaven to guide him, will take it for granted without any evidence that Beethoven was susceptible of the purest love, and that he was conducted by it. What genius could have composed the Fantasia in C, commonly called the "Moonlight or the Moonshine Sonata," without such a passion? It was love, for Bettine, to whom that imaginative composition is dedicated, (and to whom I shall again have occasion to allude,) which inspired him while engaged upon it. This piece will now be performed, and judge for yourselves whether I have said too much in its praise:—

In the year 1800, we find Beethoven engaged in the composition of his "Christ on the Mount of Olives." He wrote this work during his summer residence at Hetzendorf, a pleasant village, closely contiguous to the gardens of the imperial palace of ShÖnbrunn, where he passed several summers of his life in profound seclusion. A circumstance connected with this great work, and of which Beethoven many years afterwards still retained a lively recollection, was that he composed it in the thickest part of the wood, in the park of ShÖnbrunn, seated between the two stems of an oak, which shot out from the main trunk at the height of about two feet from the ground.

About this period Beethoven endured much family annoyance and domestic trouble. His brothers who had some years previously followed him to Vienna, began to govern him and to make him suspicious of his sincerest friends and adherents, from wrong notions or even from jealousy. Surrounded by friends who loved and esteemed him—his fame already established—with an ample income, he ought to have been completely happy; and he certainly would have been but for an infirmity which began to afflict him, and the persecution of his brothers. His misery both of mind and body, I can best describe by reading a portion of his extraordinary will, which he at this time executed, and having that song sung which he at the same time composed, with special reference to the torture he was undergoing.

[In Questa Tomba Oscura. Words by GÖthe; Music by Beethoven.]

Let us proceed from grave to gay. I have already told you that Beethoven was a man of ardent feeling, and passionately in love with a young lady, Madame Von Arnim. I will read to you, one of his love letters, and I recommend the style to all the unmarried I have the pleasure to address:—

This song will now be sung for you. The words are from the German of GÖthe.

Beethoven's interviews with Bettine were not all wasted in rhapsodies of love. In one of his conversations with this accomplished lady he thus eloquently describes the power of poetry and the philosophy of music:—

And he adds:—"We know not whence our knowledge is derived. The seeds which lie dormant in us require the dew, the warmth, and the electricity of the soil to spring up, to ripen into thought, and to break forth. Music is the electrical soil in which the mind thrives, thinks, and invents. Music herself teaches us harmony; for one musical thought bears upon the whole kindred of ideas, and each is linked to the other, closely and indissolubly, by the ties of harmony."

Hearken to proof of the truth of this eloquent and beautiful description of music.

(Waltz.—Beethoven.)

The talents of a Haydyn and Mozart raised instrumental composition in Germany to an astonishing elevation; and Beethoven may be said not only to have maintained the art in that stupendous altitude, but even in some respects to have brought it to a still higher degree of perfection. "Haydyn," says Reichardt, "drew his quartets from the pure source of his sweet and unsophisticated nature, his captivating simplicity and cheerfulness. In these works he is still without an equal. Mozart's mightier genius and richer imagination took a more extended range, and embodied in several passages the most profound and sublime qualities of his own mind. Moreover, he was much greater as a performer than Haydyn, and as such expected more from instruments than the latter did. He also allowed more merit to highly-wrought and complicated compositions, and thus raised a gorgeous palace within Haydyn's fairy bower. Of this palace Beethoven was an early inmate; and in order adequately to express his own peculiar forms of style, he had no other means but to surmount the edifice with that defying and colossal tower which no one will probably presume to carry higher with impunity.

"If any man," says an able writer in the Quarterly, "can be said to enjoy an almost universal admiration as composer, it is Beethoven—who, disdaining to copy his predecessors in any, the most distant manner, has, notwithstanding, by his energetic, bold, and uncommon style of writing, carried away a prize from our modern Olympus."

Beethoven, like most great men, had many peculiarities.

