CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 MUSIC 
 
Cornell University Library 
 ML 410.B41N77 1881 
 
 Life of Beethoven 
 
 3 1924 022 327 757 
 
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LUDWIG V AN B EETH0YEN - 
 
BIOGRAPHIES OF MUSICIANS. 
 
 Life of Beethoven 
 
 lottis iohl 
 
 TEAUSLATED FROM THE GERMAN 
 
 JOHN J. LALOR. 
 
 " Our age has need of vigorous minds." 
 
 CHICAGO: 
 
 JANSEN, MoCLUKG & COMPANY. 
 
 1881. 
 
COPYRIGHT. 
 
 JAHSEN, MoCLUEG & COMPANY. 
 
 A. D. 1880. 
 
 STERREOTYPEO AND PRINTED 
 
 ay 
 
 THE CHICAGO LEGAL KEW3' OOMPANY. 
 
IKTKODUCTION. 
 
 Music is the most popular of the arts. It fills 
 man's breast with a melancholy joy. Even the brute 
 creation is not insensible to its power. Tet, at its 
 best, music is a haughty, exclusive being, and nob 
 without reason are training, practice, talent, and 
 the development of that talent, required for the 
 understanding of her secrets. " One wishes to be 
 heard with the intellect, by one's equals ; emotion 
 becomes only women, but music should strike fire 
 from the mind of a man." In some such strain as 
 this, Beethoven himself once spoke, and we know 
 how slowly the works of the great symphonist found 
 a hearing and recognition from the general public. 
 
 Tet, who is there to-day who does not know the 
 name of Beethoven ? Who is there that, hearing 
 one of his compositions, does not feel the presence 
 of a sublime, all-ruling power — of a power that 
 springs from the deepest sources of all life ? His 
 very name inspires us with a feeling of veneration, 
 and we can readily believe the accounts that have 
 come down to us ; how even strangers drew back 
 with a species of awe, before this man of imposing 
 appearance, spite of his smallness of stature, with 
 
 (3) 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 his rounded shoulders, erect head, wavy hair and 
 piercing glance. Who has not heard of the two 
 charcoal-burners who suddenly stopped their heavi- 
 ly laden vehicle when they met, in a narrow pass, 
 this "crabbed musician," so well known to all 
 Vienna, and who was wont to stand and think, and 
 then, humming, to go his way, moving about bee-like 
 through nature from sunrise, with his memoran- 
 dum-book in his hand. 
 
 "We are moved with the same feeling of respect 
 that moved those common men, when we hear only 
 Beethoven's name ; but how much more powerfully 
 are we stirred when we hear his music ! We feel 
 in that music the presence of the spirit that ani- 
 mates and sustains the world, and which is contin- 
 ually calling new life into existence. Even the 
 person who is not a musician himself may feel, in 
 these mighty productions, the certainty of the 
 presence of the Creator of all things. Their tones 
 sound to him like the voice of man's heart of 
 hearts, the joys and sorrows of which Beethoven 
 has laid bare to us. We feel convinced, when we 
 hear them, that the person who in them speaks to 
 us has, in very deed, something to tell us, some- 
 thing of our own life ; because he lived and felt 
 more deeply than we what wt all live and feel, and 
 loved and suffered what we all love and suffer, more 
 deeply than any other child of dust. In Beethov- 
 en, we meet with a personage really great, both in 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 mind and heart, one who was able to become a 
 sublime model to us, because life and art were seri- 
 ous things with him, and one who made it his duty 
 " to live not for himself, but for other men." The 
 high degree of self-denying power found in this 
 phenomenon of art, it is that has such an elevat- 
 ing effect on us. The duties of life and the tasks 
 of the artist he discharged with equal fidelity. 
 His life was the foundation on which the super- 
 structure of his works rose. His greatness as a 
 man was the source of his greatness as an artist. 
 The mere story of his life, given here in outline, 
 reveals to us the internal springs of his artistic 
 creatipns, and we must perforce admit, that the 
 history of Beethoven's life is a part of the history 
 of the higher intellectual life of our time and of 
 humanity. 
 
CO NT EH TS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BEETHOVEN'S YOUTH AND EARLIEST EFFOKTS. 
 
 Birth and Baptism— His ^Family— Young Beethoven's Character— His 
 Brothers Karl and Johann— Early Talent for Music— Appears in 
 Public at the Age of Seven— Errors as to His Age— Travels in Hol- 
 land—Studies the Organ in Vienna— His Fame Foretold— His Per- 
 sonal Appearance — Meets Mozart— Mozart's Opinion of Him — Maxi- 
 milian, Elector of Cologne, and Mozart— Beethoven's Intellectual 
 Training — Madame von Breunihg— First Love — Beethoven and 
 Hayden— Compositions written in Vienna .... 9-39 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE EKOICA AND FIDELIO. 
 
 Music in Vienna— Society in Vienna— Beethoven's Dedications— Lich- 
 nowsky — The Eroicaand Fidelio— Beethoven's First Great Exploits — 
 Plans for Future Work— Decides to Remove to the North— New Com- 
 positions—His Improvisations— Disappointments in North Germany 
 —Prince Louis Ferdinand— Makes His Home in Austria— Neglects His 
 Health— His Deafness— Origin of the Eroica— Napoleon I— Berna- 
 dotte — The Symphony in C Minor— His Deafness Again— Thoughts 
 of Marriage— The Guicciardi Family— Meaning of His Music— His 
 " Will "—Disappointment— Meaning of the Eroica and Fidelio— The 
 Leonore Overture— Other Compositions .... 40-81 
 
 (7) 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE SYMPHONY C MINOE.— THE PASTOEALE, AND THE SEV- 
 ENTH, SYMPHONIES. 
 
 The Pastorale— Meaning of the Apassionata— Beethoven's Letter to His 
 "Immortal Loved One" — His Own Opinion of the Apassionata — 
 Thinks of Writing Operas— Court Composer— Overture to Coriolanus 
 —The Mass in C, op. 88— His Sacred Music— The Pidelio in Prague- 
 Music for Goethe's Faust— " Power, the Moral Code "—Character of 
 His Works about this Period— Intercourse with the MalfatHs— The 
 Cello Sonata, op. 69— Improvement in His pecuniary Circumstances 
 — Joseph Bonaparte— Vienna fears to lose Him— Contemplated Jour- 
 ney to England— The Seventh Symphony— His Hierathspariie— His 
 Letter to Bettina— His Estimate of Genius . . . 82-121 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE MISSA SOLEMNIS AND THE NINTH SYMPHONY. 
 
 Eesignation— Pecuniary Distress— Napoleon's Decline— The Battle-Sym- 
 phony— Its Success— Wellington's Victory— Strange Conduct— Intel- 
 lectual Exaltation— His Picture by Letronne— The Pidelio Before the 
 Assembled Monarehs— Beethoven the Object of Universal Atten- 
 tion— Presents from Kings— The Liederkreis— Madame von Ertmc :i 
 — Eomulus and the Oratorio — His "Own Style" — Symphony for 
 London— Opinion of the English People— His Missa Solemnis— His 
 Own Opinion of hv-lts Completion— Characteristics— The Ninth Sym- 
 phony - 122-162 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE LAST QUAETETS 
 
 Berlioz on the Lot of Artists— Beethoven Misunderstood— The Great 
 Concert of May, 1824— Preparation for It— Small Eeturns— Beethoven 
 Appreciated— The Quartets— An "Oratorio for Boston "—Overture 
 on B-A-C-H— Influence of His Personal Experience on His Works— 
 His Brother Johann— Presentiment of Death— The Eestoration of 
 Metternich and Gentz— His " Son "—Troubles with the Young Man 
 Debility— Calls for Dr. Malfatti— Poverty— The "Magnanimous" 
 English— Calls a Clergyman— His Death .... 163-201 
 
LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 1770—1794. 
 BEETHOVEN'S YOUTH AND EARLIEST EFFORTS. 
 
 Birth and Baptism — His Family — Young Beethoven's Character 
 — His Brothers Karl and Johann — Early Talent for Music — 
 Appears in Public at the Age of Seven — Error as to His 
 Age — Travels in Holland — Studies the Organ in Vienna — 
 His Fame Foretold — His Personal Appearance — Meets 
 Mozart — Mozart's Opinion of Him — Maximilian, Elector 
 of Cologne, and Mozart — Beethoven's Intellectual Training 
 — Madame von Breuning — First Love — Beethoven and 
 Haydn — Compositions written in Vienna. 
 
 Ltjdwig van Beethoven was baptized in 
 Bonn on the 17th of December, 1770. We 
 "know only this the date of his baptism, with 
 any certainty, and hence the 17th of Decem- 
 ber is assumed to be his birthday likewise. 
 
 His father, Johann van Beethoven, was a 
 singer in the chapel of the Elector, in Bonn. 
 The family, however, had come originally from 
 the Netherlands. Beethoven's grandfather 
 came to Bonn in 1732 after willfully leaving the 
 
 (9) 
 
10 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 parental roof in consequence of a quarrel. He 
 had attracted attention as a bass singer in the 
 church and the theater, and was made director 
 of the court band in 1763. By his industry, he 
 had founded a family, was earning a respecta- 
 ble livelihood, and had won for himself the 
 personal regard of the community. He did, 
 besides, a small business in wines, but this, 
 which was only accessory to his calling as a 
 musician, contributed to undermine both his 
 own happiness and his son's. His wife, Jos- 
 epha Poll, fell a victim to the vice of intemper- 
 ance, and, in consequence, it at last became 
 necessary to confine her in a convent in 
 Cologne. Unfortunately, the only surviving 
 son inherited the vice of his mother. 
 " Johann van Beethoven was given to the tast- 
 ing of wine from a very early age," says the 
 account of his playmates. It was not long be- 
 fore this weakness got the upper hand to such 
 an extent that his family and home suffered 
 greatly. It finally led to his discharge from 
 his position. Stephan van Breuning, our own 
 Beethoven's friend in youth, saw him, on one 
 occasion, liberate the drunken father out of the 
 hands of the police in the public streets. 
 
HIS FAMILY. 11 
 
 We here get a glimpse at a period in Bee- 
 thoven's youth, which put the strength of his 
 mind as well as the goodness of his heart to 
 the test. For in consequence of the very re- 
 spectable position occupied by his grand- 
 father, of his own early appointment as court- 
 organist, and of the rapid development of his 
 F talent, Beethoven soon,.enJQyed_the-SOciety of 
 the higher classes, and was employed in the 
 capacity of musician in the families of the* 5 
 nobility and at court. Yet, we are told, when- 
 ever it happened that he and his two younger 
 brothers were obliged to take their intoxi- 
 cated father home, they always performed that 
 disagreeable task with the utmost tenderness. 
 He was never known to utter a hard or un- 
 kind word about the man who had made his 
 youth so sunless, and he never failed to resent 
 it when a third person spoke uncharitably of 
 his father's frailty. The reserve and a certain 
 haughtiness, however, which marked his dis- 
 position as a youth and a man, are traceable to 
 these early harsh experiences. 
 
 And who knows the complications which 
 caused misfortune to get the upper hand here! 
 True, we are told that "Johann van Beethoven 
 
12 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 was of a volatile and flighty disposition;" but 
 even his playmates, when he was a boy, had 
 nothing bad to say of his character. Anger 
 and stubbornness seem, indeed, to have been 
 the inheritance of his Netherland nature ; and 
 these our hero also displayed to no small extent. 
 But while tbe grandfather had earned a very 
 good position for himself, and always so deport- 
 ed himself that young Beethoven might take 
 him as an example, and loved to speak of him 
 as a "man of honor," his father was never 
 more than a singer in the chapel, on a small 
 salary. But, notwithstanding his compara- 
 tively humble social position, he had made a 
 mistake in marrying below his station. 
 
 Johann van Beethoven took Magdalen a 
 Kewerich, of Ehrenbreitstein, to wife, in 1763. 
 She is described as a "pretty and slender 
 woman." She had served as a chambermaid, 
 for a time, in some of the families of the great, 
 had married young, and was left a widow at the 
 age of nineteen. Johann's marriage to thi§ 
 woman was not acceptable to the court capell- 
 meister, and so it happened that he was obliged 
 to leave the home in which he had thus far 
 lived with his lonely father, and move into a 
 
THE GRANDFATHER 13 
 
 wing of the house, number 515, iu Bonn 
 street, where his son Ludwig,. the subject of 
 this sketch, was born. 
 
 The young wife brought no property to her 
 husband. Several children were born to the 
 newly married couple in quick succession. Of 
 these, Karl, born in 1774 and Johann in 1766, 
 play some part in Beethoven's life. The growth 
 of the family was so rapid that it was not long 
 before they felt the burthen of pecuniary 
 distress. The grandfather, who was well to 
 do, helped them, at first. His stately figure 
 in his red coat, with his massive head and "big 
 eyes," remained fixed in the boy Ludwig's 
 memory, although he was only three years of 
 age when his grandfather died. The child 
 was, indeed, tenderly attached to him. As 
 the father's poverty increased, he made some 
 efforts to improve his condition. But they 
 were of no avail ; for his deportment was only 
 "passable " and his voice " was leaving him." 
 He now had recourse to teaching, and obtained 
 employment in the theater, for he played the 
 violin also. Sickness, however, soon eat up 
 what was left of his little fortune. Their 
 furniture and table ware followed their silver- 
 
14 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 service and linen — "which one might have 
 drawn through a ring," — to the pawn-shop ; 
 and now the father's poverty contributed only 
 to make him, more and more, the victim of 
 his weakness for the cup. 
 
 But there was even now one star of hope in 
 the dreary firmament of his existence — his son 
 Ludwig's talent for music. This talent showed 
 itself in very early childhood, and could not, 
 by any possibility, escape the observation of 
 the father, who, after all, wasliimself a " good 
 musician." ( And, although the father was not 
 destined to live to see his son in the zenith of 
 his success, it was his son's talent alone that 
 saved the family from ruin and their name 
 from oblivion, for with the birth of Beethov- 
 en's younger brother, Johann, and of a sister 
 who died shortly after, the circumstances of 
 the family became still more straightened. 
 Mozart had been in Bonn a short time before, 
 and it occurred to the father to train his son 
 to be a second little Mozart, and, by traveling 
 with him, earn the means of subsistance of 
 which the family stood so sorely in need. 
 And so the boy was rigidly kept to his lessons 
 on the piano and violin. His daily exercises 
 
EARLY TALENT. 15 
 
 on these instruments must have been a severer 
 task on him than would seem to be necessary 
 in a regular course of musical training. 
 He used to be taken from his playing 
 with other children to practice, and friends of 
 his youth tell us how they saw him standing 
 on a stool before the piano and cry while he 
 practiced his lessons. Even the rod was called 
 into requisition in his education, and the ex- 
 postulations of friends could not dissuade the 
 father from such relentless severity. But the 
 end was attained. Regular and persevering 
 exercise, laid the foundation of a skill in the 
 art of music, which led him before the pub- 
 he when only seven years of age. On the 
 26th of March (by a strange coincidence the 
 day of the month on which Beethoven died), 
 the father announced, in a paper published in 
 Cologne, that " his son, aged six years, would 
 have the honor to wait on the public with sev- 
 eral concertos for the piano, when, he flattered 
 himself, he would be able to afford a distin- 
 guished audience a rich treat ; and this all the 
 more since he had been favored with a hearing 
 by the whole court, who listened to him with 
 the greatest pleasure." The child, to enhance 
 
16 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 the surprise, was made one year younger in this 
 announcement than he was in reality ; and this 
 led Beethoven himself into an error as to his 
 age, which he did not discover until he was 
 nearly forty. 
 
 We need say but little concerning his other 
 teachers when a youth. His great school was 
 want, which urged him to follow and practice 
 his art, so that he might master it, and, with 
 its assistance, make his way through the 
 world. When Beethoven grew to be eight 
 years of age, he had as a teacher, in addition 
 to his father, the vocalist Tobias Pfeiffer, for a 
 whole year. Pfeiffer lived in the Beethoven 
 family. He was a skillful pianist. Beethoven 
 considered him one of the teachers to whom 
 he was most indebted, and was subsequently 
 instrumental in procuring assistance for him 
 from Vienna. But we may form some idea of 
 the nature of his instruction, and of the mode 
 of living in the family, from the fact, attested by 
 Beethoven's neighbors, that it frequently hap- 
 pened that Pfeiffer, after coming home with 
 the father late in the night from the tavern, 
 took young Ludwig out of bed and kept him 
 at the piano practicing till morning. Yet the 
 
m HOLLAND. 17 
 
 success attendant on this instruction was such, 
 even now, that when, the boy, Beethoven and 
 his teacher, who performed on the flute, played 
 variations together, the people in the streets 
 stopped and listened to their delightful music. 
 In 1781, when Ludwig was ten years old, he 
 traveled to Holland with his mother, played 
 in the houses of the great, and astonished 
 every one by his skill. The profits from this 
 journey, however, cannot have been very 
 large. When the boy was questioned about 
 them, he replied : " The Dutch are a niggard- 
 ly set ; I shall never visit Holland again." 
 
 In the meantime, he turned his attention 
 also to the study of the organ. Under the 
 guidance of a certain Brother Willibald, of a 
 neighboring Franciscan monastery, he soon 
 became so proficient on that instrument, that 
 he was able to act as assistant organist at di- 
 vine service. But his principal teachers here 
 were the old electoral court organist, van den 
 Eeden, and afterwards, his successor, Christian 
 Gottlob Neefe. In what regards composition 
 the latter was the first to exercise any real in- 
 fluence on Beethoven, and Beethoven, in after 
 years, thanked him for the good advice he had 
 2 
 
18 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 given him — advice which, had contributed so 
 much to his success in the " divine art." He 
 concludes a letter to Neefe as follows: "If 
 I should turn out some day to be a great man, 
 youwill have contributed to making me such." 
 JSeefe^came originally from Saxony. As an 
 organist, he had all the characteristics of the 
 North German artists ; but, on the other hand, 
 he had, as a composer, a leaning towards the son- 
 ata-style introduced by Ph. E. Bach. He was a 
 man of broad general education, and the form 
 of his artistic productions was almost faultless. 
 Such was young Beethoven's proficiency at the 
 age of eleven, in 1782, that ISTeefe was able to 
 appoint him his " substitute," and thus to pave 
 the way for his appointment as courtorgaaist. 
 We owe to him the first published account of 
 Beethoven, and from that account we learn 
 that the great foundation of his instruction 
 was Bach's "well-tempered clavichord," that 
 ne plus ultra of counterpoint and technic. He 
 first made a reputation in Vienna by his 
 masterly playing of Bach's fugues. But the 
 instruction he had received in composition, 
 bore fruit also, and some variations to a march 
 and three sonatas, by him, appeared at this 
 time in print. 
 
PRECOCITY. 19 
 
 In the account of Beethoven referred to 
 above, and which was written in 1783, Neefe 
 said that that young " genius " was deserving 
 of support that he might be able to travel, 
 and that he would certainly be another Mo- 
 zart. But the development of his genius soon 
 took a wider scope. He even, on one occasion, 
 when Neefe was prevented doing so, presided at 
 a rehearsal in the Bonn theater, in which the 
 best pieces of the age were produced. This was 
 at the age of twelve. And so it happened that 
 his, artistic views and technic skill grew stead- 
 ily greater. We are told that when he be- 
 came court organist, at the age of thirteen, he 
 made the very accurate vocalist Heller lose the 
 key entirely during the performance of divine 
 service, by his own bold modulations. True, 
 the Elector forbade such " strokes of genius " 
 in the future, but he, no less than his capell- 
 meister Luchesi, was greatly astonished at the 
 extraordinary capacity of the young man. 
 
 Incidents of this kind may have suggested the 
 propriety of giving him the instruction appro- 
 priate for a really great master of art; and, in- 
 deed, we find the court organist of Bonn with 
 Mozart in Vienna, in the spring of 1787. 
 
20 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 Beethoven's appearance was not what would 
 be called imposing. IJej^^nialL£>£-atai«rre, 
 muscular and awkward, with a short snub 
 nose. When he was introduced to Mozart, 
 the latter was rather cool in his praise of his 
 musical performances, considering them pieces 
 learned by heart simply for purposes of pa- 
 rade. Beethoven, thereupon requested Mozart 
 to give him a subject, that he might try his 
 powers of musical improvisation. Charmed 
 with the ability displayed in the execution of 
 the task thus imposed on his young visitor, 
 Mozart exclaimed: " Mark that young man ! 
 the world will hear of him some day." 
 Beethoven, however, received very little in- 
 struction from Mozart, who was so deeply en- 
 gaged, just at this time, with the composition 
 of his Bon Giovanni, and so sorely tried by 
 adverse circumstances, that he played very lit- 
 tle for him, and could give him only a few les- 
 sons. Besides, Beethoven's mother was now 
 taken seriously ill, and after a few weeks he 
 had to return home, where other blows of a 
 hard fate awaited him. His kind, good moth- 
 er, was snatched from him by death, and his 
 father's unfortunate weakness for strong drink 
 
MAXIMILIAN. 21 
 
 obtained such a mastery over him that he was 
 deprived of his position shortly after. The 
 duty of supporting his two younger brothers 
 was thus imposed on Ludwig, the eldest. 
 
 Young Beethoven was thus taught many a 
 severe lesson early in life, in the hard school 
 of adversity. But his trials were not without 
 advantage to him. They gave to his charac- 
 ter that iron texture which upheld him under 
 the heaviest burthens, nor was his recall to 
 Bonn a misfortune. He there found the very 
 advantages which he had gone to seek in the 
 musical metropoliSj^JSSeflna ; for Maximilian 
 Francis, Elector of Cologne, the friend and 
 patron of Mozart, was one of the noble princes 
 of the preceding century, who made their 
 courts the sanctuary of culture and of art. 
 
 Maximilian was the youngest son of Maria 
 Theresa. He had received the careful train- 
 ing, for which that imperial house was noted, 
 and he found in Joseph II an example in 
 every way worthy of imitation. He was as 
 faithful to his calling as an ecclesiastic as to 
 his duties as a ruler, and as adverse to what 
 he looked upon as superstition in the garb of 
 Christianity, as to the extravagance of his pre- 
 
22 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN'. 
 
 decessors, who had left the country in a state 
 of corruption and destitution. He every- 
 where endeavored to bring order out of chaos 
 and to spread prosperity among his people. 
 A pure, fresh atmosphere filled the little court 
 as long as he presided in it. He was still 
 young, not much over thirty, and a man of 
 the truest principles. Speaking of him as 
 " that most humane and best of princes," a 
 contemporary writer says : " People had grown 
 accustomed to think of Cologne as a land of 
 darkness, but when they came to the Elector's 
 court, they quickly changed their mind." 
 The members of the orchestra of the court 
 especially, among whom our young court or- 
 ganist is to be reckoned, were, we are told, 
 very intelligent, right thinking men, of ele- 
 gant manners and unexceptionable conduct. 
 
 The Elector had opened the University in 
 1776, and established a public reading-room, 
 which he visited with no more ostentation 
 than any one else. "All these institutions, as 
 I looked upon it, had sworn allegiance to an 
 unknown genius of humanity, and, for the 
 first time in my life, my mind had a glimmer 
 of the meaning and majesty of science." writes: 
 
HIS CULTURE. 23 
 
 the painter, Gerhard Kuegelgen,and how could 
 Beethoven have thought differently? He had, 
 it is true, devoted himself so exclusively to 
 music that he had made very little progress in 
 anything else. In the use of figures he always 
 found great difficulty, and his spelling was 
 worse than could be easily tolerated even in 
 his own day, when orthography was a rather 
 rare accomplishment. He had studied a little 
 French and Latin. But the breezes of a higher 
 intellectual culture which, at this time, swept 
 through Bonn and influenced him likewise 
 through his intimate intercourse with the most 
 highly cultivated people of the city, soon lift- 
 ed him to heights unattained by other artists 
 and musicians of his century — heights from 
 which he continually discerned new fields of 
 action. As a consequence of this intercourse 
 with the learned, he acquired intellectual tastes 
 in various directions, and so seriously occupied 
 himself with things intellectual that they be- 
 came a necessity to his nature. He tells us 
 himself that, without laying the least claim to 
 real learning, it had been his endeavor from 
 childhood to acquaint himself with what was 
 best and wisest in every age. But these intel- 
 
24 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 lectual leanings did not prevent him from be- 
 ing, as the painter Kuegelgen said of himself, 
 lovingly devoted to his art. And his own 
 beloved art of music was, at this very time, cul- 
 tivated in Bonn with a greater earnestness and 
 
 devotion than anv other. ,v 
 
 // 
 
 The writer referred to above, speaking of 
 the Elector, says: " Not only did he play him- 
 self, but he was an enthusiastic lover of music. 
 It seemed as if he could never tire of hearing 
 it. Whenever he went to a concert, he was 
 the most attentive person in the whole audi- 
 ence." And no wonder ; for the musical in- 
 struction given to the children of Maria 
 Theresa was excellent. Indeed, the art of music 
 in Vienna was at that time at its height. 
 That city was the scene of the labors of Gluck, 
 Haydn and Mozart. And so there was only 
 good music to be heard in the " cabinet " at 
 Bonn. Our Beethoven, now a distinguished 
 pianist, contributed his share to this; and 
 we need not be surprised to find him employed 
 by a prince who knew Mozart and loved him. 
 
