Painting by N. M. Price.
Painting by N. M. Price.
"Joy, thou heavenly spark of Godhead!"
A DAY WITH
LUDWIG VON
BEETHOVEN
BY MAY BYRON
HODDER & STOUGHTON
In the same Series.
Schubert.
Mendelssohn.
A DAY WITH BEETHOVEN
At daybreak, on a summer morning, in the year 1815, a short, thick-set, sturdily-built man entered his sitting-room, and at once set to work to compose music. Not that he disturbed the slumbers of the other inhabitants by untimely noises upon the pianoforte: a course which, at three in the morning, might be resented by even the most enthusiastic admirer of his genius. No: he sat down at his table, with plenty of music paper, and addressed himself to his usual avocation of writing assiduously till noon or thereabouts.
The untidy, uncomfortable condition of his room did not distress Ludwig van Beethoven in the least. True, it was scattered all over with books and music; here the remains of last night's food, there an empty wine bottle; on the piano, the hasty sketch of some immortal work; on the floor, uncorrected proofs, business letters, orchestral scores, and MSS. in a chaotic pile.
But he thoroughly enjoyed casting a glance, from time to time, at the sunny scene without; at the vista towards the Belvedere Garden, the Danube, and the distant Carpathians,—the view for the sake of which he had taken up his lodgings at this house in the Sailer-stÄtte, Vienna. For if there was one thing which still could afford a unique and cloudless pleasure to this sensitive, unhappy man, it was Nature in all her varied forms of light and loveliness. Nature, that "never did betray the heart that loved her," still held out open arms of help and solace for the healing of his afflicted soul.
Beethoven, in his various migrations from lodging to lodging—and they were very numerous, and inspired by the most trivial causes—always endeavoured to select an airy, sunshiny spot, where he could at least feel the country air blowing to him, and so keep in touch with his beloved green fields. If the supply of sunshine proved insufficient, that was quite a valid reason for another removal. But his restless, sensitive mind was apt to magnify molehills into mountains, and the most trifling inconvenience into a serious obstacle to work. Work was his starting point, his course, his goal; work was his whole raison-d'-Être, the very meaning and object of his existence.
It has been observed that if we would represent to ourselves a day in the life of Beethoven, one of the Master's own wonderful compositions would serve as the best counterpart. Wagner instances the great Quartet in C sharp minor as a notable instance of this allegoric music,—designating the rather long introductory Adagio, "than which, probably, nothing more melancholy has ever been expressed in tones, as the awaking of a day
'Which through its tardy course
No single longing shall fulfil—not one!'
And yet the Adagio is in itself a prayer, a period of conference with God, in faith, in eternal goodness." And it was in a state of mind which one may term unconsciously devotional, that the great composer now ascended into regions where few could follow him,—where, his senses deaf and blind to earthly sights and sounds, he could hold intercourse with a pure and celestial art. For Music contains, within its inexhaustible treasuries, not only all that we conceive of best, all those highest and most ennobling emotions which thrill us as at a touch of the Divine finger, but it also possesses all the characteristic beauties of other arts. The composer shares Form and Colour with the painter—a much more elastic variety of Form—and an incomparably wider use of Colour, in the magnificent paintbox of the orchestra. The composer's art, moreover, is not stationary at one fixed point—one moment, so to speak, seized and immortalised upon canvas: but has the fluidity and onward movement of actual life, passing with bewildering rapidity of transition from one phase of thought to another, even as life does. And the composer, while he shares with the great prose writer and the poet the power of expressing things marvellously well,—of uttering in beautifully poised and balanced rhythm the whole gamut of human emotion,—yet has a greater power than theirs. For he can put into a single phrase, with an exquisite intimacy of intuition, a meaning which could hardly be denoted in a hundred words: he can condense into a couple of bars the essence of a whole chapter.