In winter, well as in summer, it was his practice to rise at daybreak, and immediately to sit down to his writing-table. There he would labour till two or three o'clock, his usual dinnertime. Scarcely had the last morsel been swallowed, when, if he had no more distant excursion in view, he took his usual walk—that is to say, he ran in double quick time, as if hunted by bailiffs, twice round the town—whether it rained, or snowed, or hailed, or the thermometer stood an inch or two below the freezing point—whether Boreas blew a chilling blast from the Bohemian mountains, or whether the thunder roared, and forked lightnings played, what signified it to the enthusiastic lover of his art, in whose genial mind, perhaps, were budding, at that very moment, when the elements were in fiercest conflict, the harmonious feelings of a balmy spring.

The use of the bath was as much a necessity to Beethoven as to a Turk—and he was in the habit of submitting himself to frequent ablutions. When it happened that he did not walk out of doors to collect his ideas, he would, not unfrequently, in a fit of the most complete abstraction, go to his washhand basin, and pour several jugs of water upon his hands, all the time humming and roaring. After dabbling in the water till his clothes were wet through, he would pace up and down the room with a vacant expression of countenance, and his eyes distended, the singularity of his aspect being often increased by an unshaven beard. Then he would seat himself at his table and write; and afterwards get up again to the washhand basin and dabble and hum as before. Ludicrous as were these scenes, no one dared venture to notice them, or to disturb him while engaged in his inspiring ablutions, for these were his moments of profoundest meditation.

Many anecdotes are told of him likewise.

The wife of an esteemed pianoforte player, residing in Vienna, was a great admirer of Beethoven, and she earnestly wished to possess a lock of his hair—her husband, anxious to gratify her, applied to a gentleman who was very intimate with Beethoven, and who had rendered him some service. Beethoven sent the lady a lock of hair cut from a goat's beard—and Beethoven's own hair being very grey and harsh, there was no reason to fear that the hoax would be very readily detected. The lady was overjoyed at possessing this supposed memorial of her saint, proudly showing it to all her acquaintance; but, when her happiness at its height, some one who happened to know the secret, made her acquainted with the deception that had been practised on her—the lady's wrath who will attempt to describe?

Beethoven's name I have already told you was Ludwig Von Beethoven. In some legal proceedings in which he was concerned, it was intimated by the court that the word von, of Dutch origin, does not ennoble the family to whose name it is prefixed—according to the laws of Holland—that, in the province of the Rhine in which Beethoven was born, it was held to be of no higher value—that, consequently, the halo of nobility ought to be stripped from this Von in Austria also. Beethoven was accordingly required to produce proofs of his nobility. "My nobility! My nobility!" he exclaimed—"Why, my nobility is here, here!"—clapping his forehead.

Right, Beethoven, brains are the highest nobility, if not the richest. I love birth, and ancestry, when they are incentives to exertion not the title deeds to sloth. Who would not prefer being the descendant of a Stephenson, an Arkwright, or a Crompton, or any other of those great architects of their own fortunes, and to feel some of their noble energies, firing their blood to efforts of industry, than to be for ever falling back on some legend or fiction of ancestry; and in the absence of any personal claim to greatness to be referring back and depending on those great mistakes of our forefathers, when he who waded through slaughter to a peerage was honoured above those whose brains and whose industry were the means of promoting the comfort of their fellow men. Believe me, my young friends, the highest honour of earth, is the honour of independence, and the highest nobility, to be the Rodolph of your own fortune, and a benefactor to mankind.

Beethoven died 26th March, 1827, in the fifty-sixth year of his age. Although his warmth of temper, extreme frankness and singularity of manners, his little reserve in judging of people, and above all, that deplorable calamity—the greatest which can befall a man of his profession—his extreme deafness, seemed little calculated to endear him to the true admirers of his genius. Still, notwithstanding his foibles, which much more frequently belong to great than to ordinary men, his character as a man and as a citizen ranked deservedly high. Although his originality induced him to deviate from ordinary rules, in the little affairs of common life, yet his high feeling of honour and right produced a rectitude in his moral conduct, which ensured to him the esteem of every honourable man.