 But it was not musicians alone who were 
 benefited by prince's patronage. No sooner 
 did the condition of the country leave him 
 
THE OKCHESTEA. 25 
 
 the necessary leisure, and the state of its 
 finances afford him the necessary means, than 
 he turned his best attention to the theater and 
 the orchestra. As far back as 1784, Maxi- 
 milian Francis had organized an orchestra, and 
 our young court organist took a place in it as 
 a player of the tenor violin. The violinist, 
 Bies, and Simrock, a performer on the French 
 horn, were also members of it. Eies and 
 Simrock had henceforth much to do with 
 Mozart. The following year, a troupe visited 
 Bonn, and gave Italian operas, French vaude- 
 villes, as well as Gluck's Alceste and Orpheus. 
 They were followed by Grossmann, a person 
 of rare intellect, and one who holds a dis- 
 tinguished place in the history of German 
 dramatic art. His repertory included the 
 plays of Shakespeare, Lessing, Schiller and 
 Goethe, with all of whom Beethoven thus be- 
 came acquainted early in life. In 1788, Maxi- 
 milian Francis established a national theater, 
 and, dating from this, dramatic poetry and 
 music began to flourish in Bonn, so that it 
 took its place, in this respect, side by side with 
 Mannheim, Vienna and Weimar, and became 
 a school well calculated to foster the great 
 
26 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 abilities of Beethoven. In the orchestra we 
 find such men as Andreas, Bernhard Romberg 
 and Anton Beicher, afterwards so celebrated as 
 a writer on the theory of music. The latter 
 was, at this time, Beethoven's most intimate 
 friend and companion in art. Actors, too, come 
 upon the stage, many of whom subsequently 
 filled all Germany with their fame. Dramatic 
 works of every description appeared. There was 
 Martin's Tree of Diana, Mozart's Elopement 
 from the Seraglio, Salieri's Grotto of Tropho- 
 nius, Dittersdorf's Doctor and Apothecary, 
 and Little Red Riding Hood, Gluck's Pilgrim 
 of Mecca, besides Paisiello's King Theodore, 
 and greatest of all, Don Giovanni. The music 
 "pleased connoisseurs ;"and Figaro's Marriage 
 greatly charmed both singers and the mem- 
 bers of the orchestra, who vied with one an- 
 other to do justice to that beautiful opera. 
 "The strength of our theater," says a writer 
 of the time, characteristically and simply, 
 "lay in our opera." 
 
 This continual contemplation of " charac- 
 ters in tone" played a decided part in the 
 development of an artist who was destined to 
 infuse into instrumental music so much of 
 
IMPROVISATION. 27 
 
 poetical and even of dramatic life. We are 
 informed that Beethoven's power of delineat- 
 ing character in the language of music was so 
 great, even at this time, that when improvis- 
 ing, which he was very fond of doing, he was 
 frequently asked " to describe the character of 
 some well known person." One distinguish- 
 ing peculiarity of the Bonn orchestra had a 
 marked influence in the development of the 
 great symphonist of the future, Beethoven. 
 "We refer to what has been called " the accur- 
 ate observation of musical light and shade, or 
 of the forte and piano." This musical pecu- 
 liarity was introduced into the Bonn orchestra 
 by a former capellmeister, Mattioli, "a man 
 full of fire and refined feeling," who had 
 learned orchestral accentuation and declama- 
 tion from Gluck, and whose musical enthu- 
 siasm caused him to be considered the superior 
 of Cannabich of Mannheim, who played such 
 a part in Mozart's life, and who had originated 
 this mode of musical delivery in Germany. 
 He was succeeded by Joseph Reicha, under 
 whose energetic leadership the Bonn orchestra 
 reached its highest point of perfection. In 
 the autumn of 1791, we find that entire or- 
 
28 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 cliestra in Mergentheim, the seat of the Ger- 
 man order of which Maximilian Francis was 
 Grand Master ; and we have an account of it 
 from Mergentheim which gives us a very clear 
 idea of Beethoven's life as a student. 
 
 Our, informant tells us, in the first place, 
 that he was very much impressed by an octett 
 of wind instruments. All eight players were, 
 he says, masters who had reached a high de- 
 gree of truth and perfection, especially in the 
 sustaining of tones. Does not this remind one 
 of Beethoven's exquisite septett op. 20 ? How 
 Bles infused life and spirit into all by his sure 
 and vigorous bowing in the orchestra ! What 
 once could be heard only in Mannheim, we 
 are told, was now heard here — the close ob- 
 servance of the piano and the forte and the 
 rinforzando, the swell and gradual growth of 
 tone, followed by the dropping of the same 
 from the utmost intensity to the merest breath. 
 Bernhard Romberg's playing is lauded for 
 "perfection of expression and its fine shades 
 of feeling which appeal to the heart;" his 
 cousin Andreas's for "taste in delivery," and 
 the true art of his " musical painting." Can 
 we wonder that Beethoven's emulation of, and 
 
HIS PLAYING. 29 
 
 struggling for the mastery with such men 
 contributed constantly to develop his genius ? 
 He is praised for the peculiar expression of 
 his playing, and above all for the speaking, 
 significant, expressive character of his fancy. 
 Our informant says, in closing his account: "I 
 found him wanting in nothing which goes to 
 make the great artist. All the superior per- 
 formers of this orchestra are his admirers. 
 They are all ears when he plays, but the man 
 himself is exceedingly modest and without 
 pretension of any kind." 
 
 We have now seen what was Beethoven's 
 technical training both by practice and ex- 
 ample, on the organ and the piano, in the the- 
 ater and the orchestra, and how all these were 
 to him a school of musical composition; for 
 the Bonn orchestra was as conversant with 
 Mozart and Haydn as we of to-day are with 
 Beethoven. How thoroughly he comprehend- 
 ed and appreciated Mozart especially, is at- 
 tested by what he once said to John Cramer, 
 the only piano-player to whom Beethoven him- 
 self applied terms of high praise. The two 
 were walking, in 1799, in the park in Vienna, 
 listening to Mozart's concert in C minor. 
 
30 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN". 
 
 "Cramer! Cramer!" Beethoven exclaimed, 
 when he heard the simple and beautiful theme 
 near the close: "We shall never be able to ac- 
 complish anything like that." " What a mod- 
 est man ! " was the reply. This leads us to 
 say something of the few beautiful, purely 
 human gifts which were the fruit Beethoven 
 enjoyed through life, of his youth in Bonn. 
 
 In Bonn, lived Madame von Breuning, with 
 her four children, who were only a little 
 younger than our court-organist. Beethoven 
 and one of the sons, Stephan, received instruc- 
 tion in music from Bies, and were thus thrown 
 together. But it was not long before our 
 young artist himself was called upon to teach 
 the piano in the family of Madame von 
 Breuning. How lonely Beethoven felt after his 
 good mother had succumbed to her many suf- 
 ferings and sorrows, we learn from the first 
 letter of his that has come down to us. We 
 there read : " She was so good and amiable a 
 mother to me ! She was my best friend. O, 
 who was happier than I while I could yet 
 pronounce the sweet name of mother ! There 
 was once some one to hear me when I said 
 ' mother ! ' But to whom can I address that 
 
MADAME BREUNING. 31 
 
 name now? Only to the silent pictures of 
 her which my fancy paints." But Madame 
 von Breuning became a second mother to him; 
 and what her home was, we are informed by 
 Doctor Wegeler, afterwards husband of 
 Madame von Breuning's daughter Eleonore, 
 for a time one of Beethoven's pupils. He 
 writes : " Her home was pervaded by an 
 atmosphere of unconstrained refinement, spite 
 of an occasional outburst of the petulance of 
 youth." The boy, Christoph, took very early 
 to the writing of little poems. Stephan did the 
 same thing at a much later date, and successful- 
 ly. The useful and agreeable were found com- 
 bined in the little social entertainments of 
 fein'-ly friends. It was not long before 
 Beethoven was treated as one of the children. 
 He spent the greater part of the day in Madame 
 Bruening's home, and not unfrequently, the 
 night. He felt at home in the family, and every- 
 thing about him contributed to cheer him and 
 to devolop his mind." When it is known, on 
 the authority of the same Doctor Wegeler, 
 that it was at Madame von Breuning's home 
 that Beethoven first became acquainted with 
 German literature, that there he received his 
 
32 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN". 
 
 first lessons in socialetjqn'ette, it is easy to es- 
 timate the value toTiim of the friendship of 
 the Breuning family — a friendship which was 
 never interrupted for a moment during his 
 long life. 
 
 It was while in the enjoyment of this inter- 
 course with the Breuning family that he felt 
 the first charming intimations of the tender 
 passion. Wegeler makes mention of two 
 young ladies, one of whom, a pretty, cheerful 
 and lively blonde, Jeannette d' Honrath, of 
 Cologne, was a frequent visitor at the Breun- 
 ing's. She took delight in teasing our young 
 musician, and playfully addressed him, sing- 
 ing: 
 
 " Mich heute nock von dir zu trennen, 
 Und dieses nioht verhindern koennen, 
 1st zu empfendlich fur mein Herz !" * 
 
 His favored rival in Jeannette's affections 
 was a captain in the Austrian army, by the 
 name of Greth. His name occurs, in 1823, 
 in the written conversations of our deaf mas- 
 ter. He was just as much taken with the 
 sweet and beautiful Miss W. (Westherhold), 
 
 *To part from thee, my dear, this day, 
 And know that I can't with thee stay, 
 Is more than my sad heart can bear. 
 
SOCIAL LIFE. 33 
 
 but to no purpose. He called his love for her 
 a " young Werther's love," and, many years 
 after, he told B. Romberg a great many anec- 
 dotes about it. What he thought of his ac- 
 quaintance with the Breuning family and 
 these two young persons may be inferred from 
 the words in which he dedicated the variations 
 Se vuol ballare, to his friend Lorchen (Eleo- 
 nore Breuning) in 1793: "May this work," 
 he says, " serve to recall the time when I 
 spent so many and such happy hours in your 
 home," 
 
 Besides the home of the Breunings, in which 
 Beethoven was always so welcome, we may 
 mention another — that of Count Waldstein, to 
 whom the sonata op. 23 is dedicated. The 
 count was very friendly to Beethoven. He 
 was aware of his genius, and, on that account, 
 afforded him pecuniary assistance. Yet, to 
 spare the artist's feelings, this assistance was 
 made to have the appearance of coming from 
 the Elector. It may be that it was this same 
 amiable and art-loving young Austrian who en- 
 deavored to keep Beethoven's eye fixed on the 
 one place in the world in which he could re- 
 ceive the final touch to his musical education, 
 3 
 
34 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 — Vienna, f The verv multitude of Beethov- 
 en's ideas, arid the height to which his intellect 
 had soared, showed him that he was far from 
 having reached perfection in the artistic repre- 
 sentation of those ideas. His readiness of execu- 
 tion and his wonderful power of improvisation, 
 even now, assured him victory wherever he 
 went. But the small number of compositions 
 which he wrote at this time, in Bonn, is suffi- 
 cient proof that he did not feel sure of himself 
 as a composer. And yet he had now reached 
 an age at which Mozart was celebrated as a 
 composer of operas. 
 
 In March, 1790, Haydn, on his journey to 
 London, passed through Bonn, and was pre- 
 sented to the orchestra by Maximilian Francis, 
 in person. He returned in the summer of 
 1792, and as Mozart had died in the mean- 
 time, nothing was more natural than that 
 Beethoven should apply to the greatest living 
 musician for instruction. The Elector assisted 
 him; and we may divine how the young mu- 
 sician's heart must have swelled, now that he 
 had entered the real wrestling-place in his 
 art, from what, as we stated before, he said to 
 his teacher Neefe : " If I ever become a great 
 
THE REVOLUTION. 35 
 
 man," etc. But what was there that is not 
 expected from such a person ? Waldstein 
 expressed the " realization of his long con- 
 tested wishes" hy writing in Beethoven's 
 album: "By uninterrupted industry, thou 
 wilt acquire the mind of Mozart from the 
 hands of Haydn." When the wars of the 
 Revolution swept over the boundaries of 
 France, the excitement produced was great 
 and universal. Beethoven was affected only 
 by its ideal side. He was spared the sight of 
 the grotesque ridiculousness of the sans 
 culottes and the blood of the guillotine. 
 After a short journey, in November, 1792, 
 Vienna afforded him a safe retreat which he 
 never afterwards left. It was not long before 
 the French were masters of the Rhine. Max- 
 imilian Francis was obliged to flee, and thus 
 every prospect of Beethoven's returning home 
 was lost. 
 
 It now became imperative that he should 
 take care of himself. His two brothers were 
 provided for — Karl was a musician and Jo- 
 hann an apothecary. They soon followed him 
 to Vienna, where it was not long before they 
 renewed the scenes of his home life in Bonn. 
 
36 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEtf. 
 
 But his own constant endeavor was to be the 
 creative artist that, as he became more firmly 
 convinced every day, he was born to be. His 
 studies under Haydn, then under Schenk, with 
 whom the readers of the Life of Mozart are 
 familiar from his connection with the opera of 
 the Magic Mute, afterwards under the dry-as- 
 dust Albrechtsberger, the teacher of counter- 
 point, and even under Mozart's deadly enemy, 
 Salieri — were earnestly and zealously pursued, 
 as is evident from what he has left after him. 
 But even now his mind was too richly devel- 
 oped and his fancy too lofty to learn any- 
 thing except by independent action. Ten of 
 Beethoven's works date from the time he lived 
 in Bonn; but, during his first sojourn in 
 Vienna, compositions flowed in profusion from 
 his pen, and we cannot but suppose that the 
 germs of many of these last were sown during 
 the period of his virtuosoship in Bonn. We 
 conclude this chapter with a list of the works 
 here referred to. 
 
 Besides his first attempts at musical compo- 
 sition already mentioned, a concerto for the 
 piano written in 1784, and three quartets for 
 the piano written in 1785, which were after- 
 
COMPOSITIONS. 37 
 
 wards made use of in the sonatas op. 2, we 
 must add, as certainly dating from this period 
 of Beethoven's life iu Bonn, a ballet by Count 
 Waldstein (1791), a trio for the piano in E 
 flat, the eight songs of op. 52, which appeared 
 in 1805, two arias, one of which occurs in this 
 op. as Goethe's Mailied, a part of the Baga- 
 tellen op. 33 which appeared in 1803, the two 
 preludes op. 39, a minuet published in 1803, 
 the variations Vieni Amore (1790), a funeral 
 cantata on the death of Joseph II. (1790), and 
 one on that of Leopold II. (1792), the last of 
 which was submitted to Haydn and which he 
 thought a great deal of — both of these latter 
 compositions are lost — an allegro and minuet 
 for two flutes, a rondino for reed instruments 
 and the string trio op. 3 which appeared in 
 1796. 
 
 In addition to these, there are, in all proba-, 
 bility, many other compositions which were 
 completed during Beethoven's first sojourn in 
 Vienna, and published at a still later date ; the 
 octet op. 103, after which the quintet op. 
 4 was patterned before 1797, the serenade op. 
 8, which contained the germ of his nocturne 
 op. 42 ; the Variations op. 66, on Ein Maed- 
 
38 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 chen oder Weibchen, from the Magic Flute 
 (published in 1798); the variations on God 
 Save the King, the Romance for the violin, both 
 of which appeared in 1805, when Beethoven's 
 brother secretly published much of his music ; 
 the variation on Se Vuol Ballare from Mozart's 
 Figaro; the Es War Einmal from Ditters- 
 droff's Little Red Riding Hood, the " See He 
 Comes," the Messias, and a theme by Count 
 Waldstein (appeared 1793, 1797), the Easy 
 Sonata in C major, dedicated to Eleonore von 
 Breuning; the prelude in F minor (appeared 
 in 1805), and the sextet for wind instruments, 
 op. 71, which appeared in 1810. 
 
 In his twenty-third year, Mozart could point 
 to three hundred works which he had com- 
 posed, among them the poetical sonatas of his 
 youth. How little of sunshine and leisure 
 must there have been in a life which, spite of 
 its extraordinary intellectual wealth and ac- 
 tivity, reaped so little fruit! And even if we 
 fix the date when the three trios op. 1, were 
 composed in this period, when Beethoven was 
 for the first time taught the meaning of the 
 world and history, by the stormy movements 
 of the last decade of the last century; and 
 
HIS YOUTH. 39 
 
 admit that the two concertos for the piano 
 (op. 19 and op. 15) owe their origin to the 
 wonderful fantasias with which he charmed 
 the hearts and minds of the people of Bonn 
 at that time, yet how little did he achieve ! 
 This fact is the most convincing proof of the 
 truth of Beethoven's own assertion, that for- 
 tune did not favor him in Bonn. Leaving 
 his musical training out of consideration, 
 Beethoven's youth was not a very happy one. 
 Seldom was it brightened for any length of 
 time by the smiles of joy. 
 
CHAPTEE II. 
 
 1795—1806. 
 
 THE EROICA AND FIDELIO. 
 
 Music in Vienna— Society in Vienna — Beethoven's Dedications 
 — Lichncwsky — The Eroica and Pidelio — Beethoven's First 
 Great Exploits— Plans for Future Work— Decides to Re- 
 move to the North— New Compositions— His Improvisa- 
 tions—Disappointment in North Germany — Prince Louis 
 Ferdinand — Makes His Home in Austria — Neglects His 
 Health — His Deafness— Origin of the Eroica — Napoleon I 
 — Bemadotte— The Symphony in C Minor — His Deafness 
 Again — Thoughts of Marriage — The Guicciardi Family — 
 Meaning of His Music — His "Will'' — Disappointment — 
 Meaning of the Eroica and Fidelio — The Lenore Overture 
 — Other Compositions. 
 
 The golden age of music in Vienna had not 
 passed away when Beethoven came to that 
 city. Not the court, but the wealthy nobility, 
 and a great many circles of the cultured found 
 in music the very soul of their intellectual life 
 and of a no'bler existence. A consequence of 
 this was that more attention was paid to cham- 
 ber music than any other; and we accordingly 
 find that the greater number of Beethoven's 
 
 compositions, written at this period, are of that 
 (40) 
 
HIS DEDICATIONS. 41 
 
 style of music. Their very dedications tell us 
 much of the social circles of Vienna, and of 
 the persons who graced them. 
 
 First of all, we haye the three trios op. 1, 
 dedicated to Prince Karl von Lichnowsky. 
 The man who had been the pupil and friend 
 of Mozart might he glad, indeed, to see a sub- 
 stitute found so soon for that departed genius. 
 A quartet consisting of the able artists 
 Schuppenzigh, Sina, "Weiss and Kraft, played 
 at his house every Friday. Dr. Wegeler in- 
 forms us that Beethoven, in 1794, lived with 
 the Prince, who, at a later date, paid him a 
 salary of twelve hundred marks. The varia- 
 tions on Seht er Kommt, (See he comes) 1797, 
 were dedicated to his consort, the Princess 
 Christiane, nee Thun. She prized Beethoven 
 very highly, and, as he once said of her him- 
 self, would have liked to encase him in glass, 
 that he might be screened from the defiling 
 breath and touch of the unworthy. The first 
 three sonatas op. 2 are dedicated to J. Haydn, 
 and they introduce us to his special patron, 
 the Prince Esterhazy, with whom Beethov- 
 en was not very intimate, although the com- 
 mission to write the mass op. 86 was given by 
 
42 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 Nicholas Esterhazy. The quartet op. 4, as 
 well as the sonatas for violin, op. 23 and 24 
 (1800), and the string quintet op. 29 (1801), 
 are dedicated to Count Fries. There is much 
 in Beethoven's life to show that he was on 
 terms of close friendship with this rich "mer- 
 chant." The sonata op. 7 (1797), is dedicat- 
 ed to Countess Keglevics. The first concerto, 
 which was finished in 1794, is dedicated to the 
 same person, then known as Princess Odescal- 
 chi. The trios op. 9, as well as the brilliant 
 sonata op. 22, belong, by right of dedication, 
 to the Russian Count Browne, whom Beethov- 
 en himself called le premier Mecene de sa muse, 
 and the sonatas op. 10 (1798), to his consort. 
 To the Countess von Thun, he dedicated the 
 trio op. 11, composed the same year, and the 
 sonatas op. 12, to Salieri, one of his teachers 
 in Vienna. 
 
 How highly Beethoven esteemed Lichnow- 
 sky is evidenced by the dedication to him of 
 op. 14, the Pathetique (1799). In it we 
 find the earliest expression of Beethoven's 
 view of music as a voice speaking to man's 
 innermost nature, calling to him to live a 
 higher life. To Lichnowsky, likewise, was 
 
AUSTRIAN NOBLES. 
 
 dedicated the sonata op. 26 with the beautiful 
 funeral march (1802). The two lovely sona- 
 tas op. 14 of the year 1799, as well as the sonata 
 for the horn, op. 17 (1800), are dedicated to 
 the Countess Braun, whose husband gave 
 Beethoven, some years after, the commission 
 for the Fidelio; and the quintet op. 16 which 
 was finished in 1797 to Prince Schwarzen- 
 bera:. When we connect the name of Prince 
 Lohkowitz with the first quartets op. 18, com- 
 posed in 1797-1800; that of Baron von 
 Swieten the lover of the well-tempered clavi- 
 chord with the first symphony op. 21 (1800), 
 that of the learned von Sonnenfels with the so- 
 called pastoral sonata op. 28 (1801), we can see 
 the force of the remark made by J. F. 
 Beichart, that the Austrian nobility of this 
 period loved and appreciated music better prob- 
 ably than any other in the history of the 
 world. That they did not continue to do so 
 is due entirely to the fact of the general dis- 
 turbance of their pecuniary circumstances con- 
 sequent on the wars which came to an end 
 only in 1815, and which diminished their favor- 
 able influence on the cultivation of the art of 
 music. But our artist had all the advantages 
 
44 THE LIFE OP BEETHOVEN. 
 
 of this noble patronage. He spared no pains 
 nor sacrifice to profit by it. But his mind 
 could not rest in the mere enjoyment of 
 music. It sought other and higher spheres. • 
 His art was destined to absorb into itself the 
 whole world of culture, to take an active part 
 in the march of history and co-operate in giv- 
 ing expression to the ideas of life. The first 
 real exploits of our artist were the Eroica and 
 the Fidelio with the Leonore overture ; but 
 the path which led to them was one on which 
 those immediately surrounding him could not 
 very well follow him, and one which subse- 
 quently isolated him personally more and more 
 from his fellow men . 
 
 It was an ill-defined longing for this starry 
 path of a higher intellectual existence which 
 brought him to the north of Germany, to 
 Berlin, after he had finished the principal 
 parts of the course in music under Haydn, 
 Schenk and Albrechtsberger. Not that he 
 did not meet with recognition and remunera- 
 tion in his new home. But, after all, the 
 recognition and remuneration he met with 
 there were such as a virtuoso might expect. 
 For the present, neither the public nor music 
 
FTJTUKE PLANS. 45 
 
 publishers would have much to do with his 
 compositions. "Writing to Schiller's wife, the 
 young Bonn professor, Fischenich, says of 
 him: "So far as my acquaintance with him 
 goes, he is made for the great and the sublime. 
 Haydn has said that he would give him great 
 operas, and soon be compelled himself to stop 
 composing." He informs her, at the same 
 time, that Beethoven was going to set her hus- 
 band's Hymn to Joy — Freude choener Goetter- 
 funhen — to music. We thus see that he, even 
 now, harbored those great ideas which engaged 
 him at the close of his labors, in the composi- 
 tion of the Ninth Symphony. There were as 
 yet but few traces to be found in Vienna of 
 the intellectual awakening to which Germany 
 is indebted for its earliest classical literature, 
 and the period of its great thinkers in the west 
 and the north. On the other hand, Beethoven's 
 own mind was too full of the "storm and 
 stress" to be able to appreciate the beautiful 
 harmony and the warmth which had made 
 such phenomena as Haydn and Mozart pos- 
 sible in South-German Austria. But in the 
 North, the memory of "old Fritz" still lived; 
 there the stern rule of mind and conscience, 
 
46 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN". 
 
 generated by Protestantism, still prevailed, 
 while the firm frame-work of his own art, the 
 counterpoint of the great Bach, the " first 
 father of harmony," as he calls him himself, 
 was there preserved, apparently, in its full 
 strength. In addition to all this, the court 
 there was fond of music, and King Frederick 
 William II had endeavored to keep Mozart, 
 the greatest master of his time, in Berlin; 
 while Beethoven, since the Elector's flight 
 from Bonn, had no further prospects in his 
 home on the Rhine. He, therefore, decided 
 to remove to the North. 
 