The outward appearance was far from beautiful, which belied the really lofty heart of the great composer as he sat indefatigably at work. His thick, dark, upstanding hair, already turning grey, crowned a pitted, swarthy face; his looks were rugged, gloomy, forbidding; his chin bore evidence of the most superficial shaving; his hands were covered with thick black hair; his small, deeply set, fiery eyes alone redeemed him from ugliness. For the rest, he had cotton wool in his ears, and his rough, shabby, hairy clothes gave him a Crusoesque look, almost comic in its incongruity with his occupation.
The housekeeper brought in his breakfast: he paid no attention to her. He had punctiliously counted out sixty coffee-beans overnight, and handed them to her in readiness for the morning; but now, after he had dipped his pen in the coffee-cup instead of the ink some three or four times, he pushed away the discoloured mixture, and absently nibbled his crusty roll. He was composing a Polonaise, to be dedicated to the Empress of Russia, for which he was to receive fifty ducats. This seemed an absurdly small remuneration, but although Beethoven was "really forced" (to quote Richard Wagner) "to support himself from the proceeds of his musical labours," yet, as life had no allurements for him in the ordinary sense, he had less necessity laid on him to make much money; and "the more confident he became in the employment of his inner wealth, so much the more confidently did he make his demands outward; and he actually required from his benefactors, that they should no longer pay him for his compositions, but so provide for him that he might work altogether for himself, unconcerned as to the rest of the world. And it really happened—a thing unprecedented in the lives of musicians—that a few benevolent men of rank pledged themselves to keep Beethoven independent in the sense demanded."
So it was not with any misgivings that he set aside the score of the Polonaise, still unfinished, and turned to something which he justly regarded as holding promise of his best vocal work; that which is still, perhaps, the greatest love-song in the world—the unequalled AdÉlaide. Its words, though above the average of the German lyrist of that period, served merely as a peg upon which to hang the music.
"Lonely strays thy friend in April's garden,
Lovely fairy lights around are gleaming
Through the tremulous boughs of rosy blossom,
AdÉlaide!
In the stream, and on the snowy mountain,
In the dying day all gold-beclouded,
In the starry fields, thy likeness lingers,
AdÉlaide!
Evening breezes through the leaves are lisping,
Silver May-bells in the grasses chiming,
Waves are rustling, nightingales are fluting—
AdÉlaide!
Soon, O wonder! on my grave a floweret,
From the ashes of my heart upspringing,
Shall reveal, on every purple petal—
AdÉlaide!"
(Matthisson.)
Beethoven had qualified himself for vocal writing to a degree which is rarely attempted by the instrumental composer. Although his father and grandfather had been vocalists, his own early studies had been in other branches of music; he knew little of the capabilities of the voice. So he took singing lessons from the Italian composer Salieri; and notwithstanding that his own voice was shrill and harsh, increasingly so as his deafness grew upon him, he was thus enabled to pour forth liquid and melodious phrases, such as those of AdÉlaide, which seem so absolutely adapted to the requirements of a singer that they could, so to speak, sing themselves.
"AdÉlaide," he said, "came entirely from my heart;" and therefore its pure ardour goes straight to the heart of the hearer. But he was not contented with his work, upon which he had already spent much time and thought. A frown gathered heavily upon his overhanging brows, as, humming the air and playing an imaginary accompaniment on the desk, he went over it again and again in the endeavour to "gild refined gold."
"The more one achieves in art," he grumbled, "the less contented is one with former works." And this, indeed, was characteristic of Ludwig van Beethoven: never to be satisfied with what he had accomplished, but to go on continually, as it were, from strength to strength. That "divine discontent which is at the root of all improvement," perpetually impelled him towards higher things, and made him at once haughtily conscious of his own powers, and yet the most modest and laborious of men.
In AdÉlaide, however, lay hidden more than the fluent outcome of his creative instinct. It remains the lovesong for all time—the last word of a noble and ennobling passion. Here—to pursue the simile of the C sharp minor quartet—a dream-image of the Allegro awakened in charming reminiscence and played sweetly and sorrowfully with itself. For this rough, rugged, eccentric, bad-tempered musician was capable of reaching the austerest heights of love—those heights where renunciation sits eternally enthroned.