 We find him on his journey thither at the 
 beginning of -1226. " My music secures me 
 friends and regard — what more do I want ? " 
 he writes from Prague to his brother Johann, 
 who, in the meantime, had entered into the 
 employment of an apothecary in Vienna. He 
 here composed the aria Ah Perfido (op. 65). 
 On his way to Berlin he passed through 
 Dresden and Leipzig*, but of his stay in these 
 two cities, we have no information. The king 
 received him very graciously; he played a 
 few times at court and composed the sonatas 
 for cello, op. 5, because the king himself played 
 
IMPROVISATIONS. 47 
 
 the violincello. The very first impression re- 
 ceived by Beethoven seems to have been de- 
 cisive. K. Ezerny, to whom he taught the 
 piano, tells us something from his own recol- 
 lection and observation about him, which is 
 very characteristic of the man, and shows how 
 sorely disappointed he felt in his most ardent 
 expectations in Berlin. He says: "His im- 
 provisation was very brilliant, astonishiDg in 
 the highest degree .... ISTo matter in what 
 society he was thrown, he made such an im- 
 pression on all his hearers that it frequently 
 happened that not a dry eye was to be seen, 
 while many broke into sobs. There was some- 
 thing wonderful in his expression, besides the 
 beauty and originality of his ideas, and the 
 highly intellectual way he had of presenting 
 them. When he had finished an improvisa- 
 tion of this kind he could break out into a fit 
 of loud laughter and ridicule his hearers on the 
 emotions he had excited. At times he even felt 
 injured by those signs of sympathy. " Who," 
 he asked, " can live among such spoiled chil- 
 dren ?" and for that reason alone he once de- 
 clined an invitation extended to him by the 
 king of Prussia, after an improvisation of this 
 kind. 
 
48 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 Beethoven was doomed to a disappointment 
 of a very peculiar kind here. Instead of the 
 manliness of character which he, coming from 
 the softer South, expected to find in the North, 
 he was confronted with a voluptuous luxury 
 to which his art was only a handmaid, and 
 with an apparent surfeit of music, the natural 
 outgrowth of the French influence due to Vol- 
 taire's residence in Berlin. Such was not the 
 spirit of the new era which animated himself, 
 and for the operation of which he was seeking a 
 proper theater of action. The king himself 
 did all in his power to make Gluck and 
 Mozart settle in Berlin, and Handel's oratorios 
 were played even at the court concerts. But 
 how could a man like Beethoven have worked 
 side by side with the ruling leaders in music — 
 with a Himmel and a Rhigini ? The only per- 
 son in Berlin who seemed to Beethoven a man, 
 in the full sense of the word, was Prince Louis 
 Ferdinand. With genuine frankness, he re- 
 marked of the prince's playing that "it was 
 not kingly or princely, but only that of a good' 
 piano player." But it is probable that from 
 the prince he borrowed the chivalric and, at 
 the same time, poetico-enthusiatic character 
 
ATJSTEIA HIS HOME. 49 
 
 found in his third concerto (op. 37), which was 
 finished in 1800 and dedicated to the prince, 
 " the most human of human beings." 
 
 He played twice in the Singing Academy 
 before its conductor, Fasch, and his successor, 
 Zelter, Goethe's well-known friend, when he 
 again brought the tears to the eyes of his 
 hearers. But he clearly saw from the exam- 
 ple of these two principal representatives of 
 the more serious taste for music in Berlin, that 
 it was not Bach's spirit which he was in search 
 of that ruled there, but only a caricature of 
 it ; and this last was by no means a counter- 
 poise to the Italian style of music, which still 
 held absolute sway. He returned to Vienna 
 disappointed in every respect, but with all the 
 greater confidence in himself. He never again 
 left Austria for good. It became the scene of 
 his grandest achievements, and it was not long 
 before their history began. 
 
 In a small memorandum book used by 
 Beethoven on his journey from Bonn to 
 Vienna, we find the following passage: "Take 
 courage. Spite of all physical weakness, my 
 mind shall rule. I have reached my twenty- 
 fifth year, and must now be all that I can be. 
 4 
 
50 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 Nothing must be left undone." The father 
 always represented Beethoven to be younger 
 than he really was. Even in 1810, the son 
 would not admit that he was forty years of age. 
 The words quoted above must, therefore, have 
 been written in the winter of 1796 or 1797; 
 and this fact invests them with a greater sig- 
 nificance than they would otherwise possess ; 
 for our artist now saw that, without the shadow 
 of a doubt, Austria and Vienna were to be his 
 abiding places; and he, therefore, strained 
 every nerve, regardless of what the consequen- 
 ces might be, " to be a great man sometime ;" 
 that is, to accomplish something really good in 
 music. This regardlessness of consequences 
 manifested itself especially in the little care he 
 seemed to take of his physical well-being. A 
 friend, who had every opportunity to observe 
 him, Baron von Zmeskall, informs us that 
 "in the summer of 1796, he came home 
 almost overpowered by the heat, tore open the 
 doors and windows of the house, took off his 
 coat and vest and seated himself at an open 
 window to cool himself. The consequence of 
 his imprudence was a dangerous illness, which 
 ultimately settled on the organs of hearing. 
 
HIS DEAFNESS. 51 
 
 From this time his deafness kept on increas- 
 ing." It is possible that the first symptoms 
 of his deafness did not appear as early as 
 1796; but certain it is, that it dates back into 
 the last decade of the last century, that it was 
 brought about by heedlessness of his health, and 
 that it became a severe tax on his moral cour- 
 age. His genius was so absorbed in his music, 
 that he too frequently forgot to take care of the 
 physical man. In November, 1796, Stephan 
 von Breuning remarked of him, that "his 
 travels had contributed to mature his char- 
 acter ; that he was a better judge of men, and 
 had learned to appreciate the value, but, at the 
 same time, the rarity of good friends." The 
 hard trials of life had added to the earnestness 
 of his disposition, and he was awakening to a 
 full sense of what his own duty in this world 
 was. This leads us to the first great and mem- 
 orable work of his genius — to the Eroica, fol- 
 lowed soon after by the symphony in C minor. 
 When, in the year 1806, one of his friends 
 informed Beethoven of Napoleon's victory at 
 Jena, he exclaimed : " It's a pity that I do not 
 understand the art of war as well as I do the 
 art of music. If I did I certainly would con- 
 
52 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 quer him." These words express a rivalry 
 almost personal in its nature, and could have 
 been spoken only by a fool or by a man of 
 power not unlike that of Napoleon himself. 
 And, indeed, leaving out of consideration men 
 of genius like Goethe and Schiller, whose 
 fame had been long established on a firm 
 foundation, there were among his contempo- 
 raries men of sovereign ambition, only one 
 person, Napoleon Bonaparte, able to make any 
 great impression on a man who had chosen 
 for his motto : 'Tower is the moral code of 
 men who distinguish themselves above others ; 
 and it is mine, too." A series of the most 
 brilliant victories was achieved up to 1798 by 
 the General of the glorious French Republic, 
 who was of the same age as Beethoven. Gen- 
 eral Bernadotte, whose descendants occupy the 
 throne of Sweden in our day, had participated 
 in those victories. Bernadotte was the French 
 Ambassador to Vienna in the beginning of 
 1798. He was young ; by his origin he belong- 
 ed to the middle class ; he was the representa- 
 tive of the Bepublic, and could, therefore, in- 
 dulge, unconstrained, in personal intercourse 
 with whomsoever he pleased. 
 
BERNADOTTE. 53 
 
 The celebrated violinist, Rudolph Kreutzer, 
 to whom Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata (op. 
 47) is dedicated, was one of his retinue. It 
 was very natural that once Bernadotte and 
 Kreutzer became acquainted with Beethoven, 
 their intercourse with him and their friend- 
 ship for him, should have been more than 
 usually intimate. Bernadotte, who was sin- 
 cerely devoted to Napoleon, and who must 
 have felt himself drawn still more closely to 
 Beethoven, because of his enthusiasm for the 
 genefalTsuggested to him the idea of celebrat- 
 ing the exploits of his hero by a symphony. 
 Beethoven so informed his amanuensis, Schind- 
 ler, in 1823, and his account is corroborated 
 by other facts, that such was the first impulse 
 to the composition of the Eroica. 
 
 But the. advocate of power was destined soon 
 to swell to the proportions of the hero of in- 
 tellectual courage. " For thus does fate knock 
 at the gates." Beethoven used these words in 
 1823, in speaking " with uncontrollable en- 
 thusiasm' of that wonderful motive at the 
 opening of the symphony in C minor. The 
 last movement of the work, the fanfare-like 
 finale, so expressive of the joy of victory, 
 
54 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 shows that he here described a victory indeed, 
 the surmounting of the obstacles and darkness 
 of life, even if those obstacles and that dark- 
 ness consisted only of " the infirmities of the 
 body." The sketches of this movement, how- 
 ever, occur in the draft of the quartet op. 18, 
 and hence must have been noted down before 
 the year 1800! But the fact that the melody 
 of the adagio was also found in that sketch 
 shows that he was even then as certain of 
 mastering sorrow, as he was conscious of the 
 presence of the "demon in his ears," and of 
 the sad prospect of a " wretched " and lonely 
 future — a prospect which stirred him to the 
 very depths of his soul. 
 
 But it was years before these motives took 
 shape in his mind. To do justice to the great 
 ideas to which they give expression, to the 
 heroic victory of power and will over whatever 
 opposes them, he had to concentrate and 
 strengthen all his powers of mind and heart, 
 and to develop his talents by long exercise. 
 The portraiture of the struggles and of the 
 artistic creations of the next succeeding years 
 constitutes the transition to those first great 
 heroic deeds — a transition which must be un- 
 
LOVE AFFAIKS. 55 
 
 derstood by all who would understand Bee- 
 thoven's music. 
 
 The Napoleonic way in which Beethoven, 
 at the close of the last century, outgeneraled 
 all the most celebrated virtuosos of the time in 
 Vienna and in Europe, is attested by his tri- 
 umph over the renowned pianist Woelffl, in 
 1799, and his defeat of Steibelt, in 1800. But 
 he did still more towards achieving success by 
 his works. His numerous variations won over 
 to him many a fair player of the piano, while 
 his Adelaide, which appeared in 1797, gained 
 for him the hearts of all persons of fine feel- 
 ing; so that Wegeler may have told the simple 
 truth, when he wrote: "Beethoven was never, 
 at least so long as I lived in Vienna (1794-96), 
 without a love affair; and he occasionally made 
 a conquest which it would have been very hard, 
 if not impossible, for many a handsome Adonis 
 to have made." The "ugly," pock-marked 
 man, with the piercing eyes, was possessed 
 of a power and beauty more attractive than 
 any mere physical charms. And then, there 
 was the charm of his sonatas : op. 7, with the 
 funeral' song in adagio, which he is said to 
 have written in a tempest of "passionate feel- 
 
56 THE LIFE OP BEETHOVEN. 
 
 ing"; of op. 10, with its genuine masculine 
 profile; of the revolutionary sonata in C minor, 
 with the mysterious struggle in the allegretto 
 in No. II., and the brilliant exultation of vic- 
 tory in the allegro in No. III., the tragic song of 
 the largo, the gentle grace of the minuet — here 
 used exceptionally in the place of the scherzo, 
 as we find it already in op. 1 ; and, last of. all, 
 the droll question of little Snub Nose, in the 
 finale. And yet these were followed by the 
 Pathetique, with its exquisite and enrapturing 
 adagio, and the two beautiful love songs, op. 
 14; by the six quartets, op. 18, in which he 
 offered to a society of friends of his art, true 
 Songs of the soul and pictures of life overflow- 
 ing ; by the adagio of No. I, another Eomeo- 
 and- Juliet grave scene ; by the adagio of No. 
 VI., descriptive of the melancholy which, even 
 now, began to gather its dark clouds about 
 Beethoven himself, whose breast was so well 
 attuned to joy. /The descriptive septet (op. 
 20, 1800,) and 'the first symphony (op. 21), 
 sketched after the style of Haydn, but painted 
 with Mozart's pencil, are the last scenes in 
 what we may call Beethoven's older life, which 
 closed with the eighteenth century. The be- 
 
NEGLECTS HIS HEALTH. 57 
 
 ginning of the nineteenth opened a new world 
 to our artist. 
 
 The new world thus opened to Beethoven, 
 and the manner in which he himself conceived 
 it, may be best described in Schiller's magnifi- 
 cent verses : 
 
 " Wie shon, Mensch, mit deinemPalmenzweige 
 Stehst du an des Jahrhunderts Neige, 
 In edler stolzer Mannlichkeit! 
 Mit aufgeschlossnem Sinn, mit Geistesffille, 
 Voll inilden Ernsts, in thatenreicher Stille, 
 Der reifste Sohn der Zeit. 
 Frei durch Vernunft, stark durch Gesetze, 
 Durch Sanftmuth gross und reich durch Schittze, 
 Die lange Zeit dein Busen dir verschewieg. " 
 
 And now began for Beethoven a period of 
 severe trials, brought upon him by himself. 
 Absorbed in work, he neglected to take suffi- 
 cient care of his physical health. His trouble 
 with his hearing was increasing, but he paid no 
 attention to it. His carelessness in this re- 
 gard reduced him to a condition in which he 
 would have found no alleviation and no joy, 
 were it not for the inexhaustible resources he 
 possessed within himself. ^ 
 
 But to understand him fully, we must read 
 what he wrote himself, in June, 1801, to the 
 "best of human kind," his friend Amenda, in 
 
58 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN". 
 
 Kurland, who had left Vienna two years be- 
 fore. He says : 
 
 " Your owii dear Beethoven is very unhappy. He 
 is in conflict with nature and with God. Many and 
 many a time have I cursed Him because He has made 
 His creatures the victims of the smallest accidents in 
 nature, and this to such an extent that what promises 
 to be best and most beautiful in life, is destroyed. 
 You must know that what was most precious to me, 
 my hearing, has been, in great part, lost. How sad 
 my life is ! All that was dear to me, all that I loved 
 is gone ! How happy would I now be, if I could only 
 hear as I used to hear! If I could, I would fly to 
 thee ; but as it is, I must stay away. My best years 
 will fly, and I shall not have fulfilled the promise of 
 my youth, nor accomplish in my art what I fondly 
 hoped I would. I must now take refuge in the sad- 
 ness of resignation." 
 
 "We have here the words to the long-drawn 
 funereal tones of a song as we find it at the 
 beginning of the celebrated C sharp minor 
 (Mondschein) sonata op. 27 No. II, which 
 belongs to this period. The direct incentive 
 to its composition was Seume's poem, die Bet- 
 erin in which he gives us a description of a 
 daughter praying for her noble father, who has 
 been condemned to death. But in this pain- 
 ful struggle with self, we also hear the storm 
 
GIULIETTA. 59 
 
 of passion, in words as well as in tones. .Bee- 
 thoven's life at this time was one of sorrow. 
 He writes : " I can say that I am living a 
 miserable life. I have more than once exe- 
 crated my existence. But if possible I shall 
 bid defiance to fate, although there will be, I 
 know, moments in my life when I shall be 
 God's most unhappy creature." The thun- 
 ders of power may be heard in the finale of 
 that sonata. When it was published, the fol- 
 lowing year, its dedication ran : Alia dami- 
 gella contessa Giulietta Guicciardi. _The_ 
 celebmtedjQiulieJia..! Her friendship was, 
 indeed, a cheering ray of sunshine in Bee- 
 thoven's " wretched life" at this time. As he 
 writes himself in the fall of the year 1801 : 
 
 " My life is somewhat pleasanter now. I move about 
 among men more than I used to. I am indebted for 
 this change for the better to a lovely, charming girl 
 who loves me and is loved by me. For two years now 
 I have had once more some moments of happiness, and 
 for the first time in my life I feel that marriage might 
 make one happy. Unfortunately, she does not belong 
 to my social circle. But if I cannot get married at 
 the present time, I shall have to mix more among 
 men." 
 
 The family of the imperial counsellor, 
 
60 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 Count Guicciardi, originally from Modena, 
 was one of the families of the higher class with 
 whom Beethoven had formed an intimate ac- 
 quaintance through his art. Gruicciardi's wife 
 belonged to the Hungarian family of the 
 Brunswicks, who were likewise very friendly 
 to Beethoven. We shall yet have something 
 to say of the Countess Theresa Brunswick, for 
 whom and whose sister, the charming Countess 
 Deym, the variations for four hands on Ich 
 denlce dein, were written in 1800. Countess 
 Giulietta was in her sixteenth year, and as 
 good as betrothed to Count Gallenberg, a 
 musician and composer of ballet music. He 
 was, however, in such pecuniary straits that 
 Beethoven had, on one occasion, to come to 
 his assistance through a friend. The young 
 girl did not give any serious thought to a 
 union with the Count, although he belonged 
 to her own social circle. The attractions of 
 a genuine love had more charms for her. This 
 same true, genuine love possessed Beethoven's 
 soul. He writes to his friend Wegeler : 
 
 " I feel that my youth is only now beginning. Was 
 I not always a sickly man ? But, for a time, my physi- 
 cal strength has been increasing more than ever be- 
 
SONATA OP. 31. 61 
 
 fore, and the same is true of my mental power. With 
 every succeeding day I approach nearer to the goal 
 which I feel, but cannot describe. Thus only can I 
 live. No rest ! I know of no repose but sleep, and it 
 sorely pains me that I have now to allot more time to 
 sleep than was once necessary. Let me be only half 
 freed from my trouble and then, a perfectly mature 
 man, I shall come to you and renew our old friendship. 
 You must see me as happy as it is given me to be 
 here below. t You must not see me unhappy; that is 
 more than I could bear. I shall struggle manfully 
 with fate, and be sure, it will not overcome me entire- 
 ly. 0, how beautiful it would be to live life over a 
 thousand times! But I am not made for a quiet life." 
 
 To this, Beethoven's elasticity of soul, -which 
 lifted him to the height of joy and of intel- 
 lectual delight, we are indebted for those works 
 of his which are models of poetic creation. 
 What became of the traditional form of the 
 sonata after Beethoven began to tell in song 
 the meaning of joy and pain and of their 
 wonderful admixture, as he did in the sonata 
 op. 31, No. II, the first movement of which 
 looks as if thrown off with a single stroke of 
 the pen? There are the thoughtful ques- 
 tionings of fate in the opening chord; the 
 jubilant, tempestuous enjoyment of pleasure; 
 the expression of woe, more terrible in an- 
 
62 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 ticipation than realization, when misery 
 wrings a cry of pain from him, and he breaks 
 out in recitative — a form of art never before 
 coupled with an instrument, but which is here 
 more eloquent than words. Sorrow, joy and 
 genius have now transformed the mere 
 musician into the artist and the poet. Bee- 
 thoven, as the master of the intellectual 
 world of tones, began his career with this 
 sonata in D minor. From this time for- 
 ward, his every piece is a psychological pic- 
 ture of life. The form of the sonata had now 
 fully developed the intellectual germ which in 
 it lay. It is no longer mere form, but a finite 
 vessel holding an infinite intellectual treasure 
 as its contents. Even the separate parts of it, 
 although retained as usual, are henceforth 
 only phases and stages of the development of 
 that intellectual treasure. They are acts of a 
 drama played in the recesses of a human soul — 
 in the soul of a man who is forced to taste, 
 while still he laughs in his melancholy, the 
 tragic contents of the cup of human life dur- 
 ing every moment of his existence. For thus 
 it was now with Beethoven. The deepest sor- 
 row endows him with untrammeled serenity 
 
his "will." 63 
 
 of mind. Darkness becomes to him the par- 
 ent of a higher light. A humor that weeps 
 through its smiles is henceforth his. 
 
 On this sonata followed a symphony with 
 the real Beethoven flavor, the second sym- 
 phony (op. 36). It had its origin in the 
 "sublime feeling " which "animated" him in 
 the beautiful summer days of 1802; as had 
 also the brilliant Kreutzer Sonata (op. 47). 
 This summer of 1802 is a memorable one in 
 Beethoven's life. It brought with it the 
 severest trials of his courage as a man. These 
 trials transformed him into a hero, and were 
 the incentives to the composition of the fflroica. 
 To this period belongs the so-called " Heili- 
 genstadt Will," which discloses to us the in- 
 most depths of Beethoven's soul. 
 
 His physician had ordered him in October, 
 1802, to the village Of Heiligenstadt, near 
 Vienna, in a condition of the utmost hopeless- 
 ness. Beethoven thought that death was not 
 far off, and, anxious to justify himself before 
 posterity, he wrote from that place: "O, you 
 men, who think or say that I am malignant, 
 obstinate or misanthropic, what an injustice 
 you do me ! You know not the secret cause of 
 
64 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 what you think you see. From childhood up, 
 my heart and mind have been bent upon the 
 accomplishment of great deeds; I was ever 
 moved thereto by the feeling of benevolence. 
 To accomplish such deeds I was always dis- 
 posed. But consider that for six — yes, six 
 whole years, I have been in a most unfortunate 
 condition — a condition which has been made 
 worse by the stupidity of my physicians; that 
 my hopes, from year to year, of being cured 
 have been disappointed, and that at last there 
 lies before me the prospect of permanent ill. 
 Born with an active and even fiery tempera- 
 ment, a lover of the distractions of society, I 
 had to live in a state of isolation from all men. 
 How humbled I felt when a person standing 
 near me could hear a flute that was playing in 
 the distance, while I could hear nothing! 
 Experiences like this brought me to the very 
 verge of despair, and I came very near ending 
 my own life. Art alone held me back. It 
 seemed to me impossible that I should leave 
 the world until I had accomplished all for 
 which I felt myself so well fitted. O God, 
 thou seest my heart. Thou seest that it har- 
 bors beneficence and love for human kind. O 
 
EELIGIOTJS MUSIC. 65 
 
 you men, when you read this, remember that 
 you have wronged me, and let the unfortunate 
 rejoice to find one of their number who, spite 
 of the obstacles put in his way by nature, did 
 all in his power to be admitted into the ranks 
 of artists and men worthy of the name." 
 
 And now, too, we find in his music the 
 first traces of such appeals to the Godhead. The 
 text of the six songs of Gellert, op. 48, which 
 appeared in 1803, are of a religious nature. 
 But, in the domain of religion, our artist had 
 not yet risen to his full height. He is still pre- 
 ponderantly the musician of life, force and of 
 the brilliant play of the intellect; and his com- 
 positions are still pre-eminently works of art 
 and of the fancy. The Eroica (op. 55), which 
 was finished in 1803, possessed these character- 
 istics in the highest sense of the word. And now 
 we may understand what he felt himself, as he 
 said in his "Will," fitted to accomplish, as 
 well as the mysterious conversation he had in 
 1823, with his amanuensis, Schindler, in which 
 he speaks of this period of his life, and of 
 Giulietta, who had now long been the Countess 
 Gallenberg, and who had, a short time before, 
 returned from Naples, where her husband had 
 5 
 
66 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 acted as director of the theater for years. 
 The conversation in question begins thus: It 
 was held in the French language — 
 
 Beethoven — " She was mine before she was 
 her husband's or Italy's, and she paid rne a 
 visit, bathed in tears ; but I despised her." 
 
 Schindler — "By Hercules!" 
 
 Beethoven — " If I had parted in that way 
 with my strength, as well as my life, what 
 would have remained to me for nobler and bet- 
 ter things?" 
 