Love and Beethoven seem a singularly anomalous pair: yet from his youth onward love was the very mainspring of his unsullied life. It began, rooted in filial affection for his mother, of whom he wrote those touching words, "She was such a good, loving mother to me, and my best friend. Oh, no one could be more fortunate than I, when I was able to speak that sweet name 'Mother', and it was heard—and to whom shall I ever say it now?"—And it continued as a vague but fervent longing for some sweet unknown—some "not impossible She."
"Love, and love alone, is capable of bringing lasting happiness .... O God, let me find her—her—who will strengthen me in virtue and lawfully be mine."
So he sighed: but his hopes remained unfulfilled. "His intense longing for a home and for female companionship was never satisfied," and the extraordinary number of attachments by which his career was punctuated, and which were generally for women of superior rank to his own, were every one of them destined to be transitory and destitute of result. Magdalena Willmann, Giulietta Guicciardi, Bettine Brentano, ThÉrÈse von Brunswick, Amalie Sebald, and many another charming phantom, passed, fugitively brilliant, across his horizon: and the domestic happiness for which Beethoven never ceased to crave, was never within measurable distance of his grasp.
But now he resolutely put away AdÉlaide and its attendant wistful thoughts, and addressed himself to more severely intellectual work: the great B flat Sonata (Op. 106) which, like all his latter work, is orchestral in feeling and treatment.
Painting by A. C. Michael.
Painting by A. C. Michael.
"The Scherzo of the 'Moonlight' Sonata, wherein a troop of glimmering fairy forms come dancing through the midnight forest."
Beethoven was primarily and permanently a composer of sonatas; for "the great majority and most excellent of his instrumental compositions, the fundamental form of the sonata was the veil-like tissue through which he gazed into the realm of tones, or, also, through which, emerging from that realm, he made himself intelligible to us—while other forms, the mixed ones of vocal music especially, were, after all, only transitorily touched upon by him, as if by way of experiment." (Wagner.)
And one has only to reflect upon the magical and matchless beauty of his best-known work in sonata form, to be surrounded at once by a multitude of gorgeous memories. The opening movement of the "PathÉtique," transfused with gloomy majesty; the Scherzo of the "Moonlight" Sonata, wherein a troop of glimmering fairy forms come dancing through the midnight forest: the magnificent verve and vigour of the "Waldstein:" and that unapproachable Andante of the "Appassionata," which some have declared they would wish to hear in dying, that the solemn glory of its pensive chords might companion them into the rest of God .... These, and innumerable other instances, each dear to the individual heart, identify Beethoven as the true lord of the Sonata.
The reader will doubtless feel some wonder that all this while the master was composing so rigorously at his desk, leaving the pianoforte untouched. But there were three very adequate reasons for this mode of action. First—that he was in the habit of writing everything, as he composed it, in notebooks; mostly out of doors in solitary rambles away from any instrument, where he would "hum to himself, and beat the air with an accompaniment of extraordinary vocal sounds." Secondly—that, being a consummate master of the science of music, and the best pianist, perhaps, of his day, he had no occasion to put to proof in actual performance, as the amateur does, the constructions of his fertile brain. Thirdly—and chiefly, and sorrowful to relate—when he had just been composing, his deafness for a while would deepen into stone-deafness: and "because of the inner world of harmony at work within his brain," said Bettine Brentano, "the external world seemed all confusion to him." Beethoven's greatest works, as years went on, were "conceived, produced and given complete to the world ... when not one of those wondrous succession of of phrases could by any possibility reach his ears:" when, in a "splendid isolation" beyond the average power to understand, he and Music dwelt alone in an inner shrine together. "Never has an earthly art created anything so serene as the symphonies in A, and F major, and all those works of the Master which date from the period of his complete deafness."
It is therefore open to doubt whether an affliction, which in an ordinary man would command our pity, was so much to be deprecated in the case of Ludwig van Beethoven as at first thoughts one might imagine. He was full of self-commiseration on its account: yet assuredly the compensations which were awarded him were such as never before fell to mortal man. By the entire exclusion of external sounds, and the entire concentration of his mind upon his work, which resulted, he was enabled to enter those unexplored altitudes whither none has followed, as none had preceded him. "He elevated music (which had been degraded, as regards its proper nature, to the rank of a merely diverting art), to the height of its sublime calling." And it must be remembered that his works were very much more remarkable, as offsprings of the early nineteenth century; than they now appear to us who are familiar with them,—to us, who are heirs of the progress of composition. For Music is the youngest of all the arts,—as compared to all others, a mere babe in arms, whose potentialities and possibilities are still but in the bud. And that Beethoven should stand where he does, on a pinnacle that none may deny, is one more proof of that isolation of genius which makes him twin with Shakespeare. These columnar intellects rise like obelisks in the midst of the ages: not to be accounted for by any rule of circumstance, or education, or heredity: and "What Beethoven's melodies produce, Shakespeare's spirit-shapes also project."
So absorbed was the master in the elaboration and evolution of his "tone-poem," that he did not see, much less hear, the timid entrance of a very shy young man. It was one Charles Neate, an English pianist, who had come, armed with a letter of introduction, to beseech the great Beethoven to receive him as a pupil for the piano.
The great Beethoven was for a moment inclined to be exceedingly bearish and inhospitable. To come on a morning when he was busy—to interrupt a man in the full flow of composition—these were unpardonable crimes! But soon his native kindliness prevailed—above all, when he discovered that his visitor was of "the noble English nation." For he held England and the English to be of an incomparable excellence: and his darling wish was to visit that favoured land, and to win a hearing there, and if possible secure an offer from some London publishing firm.
He, therefore, accepted the young man with unwonted graciousness and alacrity: looked through his compositions and gave him sound advice: and finally, thrusting away his own MSS., proposed that they two should take a little walk, to get a breath of fresh air before further operations. They passed out into the sunlit fields.
Never in all his life had Neate met a man so wholly taken up with nature, so enwrapt with the contemplation of trees, flowers, cloud, and sward. "Nature seemed his nourishment," Neate said afterwards. "He seemed to live upon and by her." The parable of the Presto of the C sharp minor Quartet, here was openly fulfilled,—the master, rendered, from within, completely happy, cast a glance of indescribable serenity upon the outer world. There it once more stands before him as in the Pastoral Symphony: everything is rendered luminous to him by his inner happiness.
They seated themselves upon a grassy bank, and Beethoven discoursed freely of the things dearest to his heart: his keen desire to visit England, and his fear lest his deafness might prove a hopeless obstacle to this. Neate, speaking to him in slow German, close to his left ear, managed to make himself intelligible; while the master expressed his unbounded admiration for everything English, especially Shakespeare, who was his favourite poet.
Painting by A. C. Michael.
Painting by A. C. Michael.
"The outer world ... once more stands before him as in the Pastoral Symphony: everything is rendered luminous to him by his inner happiness."
Beethoven was, indeed, as has been observed, "precisely like Shakespeare in his bearing towards the formal laws of his art, and in his emancipation from and penetration of them." He stood, as has previously been shown, nearer in point of genius to Shakespeare than to any other man: and verified the truth of Schumann's dictum that "all arts are reducible to one," and are guided by the same fundamental rules.
After a brief but exhilarating ramble in the open air, Beethoven proposed that Neate should return to dinner with him, and after that should—perhaps—receive his first lesson. The young man was overwhelmed at such unexpected kindness and camaraderie as he was receiving from the master, and gratefully accompanied him back to the city.
Before going to the Sailer-stÄtte, however, Beethoven turned into Steiner's, the music publisher's, which he was in the habit of frequenting about noon-day; where there was "nearly always a little crowd of composers, and a brisk interchange of musical opinion." (HÄttenbrenner).
Beethoven was to-day in a genial and expansive frame of mind. Possibly the advent of a young Englishman had struck him as a good omen for the fulfilment of his cherished hopes towards English fame. He held forth at considerable length, upon all manner of subjects, from music to philosophy. "His criticisms were ingenuous, original, full of curious ideas" and boundless imagination. Finally, at the reiterated request of those he most favoured among the younger men, he reluctantly consented to play—to exemplify, as they cunningly put it, the opinions which he had been urging, and the laws he had been laying down.