 Beethoven had said of himself that he 
 had something to do in the world besides mar- 
 rying. His ideal was not to live in such 
 cramped circumstances. He knew of " nobler 
 and better things." Yet it seems that he of- 
 fered his hand to the " lovely, charming girl " 
 in this year 1803, when he began to have a 
 prospect of permanently bettering his condi- 
 tion, and that Giulietta was not disinclined to 
 marry him. , But family considerations pre- 
 vented the decisive step; and she was married 
 in the fall of the same year to Count Gallen- 
 berg. " Despising " her — whether rightly or 
 wrongly we have no means of determining, 
 but we do know that she was not happy — 
 
LOVE AND AMBITION. 67 
 
 Beethov.eu turned to the performance of the 
 great tasks for which he felt himself fitted. 
 
 Our artist's life, like that of a thousand 
 others, thus proves the truth of the old saying : 
 the course of true love never did run smooth. 
 In his earlier biographies this episode has been 
 treated as a great and even tragic event, be- 
 cause that remarkable letter to his " immortal 
 love," of which we shall yet have occasion to 
 speak, was erroneously supposed to be ad- 
 dressed to Countess Guicciardi and to refer to 
 this circumstance in his life. But although 
 no more than an episode, Beethoven could 
 here have mastered his feelings only by the 
 full consciousness he now possessed of the duty 
 he owed to his genius. As Liszt says, le genie 
 oblige, and Beethoven felt that it was a duty 
 genius owed to mankind to sacrifice mere am- 
 bition and even the heartfelt happiness that is 
 born of love. The day before Guilietta's 
 wedding, he wrote to Macco, the painter: 
 " You paint, and I shall compose music. In 
 this way, we shall be immortal ; yes, perhaps 
 live forever." And that our artist had some 
 right to lay claim to such immortality is 
 proved not only by his sonatas, which are little 
 
68 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 poems in themselves, by his songs and quartets, 
 but by mighty and memorable works which 
 reflect the world-soul. He was working on 
 that grand creation, the Eroica. This sac- 
 rifice of his feelings may have been, and most 
 likely was, forced upon him by the accident 
 of the uncertainty of his position in life, but 
 that it was not made without a struggle is 
 manifest from his expression of contempt for 
 Giulietta — metis je la meprisais but still more 
 from the ideal of the value of faithful love 
 which now became rooted in his soul, and 
 which we see reflected in the Fidelio, that 
 immediately followed the Eroica, and which 
 presents us with the most beautiful of all 
 female characters. In its composition, we find 
 united that warmth of heart and that intellect- 
 ual in sight so peculiarly Beethoven's own, and 
 which he so beautifully embodied in his art. 
 On the golden background of his enthusiasm 
 for " nobler and better things," the sweet face 
 of Leonore stands out in bold relief as the 
 perfect type of human beauty. 
 
 Beethoven borrowed the tones of the Eroica 
 from the elevating nature of humanitarian 
 ideas transferred to the region of public life. 
 
THE EROICA. 
 
 & 
 
 The hero enters, touching with giant hands 
 the foundations of human existence, which, he 
 wants to ameliorate by renewing them. And, 
 indeed, the First Consul of the French. Bepub- 
 lic might very well suggest to him, at the be- 
 ginning of this century, how heroes act, the 
 jubilation with which nations greet them, 
 how great existing institutions oppose their 
 progress, and, finally, overthrow them in their 
 might. The first movement of the Eroica de- 
 scribes the mo&Tvaried events in the life of 
 such a hero with a fullness of episode almost 
 destructive of its form. In its climax, the real 
 work of the hero is seen; the old order of 
 things is heard crumbling and falling to pieces 
 in its powerful and terrific syncopations and 
 dissonant chords, to make place for a new ex- 
 istence, one more worthy of human beings. 
 But, at the close of the movement, the vic- 
 torious hero exultingly yokes the new order of 
 things to his chariot. This is history, the 
 world's history in tones ; and, for its sake, we 
 may for the moment shroud the dearest long- 
 ings of the heart in the dark robes of resigna- 
 tion. 
 
 Beethoven's fancy as an artist fully compre- 
 
70 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 hended the genius of liberty, at this time 
 newly born into the world, and a new factor 
 in the history of mankind. He understood, 
 too, the tragic fate of all heroes — that they are 
 destined, like all other mortals, to fall, and, 
 though God-commissioned, to die, that their 
 works may live and prosper. Bonaparte's 
 history also suggested the rhythm of the sub- 
 lime and solemn step of the funeral march ; 
 for, since the days of Caesar and Alexander, 
 no man had stepped as did he through the 
 spaces of the existing order of things. But 
 Beethoven's poetic fancy soared even now far 
 beyond the reality that surrounded him. As 
 early as 1802, he wrote to the music dealers in 
 Leipzig, now so well known as the publishers 
 of the Edition Peters: "Away with you all, 
 gentlemen! To propose to me to write such a 
 sonata! That might have done in the time 
 when the Revolution was at fever heat, but now 
 tli at everything has returned to the old beaten 
 path, that Bonaparte has concluded a concordat 
 with the Pope, to write such a sonata — away 
 with you !" It is not Napoleon, therefore, who 
 is here interred. It is not Napoleon for whom 
 mankind weeps in the tones of this funeral 
 
THE EEOICA. 71 
 
 march. It is the ever-living, ever-awakening 
 hero of humanity, the genius of our race, ttfat 
 is solemnly home to the grave to the rhythm of 
 this wonderful march — a march which has in 
 it something of the tragic pathos of a Shaks-: 
 peare or an iEschylus. Beethoven in this 
 march became a tragic writer of purely instru- 
 mental music, and gave evidence of that qual- 
 ity of soul which made him indifferent to "the 
 slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." 
 
 The two last movements of the work do not 
 convey so powerful an idea of heroic action. 
 Was it that his powers of imagination flagged, 
 or that the change in Napoleon's career made 
 him disgusted with the hero? We know that 
 when, in the spring of 1804, the copy of the 
 symphony was finished — the title, proudly 
 and characteristically enough bearing only 
 two names, "Buonaparte " at the top and 
 "Luigi van Beethoven" at the bottom — and 
 Beethoven heard of Napoleon's elevation, he 
 said : " Can it be that he is no more than an 
 ordinary man? Now he, like others, will 
 trample all human rights under foot, serve 
 only his ambition and become a tyrant." He 
 tore the title page in two, threw the work on 
 
72 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 the floor and did not again look at it for a long 
 time. When it appeared in 1806, it was under 
 the name of the Sinfonia Eroica, " composed 
 to celebrate the memory of a great man." 
 It was dedicated to Prince Lobkowitz, who 
 purchased it and caused it to be performed be- 
 fore Prince Louis Ferdinand, in the fall of 
 1804. The Prince was so delighted with it 
 that he had it played three times the same 
 evening in immediate succession, which was a 
 very great satisfaction to Beethoven. 
 
 There is a oneness of spirit in this instru- 
 mental fresco-painting of a hero who strives 
 and suffers for the sake of what is most pre- 
 cious to man, and in Beethoven's only opera, the 
 Fidelio, which made the latter the natural 
 successor of the Eroica. Florestan dared 
 " boldly to tell the truth," and this, his enter- 
 ing the lists for right and freedom, incites his 
 faithful wife, Leonore, to a truly heroic deed. 
 Disguised in male attire, she enters the prison, 
 and, just in the nick of time, casts herself be- 
 tween her beloved husband and his murderer. 
 Her cry — which has in it much of the heroism 
 of death — " kill first his wife," is a bit of 
 history showing the enthusiasm of the ideally 
 
PROMETHEUS. 73 
 
 great, as it is also the most intense dramatic 
 representation, in tones, of the full energy of a 
 woman's love. 
 
 In a letter to Amenda, in 1801, he wrote : 
 "I have composed music of every description, 
 except operas and church music." But even, 
 a short time before this, he had something to 
 do with the theater. He had written the ballet 
 Prometheus, which represents in a sense, the 
 history of the creation of man in chore- 
 graphic pictures. The success of this work 
 determined Schikaneder, well known to the 
 readers of the life of Mozart, and who, at this 
 time, had the direction of the newly-built 
 theater in Vienna, to engage Beethoven at a 
 large annual stipend. When this man, Schi- 
 kaneder, in the same spring of 1803, saw that 
 the oratorio Christus am Oelberg (Christ on 
 the Mount of Olives) met with good success, 
 although more theatrical than spiritual in its 
 character, he commissioned him to write an 
 opera also. The subject was, probably, Alex- 
 ander — a very suitable one, considering Bee- 
 thoven's own heroic style, and his feeling at 
 the time. But nothing came of it. There 
 can be no doubt, however, that a piece which 
 
74 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN". 
 
 he had sketched and intended to make a part 
 of it, the duet, Namenlose Freude (O 
 Nameless Joy), was afterwards embodied in the 
 Fidelio. Beethoven had received a commission 
 to write the latter from Baron von Braun, who 
 had taken charge of the theater in Vienna, in 
 the year 1804. 
 
 At this time, both the Abbe Vogler and 
 Cherubini were writing for the Viennese. The 
 compositions of the latter met with great suc- 
 cess, and made a powerful impression on Bee- 
 thoven. In these men he met with foes worthy 
 of his steel, and inducements great enough to 
 lead him to do his very best. His severe heart 
 trials and consequent disappointment had 
 taught him how lonely he was in the world. 
 Breuning wrote of him in 1804 : " You have 
 no idea, my dear Wegeler, how indescribable, 
 and, I might say, horrible an impression his 
 partial loss of hearing has made on him. . . . 
 What must be the feelings of one with such a 
 violent temper, to meet with such a misfortune ! 
 And then his reserve, and his distrust fre- 
 quently of his best friend!" A subject like 
 that of the Fidelio must, of itself, have taken 
 strong hold of a man like Beethoven, because 
 
THE FIDELIO. 75 
 
 of the powerful scene in which Leonore holds 
 her mortal enemy, Pizarro, spell-bound, with 
 the pistol in her hand. "What must have most 
 affected him here, however, was the ideal back- 
 ground of suffering for truth and freedom — 
 for Pizarro was a tyrant — and the fact that a 
 woman had the power that comes of genuine 
 fidelity to avert every danger from her beloved 
 husband, even at the risk of her own life. 
 And Beethoven endowed the work with his 
 exalted and almost transfigured background 
 of feeling, by means of his music, which here 
 depicts the constitution of his own nature, and 
 his whole intellectual build. He accurately 
 hits the decisive climax of the conflict, and 
 gives to the principal actors so much of real 
 personal character, that we cannot fail to re- 
 cognize them, and to understand their action 
 from their inner feelings. This, in connection 
 with a very powerful declamation, is the con- 
 tinuation of the dramatic characteristics which 
 we greet in the Fidelio. The development of 
 the operatic form as such is not further carried 
 on in this work. In his pure instrumental 
 music, even more than in the Fidelio, Bee- 
 thoven has given form to the language of the 
 
76 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 soul and to the great hidden springs of action 
 of the world and human nature. 
 
 A period may come when stricter demands 
 may be made on dramatic art, and when, as a 
 consequence, this work may not have as much 
 charm as it has for us, because of its fragment- 
 ary character. But be this as it may, in some 
 of its details it will always appeal irresistibly 
 to the finest feeling. We find in it passages 
 like those in Beethoven's improvisation which 
 never failed to draw from his hearers tears of 
 real happiness. The greater part of this lan- 
 guage was, like Mozart's Cantilene, rich in 
 soul. Yet melodies like Komm Hoffnung, lass 
 den letzen Schein, In des Lebens Fruehlings- 
 tagen and namen, namenlose Freude, are of 
 such a character that " humanity will never 
 forget them." Like the Holy Grail, they fur- 
 nish food and light at the same time, and, like 
 certain forces, produce a greater yield in pro- 
 portion as greater demands are made upon 
 them. We frequently find in it expressions 
 that are simply inimitable, and when this 
 work is contemplated we see that it bears evi- 
 dence of a profundity of soul and of a devel- 
 opment of mind which separate — toto coelo — 
 
LEONOEE. 77 
 
 Beethoven from his predecessors, Mozart not 
 excepted. "Whole pieces in it are full of the 
 deepest and warmest dramatic life, made up of 
 the web and woof of the human soul itself. 
 Such, for instance, are Wir mussen gleich zu 
 Werhe schreiten, the chorus of prisoners, the 
 picture of Florestan's dungeon, the digging 
 of the grave, and above all the thrilling 
 ToeoVt erst sein Weib ! (kill first his wife) . But 
 the center of all is, as may be seen from the 
 innumerable and most refined traits of the 
 music, Leonore, the pattern of heroic fidelity. 
 Her character stirred Beethoven to the very 
 depths of his soul, for her power of hope and 
 her devotion to freedom were his own. The 
 work itself was to be called Leonore, as, indeed, 
 the first piano-score was called in 1810. 
 
 This work has a meaning in the life of our 
 artist himself, greater, almost, than its impor- 
 tance as a work of art. 
 
 The work required, for its completion, only 
 the spring and summer of the year 1805. The 
 sketches of it show how carefully the file was 
 used on its every part. Only the fire of en- 
 thusiastic devotion was able to smelt the ore 
 of the separate arias, duets and terzettoes 
 
78 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 which make up the matter of the whole ; but 
 thio it could not do here fully enough to pro- 
 duce that natural flow which dramatic taste 
 even now demanded. Moreover, the storm of 
 war broke upon Vienna and deprived Bee- 
 thoven's hearers of even the calm of devotion. 
 The result was that only the prima donna 
 Milder-Hauptmann satisfied the public in the 
 character of Leonore. Besides, Beethoven, as 
 a composer of purely instrumental music, had 
 not paid sufficient attention to the demands of 
 the bum an voice. On the 13th of October, 
 1805, Napoleon entered Vienna, and after the 
 20th the Fidelio was repeated three times; 
 not, however, before the art lovers of Vienna, 
 but before an audience composed of French 
 officers. It was received with little applause, 
 and after the first performance the house 
 remained empty. Beethoven withdrew the 
 work. But even the critics missed in it at this 
 time "that certain splendor of originality 
 characteristic of Beethoven's works." Our 
 artist's friends now gathered about him to 
 induce him to make some abbreviations in the 
 opera. This was at the house of Lichnowsky. 
 Beethoven was never before seen so much 
 
LEONORE OVEKTUEE. 79 
 
 excited, and were it not for the prayers and 
 entreaties of the gentle and tender Princess 
 Christiaue, he would certainly have agreed to 
 nothing. He consented at last to drop a few 
 numbers, but it took six full hours to induce 
 him to do even this. It is easy to explain this 
 fact : the work was the pet child of his brain. 
 Breuning now re-arranged the libretto. He 
 made the acting more vivacious and Beethoven 
 shortened the several pieces still more. The 
 work proved more acceptable to the pub- 
 lic, but Beethoven thought himself surround- 
 ed by a network of intrigue, and, as he had 
 agreed only for a share in the profits, he once 
 more withdrew the work. We hear no more 
 of it until 1814. We shall see what effect its 
 production had when we reach that date in 
 Beethoven's life. 
 
 But this re-arrangement led to a new over- 
 ture and to a new poetical expression of the 
 subject, to the great Leonor en- Overture, known 
 as No. 3, but which is properly No. 2. Bee- 
 thoven, in this overture, lets us hear, as if in 
 the voices of thousands, the depth of pain in 
 Florestan's dungeon ; the glance of hope that 
 flashes across his mind when he thinks of his 
 
80 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 Leonore ; the struggle of love with native fear 
 in the heart of the woman; her daring risk of 
 her own life for her beloved husband, and in 
 the signal of trumpets, the coming of her res- 
 cuer; the calm joy of the unutterably happy 
 husband, as well as the boisterous, stormy joy 
 of the prisoners, all of whom get their liberty 
 with this one slave ; and, last of all, the loud- 
 est song of praise of freedom and happiness. 
 The symphonic poem, Leonore, as a whole, far 
 surpasses the dramatic work itself. Together 
 with the JEroica, it is the second monumental 
 work of Beethoven's genius in this early 
 period of his musical creations, and proves him 
 a matured master in his art. 
 
 The proud path thus entered on, he never 
 left. 
 
 Besides the works already mentioned, we 
 may, for the sake of completeness, mention the 
 following likewise: The Opferlied (1st arrange- 
 ment), Seufzen eines Unbeliebten, variations 
 quant'' 'e piubello, about 1795; variations toiVe^ 
 cor piu and minuet a la Vigano which appeared 
 in 1796; sonata op. 49, 1, about 1796; sonata 
 for four hands op. 6, the rondo op. 51, I, and 
 variations to a Kussian dance, in 1797; varia- 
 
COMPOSITIONS. 81 
 
 tions to a Swiss song and Mich brennt, 1798 ; 
 Gretels Warnung, La partenza, composed in 
 1798; variations to the La stessa, Kind wilUt 
 du and Taendeln und Scherzen, which, 
 appeared in 1799 ; sonata op. 49, I, composed 
 in 1799 ; variations in G major, composed in 
 1800, serenade op. 25; rondo, op. 51, I; vari- 
 ations, Bei Maennern which appeared in 1802; 
 terzetto op. 116, sonatas for violin, op. 30, 
 variations op. 34 and 35, composed in 1802 ; 
 Gluech der JFreundschaft ,o-p. 88 and Zaertliche 
 Liebe which appeared in 1803; trio variations 
 op. 44 and romance for the violin, op. 40, com- 
 posed in 1803 ; three marches op. 45, varia- 
 tions to "Rule Brittannia," and the Wachtel- 
 schlag, 1804 ; sonata op. 53, together with the 
 andante in F major, originally belonging to it, 
 the triple concerto op. 56, and the sonata op. 
 57, begun in 1804, Andie Hoffnung, op. 32 and 
 trio op. 38, which appeared in 1805 ; fourth 
 concerto op. 58, composed in 1805 ; trio op. 36, 
 sonata op. 34, which appeared in 1806; Emp- 
 findungen bei Lydiens Untreue belonging 
 probably to 1806. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 1806-1812. 
 
 THE SYMPHONY MINOR— THE PASTORALE AND 
 THE SEVENTH SYMPHONIES. 
 
 The Pastorale — Its Composition — Meaning of the Apassionata 
 — Its History — Beethoven's Letter to His " Immortal Loved 
 One" — His Own Opinion of ,'the Apassionata — New Ac- 
 quaintances — Thinks of Writing Operas — Court-theater 
 Composer — Overture to Coriolanus — The Mass in C, op. 
 86 — His Sacred Music — The Fidelio in Prague — Music 
 for Goethe's Faust — "Power, the Moral Code" — Power 
 Expressed in Beethoven's Music — Character of His Works 
 ahout this Period — Intercourse with the Malfattis — The 
 Cello Sonata, op. 69 — Other Compositions and their Mean- 
 ing — Improvement in His Pecuniary Circumstances — 
 Joseph Bonaparte — Vienna Pears to Lose Him — Contem- 
 plated Journey to England — The Seventh Symphony — 
 Wagner on the Seventh Symphony — His Hierathspartie 
 — His Letter to Bettina — His Estimate of Genius. 
 
 Beethoven's Heilegenstadt Will, written 
 in the year 1802, closed with this painful ap- 
 peal : " O thou, Providence, let one day more 
 of joy dawn on me. How long have I been a 
 stranger to the heartfelt echo of true happi- 
 ness! When, when, O God, can I feel it once 
 more in the temple of nature and of man. 
 (82) 
 
THE PASTORALE. 83 
 
 Never ? No ! O, that were too hard !" Our 
 artist's thoughts were thus directed into chan- 
 nels which earried him far from the scenes 
 immediately surrounding him into regions of 
 a higher existence — of an existence which he 
 soon described so exquisitely in the language 
 of music. The Pastorale which celebrates this 
 " Temple of nature" was originally designated 
 as No. 5, and was, therefore, intended to be 
 completed before the symphony in C minor. 
 But it would seem that Beethoven had to go 
 through many an internal conflict, the result 
 of his great depression of spirits, before he 
 could acquire the calmness of mind necessary 
 to form a proper conception of the " Peace of 
 God in Nature," and to give it proper form 
 and expression in art. 
 
 Breuning wrote, on the 2nd of June, 1806, 
 that the intrigues about the Fidelio were all 
 the more disagreeable to Beethoven because 
 the fact that it had not been performed reduced 
 Tiim to some pecuuiary straits, and that it 
 would take all the longer time for him to re- 
 cover, as the treatment he had received de- 
 prived him of a great deal of his love for his 
 work. Yet the first of the quartets, op. 59, 
 
84 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 bears the memorandum : " Begun on the 26th 
 of May, 1806;" and the fourth symphony 
 (op. 60), as well as the violin concerto (op. 
 61), also belong to this year. In the mean- 
 time Op. 56, which had been begun some time 
 previous, the triple concerto, op. 57, called the 
 Apassionata, and op. 58, the fourth concerto, 
 were all either continued or finished. What 
 wealth there is here — in the number of com- 
 positions, in their magnitude and in their con- 
 tents ! The three quartets are dedicated to 
 Count Easumowsky, who had given Beethoven 
 the commission to write them, and who had 
 furnished the Russian melodies on which they 
 are based. How well the adagio of the second 
 of them points us to that higher region in 
 which Beethoven now felt himself more and 
 more at home. He himself told Czerny that 
 that adagio suggested itself to him one night, 
 when he was contemplating the starry heavens, 
 and thinking of the harmony of the spheres. 
 In the serene calmness of these vanishing 
 tones, we see the revolution of the stars 
 mirrored in all its grandeur. Here all 
 pain seems lightened, all passion stilled. 
 Yet how both had raged even in the Apas- 
 
THE APASSIONATA. 85 
 
 sionata, the draft of which is to be found 
 immediately following that of the Fidelio. 
 The Apassionata is written in his heart- 
 blood. Its tones are cries of excitement the 
 most painful. It was finished in the summer, 
 and dedicated to Coiint Franz Brunswick. 
 An oil painting of the count's sister, Countess 
 Theresa, was found among Beethoven's effects, 
 after his death. It bore the superscription : 
 " To the rare genius, the great artist, the good 
 man. From T. B." It is supposed that the 
 letter to his " immortal love," already referred 
 to, was addressed to her— and it is truly a 
 letter which gives us a pen-picture of Bee- 
 thoven's condition of mind at that time, and 
 which affords an idea of the " gigantic sweep 
 of his ideas." It was found after.his death, to- 
 gether with other important papers, in an old 
 chest, and is dated on July 6, from a watering 
 place in Hungary. It is rightly Supposed to 
 have been written in the year 1806, in which 
 Beethoven paid a visit to the Brunswicks. But, 
 be this as it may, it gives evidence of intense 
 feeling, and shows that Beethoven now dwelt 
 on that sublime height on which all earthly 
 desires are silent. It seems also to lead us 
 
86 THE LIFE OP BEETHOVEN. 
 
 over to the understanding and appreciation of 
 Beethoven's subsequent creations, which hence- 
 forth gain an ideal character not of this earth. 
 We can here touch only on the principal points 
 in these letters. 
 
 " My angel, my all, my other self." Thus does he 
 begin it on the 6th of July, in the morning. He pro- 
 ceeds : " Only a few words to-day, and those in lead- 
 pencil, and that your own pencil, dear. Nothing can 
 bo settled about my dwelling until to-morrow. What 
 a wretched loss of time for such trifles! "Why 
 this deep affliction where necessity speaks? How 
 can our love continue to exist except through sacrifice, 
 except by limitation of our desires? Can you change 
 the fact that you are not entirely mine nor I entirely 
 yours? Look out on the beauties of nature, and re- 
 sign yourself to what must be. Love asks everything, 
 and rightly so. It does in my case. It does in your 
 case. But you forget too easily that I have to live for 
 you as well as for myself. Were we entirely one, you 
 would feel the pain there is in this as little as I. . . . 
 
 We shall, I trust, soon meet I cannot tell you 
 
 to-day what reflections I have made upon my life, 
 during the past forty-eight hours. Were our hearts 
 always close to one another, I am sure I should make 
 no such reflections. My heart is too full to tell you 
 much. There are moments when I find that language 
 is nothing at all. Cheer up ; be my faithful, my only 
 pet, my all, as I am all yours. The gods must direct 
 the rest in our lives. Thy faithful Ludwig." 
 
HIS LOVE. 87 
 
 But, on the same dainty little piece of note 
 paper, he continues, for the mail had already 
 left: 
 
 " You suffer, dearest creature. Wherever I am, 
 you are with me. I must try to so arrange it that our 
 life may be one. But what, what a life to be thus 
 without you! I am pursued by the kindness of men 
 which I do not intend to earn, and yet, which I really 
 do earn. That a man should humble himself before 
 his fellow man, pains me ; and when I consider myself 
 as a part of the universe, what am I, and who is He 
 they call the Most High? And yet here, again, we 
 
 find the divine in that which is human No 
 
 matter how great your love for me, my love for you is 
 greater still. Never hide yourself from me. Good 
 night ! Being an invalid, I must go to sleep. Alas, 
 that I should be so near and yet so far from you. Is 
 not our love a real firmament of heaven? And is it 
 not as firm as the foundation of the heavens?" 
 
 He takes up the same piece of paper once 
 more: 
 
 " Good morning, this 7th of July! Even before I rise 
 my thoughts fly to you, dear — to you, immortal love, now 
 joyfully, now sadly, waiting to see whether the fates will 
 hear our prayer. If I shall live at all, it must be with 
 you. I am resolved to wander about far away from 
 vou, until the time comes when I may fly into your 
 arms, and say that I belong to you ; until I may send 
 my soul absolved by you, dear, into the land of spirits. 
 
88 THE LIFE OP BEETHOVEN. 
 
 Yes, unfortunately it must be so. You will be all the 
 more composed, since you know how faithful I am to 
 you. Another can never possess my heart — never ! 
 Why, O God, must a man be so widely separated from 
 the object of his love? And yet the life I now live in 
 Vienna is so wretched ! Your love makes me, at 
 once, the happiest and the most unfortunate of men. 
 At my present age, there should be some uniformity 
 in my life; but is such a thing possible in my present 
 circumstances? Be patient. Only by the patient 
 contemplation of our existence can we gain our object 
 and live united. Be patient ! love me! How I longed 
 and wept for you to-day and yesterday; you, my life, 
 my all! Farewell; love me ever, never forget the most 
 faithful heart of thy beloved Ludwig. I am ever thine 
 and thou forever mine." 
 
 How completely like Beethoven! It was 
 during this very summer that he completed 
 the Apassionata, which he always considered 
 the greatest of his sonatas, at the home of the 
 Brunswicks. Can it be said that its language 
 is in anything greater than the language of 
 this letter ? He seems at this time to be nearly 
 always possessed by a feeling of melancholy. 
 But for this very reason he took refuge more 
 than ever in music. It was, indeed, a real 
 sanctuary to him, and he refused to open that 
 sanctuary to the eyes of strangers, and, least of 
 all, to the eyes of enemies. This he very 
 
LICHNOWSKY. 89 
 
 plainly proved to Prince Lichnowsky during 
 the fall. Beethoven had left Hungary and 
 was spending some time in Silesia with the 
 prince. The latter desired him to play for 
 some French officers who were quartered in his 
 castle. A violent scene immediately ensued. 
 After it was over, Beethoven left the castle. 
 He refused to go back with the prince who had 
 followed him, but repaired, post haste, back to 
 Vienna, in which city the prince's bust was 
 broken to pieces as an expiatory sacrifice. It 
 was not long, however, before the old friend- 
 ship of the two was re-established. 
 
 In the quartet sketches of this year, we find 
 the words: "Just as you can cast yourself here 
 into the whirl of society, it is possible to write 
 operas spite of all social impediments. Let 
 the fact that you do not hear be a mystery no 
 longer, even in your music," This " whirl of 
 society " introduces us to some new acquaint- 
 ances. Count Rasumowsky held very bril- 
 liant soirees, at which the amiable and charm- 
 ing wife of his librarian, Marie Bigot, per- 
 formed some of Beethoven's works in an ex- 
 quisite manner. The playing of the elegant 
 and handsome Countess Marie Erdoedy, whom 
 
90 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEK. 
 
 Beethoven himself called his " father con- 
 fessor," was not inferior to that of Madame 
 Bigot. Other patrons of the musical art were 
 Madame Dorothea von Ertmann, a charming 
 Frankfort lady, and the Malfattis,one of whom 
 was Beethoven's physician. The home of 
 Streicher, who had married Nanette Stein, 
 daughter of the Augsbury piano-maker, de- 
 scribed in Mozart's letter of 1777 in so droll 
 a manner, was the rendezvous of lovers of 
 music. Nor must we forget to mention Prince 
 Lobkowitz and theEmperor's youngest brother, 
 the Archduke Budolph, Beethoven's distin- 
 guished pupil, who, as our artist himself ad- 
 mitted, understood music thoroughly. 
 
 The chief value, however, of the works 
 quoted above, is that they inform us how 
 Beethoven, spite of his experience with the 
 Fidelio, was thinking very seriously of the 
 writing of " operas." If successful here, his 
 fortune was made, and there was nothing then 
 to hinder the crowning of his love by mar- 
 riage. There now seemed to be a very good 
 prospect of that success, for, in the year 1807, 
 the two court-theaters passed into the hands 
 of a company of noblemen, with Lobkowitz at 
 
COURT COMPOSER. 91 
 
 their bead. Lobkowitz immediately called 
 upon Beethoven to act as composer for the 
 Court-theater. Our artist accepted tbe posi- 
 tion, and bound bimself to write at least one 
 great opera and operatta each year, and to sup- 
 ply wbatever other music migbt be needed. A 
 feeling of inexhaustible power must have in- 
 spired him at this time, when he was actuated 
 by the tenderest love, with the utmost confi- 
 dence in self. A forcible proof of this is the 
 overture which he then wrote to Collins's Cor- 
 iolanus. But the gentlemen did not accede to 
 his wishes ; they did not want to trust him as 
 composer of instrumental music in this point ; 
 and thus Beethoven, although not particularly 
 pleased by the action of his princely friends, 
 was, fortunately for himself and for us, re- 
 tained in the field of labor most in harmony 
 with his disposition. 
 
 " If it be true that genuine strength and a 
 fullness of deep feeling characterize the Ger- 
 mans, we must say that Beethoven was, above 
 all, a German artist. In this, his most recent 
 work, we cannot but admire the expressiveness 
 and depth of his music, which so grandly 
 painted the wild, perturbed mind of Coriola- 
 
92 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 nus, and the sudden and terrible change in his 
 fate, while it elicited the sublimest emotion." 
 These lines are from an account of a concert 
 given in the Augarten by Lichnowsky in the 
 spring of 1807. But we have very reliable in- 
 formation that Beethoven was now engaged on 
 the symphony in C minor and on the Pas tor- 
 ale. Thanks to Clementi, who was doing a 
 large and thriving music business in London, 
 and to his old friend Simrock, in Bonn, which 
 was French at the time, he felt at his ease so 
 far as money matters were concerned. He 
 frites to Brunswick on the 11th of May, 1807: 
 "I can now hope to be able, in a few years, to 
 maintain the dignity of a real artist." And 
 when, in the same letter, we read the farther 
 passage, "Kiss your sister Theresa. Tell 
 her that I fear that I shall become great 
 without a monument, to which she has con- 
 tributed," we can understand how love, fame 
 and lofty intuition conspired to fit him for new 
 and mighty exploits in art. 
 
 The next work published by Beethoven was 
 the Mass in C, op. 86, which Esterhazy gave 
 him a commission to write. But here Bee- 
 thoven, even more than in opera, missed the 
 
HIS MASS. 93 
 
 spirit of his subject. The Mass bears witness 
 to his intellect, and has all the charms of 
 sound ; but it is not a religious composition. 
 When Beethoven himself wrote to Esterhazy, 
 as he did at this time : "Shall I tell you that 
 it is not without many misgivings that I shall 
 send you the Mass, for I know you are ac- 
 customed to have the inimitable works of the 
 great Haydn performed for you," he proves 
 that he did not understand the real spirit of 
 church music; for Haydn had, just as little as 
 Beethoven, a true conception of what church 
 music is. Haydn was now seventy-six years 
 old, and Beethoven attended a performance of 
 his Creation the following year, and, with a 
 number of the distinguished nobility, received 
 the celebrated guest at the door. The fame 
 of the man whom he was thus called upon to 
 honor, was a type of what his own was des- 
 tined one day to be. And what his own fame 
 would be, the production of the great works 
 he had recently finished, must have enabled 
 him to foresee. When the Mass was per- 
 formed, in September, 1807, in Eisenstadt, our 
 composer had a personal falling out— the re- 
 sult of a misunderstanding — with Mozart's 
 
94 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 pupil, Hummel; and one which was not made 
 up for for some years. The prince had criticised 
 Beethoven's Mass by asking the strange ques- 
 tion : " But, my dear Beethoven, what have 
 you been doing now?" Hummel could not 
 help laughing at this strange mode of criti- 
 cism. Beethoven supposed he was laughing 
 at his work; and after this would have nothing 
 more to do with the prince. 
 
 It was otherwise with the magnanimous, 
 noble lover of art, Prince Lobkowitz, one of the 
 principal grandees of Bohemia, and one of the 
 principal patrons of the theater. To him Bee- 
 thoven was indebted for the suggestion that the 
 Fidelio should be performed in Prague. For 
 the occasion, Beethoven wrote, in this year, 
 1807, the overture, op. 138, which is, there- 
 fore, to be accounted not the second, but the 
 third Leonore overture. The performance of 
 the Fidelio, however, did not take place until 
 1814, the same year in which it was performed 
 in Vienna. In the following summer (1808) , it 
 was publicly announced that " the gifted Bee- 
 thoven had conceived the idea to put Goethe's 
 Faust to music, as soon as he could find any 
 one to prepare it for the stage." The first 
 
HIS POWER. 95 
 
 part of Faast bad appeared in 1807, as a 
 "tragedy;" and, as we shall see, the poem 
 made a deep impression on our artist. Long 
 after, and even on his death-bed, it occupied 
 his thoughts. But be had, even now, written 
 some Faust music — the symphony in C minor. 
 To it we now turn, for it is one of the greatest 
 of Beethoven's creations. 
 
 We have seen how Beethoven himself once 
 said : " Power is the moral code of men who 
 distinguish themselves above others." And 
 so we hear how one person described him as 
 " power personified ;" how another said of him 
 that "a Jupiter occasionally looked out through 
 his eyes :" and a third, that " his magnificent 
 forehead was the seat of majestic, creative 
 power." Spurred on by the opposition of 
 " fate," that is, by what nature had denied him, 
 we see this power appear in all its concentra- 
 tion and sublimity. The power which has 
 created, and which preserves all things, has 
 been called "will," and music, one of its im- 
 mediate phenomena, while the other arts are 
 only reflections of that will, and reflect only 
 the things of the world. In the first move- 
 ment of the symphony in C minor, we feel 
 
96 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 the presence of this power or personal will, to 
 an extent greater than in any other work of 
 art. It there appears in fullest action, in all 
 its nobility. The symphony might not inap- 
 propriately have been called the Jupiter-sym- 
 phony ; for it is a veritable head of Jove, such 
 as only a Phidias could have imagined. Mel- 
 ody has been described as the history of the 
 will illuminated by reason, and the sonata- 
 form of the symphony is just such kind of 
 melody. And it is this fifth symphony of 
 Beethoven's, which, more than any other, tells 
 us the most secret history of that personal 
 will, of all its strivings and motions. No 
 type in any art, could have suggested a Siegfried 
 to Eichard Wagner. Here Beethoven's genius 
 acts as force, as will, and as the conscious intel- 
 ligence of the prototype of the Great Spirit. 
 Yet when the work was performed in Paris 
 Hector Berlioz heard his teacher, Lessieur, say 
 of it — and this, although he was deeply moved 
 by it — " but such music should not be heard." 
 "Don't be afraid," was the reply, "there will 
 be little of that kind of music written." How 
 correct was the insight of the gifted French- 
 man! Siegfried's Bheinfahrt, in the Goetter- 
 daemmerung, is music of "that kind." 
 
C MINOR SYMPHONY. 97 
 
 But it is only the night of sorrow that gives 
 birth to the concentration of power. It is only 
 by great effort that this energy can be main- 
 tained. And as Coriolanus finely presses all the 
 darts aimed at him by his mother into her 
 own heart, in defying sacrifice, so we find, in 
 the background of this holiest and most manly 
 will, the consciousness of the variety and 
 transitory character of all things. In his 
 heart of hearts, Beethoven feels that fate has 
 knocked at his door, only because in his fol- 
 lowing the dictates of force and action, he has 
 sinned against nature, and that all will is only 
 transitoriness and self-deception. The adagio 
 expresses subjection to a higher will. The 
 consciousness of this highest act of the will, 
 to sacrifice one's self and yet to preserve one's 
 freedom, gave birth to the song of jubilation 
 iu the finale which tells not of the joy and 
 sorrow of one heart only; it lifts the freedom 
 which has been praised and sought for into the 
 higher region of moral will. Thus the sym- 
 phony in C minor has a significance greater than 
 any mere " work of art." Like the production 
 of religious art, it is a representation of those 
 secret forces which hold the world together. 
 7 
 
98 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN'. 
 
 The consciousness of this deeper, intimate 
 dependence of all things on one another, is 
 henceforth seen like a glimmer of light in the 
 darkness which gathered around him, and it 
 continues to beautify and transfigure his crea- 
 tions. 
 
 The Pastorale immediately followed the 
 symphony in C minor. It gives expression 
 to the peace of nature and to the fulfillment of 
 the saying: £; Look out on the beauties of na- 
 ture and calm your soul by the contemplation 
 of what must be." While the fourth sym- 
 phony compared with the fifth, is a symphony 
 and nothing more — even if it be Beethoven's 
 — we plainly discover in this sixth, the poetic 
 spirit, the pure feeling of God. The idea and 
 character it illustrates constitutes in Beethov- 
 en's life the transition from the external beauty 
 of nature to the comprehension of the eternal. 
 Over it is written: " Recollections of country 
 life," but also, " More an expression of feeling 
 than a painting." "The Beethovens loved 
 the Rhine," the young playmates of the boy 
 Ludwig were wont to say, and he wrote him- 
 self to Wegeler: "Before me is the beautiful 
 region in which I first saw the light as plainly 
 
THE PASTORALE. 99 
 
 and as beautiful as the moment I left you." 
 On a leaf, written in his own hand, we find 
 the words: "O the charm of the woods — who 
 can express it ? " But now that he was com- 
 pelled to live a solitary life, nature became to 
 him a mother, sister and sweetheart. He 
 looked upon the wonders of nature as into 
 living eyes; she calmed him who was natural- 
 ly of such a stormy temperament, and to whom 
 life had been unkind in so many ways. In 
 the Scene am Bach (Scene by the Brook), the 
 waters murmur peace to his soul; and the 
 birds by the brooklet, in Heiligenstadt, where 
 these two symphonies were finished, whisper 
 joy. His Lustige Zusamnensein der Land- 
 leute, infuses new courage into the heart, and 
 when his Gewitter und Sturm, tells of the 
 might of the Eternal, the shepherds express 
 their joyful and grateful feelings in the words: 
 Herr wir danhen dir. The finale, like the 
 Chorphantasie (op. 80), planned in 1800 but 
 not finished until 1808, was intended to con- 
 tain a chorus expressing in words the joyful 
 and thankful feeling of the people. Beethov- 
 en's own personal experience is always ex- 
 pressed in his music. A more intimate 
 
100 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 acquaintance with nature gave it to him to 
 find yet deeper expression for the feelings 
 which it excites in our hearts, as its everlast- 
 ing change enabled him to conceive the eternal 
 and imperishable. 
 
 We now turn to a whole series of new and 
 brilliant creations of our hero. It would seem 
 as if his intercourse with the eternal in nature 
 had given him new life. 
 
 During these years, Beethoven's intimacy 
 with the Malfattis and their two charming 
 daughters, was a great source of pleasure to 
 him. His feelings towards them may be in- 
 ferred from the following passages in his notes 
 to his friend Gleichenstein. He writes : " I 
 feel so well when I am with them that they 
 seem able to heal the wounds which bad men 
 have inflicted on my heart." . ..." I expect 
 to find there in the Wilden Mann in the park, 
 no wild men, but beautiful graces." And 
 again : " My greetings, to all who are dear to 
 you and to me. How gladly would I add — 
 and to whom we are dear ? ? ? ? These points 
 of interrogation are becoming, at least in me." 
 Gleichenstein married the second daughter, 
 Anna Malfatti, in 1811. To the young dark- 
 
HIS SOCIETY. 101 
 
 eyed Theresa, who made her debut in society 
 about this time, and whom he writes of as 
 " volatile, taking everything in life lightly " 
 but " with so much feeling for all that is beau- 
 tiful and good, and a great talent for music," 
 he sends a sonata, and recommends Goethe's 
 Wilhelm Meister and Schlegel's translation of 
 Shakspeare. We thus see that his intercourse 
 with the family had that intellectual founda- 
 tion which Beethoven could not dispense with, 
 on anything. It would even seem as if, in his 
 enthusiasm to put his strength to the test of 
 new deeds, even his " eternal loved one " 
 should fade from his view. 
 
 The cello-sonata (op. 69) dedicated to his 
 friend Gleichenstein immediately followed the 
 Pastorale. The two magnificent trios dedi- 
 cated to Countess Erdoedy, with whom he 
 resided at this time, follow as op. 70. The 
 first movement of the trio in D major is a 
 brilliantly free play of mind and force, while 
 the adagio suggests Faust lost in the deep 
 contemplation of nature and its mysteries. 
 The whole, on account of the mysterious awe 
 expressed by this movement has been called by 
 musicians the Fledermaustrio, i. e., the bat- 
 
102 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 trio. The Leonore is numbered op. 72. It 
 was published in 1810. Op. 73, the most 
 beautiful of all concertos, was dedicated to the 
 Archduke Rudolph. We have further,, op. 
 74, the harp-quartet, dedicated to Prince 
 Lobkonitz,and the fantasia for the piano, op. 
 77, to his friend Brunswick ; lastly, the sonata 
 in F sharp major, op. 78, very highly valued 
 by Beethoven himself, dedicated to his sister 
 Theresa. Verily "new acts" enough, and 
 what glorious deeds ! 
 
 This brings us to the year 1809, which wit- 
 nessed a change for the better in Beethoven's 
 pecuniary circumstances. He now received a 
 permanent salary. On the 1st of November 
 1808, he wrote to the Silesian Count, Oppers- 
 dorf, — whoin he had visited in the fall of 1806 
 in company with Lichnowsky, and who gave 
 him a commission to write a symphony, which 
 the count, however, never received — as follows : 
 "My circumstances are improving without the 
 assistance of people who entertain their friends 
 with blows. I have also been called to act as 
 capellmeister to the King of Westphalia, and 
 perhaps I may obey the call." The following 
 December, Beethoven gave a great concert, the 
 
JEROME BONAPARTE. 103 
 
 programme of which embraced the two new 
 symphonies, parts of his Mass, the concerto in 
 G minor, and the Chorphantasie. He him- 
 self improvised at the piano. The attention 
 of people far and near was called anew to this 
 great and grave master in music, whom the 
 sensualist Jerome Bonaparte endeavored to at- 
 tract to his Capua in Cassel, and they became 
 anxious lest he might leave Vienna. Bee- 
 thoven's friends bestirred themselves to keep 
 him in Vienna, as did Beethoven himself to 
 stay. This is very evident from the letters to 
 Gleichenstein and Erdoedy. Three friends of 
 his, to whom it was largely due that he wrote 
 one of his greatest works, were instrumental 
 in keeping him in Vienna. They were the 
 Archduke Rudolph, Prince Lobkowitz and 
 Prince Kinsky, to whose wife the six songs, op. 
 75, are dedicated. The sum guaranteed 
 amounted to eight thousand marks. " You 
 see, my dear good Gleichenstein," he writes, 
 on the 18th of March, 1809, apropos of the 
 "decree" which he had received on the 26th 
 of February, from the hands of the archduke 
 and which imposed on him no duty but to 
 remain in Vienna and Austria, "how honor- 
 
104 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 able to me my stay here has become." He 
 could not, however, have meant seriously what 
 he added immediately after : "The title of im- 
 perial capellmeister will come to me also;" for 
 what use had a man like the Emperor Franz 
 for such an "innovator " at his court? The 
 dedications of his works mentioned above 
 were simply testimonials of gratitude for the 
 friendship thus shown him. 
 
 He now planned an extensive journey, 
 which was to embrace England, and even 
 Spain. He writes to Gleichenstein: "Now 
 you can help me get a wife. If you find a 
 pretty one — one who may perhaps lend a sigh 
 to my harmonies, do the courting for me. 
 But she must be beautiful; I cannot love any- 
 thing that is not beautiful ; if I could I should 
 fall in love with myself." The coming war 
 interrupted all his plans. But, at the same 
 time, it suggested to the imagination of our 
 artist, that wonderful picture of the battle of 
 forces, the seventh (A major) symphony (op. 
 92), which Bichard Wagner has called the 
 "apotheosis of the dance." Germany now 
 first saw the picture of a genuinely national 
 war. Napoleon appeared as Germany's heredi- 
 
NAPOLEON. 105 
 
 tary foe, and the whole people, from the high- 
 est noble to the meanest peasant rose up, as 
 one man, to fight the battle of freedom. The 
 march is, after all, only the dance of war, and 
 Beethoven gathered into one picture of instru- 
 mentation, the glad tramp of warlike hosts, 
 the rythm of trampling steeds, the waving of 
 standards and the sound of trumpets, with a 
 luminousness such as the world had never 
 witnessed before. The poet needs only see the 
 eddy created by a mill-wheel to paint the vapor 
 and foam of Charybdis. In the case of Bee- 
 thoven, this joy in the game of war was, as 
 the character of Bonaparte, on another occa- 
 sion, a stimulant to his imagination, which 
 now painted a picture of the free play of force 
 and of human existence from the material of 
 recent historical events. And even in after 
 years the timeliness of this work and the 
 spirit which called it into existence were evi- 
 dent. And, as we shall soon see, it constitut- 
 ed the principal part in the musical celebration* 
 when, in 1813, the real war of emancipation 
 occurred and led to a most decided victory. 
 Personally, Beethoven felt himself not inferior 
 to the mighty conqueror in natural power, and, 
 
106 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 like Schiller, he clearly foresaw the awakening 
 of the national genius which overthrew Na- 
 poleon. To this second-sight of the prophet, 
 possessed by every genuine poet — to this sure 
 presentiment of ultimate triumph — our artist 
 owed it, that, even in the days of Germany's 
 greatest ignominy and subjection he sang of 
 the disenthrallment of the mind and of the 
 jubilation of victory. Napoleon defeated the 
 Austrians again. But as Beethoven first felt 
 the weight and the power of resistance of 
 Germany after the battles of Aspern and Wa- 
 gram, he now depicted (after Napoleon had 
 taken the Emperor's daughter to wife and 
 seemed predestined to become the despot of all 
 Europe), in the scherzo and finale of the 
 seventh symphony, better than ever before, 
 the jubilation of the victorious nation, with all 
 its popular feasts and games. Yet, in the 
 melancholy second part, with its monoto- 
 nous beats on the dominante, we think we 
 hear the gloomy rythm of a funeral march. 
 This exceedingly characteristic theme is found 
 at the very beginning of a sketch-book of the 
 year 1809. 
 
 Affairs were for a time in a very bad con- 
 
AUSTRIAN AFFAIRS. 107 
 
 dition in Vienna and all Austria. The burthen 
 of taxation was severely felt. Everything 
 was at a standstill. When his beloved pupil, 
 the Archduke Rudolph retreated from Vienna 
 he wrote the Lebewohl of the sonata op. 81 a ; 
 but its finale {die Ankunff) was not written 
 until the 30th of January, 1810. The sum- 
 mer was a dreary one to Beethoven, and there 
 was no demand for the exercise of his genius. 
 Following Ph. E. Bach, Kirnberger, Fux 
 and Albrechtsberger he prepared the Materi- 
 ellen zum Generalbass (materials for thorough- 
 bass) for his noble pupil. This work was- 
 subsequently but wrongly published under the 
 the name of Beethoven's Studien. On the 8th 
 of September, a charity concert was given at 
 which — to the disgrace of the period, be it 
 said, for Napoleon had only just left Schoen- 
 brunn — the Eroica was performed, Beethoven 
 himself holding the baton. The rest of the 
 summer he hoped to spend in some quiet 
 corner in the country. He sojourned some- 
 time with the Brunswicks in Hungary, and 
 composed those works of his genius, op. 77 
 and 78. His genius, indeed, seems to have 
 awakened to a new life duriDg this fall of 
 
108 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEK. 
 