Now, listeners on either side of a door—in or out—were, as it has been said, Beethoven's chief aversion. Pianoforte virtuoso as he was, fine performer on the organ, violin, and viola—anything that savoured of professional display was nauseous to him. "Music the art was for him the breath of life: music the profession, as generally understood," he relegated to the depths of distaste.
He sat down with a shrug of his square shoulders, and, crooking his fingers to such a degree that his hands almost hid them, continued for a moment his tirade against the prevalent methods of playing.
"How did the old composers who were pianists, play?" he asked of his audience. "They did not run up and down the keyboard with their carefully-practised passages—putsch, putsch, putsch!"—and he worked the runs in a caricatured passage on the pianoforte.
"When true virtuosi played, it was comprehensive, complete.... Good, thorough work one could look into and examine.... But I pronounce judgment on no one," he added hastily, and forthwith burst into the full splendour of the Waldstein sonata.
His passion, his prodigious strength, amazed the Viennese, accustomed as they were to hear him, no less than the young Englishman, to whom he appeared a very prodigy of execution, as his broad, hairy, spatulate fingers, so unlike those of the typical pianist, flung themselves hither and thither upon the keys. He produced tones and effects which were hitherto undreamed of in the philosophy of the pianists of that period; and it was evident that this was no mere display of virtuosity, but that Beethoven had lost consciousness of all around him, and was simply giving vent to his own inspiration, as one possessed might do. And among the impressionable hearers, moved beyond self-control, soon not a dry eye was to be seen. Many broke into sobs; but when they would have crowded round the master, with the ultimate chord, to express in vehement gestures their boundless admiration, he rose with an almost shamefaced air, as though he had debased himself by this semi-poetic performance, and shuffled away, beckoning Neate to follow him.
The two dined alone in Beethoven's apartment in the Sailer-stÄtte, at his wonted time of two o'clock. The composer was not superior to creature comforts, and was very particular to have certain dishes on certain days. On Thursdays he invariably indulged in his favourite bread-soup, made with ten eggs. On Fridays he had a large haddock, with potatoes. A little Hungarian wine, or a glass of beer, sufficed him; but his favourite beverage was plenty of cold water. Water, in fact, was a necessity to him, and he rejoiced ecstatically in bathing, washing, splashing about in water; in pouring it recklessly over his hands and arms; water, internally or externally, may be said to have been his chief necessity of life.
Upon this especial occasion, the table—still littered with MSS.—was graced by Beethoven's favourite dish of macaroni and cheese, and a small dish of fish. Somewhat Spartan fare this for an Englishman; but Charles Neate was much too excited to care what he was eating.
Beethoven never composed in the afternoon, and very seldom in the evening. He had hardly sat still after dinner, smoking his long clay pipe, when—"Let us go out into the country," said he, suddenly springing up. Neate's possible piano lesson had vanished from his mind. He stuffed one or two extra note-books into his capacious pockets, and they started off—this time in a different direction.
This habit of suddenly rushing out into the open air he practised at all seasons, as the fancy took him: cold or heat, rain or sunshine, made no difference to him whatever. He had found that only among the silent solitudes of the hills and valleys could he fully release that throng of insurgent ideas which for ever clamoured in his brain for an outlet. Melodies, subjects, suggestions for their development and execution, flocked continuously through his mind; and to set them down in feverish haste—to imprison their "first fine careless rapture" in his note-book, for subsequent improvement and enlargement, was the occupation of all these country walks. But, consciously or unconsciously, his restless mind was soothed, and his sensitive nerves strengthened by the tranquil influences of the winds and skies.