 1809. For the sketch-book of the seventh 
 symphony (op. 92) contains sketches of the 
 8th (op. 93) also ; and Beethoven con- 
 templated giving another concert at Christ- 
 mas, at which, of course, only new works 
 could be performed. These sketches are fol- 
 lowed by drafts for a new concerto. On these 
 drafts we find the words : Polonaise fuer 
 Clavier allein, also Freude schoener Goet- 
 terfunhen — "finish the overture" and "de- 
 tached periods like princes are beggars, not 
 the whole." He here takes up once more 
 those ideas of his youth, but with a grander 
 conception of their meaning. They consti- 
 tute the intellectual germ of the finale of the 
 ninth symphony. But the melody which he 
 actually noted down was elaborated in 1814 
 into the overture op. 115 (Zur Namensfeier). 
 During this period of Germany's national 
 awakening, the theaters had again turned their 
 attention to Schiller's dramas. The effect of 
 this was to revive Beethoven's youthful ideas. 
 He now desired to give Tell a musical 
 dress. He had already received a commission 
 of this kind for the Egmont, and, on the ocf 
 casion of his receiving it, he gave expression 
 
GOETHE. 109 
 
 to a remarkable opinion. Said he to Ezerny : 
 "Schiller's poems are exceedingly difficult to 
 set to music. The composer must be able to 
 rise high above the poet. But who can rise 
 higher than Schiller ? Goethe is much easier." 
 And, indeed, his Egmont overture breathes a 
 higher spirit and takes a loftier flight than 
 Goethe's beautiful tragedy. The composition 
 of this music led to his more intimate ac- 
 quaintance with the poet. To this same year, 
 1810, belong the incomparable songs Kennst 
 du das Land, and Herz mein Herz, in op. 75. 
 
 This year, 1810, brings us to a somewhat 
 mysterious point in Beethoven's life, to his 
 Heirathspartie (marriage speculation). 
 
 In the spring, he writes to his friend Zmes- 
 kall : " Do you recollect the condition I am 
 in — the condition of Hercules before Queen 
 Omphale ? Farewell, and never again speak 
 of me as the great man, for I never felt either 
 the weakness or the strength of human nature 
 as I do now." But writing to Wegeler on the 
 second of May, he says: "For a couple of 
 years I have ceased to lead a quiet and peace- 
 ful life. I was carried by force into the 
 world's life. Yet I would be happy, perhaps 
 
110 THE LIFE OP BEETHOVEN. 
 
 one of the very happiest of men, were it not 
 that the demon has taken up his abode in my 
 ears. Had I not read somewhere that man 
 should not voluntarily take leave of life while 
 he is still able to do one good deed, I should 
 long have departed hence, and by my own 
 act. Life is very beautiful, but, in my case, 
 it is poisoned forever." He asked for the 
 certificate of his baptism, and this in a man- 
 ner so urgent that it creates surprise. It was 
 three months before the answer to the enigma 
 was found, and Breuning wrote that he be- 
 lieved that Beethoven's engagement was 
 broken off. But it continues a mystery, even 
 to this day, who his choice was. It has been 
 surmised that it was his "immortal loved one," 
 or Theresa Brunswick. But we know noth- 
 ing certain on this point. True, he had now 
 acquired both fame and a position which raised 
 him above all fear of want. But she was 
 thirty-two years old, and he hard of hearing. 
 In addition to this, there was, on his side, a 
 relationship of the nature of which we shall 
 yet have something to say. Her passion, if 
 such there was on her part, must have been 
 prudently concealed ; and it is certainly re- 
 
HIS LOVE. Ill 
 
 markable that, from this time forward, her 
 name is not mentioned by Beethoven. How- 
 ever, her niece, Countess Marie Brunswick, 
 who is still living, expressly writes : " I never 
 heard of any intimate relation nor of any love 
 between them, while Beethoven's profound 
 love for my father's cousin, Countess Guicci- 
 ardi, was a matter of frequent mention." But 
 Giulietta had at this time long been Countess 
 Gallenberg. The solution of this mystery, 
 accordingly, belongs to the future. 
 
 On the other hand, we have a few notes to 
 Gleichenstein, who married the younger Mal- 
 fatti, the following year. In one of them we 
 read : " You live on still, calm waters — in a 
 safe harbor. You do not feel or should not 
 feel the distress of the friend who is caught in 
 the storm. What will people think of me 
 in the planet Venus Urania ? How can one 
 judge of me who has never seen me? My 
 pride is so humbled, that even without being 
 ordered to do so, I would travel thither with 
 thee." And, in the other: "The news I 
 received from you cast me down again out of 
 the regions of happiness. "What is the use 
 of saying that you would send me word when 
 
112 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 there was to be music again ? Am I nothing 
 more than a musician to you and to others ? 
 Nowhere but in my own bosom can I find 
 a resting-place. Externally, to myself there 
 is none. No, friendship and feelings like 
 it have only pain for me. Be it so, then. 
 Poor Beethoven, there is no external happi- 
 ness for you. You must create your own 
 happiness. Only in the ideal world do you 
 find friends." The sketch of that and Klaer- 
 chen's song Freudvoll und leidvoll were 
 found in the possession of Theresa Malfatti. 
 When Gleichenstein was engaged, the feelings 
 of the man who had been so bitterly deceived 
 overflowed. But how could the young girl of 
 eighteen dare to do what the grave Countess 
 would not venture ? Theresa Brunswick died 
 unmarried. Theresa Malfatti married, in 1817, 
 one Herr von Drossdick. Nevertheless, Bee- 
 thoven's intercouse with the family con- 
 tinued. 
 
 We next hear of his acquaintance with 
 Bettina Brentano which led to his meeting 
 Goethe in person. 
 
 Her brother Francis had married a Miss 
 Birkenstock, of Vienna. Beethoven had been 
 
BETTINA. 113 
 
 long and well acquainted with the Birken- 
 stock family. Bettina Brentano herself was 
 betrothed to Achim von Arnim, and her 
 deep love of music had inspired her with a 
 genuine affection for Beethoven. One beau- 
 tiful clay in May, she, in the utmost simplicity 
 of heart, went, in company with her married 
 sister, Mrs. Savigny, to Beethoven and met 
 with the very best reception. He sang for 
 her Kennst du das Land, with a sharp 
 and unpleasant voice. Her eyes sparkled. 
 " Aha ! " said Beethoven, " most men are 
 touched by something good. But such men 
 have not the artist's nature. Artists are fiery 
 and do not weep." He escorted her home to 
 Brentano's, and after this they met every day. 
 Bettina at this time sent Goethe an account 
 of the impression made on her by Beetho- 
 ven's appearance and conversation. Her 
 charming letters are to be found in the Cotta 
 JSeethovenbueh. They show how exalted an 
 idea Beethoven had of his own high calling. 
 She writes: "He feels himself to be the 
 founder of a new sensuous basis of the intel- 
 lectual life of man. He begets the undreamt- 
 of and the uncreated. What can such a man 
 8 
 
114 THE LIFE OP BEETHOVEN. 
 
 have to do with the world ? Sunrise finds 
 him at his blessed day's work, and at sunset he 
 is as busy as at early morning. He forgets 
 even his daily food. O ! Goethe, no Emperor 
 or King is as conscious of his power and of 
 the fact that all power proceeds from him, as 
 is this man Beethoven." And Goethe, who 
 " loved to contemplate and fix in memory 
 the picture of real genius," who well knew 
 " that his intellect was even greater than his 
 genius, and who frequently throws from him- 
 self a luminousness like that of lightning, so 
 that we can scarcely tell, as we sit in the 
 darkness, from what side the day may break," 
 invited him to Carlsbad, whither he was wont 
 to go every year. 
 
 The two remarkable letters to Bettina of 
 the 11th of August, 1810, and the 10th of 
 February, 1811, the autographs of which 
 have since been found, show us how deeply 
 the heart of our artist was stirred by love 
 at this time. They are to be found in 
 "Beethoven Letters." A work of his com- 
 posed about this time, the Quartetto serioso, op. 
 95, of October, 1810, throws some light on 
 this love, and yet it rises far above the pain 
 
QUAKTETTO. 115 
 
 and the sorrow of the situation in which he 
 found himself. Heavy thunders announce 
 Vulcan at work ; but in the finale, how Bee- 
 thoven's giant mind frees itself from itself! 
 The noble, powerful soaring Trio op. 97 dates 
 from the spring of 1811, and, especially in the 
 adagio, gives evidence of wonderful heartfelt 
 bliss. But the fact that in this period no other 
 compositions were written would go to show the 
 influence of bitter 'experience. It may be, 
 however, that the commission he received for 
 the plays " The Ruins of Athens " and " King 
 Stephen," took up the best portion of his 
 time ; and, besides, the two symphonies had to 
 be finished. The song An die Geliebte also 
 belongs to this year 1811, as well as the prin- 
 cipal draft of op. 96, the charmingly coquet- 
 tish sonata for the violin which was finished in 
 1812, on the occasion of the visit of the then 
 celebrated violin player Bode to Vienna. 
 
 Beethoven's work on these two plays took up 
 the summer of 1811, but they were not put 
 upon the stage until the spring of 1812. At 
 the same time, an opera was wanted for Vienna. 
 It was the "Buins of Babylon." He also 
 received an invitation to Naples, where Count 
 
116 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 Gallenberg was director of the theater. We 
 next find him traveling to Teplitz, a bathing 
 place, where he formed a more intimate ac- 
 quaintance with Varnhagen, Tiedge and Elise 
 von der Recke. Amalie Sebald, a nut-brown 
 maid of Berlin, twenty-five years of age, was 
 stopping with Elise. Amalie had a charming 
 voice, and was as remarkable for her intellectual 
 endowments as for her beauty of physique. 
 Beethoven, spite of his many disappointments, 
 was greatly taken with her. Her picture is 
 before us. Her eye betokens intellect and 
 nobility of soul, and her mouth extreme 
 loveliness. Beethoven subsequently wrote to 
 Tiedge : " Press the Countess's hand for me 
 very tenderly, but very respectfully. Give 
 Amalie a right loving kiss, when no one is 
 looking." He did not see Goethe on this 
 occasion. He was at Teplitz again the fol- 
 lowing year, when his meeting — of which so 
 much has been said and written — " with the 
 most precious jewel of the German nation," 
 as he called Goethe, when writing to Bettina, 
 occurred. We can here give only the prin- 
 cipal incidents of that event. 
 
 The Austrian imperial couple, their daugh- 
 
WITH GOETHE. 117 
 
 ter, the Empress of France, the King of Sax- 
 ony, the Duke of Saxe- Weimar, and a great 
 many Princes were there. The company al- 
 ready in the place was joined by Goethe, the 
 jurist Savigny and his brother-in-law, A. von 
 Arnim, together with his charming wife, Bet- 
 tina. Beethoven himself writes on the 12th 
 of August, 1812, to his Archduke in Vienna: 
 
 " I was in Goethe's company a great deal." And 
 the poet, writing to Zelter, passes the following judg- 
 ment on Beethoven: " I became acquainted with Bee- 
 thoven in Teplitz. His wonderful talent astounded 
 me. But, unfortunately, he is an utterly untamed 
 character. He is not, indeed, wrong in finding the 
 world detestable. Still, his finding it detestable does 
 not make it any more enjoyable either to himself or to 
 others. But he is very excusable and much to be 
 pitied. His hearing is leaving him. He is by nature 
 laconic, and this defect is making him doubly so." 
 
 The remarkable incident related in the 
 third letter to Bettina, a letter which has been 
 widely read and the authenticity of which has 
 been much contested — for the original does 
 not seem to be extant — Bettina herself de- 
 scribes in a letter to Pueckler-Muskau. Goe- 
 the, she says, who had received many marks 
 of attention from the Princes present, was de- 
 
118 THE LIFE OP BEETHOVEN. 
 
 sirous of testifying his special devotion to the 
 Empress, and in " solemn, unassuming expres- 
 sions" signified to Beethoven that he should do 
 the same. But Beethoven replied: " What ! 
 You must not do so. You must let them 
 clearly understand what they possess in you ; 
 for if you do not, they will never find it out. 
 I have taken quite a different course." And 
 then he told how his Archduke once sent him 
 word to wait, and how, instead of doing so, he 
 went away. Princes might indeed, he said, 
 decorate one with the insignia of an order, or 
 make a man a court counsellor, but they could 
 never make a Goethe or a Beethoven. To 
 such men they owed respect. The whole court 
 now came in. Beethoven said to Goethe: 
 " Keep my arm ; they must make way for us." 
 But Goethe left him and stood aside with 
 his hat in his hand, while Beethoven, with fold- 
 ed arms, went through the midst of them 
 and only touched his hat. The court party 
 separated to make place for him, and they had 
 all a friendly greeting for our artist. He 
 stood and waited at the other end for Goethe, 
 who bowed profoundly as the court party 
 passed him. Now Beethoven said : " I have 
 
WITH GOETHE. 119 
 
 waited for you, because I honor and respect 
 you, as you deserve, but you have done them 
 too much honor." Then, it is said, Beethoven 
 ran to them, and told them all that had hap- 
 pened. 
 
 That his behavior, on this occasion, was 
 not by any means dictated by any over- 
 estimation of himself, but by a deep human 
 feeling of equality — an equality which the 
 artist finds it harder than any one else to assert 
 and acquire — the whole course of Beethoven's 
 life, as well as his intercourse with people at 
 this bathing place at Teplitz, proves. He 
 there found Miss Sebald again. A series of 
 very tender notes written to her tells us of his 
 heartfelt and good understanding with this 
 refined and clever North German lady, who 
 made greater allowances for his natural dis- 
 position than were wont to be made. He 
 writes in 1816 : " I found one whom, I am sure, 
 I shall never possess." His admission that, for 
 five years — that is from 1811, — he had known 
 a lady to be united to whom he would have 
 esteemed it the greatest happiness he could 
 have on earth, was made in this same year. 
 But, he added, that was a happiness not to be 
 
120 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 thought of ; union with her was an impossi- 
 bility, a chimera! And yet he closed with 
 the words : " It is still as it was the first day 
 I saw her. I can not dismiss the thought of 
 her from my mind." He did not know that 
 Amalie Sebald had been the wife of a coun- 
 cillor of justice named Krause. Again did he 
 give vent to his feeling in the songs An die 
 feme Oeliebte — "to the distant loved one" — 
 which bear the date; "in the month of 
 April, 1816." 
 
 This was the last time that Beethoven seri- 
 ously concerned himself about marriage. Fate 
 would indeed have it that he should soon be- 
 come a "father," but without a wife. Yet no 
 matter what the personal wishes of our artist 
 through the rest of his life may have been, or 
 what the wants he felt, his eye was ever fixed 
 on a lofty goal; and it was in the ideal world 
 that he found his real friends. He finished 
 the seventh symphony, and after it the eighth, 
 in this fall of 1812. The coquettish allegretto 
 scherzando of the latter was suggested by the 
 Maelzl metronome invented a short time be- 
 fore, and the strange minuet with its proud 
 step is a hit at the high court society whom 
 
COMPOSITIONS. 121 
 
 Beethoven so solemnly warned that the times 
 of the old regime, when the principle Vetat 
 c'est moi obtained in society, were passed. 
 These works are clearly expressive of the free 
 and progressive spirit of a new and better age. 
 It was the seventh symphony especially that, 
 in the broadest sense, opened to Beethoven 
 himself the hearts of that age. This sympho- 
 ny helped celebrate the newly-won peace es- 
 tablished by the Congress of Vienna. Bee- 
 thoven now entered a new stage of develop- 
 ment, and rose to his full height as an artist 
 and a man. Other works composed by Bee- 
 thoven during this period are the following: 
 32 variations (1806-7) ; In questa tomba 
 (1807) ; sonatine (op. 79) ; variations op. 76 
 and Lied aus der Feme (composed 1809) ; 
 die laute Klage (probably 1809 ; Sextett op. 
 8 b . Andenhen, Sehnsucht by Goethe; der Lieb- 
 e?ide, der Jungling in der Fremde (appeared 
 in 1810) ; three songs by Goethe, op. 83 (com- 
 posed in 1810) ; Scotch songs (commenced in 
 1810 ; four ariettes, op. 82, (appeared 1811) ; 
 trio in one movement and three equale for 
 four trombones, (composed in 1812) the latter 
 of which was re-arranged as a dirge for Bee- 
 thoven's burial. 
 
CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 1813—1823. 
 
 THE MISSA SOLEMNIS AND THE NINTH SYMPHONY. 
 
 Resignation — Pecuniary Distress — Napoleon's Decline — The 
 Battle-Symphony — Its Success — Beethoven's Own Es- 
 timate of It — Wellington's Victory — Strange Conduct — 
 Intellectual Exaltation — His Picture by Letronne — The 
 Fidelio Before the Assembled Monarchs — Beethoven the 
 Object of Universal Attention — Presents from Kings- 
 Works Written in 1814 and 1815— The Liederkreis 
 — Madame von Ertman — His Nephew — Romulus and the 
 Oratorio — His " Own Style " — Symphony for London — 
 Commission from London — Opinion of the English 
 People — His Songs — His Missa Solemnis — His Own 
 Opinion of It — Its Completion — Characteristics — The 
 Ninth Symphony. 
 
 " Kesignation, the most absolute and heart- 
 felt resignation to thy fate ! Thou shoulclst 
 not live for thyself, but only for others. 
 Henceforth there is no happiness for thee, but 
 in thy art. O God, grant me strength to 
 conquer myself. Nothing should now tie me 
 to life." With this cry of the heart, taken 
 verbatim from his diary of 1812, Beethoven 
 consecrated himself to the noble task which 
 (122) 
 
POVERTY. 123 
 
 after this lie never lost sight of — of writing 
 " for the honor of the Almighty, the Eternal, 
 the Infinite." 
 
 The national bankruptcy of Austria did not 
 leave Beethoven unaffected. It compelled 
 him, besides, to come to the assistance of his 
 sick brother, Karl. The first thing, there- 
 fore, that he felt called upon to undertake, in 
 order to provide himself with the mere means 
 of subsistence, was the public representation of 
 his new compositions. It was not long before 
 an occasion of an extraordinary kind offered, 
 an occasion which lifted Beethoven's creations 
 to the dignity of one of the motive powers of 
 the national life of the period. The star of 
 Napoleon's destiny was declining; and the 
 gigantic struggle begun to bring about the 
 overthrow of the tyrant of Europe, enlisted 
 the sympathy and active participation of our 
 artist. 
 
 "To abandon a great undertaking and to re- 
 main as I am ! O, what a difference between 
 the un-industrious life I pictured to myself so 
 often ! 0, horrible circumstances which do 
 not suppress my desire to be thrifty, but which 
 keep one from being so. 0, God! O, God ! 
 
124 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 look down on thy unhappy Beethoven. Let 
 this last no longer as it is. " Thus did he write 
 in May, 1813, in his diary. Madame Streich- 
 er, interested herself in him in his pecuniary 
 embarrassment, which was so great that at one 
 time, he did not have so much as a pair of boots 
 to leave the house in. He writes: "I do 
 not deserve to be in the condition I am 
 — the most un fortunate of my life." The pay- 
 ments due him from Kinsky did not come, be- 
 cause of his sad death, and Prince Lobkowitz's 
 love of music and the theater had greatly em- 
 barrassed him financially. Even the giving 
 of a concert which he contemplated had to be 
 abandoned in consequence of the bad times. 
 
 The idea of a journey to London now took 
 possession of him all the more strongly be- 
 cause of the straits to which he was reduced. 
 This journey was, doubtless, the "great un- 
 dertaking " referred to above. It is deserving 
 of special mention here, because to it we are 
 indebted for the ninth symphony. 
 
 Maelzl, the inventor of the metronome, had 
 built a panharmonicum, and was anxious to 
 make the journey to London in company with 
 Beethoven. He had had the burning of 
 
BATTLE-SYMPHONY. 125 
 
 Moscow set for his instrument ; and he now 
 wanted a musical representation of the next 
 great event of the time — Wellington's victory 
 at Vittoria. He suggested the idea to Beet- 
 hoven. Beethoven's hatred of Napoleon and 
 love of England induced him to adopt it, and 
 this was the origin of the Schlachtsymphonie 
 (battle-symphony) op. 91. For, in accord- 
 ance with Maelzl's proposition, he elaborated 
 what was at first a trumpeter's piece into an 
 instrumental composition. It was performed 
 before a large audience " for the benefit of the 
 warriors made invalids in the battle of Hanau." 
 And — , irony of fate ! — a work which Beetho- 
 ven himself declared to be a "piece of stu- 
 pidity," took the Viennese by storm, and at a 
 bound, made him very popular in Vienna. 
 
 It was performed on the 12th of December, 
 1813. The applause was unbounded. All 
 the best artists of the city were with him. 
 Salieri, Hummel, Moscheles, Schuppanzigh, 
 Mayseder, and even strangers like Meyerbeer, 
 assisted him. The Seventh Symphony was the 
 ideal foundation of the entire production, for 
 that symphony was the expression of the 
 awakening of the heroic spirit of the nation. 
 
126 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 Anton Schindler, of whom we have already 
 spoken more than once, and of whom we shall 
 have more to say in the sequel, as Beethoven's 
 companion, writes : " All hitherto dissenting 
 voices, with the exception of a few professors 
 of music, finally agreed that he was worthy of 
 the laurel crown." He rightly calls the pro- 
 duction of this piece one of the most important 
 events in Beethoven's life; for now the portals 
 of the temple of fame were opened wide to re- 
 ceive him ; and if he had had nothing " nobler 
 or better " than this to do in life, he certainly 
 would never again feel the want of the good 
 things of this world. 
 
 His next concern was to turn the occasion 
 of the moment to advantage, to give some con- 
 certs with Wellington 's Victory, and thus ob- 
 tain leisure to work. Pieces from the " Ruins 
 of Athens " also were played at these concerts. 
 The success of one aria in particular from that 
 composition suggested to one of the singers 
 of the court- opera the idea of reviving 
 the Fidelio. It then received the form in 
 which we have it to-day. And what a hold 
 the character of Leonore still had on our 
 artist's soul, we learn from the account of the 
 
THE FIDELIO. 127 
 
 ( dramatic poet, Treitschke, who again tried to 
 , abridge the text. He had given expression 
 
 to the last flash of life in the scene in Flores- 
 
 tein's dungeon, in the words : 
 
 " Und spur ich niclit linde, sanft sauselnde Luft^ 
 
 Und ist nicht mein Grab mir erhellet ? 
 Und seh' wie ein Engel im rosigen Duft 
 
 Sich trostend zur Seite mir stelkt, 
 Ein Engel, Leonoren, der Gatten so gleich, 
 Der fiihrt inich zur Freiheit ins himmlisohe Reich." 
 
 ""What I now tell you," he continues, "will 
 never fade from my memory. Beethoven 
 came to me in the evening. He read, ran up 
 and down the room, murmured, growled, as 
 he usually did instead of singing, and tore 
 open the pianoforte. My wife had frequently 
 begged him in vain to play. To-day he 
 placed the text before him and began playing 
 wonderful melodies, which unfortunately no 
 charm could preserve. The hour passed. 
 Beethoven, however, continued his improvisa- 
 tion. Supper was served but he would allow 
 no one to disturb him. It grew quite late. 
 He then put his arms about me and hurried 
 home. A few days after the piece was 
 finished." 
 
 At this time he wrote to Brunswick : "My 
 
128 THE LIFE OP BEETHOVEN. 
 
 kingdom is in the air. My soul trills as the 
 winds warble ;" and to Treitschke : "In short 
 I assure you, the opera will win the crown of 
 martyrdom for me." Thus Leonore's sorrows 
 and victory found expression a second time ; 
 for now the so called Fidelio overture (E major) 
 was composed. At its performance on the 
 23d of May, 1814, Beethoven was after the 
 very first act, enthusiastically called for and 
 enthusiastically greeted. The applause in- 
 creased with every succeeding performance. 
 
 Beethoven was now one of the best known 
 characters in Vienna. He had, even before 
 this, given several concerts of his own, and at 
 several others music composed by him had 
 been performed. His picture by Letronne 
 appeared at this time. " It is as natural as 
 life," said Dr. Weissenbach. He had, on the 
 26th of September, received with his music of 
 the Fidelio, the assemblage of monarchs who 
 had come to attend the Congress of Vienna ; 
 and what was more natural than that he 
 should now greet them with something new 
 in the nature of festal music ? He did this 
 with the cantata, der Glorreiche Augenblioh 
 (" the glorious moment") op. 136. The pro- 
 
BATTLE-SYMPHONY. 129 
 
 duction of it took place in the ever memorable 
 Academy, on the 29th of November, 1814, 
 when Beethoven, before a "parterre of kings," 
 and what was more, before the educated of 
 Europe, by the mere assistance of his art, 
 helped celebrate the solemn moment which 
 did away with oppression and tyranny and 
 marked the beginning of a new and happier 
 period. His audience was numbered by 
 thousands, and " the respectful absence of all 
 loud signs of applause gave the whole the 
 character of worship. Every one seemed to 
 feel that never again would there be such a 
 moment in his life." This extract is from 
 Schindler's account, yet, at certain places "the 
 ecstasy of all present found expression in the 
 loudest applause, applause which drowned the 
 powerful accompaniment of the composer." 
 The Schlachtsymphonie (battle-symphony) as 
 well as the seventh symphony, contributed to 
 the achievement of this victory. After it was 
 over, he wrote to the archduke : " I am still 
 exhausted by fatigue, vexation, pleasure and 
 joy." But to get an idea of the overpowering 
 impression made on him by those days, we 
 must refer to his diary of the following spring, 
 9 
 
130 THE LIFE OP BEETHOVEN. 
 
 when all that he had then experienced took a 
 definite form in his feelings and consciousness. 
 He then writes : 
 
 "May all my life be sacrificed to the sublime. May 
 it be a sanctuary of art. . . . Let me live, even 
 if I have to have recourse to 'assistance,' and such 
 means can be found. Let the ear apparatus be per- 
 fected if possible, and then travel! This you owe to 
 man and the Almighty. Only thus can you develop 
 what is locked up within you. The court of a prince, 
 a little orchestra to write music for, and to produce it, 
 for the honor of the Almighty, the Eternal, the Infi- 
 nite. Thus may my last years pass away, and to 
 future humanity " 
 
 He breaks off here as if he did not need to 
 express an opinion on what he aimed at achiev- 
 ing and left after him as an inheritance. But 
 the reputation which he had acquired is cor- 
 rectly decsribed as "one of the greatest ever 
 won by a musician." And now, more than 
 ever before, he was the object of universal 
 attention, especially at the brilliant entertain- 
 ments given by the Eussian ambassador, count 
 Easumowsky, to the monarchs present, on one 
 of which occasions he was presented to them. 
 The Empress of Eussia wished to pay him a 
 special "compliment." She did so at the 
 
HOYAL GIFTS. 131 
 
 palace of Archduke Rudolph, who thus helped 
 celebrate the triumph of his honored teacher. 
 At a court concert on the 25th of January, 
 1815, he accompanied the Adelaide for Flores- 
 tan Wild himself; and Schindler closes his 
 account of it with the words : " The great 
 master recalled those days with much feeling, 
 and with a certain pride once said that he 
 had made the great pay their court to him, 
 and that with them he had always preserved bis 
 dignity." He thus verified what, as we saw 
 alone, he had said to Goethe : " You must let 
 them clearly understand what they possess in 
 you." 
 
 The " assistance " he longed for came in the 
 form of presents from monarchs, especially of 
 the " magnanimous " one of the Empress of 
 Russia, for whom he, at that time, wrote the 
 polonaise, op. 89. These presents enabled him 
 to make a permanent investment of twenty 
 thousand marks, which his friends were very 
 much surprised to find he owned, after his 
 death. But, although by " decree " he drew 
 yearly the sum of 2,700 marks, his principal 
 source of income continued to be derived from 
 bis intellectual labor; for his dearly beloved 
 
132 THE LIFE OP BEETHOVEN. 
 
 brother Karl died and left him, as an inherit- 
 ance, so to speak, his eight-year-old son, named 
 after his father — the mother not being a fit 
 person to take care of the child, and, besides, 
 not enjoying the best of reputations. Beetho- 
 ven's struggles for his " son," the unfortunate 
 nephew, with the mother, whom he was wont 
 to call the " queen of the night," filled the next 
 succeeding years of his life with legal con- 
 troversies and negotiations to such an extent 
 that they seem to have hindered him in his 
 work. Extreme trouble of mind, brought 
 about by the social and political degeneration 
 of Vienna immediately after the Congress, soon 
 entirely obscured the lustre of the days we 
 have just described ; and it was only for short 
 moments of time, as on the occasion of the 
 celebrated concert of the year 1824, that we 
 see his old pride and fame revive. The works 
 performed at that concert were the Missa So- 
 lemnis and the Ninth Symphony. The former 
 was a token of gratitude and devotion to the 
 Archduke Eudolph, but at the same time a 
 reflection of the soul of the artist himself as we 
 have heard him describe it above. The sym- 
 phony was written " for London," whither in 
 
LONDON. 133 
 
 these saddening times his eyes were directed, 
 and which, although he never undertook the 
 contemplated journey thither, became the in- 
 centive to the composition of many important 
 works. 
 
 Among the works which date from 1814 
 and 1815, we may mention the sonata, op. 90, 
 a " struggle between the head and the heart," 
 addressed in the summer of 1814 to Count 
 Moritz Lichnowsky on the occasion of his mar- 
 riage to a Vienna singer; the song Merhen- 
 stein (op. 100), composed in the winter of 
 1814; Tiedge's Hoffimng (op. 94), composed 
 after the last court concert for the singer 
 Wild; the chorus Meeresstille and Gluechliche 
 Fahrt (op. 112), which was written in 1815, 
 and in 1822, "most respectfully dedicated to 
 the immortal Goethe;" lastly, the magnificent 
 cello sonatas, op. 102, dedicated to Countess 
 Erdoedy, who became reconciled with him once 
 more during this winter, after there had been 
 a variance between them for a time. He calls 
 the first of these sonatas the "free sonata, 11 
 and, indeed, freedom now became the charac- 
 teristic of his higher artistic pictures. The 
 adagio of the second discloses to us, in the 
 
134 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 choral-like construction of its theme, the pre- 
 vailing religious direction taken by his 
 thoughts, which is also apparent in very many 
 expressions and quotations to be found in his 
 diary. 
 
 We have already mentioned the Liederkreis, 
 op. 98. Beethoven worked at it and at the 
 sonata op. 101 at the same time. The latter, 
 an expression of the deepest poetry of the 
 soul, was ready the following year, and was 
 dedicated to Madame von Ertmann, his "dear 
 Dorothea Caecilia," who, because she thor- 
 oughly understood the meaning of Beethoven's 
 music, became a real propagandist of his com- 
 positions for the piano. In 1831, Mendelssohn 
 could say that he had "learned much" from 
 her deeply expressive execution. The noble 
 lady had lost- her only son during the absence 
 of her husband in the wars of emancipation ; 
 and Beethoven had rescued her from a con- 
 dition of mind bordering on melancholy, by 
 coming to her and playing for her until she 
 burst into tears. " The spell wad broken." 
 "We finite creatures with an infinite mind are 
 born only for suffering and for joy ; and we 
 might almost say that the best of human kind 
 
HIS NEPHEW. 135 
 
 obtain joy only through their sorrow." Thus 
 spoke Beethoven to Countess Erdoedy, and 
 this little incident confirms its truth. His 
 own sufferings gave our artist the tones of his 
 musical creations, and these creations were to 
 him "the dearest gift of heaven," and, as it 
 were, a consolation from on high. 
 
 But to continue our biography. 
 
 "When, after a violent contest with the 
 mother, he was made sole guardian of his 
 nephew, and could then call him his own, he 
 seems, as a lady whose diary is embodied in 
 the little book Eine stille Liebe zu Beethoven, 
 informs us, to gain new life. He devoted 
 himself heart and soul to the boy, and he 
 wrote, or was unable to write, according as the 
 care of his nephew brought him joy or sorrow. 
 We can readily understand how it came to 
 pass that he now penned the words found by 
 the lady just mentioned, in a memorandum 
 book of his : " My heart overflows at the 
 aspect of the beauties of nature — and this 
 without her." His "distant loved one" was 
 still to him the most valued possession of his 
 life — more to him, even, than himself. 
 
 He had now in view several great projects — 
 
136 THE LIFE OP BEETHOVEN. 
 
 among them an opera, Romulus., by Treitschke, 
 and an oratorio for the recently founded "So- 
 ciety of the Friends of Music," in Vienna. 
 The latter failed, through the niggardliness of 
 the directors, and the former was not finished, 
 although our artist never gave up the intention 
 of completing it. In the autumn of 1816, an 
 English general, Kyd, asked Beethoven to 
 write a symphony, for two hundred ducats. 
 But as the general wanted it written in the 
 style of his earlier works, Beethoven himself 
 refused to accept the commission. Yet this 
 narrow English enthusiast had excited Bee- 
 thoven's imagination with glowing accounts of 
 the harvest of profit he might reap in England, 
 and as Beethoven had recently sold many of 
 his works there, and as, besides, the new 
 " Philharmonic Society " had handsomely re- 
 munerated him for these overtures, his inten- 
 tion of crossing the Channel began to assume 
 a more definite form. His Schlachtsymphonie 
 (battle symphony), especially, had already met 
 with a very flattering reception in England. 
 And a project was on foot in that country, even 
 now, to give him a " benefit " by the produc- 
 tion of his own works; and such a "benefit" 
 
NINTH SYMPHONY. 137 
 
 was actually given for him there when he was 
 on his death-bed. He wrote in 1816 that it 
 would natter him to be able to write some new 
 works, such as symphonies and an oratorio, for 
 the Society which embraced a greater number 
 of able musicians than almost any other in 
 Europe. 
 
 His diary covering this period to 1818, pub- 
 lished in the work Die Beethovenfeier und die 
 deutsche Kunst, because of the many items of 
 interest it has in it, contains these characteris- 
 tic lines : " Drop operas and everything else. 
 Write only in your own style." But even the 
 sketches of the Seventh Symphony had the re- 
 mark accompanying them : "2. Symphony in 
 D minor," and those of the eighth: "Symphony 
 in D minor — 3. Symphony." Belonging to 
 the years succeeding 1812, we find drafts of the 
 scherzo of the Ninth Symphony. The headings 
 above given undoubtedly had reference to this 
 last, but the sketches of the first movement, 
 decisive of the character of such a work, are 
 not to be found until the year 1816, but then 
 they are found with the physiognomy so mascu- 
 line and so full of character which distinguishes 
 this " symphony for London." He once said 
 
138 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 of Englishmen that they were, for the most 
 part, " clever fellows;" and he — of whom 
 Zelter wrote to Goethe, that " he must have 
 had a man for his mother " — felt that, in Eng- 
 land, he, as a man, had to do with men, and, 
 as an artist, to enter the list with Handel, 
 whose own powerful influence was due to his 
 decided manfulness of character. And then, 
 had not England produced a tragic poet like 
 Shakspeare, whom Beethoven loved above all 
 others? Deep, tragic earnestness, and a mas- 
 culine struggle with fate, are here the funda- 
 mental tone and design of th§ whole. "And 
 then a cowl when thou closest thy unhappy 
 life" — such is the conclusion of the lines 
 quoted above, in which he says that he must 
 write " only in his own style." 
 
 And now, in July, 1817, came from London 
 the "direct commission" he had so long en- 
 deavored to obtain. The Society desired 
 to send him a proof of their esteem and 
 gratitude for the many happy moments his 
 works had given them to enjoy, and invited 
 him to come to London to write two great 
 symphonies, promising him an honorarium of 
 three hundred pounds sterling. Beethoven 
 
TENTH SYMPHONY. 139 
 
 immediately accepted the commission, and 
 assured them that he would do his very best 
 to execute it — honorable as it was to him, and 
 coming as it did from so select a society of 
 artists — in the worthiest manner possible.- 
 He promised to go to work immediately. 
 " He believed that he could nowhere receive 
 the distinction which his gigantic genius — in 
 advance of his age by several centuries — 
 deserved, as he could in Great Britain. The 
 respect shown him by the English people, 
 he valued more than that of all Europe 
 besides. The feeling he had of his own 
 powers may, indeed, have contributed to make 
 him prefer the English nation to all others, 
 especially as they showered so many marks of 
 distinction on him." Thus writes one of his 
 most intimate friends in Vienna, Baron Von 
 Zmeskall, already mentioned ; and certain it 
 is that he did his very best on this work. It, 
 as well as the symphony in C minor, is of 
 the true Beethoven type — more so, perhaps, 
 than any other of his works — the full picture 
 of his own personal existence and of the 
 tragedy of human life in general. This work 
 was followed by the Tenth Symphony, the 
 
140 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 " poetical idea," at least, of which we know. 
 The first movement was intended to represent 
 a "feast of Bacchus," the adagio a cantique 
 ecclesiastique, a church hymn, and the finale 
 the reconciliation of the antique world, which 
 he esteemed so highly with the spirit of 
 Christianity, into the full depth of which he 
 came to have a deeper insight every day that 
 passed. We see that he had lofty plans, and 
 that no poet ever soared to sublimer heights 
 than he. We must bear these great plans 
 and labors of Beethoven in mind if we would 
 rightly understand his subsequent life — if we 
 would comprehend how, in the desolate and 
 distracted existence he was compelled hence- 
 forth to lead, he did not become a victim of 
 torpidity, but that, on the contrary, the elas- 
 ticity of his genius grew greater and greater, 
 and that his creations gained both in depth 
 and perfection. 
 
 Thus do we see with our own eyes at least 
 one of his works born of his own life. 
 
 The songs Ruf vom Berge and So oder so, 
 were composed in the winter of 1816-17; and 
 in the following spring, after the sudden death 
 of one of his friends, the chorus Easch tritt 
 
SCHNYDEK. 141 
 
 der Tod, from Schiller's Tell. " O God, help 
 me! Thou seesfc me forsaken by all mankind. 
 O hard fate, O cruel destiny! No, no, no, 
 my unhappy condition will never end. Thou 
 hast no means of salvation but to leave here. 
 Only by so doing canst thou rise to the height 
 of thy art. Here thou art immersed in vul- 
 garity. Only one symphony, and then away, 
 away, away!" Thus does he write in his 
 diary. He next, in 1817, finished the quin- 
 tet fugue, op. 137, and, in 1818, the great 
 sonata for the Hammer-clavier, op. 106. The 
 adagio of the latter is the musical expression 
 of earnest prayer to God. Its first movement 
 shows how he had soared once more to the 
 heights of his art. " The sonata was written 
 under vexatious circumstances," he says to his 
 friend Eies ; and to a younger fellow-artist, 
 the composer Schnyder von Wartensee : " Go 
 on. There is no calmer, more unalloyed or 
 purer joy than that which arises from as- 
 cending higher and higher into the heaven 
 of art." Such, too, was his mood in those 
 days when he promised his friend Zmeskall 
 the trio for the piano' in C minor, his op. 1,. 
 worked over into the quintet op. 104 ; for he 
 
142 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEH. 
 
 wrote : " I rehearse getting nearer the grave, 
 without music, every day." In keeping with 
 this is the song, Lisch cms mein Licht, " Put 
 out my light," which also belongs to this 
 period. The supplication : " O hear me al- 
 ways, Thou unspeakable One, hear me, thy 
 unhappy creature, the most unfortunate of all 
 mortals," found in his diary, belongs to this 
 same time. It is now easy to see that he was 
 in a very suitable frame of mind when he 
 resolved, in 1818, to write a solemn mass for 
 the occasion of the inauguration of his dis- 
 tinguished pupiF as Archbishop of Olmutz. 
 It was the "little court," the "little orchestra" 
 for which he wished to write the music " for 
 the honor of the Almighty, the Eternal, the 
 Infinite;" for the Archduke thought of making 
 him his capellmeister there. After four years' 
 labor, the Missa Solemnis, op. 123, was fin- 
 ished. Beethoven called it " Fceuvre le plus 
 accompli, my most finished work." And, like 
 the Fidelio, it is deserving of this character- 
 ization, but more on account of the pains 
 taken with it and the labor expended on it 
 than of its matter. 
 
 "Sacrifice again all the trivialties of social 
 
THE MASS. 143 
 
 life to thy art. 0, God above all ! "For Provi- 
 dence eternal omnisciently orders the happi- 
 ness or unhappiness of mortal men." With 
 these words from the Odyssey, lie resolved 
 to consecrate himself to this great work. 
 And it was a resolve in very deed. For, as 
 in opera, he knew that he was here bound 
 by traditionary forms — forms which, indeed, 
 in some details afforded rich food to his own 
 thoughts, but which, on the whole, hindered 
 the natural flow of his fancy. We now 
 approach a period in Beethoven's life in 
 which, he was strangely secluded from the 
 world. The painter, Kloeber, the author of 
 the best known portrait of Beethoven, and 
 which is to be found in Beethoven's Brevier 
 — it was painted during the summer of 1818 
 — once saw him throw himself under a fir 
 tree and look for a long time " up into the 
 heavens." In some of the pages of his written 
 conversations — for it was now necessary for him 
 to have recourse to putting his conversations 
 on paper more frequently on account of his in- 
 creasing deafness — he wrote in the winter of 
 1819-20: "Socrates and Jesus were patterns 
 to me;" and after that: "The moral law within 
 
144 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 us and the starry heavens above us. — Kant ! ! !" 
 Just as on the 4th of March, 1820, he wrote : 
 
 "Ernte bald an Gottes Thron 
 Meiner Leiden schoenen Lohn." 
 
 This was the time of the struggles with the 
 mother of his "son" and of the heartfelt sor- 
 row he had to endure on account of the moral 
 ruin of the poor boy himself, who, always 
 going from the one to the other, did not really 
 know to whom he belonged, and who, there- 
 fore, deceived both. "From the heart — may 
 it in turn appeal to hearts!" He wrote these 
 words on the score of the mass ; and Schind- 
 ler, who was now his companion, says that 
 "the moment he began this work his whole 
 nature seemed to change." He would sit in 
 the eating-house sunk in deep thought, forget 
 to order his meals, and then want to pay for 
 them. " Some say he is a fool," wrote Zelter 
 to Goethe in 1819. And Schindler tells us 
 "he actually seemed possessed in those days, 
 especially when he wrote the fuge and the 
 Benedictus." That fuge, Et vitam senturi 
 (life everlasting!) is the climax of the work, 
 since the depiction of the imperishableness 
 and inexhaustibleness of Being was what Bee- 
 
THE BENEDICTUS. 145 
 
 thoven's powerful mind was most used to. 
 The wonderful Benedictus, (Blessed is lie who 
 cometh in the name of the Lord) whose tones 
 seem to float down from heaven to earth, the 
 bestowal of help from on high, was subse- 
 quently the model used by Wagner for his 
 descent of the Holy Grail, the symbol of di- 
 vine grace, in the prelude to the Lohengrin. 
 "When I recall his state of mental excitement, 
 I must confess that I never before, and never 
 after this period of his complete forgetfulness 
 of earth, observed anything like it in him." 
 So says Schindler. They had gone to visit 
 him in Baden, near by, whither he repaired 
 in the interest of his health, and where he 
 loved so well to "wander through the quiet 
 forest of firs" and think out his works. It 
 was four o'clock in the afternoon. The door 
 was closed, and they could hear him "singing, 
 howling, stamping" at the fugue. After they 
 had listened to this "almost horrible" scene, 
 the door opened, and Beethoven stood before 
 them, with trouble depicted on his counten- 
 ance. He looked as if he had just gone 
 through a struggle of life and death. "Pretty 
 doings here ; everybody is gone, and I have 
 10 
 
146 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN". 
 
 not eaten a morsel since yesterday noon," he 
 said. He had worked the previous evening 
 until after midnight ; and so the food had 
 grown cold and the servants left in disgust. 
 
 His work assumed greater and greater di- 
 mensions as he himself gradually rose to the 
 full height of the subject. He no longer 
 thought of completing it for the installation 
 ceremonies. It became a grand fresco paint- 
 ing — a symphony in choruses on the words 
 of the mass. He now began to work more 
 calmly, and to compose at intervals other 
 works, in order to quiet his over-excited mind 
 and to earn a living for his " dear " nephew. 
 And thus, while he was composing his mass, he 
 produced not only the Variirten Themen, op. 
 105 and 107, which Thompson, of Edinburg 
 — who had sent Beethoven the Scotch songs 
 like op. 108 to be arranged — had ordered, but 
 also the three Last Sonatas, op. 109, dedicated 
 to Bettina's niece, Maximiliane Brentano, to 
 whose excellent father he was indebted for 
 ready assistance during these years of his 
 pecuniary embarrassment ; also op. 110, which 
 was finished at Christmas, 1821, as op. Ill 
 was on the 13th of January, 1822. It is said 
 
COMPOSITIONS. 147 
 
 that be entertained a higher opinion himself 
 of these sonatas than of his previous ones. 
 They are greatly superior, however, only in 
 some of their movements ; and they are written 
 in the grand, free style of that period, es- 
 pecially the arietta in the last opus, the varia- 
 tions of which are real pictures of his own 
 soul. In the intervals between them, how- 
 ever, we find some trifles such as the Baga- 
 tcllen, op. 119. which his pecuniary condition 
 made it imperative he should compose, since, 
 " as a brave knight by his sword, he had to 
 live by his pen." And even the ",33 Veraen- 
 derungen'" (variations), op. 120, on the works 
 of Diabelli, of the year 1822-23, are more the 
 intellectual play of the inexhaustible fancy of 
 an artist than the work of the genuine gigantic 
 creative power which Beethoven undoubtedly 
 possessed. He had overtaxed his strength 
 working on the mass, and thus exhausted it 
 for a moment. The two chorus-songs, op. 
 121 b and op. 122, the Opferlied and Bundes- 
 lied, which date from the year 1822-23, bear 
 the stamp of occasional compositions, which 
 they, in fact, are. 
 ■ But in the meantime the lion had roused 
 
148 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN". 
 
 himself again. He now only needed to give 
 the finishing touch to the Mass, and in the 
 spring of 1823 the entire work was completed. 
 The summer of 1822 found him fully en- 
 gaged on the composition of that monument 
 to his genius, the Ninth Symphony. Freedom 
 from the torment of exhausting labor, and the 
 entire surrender of himself to " his own style," 
 gave his fancy back its old elasticity and all 
 its productive power. Scarcely any year of 
 his life was more prolific of works than this 
 year 1822. 
 
 "Our Beethoven seems again to take a 
 greater interest ,in music, which, since the 
 trouble with his hearing began to increase, he 
 avoided almost as a woman-hater avoids the 
 sex. To the great pleasure of all, he impro- 
 vised a few tunes in a most masterly manner." 
 Thus do we read in the Leipsig Musikzeitung, 
 in the spring of 1822, and the Englishman, 
 John Russell, gives us a eharming description 
 of such an evening in the Cotta Beethovenbuch. 
 Weisse's droll poem, Der Kuss (the kiss) op. 
 128, is found among the serious sketches of 
 this year. And now he received a whole 
 series of commissions. An English captain, 
 
HIS APPEAKANCE. 149 
 
 named Reigersfeld, wanted a quartet, and 
 Breitkopf and Haertel an operatic poem wor- 
 thy of his art, before he "hung up his harp 
 forever." Others asked for other kinds of 
 music. "In short," he writes to his brother 
 Johann, "people are fighting to get works from 
 me, happy, unhappy man that I am. If my 
 health is good, I shall yet be able to feather 
 my nest." Friederich Rochlitz brought him, 
 too, a commission from Breitkopf and Haertel 
 to write "music for Faust." Bochlitz gives 
 us a very interesting account of Beethoven's 
 appearance and whole mode of life at this 
 time. Not Beethoven's neglected, almost sav- 
 age exterior, he says, not his bushy black 
 hair, which hung bristling about his head, 
 would have stirred him ; what stirred him was 
 the whole appearance of the deaf man who, 
 notwithstanding his infirmity, brought joy to 
 the hearts of millions — pure, intellectual joy. 
 But when he received the commission, he 
 raised his hand high up and exclaimed : 
 "That might be worth while. But I have 
 been intending for some time to write three 
 other great works — two great symphonies, very 
 different from each other, and an oratorio. I 
 
150 THE LIFE OP BEETHOVEW. 
 
 shudder at the thought of beginning works of 
 such magnitude. But once engaged on them, 
 I shall find no difficulty." He spoke of the 
 Ninth Symphony, to which he had now begun 
 to give the finishing touches, in all earnest- 
 ness. 
 