Beethoven pursued his usual course on the present occasion, pulling out his note-book every few minutes, his lips moving rapidly, his eyes riveted on some mysterious distance. But he made an obvious effort at entertaining his young companion; and presently, Neate, encouraged by an unwonted stretch of conversation, or rather monologue, ventured to remark upon the master's great power in creating tone-pictures, and of the landscape-drawing, so to speak, of the Pastoral Symphony, wherein the green fields of Paradise seem to expand before earth's weary eyes, and there is
"Shed
On spirits that had long been dead,
Spirits dried up and closely furled,
The freshness of the early world."
Painting by A. C. Michael.
Painting by A. C. Michael.
"Know'st thou the house, its roof on columns white? ....
O there, O there, might I with thee, Beloved, go!"
Beethoven testified that, when composing, he always had a vision of natural beauty before his eyes, and that it enabled him to work. He had never been out of his native land: the lovely Austrian villages which he frequented, Hetzendorf, Dobling, or Heiligenstadt, sufficed him for beauty and for healthiness. But now and then, he allowed, he had a momentary longing for other scenes: the ice-blue mysteries of the Alps, or the warm and fragrant air of Italy. And he quoted—singing in a harsh, crude voice—those words of Goethe's which he had linked with such enchanting music,—the words of Mignon, yearning towards the homeland of her heart.
"Know'st thou the land, where sweet the citron blows,
Where deep in shade the golden orange glows?
A tender breeze from bluest heav'n doth stray
O'er myrtle bough and lofty laurel spray.
Know'st thou it well? that land dost know?
O there, O there, might I with thee, Beloved, go!
Know'st thou the house, its roof on columns white?
Fair gleams the hall, the hearth is glimmering bright;
And marble statues ask, with glances mild,
'What have they done to thee? O say, poor child!'
Know'st thou it well? that house dost know?
O there, O there, might I with thee, Beloved, go!
Know'st thou the crag, and all its cloudy grey,
Where scarce the muleteer may grope the way?
In caverns lurk the dragon's ancient brood,
Sheer falls the rock, and over it the flood.
Know'st thou it well? the way we know—
O there, O there, my father, let us go!"
GÖethe—Wilhelm Meister.
The composer at last turned homeward once more, and on arrival at his rooms, without a word of preparation, took young Neate by the shoulders and placed him upon the three-legged chair before the pianoforte. The chair promptly broke; but, nothing disconcerted, the master replaced it with another almost equally crippled, and bade the young man play.
It may be imagined with what diffidence, what nervousness, and what sinking of heart, the Englishman essayed the Sonata PathÉtique. He paused, breathless, at the conclusion, and awaited the verdict with anxiety.
"My son," said Beethoven, clapping him on the shoulder, "you will have to play a very long time before you discover that you know nothing. But cheer up! for the young there are infinities of hope." And he proceeded, with inconceivably kind care and patience, to give the youth such teaching as he had never imagined possible. That 'bitter, sarcastic' tongue of which folk complained, that irritable temper which often alarmed the master's young lady pupils—were now conspicuously absent. For he had a peculiar sympathy with young people at the outset of their career; and no trouble was too great for him to take on their behalf.
When at length, with cordial words of encouragement, he dismissed the Englishman, Beethoven for a moment was tempted to look back upon his own early days; when, always working very hard, either as a performer or a teacher, surrounded by unloving relations and uncongenial circumstances, he struggled upward, ever upward, impelled by some irresistible wind of destiny. Then he dwelt, involuntarily, upon the gathering clouds of his manhood—the secret dread of his encroaching deafness—the hidden sorrows of unrequited love.
"Such things," he thought, "have often brought me to the border of despair, and I have come very near to putting an end to my own life.... Yet it seemed impossible to quit this world for ever before I had done all that I felt I was destined to accomplish ... and how much of that is still before me! Ah! hard struggle to accomplish all which remains to be done, from the daily drudgery of necessity-work to the farthest journey, the highest flight! ... All this must be hewn out of thyself ... for thyself there is no further happiness than that which thou findest in thyself—thy art!" (Beethoven's Diary).
But now, with the coming of the evening hours, the composer might relax the tension of his thoughts, and find pleasure, so far as his infirmity allowed, in the society of his friends, and in talking over the newspapers. He was a well-read man, and took an eager interest in all the passing events of the day; moreover, when not in his 'serious working humour', he was a humorous, cheerful companion, full of fun and not averse from practical joking; a very different man from that 'savage personality, at loggerheads with mankind,' which he had appeared to the unsympathetic Goethe. For 'friends,' however, we had better substitute 'acquaintances'; because Beethoven declared: "I have only found two friends in the world with whom I have never had a misunderstanding. One is dead; the other still lives. Although we have heard nothing of each other for six years, I know that I still hold the place in his affections that he holds in mine."
A decided irascibility and uncertainty of temper, common to all deaf people, was apt to create rifts and coolnesses between Beethoven and those with whom he might be closely intimate. His whole warmth and abundance of affection was squandered upon his nephew Carl, the worthless son of a worthless father; an affection by no means reciprocated, which was fated only to cause fresh pangs to his much-enduring heart.
But, be that as it may, the Viennese were proud of their Beethoven—proud to be numbered among his associates. They bore him a species of personal attachment. He was part and parcel of themselves; though he moved in their midst, doubly remote from them, alike by his affliction and by his open distaste for 'the dissipations of a great and voluptuous city.' He would sit apart at a table, brooding over a long pipe and a glass of lager, his eyes half-closed; but if anyone spoke to him, or rather attempted to do so, he would always reply with ready courtesy and kindness. For, as he had written from the very depths of his heart:—
"O ye who think or say that I am rancorous, obstinate or misanthropical, what an injustice you do me! You little know the hidden cause of my appearing so. From childhood my heart and mind have been devoted to benevolent feelings, and to the thoughts of great deeds to be achieved in the future.... Born with an ardent, lively temperament, fond of social pleasures, I was early compelled to withdraw myself, and live a life of isolation from all men. At times, when I made an effort to overcome the difficulty, oh, how cruelly was I frustrated by the doubly painful experience of my defective hearing! ... Forgive me, then, if you see me turn away when I would gladly mix with you. Doubly painful is my misfortune, seeing that it is the cause of my being misunderstood. For me there can be no recreation in human intercourse, no conversation, no exchange of thoughts with my fellow-men. In solitary exile I am compelled to live."
Sometimes, however, his naturally vivacious spirits prevailed, and he became witty, satirical, 'a fellow of infinite jest.' Anything in the way of bad music was apt to send him into shouts of laughter; but "of Handel, Bach and Mozart he always spoke with the greatest reverence, and, although he would not allow his own great works to be depreciated, he himself made fun of his lesser productions. If greatly roused, he would let loose a perfect flood of hard-hitting witticisms, droll paradoxes and ideas." (Rochlitz.)
Still, albeit generous to a fault, and ready to give away his last thaler even to an enemy, his dislikes were so violent that he would actually take to his heels at the sight of some special object of aversion.
With particularly favoured friends, in the privacy of their own homes, Beethoven was less reticent than usual. He would discuss with them his two great regrets—that he had never visited England and had never married; which were his favourite topics of conversation. It is true that at forty-five—his present age—these regrets might still have time to be obliterated. But he felt himself the very Simeon Stylites of music, set apart to suffer in ascetic endurance upon a pillar of aloofness and despair.
And it was in this melancholy frame of mind—a reaction from the transient mirth of the evening—that the master buttoned his old grey coat about him and trudged gloomily homeward as the evening star first lighted itself. "O God, Thou lookest downward on my inward soul!" he murmured, "Thou knowest, Thou seest that love for my fellow-men, and all kindly feelings have their abode there! ... But I have no real friends; I must live alone. But I know that God is nearer to me than to many others in my art, and I commune with Him fearlessly."
Drawing a scrap of paper towards him, he scrawled a few heartfelt words upon it by the last rays of twilight:—
"I must praise Thy goodness that Thou hast left nothing undone to draw me to Thyself. It pleased Thee, early, to make me feel the heavy hand of Thy wrath, and by many chastisements to bring my proud heart low. Sickness and other misfortunes hast Thou caused to hang over me, to bring my straying from Thee to my remembrance.... But one thing I ask of Thee, my God—not to cease Thy work in my improvement ... Let me tend towards Thee, no matter by what means—and be fruitful in good works...."
And Ludwig van Beethoven had a means of "communing fearlessly" with his Creator, which, for him, was perhaps, as direct a road as prayer, if laborare est orare. For music, "although in its glorious fulness and power at that time unknown, was associated intimately by the early Christian writers with Christianity—with immortality." As Wagner has declared, music is of the "essential nature of things, and its kingdom is not of this world... Its spirit, like that of Christianity, is love." And by this medium, and in this divine language, the man whose outward senses were being darkened, now held, in the rapture of the "inward light," his intercourse with celestial things.
Baulked and baffled by circumstances—dragged at the chariot-wheels of relentless Fate—shut up and shut off from all sweet human amenities, the tone-artist sat down at his piano, and "after preluding softly with one hand ... poured out his soul in a very flood of harmony." At first the strains were mournful, sombre, disconnected, his own sad thoughts bearing a perpetual burden to him.
"O Providence," so he prayed, "let one more day of pure joy be vouchsafed to me! The echo of true happiness has so long been a stranger to my heart! When, when, O God! shall I again be able to feel it in the temple of nature and of man? Never? No! O, that were too hard!"
But presently he became buried in a deeper abstraction; a sphinx-like calm settled on, and smoothed out, his harsh, rough features. With the ease and firmness of a brilliant executant—with the intense feeling of an inspired artist, he continued to improvise the most glorious music which had issued that day from either his brain or his fingers. It was, like the Allegro Finale of the C sharp minor Quartet, "the dance of the world itself: wild delight, the lamentation of anguish, ecstasy of love, highest rapture, misery, rage, voluptuousness and sorrow." This great gift of extemporising, (which was only paralleled by his equal skill in sight-reading) was at once the solace and the snare of Beethoven. Hours upon hours could thus be dreamed away; yet who shall say that they were wasted? For gradually, out of the shifting panorama of rhythm and sound, a supreme and marvellous melody evolved itself.
Painting by E. B. Lintott.
Painting by E. B. Lintott.
"The Allegro Finale of the C-sharp-minor Quartet ... wild delight, the lamentation of anguish, ecstasy of love, highest rapture, misery, rage, voluptuousness and sorrow."
For a long time—months, if not years—he had been pursuing, as it were, some beautiful, elusive phantom—the idea contained in Schiller's stirring lines commencing:—"Freude, schÖner GÖtterfunken," ("Joy, thou heavenly spark of Godhead"). He was consumed with the desire to give these lines a worthy setting; he had filled a multitude of note-books with rough sketches; but the authentic, the indubitable melody which should be recognised at first hearing as the only one, had still evaded him until now—now, when he filled the twilight with a cry of success.
"I have it! I have it!" he exclaimed, as those magnificent phrases which were to be the crown and consummation of the great Ninth Symphony, at last were crystallised into shape upon his brain. And at that moment he entered, as it were, upon a new world of light, "in the soil of which bloomed before his sight the long-sought, divinely-sweet, innocently pure melody of humanity."
"Joy, thou heavenly spark of Godhead!" Was it the irony of Fate that made this thought the highest pinnacle of Beethoven's marvellous achievements? Was it not rather one of those divine compensations by which Heaven bestows, with both hands lavishly, "above all that we can desire or deserve?"
Scintillations of that "heavenly spark," multiplied a million-fold, flashed across the mental vision of the inspired composer; incessant majesties of sound piled themselves in splendid strata upon his intellectual ear; until, "blinded with excess of light," and outwearied with the exuberance of a joy beyond all that earth could yield, Ludwig van Beethoven sought his meagre straw mattress and thin quilt, and—while the clocks struck ten in the city—fell asleep as softly as a child.
Printed by The Bushey Colour Press (AndrÉ & Sleigh, Ltd.),
Bushey, Herts.