 This was interrupted for a short time by 
 the overture, Zur Weihe des Hauses (op. 124), 
 for the opening of the renovated Josephstadt 
 theater with the " Euins of Athens," of 1812. 
 It is the portal to the temple in which art is 
 praised as something consecrated to the ser- 
 vice of mankind — as a thing which may lift 
 us for blissful moments into the region of the 
 purifying and elevating influences of higher 
 powers. Even in this work, which dates from 
 September, 1822, we may hear the solemn 
 sound and rhythm of the Ninth Symphony. 
 And, indeed, after a memorandum on the 
 ' 'Hungarian Story," we find in the sketches 
 of it the words, "Finale, Freude schoener Goet- 
 terfunken" together with the wonderfully sim- 
 ple melody itself, which sounds to humanity's 
 better self like the music of its own redemp- 
 tion. Beethoven's own nature was deeply 
 moved at this time. Weber's Freischuetz, 
 
SCHROEDER-DEVKIENT. 151 
 
 with Wilhelmine Schroeder, afterwards so 
 celebrated, had excited the greatest enthusi- 
 asm. Rossini's reception in Vienna was "like 
 an opeotheosis;" and Beethoven was deter- 
 mined to let the light of his genius shine forth, 
 which he could do only by writing a work 
 "in his own style." The world was " his for 
 another evening," and he was anxious to turn 
 that evening to account. And, indeed, had 
 he not a world of sorrows to paint — sorrows 
 which actual life had brought to him ? He 
 had also a world of joys — joys vouchsafed to 
 him by his surrendering of himself to a higher 
 life. 
 
 An incident which occurred during this fall 
 of 1822 tells us something of this gloomy night 
 of his personal existence. Young Schroeder- 
 Devrient, encouraged by her success with 
 Pamina and Agathe, had chosen the Fidelio 
 for her benefit, and Beethoven himself was to 
 wield the baton. Sshindler tells us how, even 
 during the first scene of the opera, everything 
 was in confusion, but that no one cared to 
 utter the saddening words : " It's impossible 
 for you, unfortunate man." Schindler finally, 
 in response to Beethoven's own questioning, 
 
152 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 wrote something to that effect down. In a 
 trice, Beethoven leaped into the parterre, say- 
 ing only: "Quick, out of here!" He ran 
 without stopping to his dwelling, threw him- 
 self on the sofa, covered his face with his two 
 hands, and remained in that position until 
 called to table. But, even at table, he did not 
 utter a word. He sat at it, the picture of the 
 deepest melancholy. Schindler's account of 
 the incident closes thus : " In all my experi- 
 ence with Beethoven, this November day is 
 without a parallel. It mattered not what dis- 
 appointments or crosses misfortune , brought 
 him, he was ill-humored only for moments, 
 sometimes depressed. He would, however, 
 soon be himself again, lift his head proudly, 
 walk about with a firm step, and rule in the 
 workshop of his genius. But he never fully 
 recovered from the effect of this blow." 
 
 The performance itself brought out, for 
 the first time, in all its completeness, musico- 
 dramatic art, in the representation of the 
 scene, " Kill first his wife." Bichard Wagner, 
 who has so highly developed this musico- 
 dramatic art, admits that he acquired the real 
 idea of plastic shaping for the stage from 
 
NINTH SYMPHONY. 153 
 
 Schroeder-Devrient. To it, also, Beethoven 
 owed it that he was invited, during the same 
 winter (1822-23), to compose a new opera. It 
 was Grillparzer's Melusine, but the intention 
 to compose it was never carried into effect. 
 
 We have now reached the zenith of the 
 life of Beethoven as an artist. Besides the 
 Ninth Symphony, he finished only the five 
 last quartets which beam in their numerous 
 movements like "the choir of stars about the 
 sun." The welcome incentive to the composi- 
 tion of these last came to him just at this time 
 from the Russian, Prince Gallitzin, who gave 
 him a commission to write them, telling him 
 at the same time to ask what remuneration he 
 wished for his work. But the Symphony filled 
 up the next following year, 1823. Nothing 
 else, except the " fragmentary ideas" of the 
 Bagatellen, op. 126, engaged him during that 
 time. 
 
 "To give artistic form only to what we 
 wish and feel, that most essential want of the 
 nobler of mankind," it is, as he wrote himself 
 to the Archduke at this time, that distin- 
 guishes this mighty symphony, and consti- 
 tutes, so to speak, the sum and substance of 
 
154 THE LIFE OE BEETHOVEN. 
 
 his own life and intuition. This symphony 
 was soon connected in popular imagination 
 with Goethe's Faust, as representing the tragic 
 course of human existence. 
 
 And when we bear in mind how closely 
 related just here the musician was to the poet, 
 this interpretation of the work, given first by 
 Richard Wagner on the occasion of its pre- 
 sentation in 1846 in Dresden, seems entirely 
 warranted. What was there of which life had 
 not deprived him ? The words it had always 
 addressed to him were these words from Faust : 
 JEntbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren (renounce 
 thou must, thou must renounce). He now 
 wished to paint a full picture of this vain 
 struggle with relentless fate in tones, and what 
 he had just gone through in his own experi- 
 ence enabled him to do it in living colors. All 
 the recollections .of his youth crowded upon 
 him. There were the "pretty lively blonde " 
 whom he had met in Bonn; Countess Giu- 
 lietta, who had a short time before returned 
 to Bonn with her husband; and his "distant 
 loved one" in Berlin ! A promenade through 
 the lovely Heiligenstadt vall'ey, in the spring 
 of 1823. brought to his mind anew pictures 
 
STRANGE CONDUCT. 155 
 
 of the reconciling power of nature, as well as 
 of the Pastorale and the C minor symphony. 
 He was now able to form an idea of their 
 common meaning, and to put an interpretation 
 on them very different from his first idea and 
 first interpretation of them. He began to have 
 a much deeper insight into the ultimate ques- 
 tions and enigmas of existence. 
 
 But, all of a sudden, his humor left him. 
 He refused to receive any visitors. " Samothra- 
 cians, come not here; bring no one to me," 
 he wrote to Schindler, from the scene of his 
 quiet life in the country. What had never 
 happened before, even when he was in the 
 highest stages of intellectual exaltation, now 
 came to pass: he repeatedly returned from his 
 wanderings through the woods and fields with- 
 out his hat. " There is nothing higher than 
 to approach nearer to the Deity than other 
 men, and from such proximity to spread the 
 rays of the Deity among the human race." 
 In these words, directed to the Archduke 
 Rudolph, he summed up his views of his art 
 and what he wished to accomplish in it. It 
 was everything to him — a language, consola- 
 tion, admonition, light and prophecy. 
 
156 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 This we learn most clearly from the Ninth 
 Symphony, which he finished at this time, in 
 Baden. 
 
 From the dark abyss of nothing arises the 
 Will, infinite Will ; and with it the struggles 
 and the sorrow of life. But it is no longer 
 personal sorrow — for what is personal sorrow 
 compared with the sorrow of the world as 
 known to a great mind, experienced by a great 
 heart ? — it is the struggle for a higher exis- 
 tence which we "mortals have to engage in 
 against the infinite spirit." "Many a time 
 did I curse my Creator because he has made 
 his creatures the victims of the merest acci- 
 dents." Cries of anguish and anger like this — 
 the cries of great souls whose broad vision is 
 narrowed by the world, and whose powerful 
 will is hampered — find utterance here. "I 
 shall take fate by the jaws," he says again, 
 and how immense is the struggle as well as 
 the consciousness of a higher, inalienable pos- 
 session, which lives as a promise in the breasts 
 of all! Such blows, murmurs, prayers, long- 
 ings, such despair ; and then, again, such 
 strength and courage after trial, had never 
 before been expressed in music. In the 
 
NINTH SYMPHONY. 157 
 
 Ninth Symphony, we hear the voices of the 
 powers which through all ages have been the 
 makers of history ; of the powers which pre- 
 serve and renovate the life of humanity; and 
 so the Will, the Intellect, man, after a terrible 
 effort and concentration of self, stands firmly 
 before us, bold and clear-eyed — for Will is 
 the world itself. 
 
 But when we see the man Beethoven, we 
 find him divided against himself. We have 
 often heard him say that he found the world 
 detestable ; and we shall again hear him ex- 
 press his opinion on that subject plainly 
 enough, in this his work. 
 
 In the second movement, which he himself 
 calls only allegro vivace, and which, indeed, is 
 no scherzo, not even a Beethoven-like one, 
 but rather a painting, we have a dramatic 
 picture of the earthly world in the whirl of 
 its pleasures, from the most ingenuous joy of 
 mere existence — such as he himself frequently 
 experienced in such fullness that he leaped 
 over chairs and tables — to the raging, uncon- 
 trollable Bacchanalian intoxication of enjoy- 
 ment. But we have in it also a fresco-paint- 
 ing of the "dear calmness of life," of joy in 
 
158 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 the existing, of exultation and jubilation as 
 well as of the demoniacal in sensuous life and 
 pleasure. But what nutriment and satisfaction 
 this splendid symphony affords to a noble 
 mind ! It carries such a man from the arms of 
 pleasure to "the stars," from art to nature, 
 from appearance to reality. 
 
 This ideal kingdom of the quiet, sublime 
 order of the world, which calms our minds 
 and senses, and expresses our infinite long-r 
 ings, is heard in the adagio of the work. And 
 when, in an incomparably poetical union to 
 the quiet course of the stars and to the etern- 
 ally ordered course of things, the longing, 
 perturbed human heart is contrasted by a 
 second melody, with a wealth of inner beauty 
 never before imagined, we at last see the soul, 
 so to speak, disappear entirely before itself, 
 dissolved in the sublimity of the All. The 
 steps of time, expressed by the rhythm of the 
 final chords, sound like the death knell of the 
 human heart. Its wants and wishes are silenced 
 in the presence of such sublimity, and sink to 
 naught. 
 
 But the world is man, is the heart, and 
 wants to live, to live! And so here the final 
 
NINTH SYMPHONY. 159 
 
 echo is still the longing, sounding tones of 
 human feeling. 
 
 Beethoven himself tells us the rest of the ' 
 development of this powerful tragedy, and 
 thus confirms the explanation of it we have 
 given, as well as the persistence of ultimate 
 truth in his own heart ; for in it we find — after 
 the almost raging cry of all earthly existence 
 in the orchestral storm of the beginning of 
 the finale, which was even then called a "feast 
 of scorn at all that is styled human joy" — in 
 the sketches, as text to the powerful recitatives 
 of the contra-bassos : " No, this confusion re- 
 minds us of our despairing condition. This is 
 a magnificent clay. Let us celebrate it with 
 song." And then follows the theme of the 
 first movement : " O no, it is not this ; it is 
 something else that I am craving." "The will 
 and consciousness of man are at variance the 
 one with the other, and the cause of man's 
 despairing situation." Next comes the motive 
 for the scherzo : " Nor is it this thing either ; 
 it is butmerriness and small talk" — the trifles 
 of sensuous pleasure. Next comes the theme of 
 the adagio : " Nor is it this thing either," and 
 thereupon the words : " I myself shall sing — 
 
160 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 music must console us, music must cheer us; " 
 and then the melody, Freude schoener Goet- 
 terfunhen, is heard, expressive of the newly 
 won peace of the soul, descriptive of human 
 character in the full beauty of its simplicity 
 and innocence restored. Beethoven knew from 
 what depths of human nature music was born, 
 and what its ultimate meaning to mankind is. 
 We are made to experience this more fully 
 still by the continuation of the jinale which 
 represents the solution of the conflict of this 
 tragedy of life. For the "joy" that is here 
 sung plainly springs from its only pure and 
 lasting source, from the feeling of all-embrac- 
 ing love — that feeling which, as religion, fills 
 the heart. The Ihrstuertz nieder Millionen 
 is the foundation, the germ (to express it in 
 the language of music of double counter- 
 point) of the Seid umschlungen, Millionen, 
 and then the whole sings of joy as the trans- 
 figuration of the earthly world by eternal love. 
 The will can accomplish nothing greater than 
 to sacrifice itself for the good of the whole. 
 To our great artist, the greatest and most won- 
 derful phenomenon in the world was not the 
 conqueror but the over comer of the world ; 
 
NINTH SYMPHONY. 161 
 
 and lie knew that this spirit of love cannot die. 
 This is celebrated by the finale as the last 
 consequence of the " struggle with fate," of 
 man's life-struggle. Is it claiming too much 
 to say that out of the spirit of this music a 
 " new civilization " and an existence more 
 worthy of human beings might be developed, 
 since it leads us back to the foundation and 
 source of civilization and human existence — 
 to religion ? Beethoven was one of those 
 great minds who have added to the intellectual 
 possessions of our race in regions which ex- 
 tend far beyond the merely beautiful in art. 
 When we bear this in mind, we can under- 
 stand why he wanted to write a tenth sym- 
 phony as the counterpart and final representa- 
 tion of these highest conceptions of the nature 
 and goal of our race. This tenth symphony 
 he intended should transfigure the merely hu- 
 manly beautiful of the antique world in the 
 light of the refined humanity of modern ideas — 
 the earthly in the light of the heavenly. And 
 we may understand, too, what we are told of 
 himself, that as soon as cheerfulness beamed 
 in his countenance, it shed about him all the 
 charms of childlike innocence. "When he 
 11 
 
162 THE EIEE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 smiled," we are told, "people believed not 
 only in him, but in humanity." Occasionally 
 there would blossom on his lips a smile which 
 those who saw could find no other word to de- 
 scribe but " heavenly." So full was his heart 
 of hearts of the highest treasure of humanity. 
 
 We shall see how the last quartets, which 
 follow now, represent this, his sublime trans- 
 figured condition of soul, in the most varied 
 pictures, and disclose it to the very bottom. 
 
 Of works composed during this period, we 
 may mention : March to " Tarpeja " and the 
 Bardengeist composed in 1813 ; Gute Nach- 
 rieht, Elegischer Qesang, Kriegers Abschied, 
 composed in 1814; Duos for the clarionette and 
 bassoon, which appeared in 1815; E% ist voll- 
 bracht, Seknsucht, Scotch songs, composed in 
 1815 ; Der Mann von Wort, op. 99. Militaer- 
 marsch, composed in 1816; quintet op. 104 
 (after op. 1, III), composed in 1817; Clavier- 
 stueck in B, composed in 1818; Gratulations- 
 menuet, composed in 1822. It will be noticed 
 that the number of his works grows steadily 
 smaller according as their volume or their 
 depth of meaning grows greater. This last will 
 be evident especially from his subsequent quar- 
 tets which, so to speak, stand entirely alone. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 1824—27. 
 THE LAST QUARTETS; 
 
 Berlioz on the Lot of Artists— Beethoven Misunderstood — The 
 Great Concert of May, 1824 — Preparation for It— Small 
 Returns — Beethoven Appreciated — First Performance of 
 the Missa Solemnis and of the Ninth Symphony — The 
 Quartets— An " Oratorio for Boston " — Overture on 
 B-A-C-H — Influence of His Personal Experience on His 
 Works— His Brother Johann — Postponement of His Jour- 
 ney to London — Presentiment of Death — The Restoration 
 of Metternich and Gentz — His " Son " — Troubles with the 
 Young Man — Debility — Calls for Dr. Malfatti — Poverty — 
 The "Magnanimous" English — Calls a Clergyman — His 
 Death. 
 
 "Noble souls fall usually only because they 
 do not know the mournful but incontestable 
 truth that, considering our present customs 
 and political institutions, the artist has more 
 to suffer in proportion as he is a genuine ar- 
 tist. The more original and gigantic his 
 works are, the more severely is he punished 
 for the effects they produce. The swifter and 
 sublimer his thoughts, the more does he van- 
 ish from the dim vision of the multitude." 
 (163) 
 
164 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 Thus did Beethoven's direct successor in art, 
 Hector Berlioz, complain at the end of his 
 days; and to whom can what he says here be 
 applied with more propriety than to our artist, 
 especially at this period of his life, when his 
 thoughts took their sublimest flight? His 
 action now seemed indeed to assure him un- 
 conditional victory, even in his immediate 
 environment — we are approaching the cele- 
 brated concert of May, 1824 — but how soon 
 shall we see him again misunderstood by the 
 crowd and, as a consequence, lonelier than ever 
 before. 
 
 He had again enjoyed to the full the " high- 
 er life wliich art and science imply, and which 
 they give it to us to hope for ;" and he, in 
 consequence, became exceedingly neglectful of 
 himself; so that his brother found it necessary 
 to say to him : " You must buy yourself a new 
 hat to-morrow. The people make merry at your 
 expense because you have so bad a hat." But 
 now that the " colossal creation " was finished, 
 even to the last iota, he began to be in better 
 humor, to stroll about the streets gazing at the 
 show-windows, and to salute many an old 
 friend, as, for instance, his former teacher, 
 
ART IN VIENNA. 165 
 
 Schenk, more warmlv. His name was now 
 more frequently on the lips of friends, and 
 when it was known that a great symphony, as 
 well as the Mass, was finished, people recalled 
 the boundless rapture of the years 1813-14 ; 
 and a letter signed by men of the higher 
 classes of society — men whom Beethoven him- 
 self loved and honored — invited him, in Feb- 
 ruary, 1824, to abstain no longer from the 
 performance of something great. And, in- 
 deed, the Italian roulade and all kinds of 
 purely external bravoura had obtained suprem- 
 acy in Vienna. The " second childhood of 
 taste " threatened to follow the " golden age 
 of art." It was hoped that home art would 
 receive new life from Beethoven, who, in his 
 own sphere, had no equal, and that, thanks to 
 his influence, the true and the beautiful would 
 rule supreme again. 
 
 Schindler found him with the manuscript 
 in his hand. " It is very pretty ! I am glad!" 
 Beethoven said, in a very peculiar tone. And 
 another hope was bound up with this. He 
 hoped to obtain compensation for his long 
 labor, and, in this way, leisure to produce 
 something new worthy of his genius. The pre- 
 
166 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN". 
 
 paration for the concert was attended by very 
 much that was disagreeable. His own want of 
 resolution and suspicious manner contributed 
 their share to this. With the most splenetic 
 humor, he writes: "After six weeks' vexation, 
 I am boiled, stewed, roasted." And when 
 several of his more intimate friends, like Count 
 Lichnowsky, Schuppanzigh and Schindler, re- 
 sorted to a little subterfuge to make him come 
 to some resolve, he said : " I despise deceit. 
 Visit me no more. And let him visit me no 
 more. I'm not giving a party." But, on the 
 other hand, the first violinists of the city — 
 Schuppanzigh, Mayseder and Boehm, who is 
 still living — together with capellmeister Um- 
 lauf, were at the head of the orchestra, while 
 a large number of amateurs were ready to lend 
 their assistance at a moment's notice. Their 
 motto was: "Anything and everything for 
 Beethoven!" And thus the preparations for 
 the performance of Beethoven's great crea- 
 tions were begun. 
 
 "Just as if there were words beneath them?" 
 asked Schindler, speaking of the powerful rec- 
 itatives of the basses in the Ninth Symphony. 
 Henriette Sontag and Caroline Unger, both 
 
THE MASS. 167 
 
 subsequently so celebrated, found it exceed- 
 ingly difficult to execute the solos in the Mass 
 and the finale', but to all prayers that they 
 might be changed, Beethoven had only one 
 answer: "No!" To which Henriette finally 
 replied: "Well, in God's name, let us torment 
 ourselves a little longer, take a little more 
 trouble, and attempt it." The performance 
 was to occur on the 7th of May. That "rare, 
 noble man," Brunswick had, as he said, brought 
 "four ears" with him, that he might not lose a 
 single note. Frau von Ertmann was again in 
 Vienna. The boxes were all soon taken, and 
 many seats were sold at a premium. Beetho- 
 ven personally invited the court. His trusted 
 servant, who was specially helpful to him on 
 this occasion, said to him: "We shall take 
 your green coat with us, too; the theater is 
 dark; no one can see us. O my great master, 
 not a black dress coat have you in your pos- 
 session." The house was crowded to over- 
 fullness. Only the court box was almost empty, 
 on account of the Emperor's absence. Bee- 
 thoven's attendant again tells us: "His recep- 
 tion was more than imperial ; at • the fourth 
 round of applause, the people became vocifer- 
 
168 THE LIFE OP BEETHOVEN. 
 
 ous." And Boehm tells us how the tears 
 rushed into his own and Mayseder's eyes at 
 the very beginning. And what a success the 
 performance was! 
 
 In one of the accounts of it that have come 
 down to us, we read : " Never in my life did 
 I hear such tempestuous and at the same time 
 such hearty applause. At one place — where 
 the kettle-drums so boldly take up the rhyth- 
 mic motive alone — the second movement of 
 the symphony was totally interrupted by the 
 applause ; the tears stood in the eyes of the 
 performers ; Beethoven, however, contrived to 
 wield the baton until Umlauf called his atten- 
 tion to the action of the audience by a motion 
 of his hand. He looked at them and bowed 
 in a very composed way." At the close the 
 applause was greater still. Yet, strange to 
 say, the man who was the cause of it all again 
 turned his back to the enthusiastic audience. 
 At this juncture, the happy thought occurred 
 to Unger to wheel Beethoven about towards 
 the audience, and to ask him to notice their 
 applause with their waving of hats and hand- 
 kerchiefs. He testified his gratitude simply 
 by bowing, and this was the signal for the 
 
DISAPPOINTMENT. 169 
 
 breaking forth of a jubilation such as bad 
 scarcely ever before been beard in a theater, 
 and which it seemed would never end. The 
 next day, we read, in bis conversation leaves, 
 what some one said to him : " Everybody is 
 shattered and crushed by the magnitude of 
 your works." 
 
 And now, what of the pecuniary success of 
 the performance? It was measured by about 
 one hundred and twenty marks. The expenses 
 attending it bad been too great. Besides, reg- 
 ular subscribers, entitled to their seats in boxes, 
 did not pay a farthing for this concert. The 
 court did not send in a penny, wbich, however, 
 they were wont not to fail to do on the occasion 
 of the commonest benefits. When Beethoven 
 reached bis home, Schindler'i handed him the 
 account of the receipts. " When he saw it, he 
 broke down entirely. We took him and laid 
 h im on the sofa. We remained at his side 
 until late in the night. He asked neither for 
 food nor for anything else. Not an audible 
 word did he utter. At last, when we observed 
 that Morpheus had gently closed his eyes, we 
 retired. His servant found him next morning 
 in his concert toilette (his green dress coat) 
 
170 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 in the same place, asleep." This account is 
 by Sch.in.dler, who, together with the young 
 official, Joseph. Huettenbrenner, one of Franz 
 Schubert's intimate friends, had taken him 
 home on this occasion. 
 
 This was the first performance of the Missa 
 Solemnis (op. 123) and of the Ninth Sympho- 
 ny (op. 125). It took place on the 7th of May, 
 1824. The fact that when the performance 
 was repeated on the 24th of May, spite of the 
 additional attraction of the "adored" tenor, 
 David, who sang Rossini's Di tanti palpiti, 
 (after so much pain) , the house was half emp- 
 ty, shows that, after all, it was more curiosity 
 to see the celebrated deaf man than real taste 
 for art which had filled it the first time. Like 
 Mozart, Beethoven did not live long enough to 
 pluck even the pecuniary fruits of his genius. 
 Not till 1845 did the magnanimous liberality 
 of one who was really permeated by his spirit 
 bring it to pass that a monument was erected 
 to him in his native city, Bonn, as that same 
 liberality has brought it to pass that one has 
 been erected to him, in our own day, in his 
 second home, Vienna. We have reference to 
 the royal gift and to the equally rich playing 
 of Franz Liszt. 
 
PEOJECTS. 171 
 
 It now became more imperative for him to 
 give his attention to those compositions which 
 promised him some immediate return, to the 
 quartets, to write which he had received a 
 commission from persons as noted for their 
 generosity to him as for their love of art. 
 These and the op. 127 occupy the first 
 place in this brilliant constellation of art. 
 "I am not writing what I should prefer 
 to write. I am writing for the money I 
 need. "When that end is satisfied, I hope 
 to write what is of most importance to 
 myself and to art — Faust." He thus ex- 
 pressed himself when engaged in the com- 
 position of the Ninth Symphony, and there, 
 was some talk of his writing an "Oratorio for 
 Boston." And so, likewise, the German Melu- 
 sine and an opera for Naples, the Requiem, 
 the tenth symphony, and an overture on 
 B-A-C-H remained projects and no more. 
 But they were also a great prospect for the fu- 
 ture while he was engaged in the labors of 
 the day; and they exercised no inconsiderable 
 influence on the composition of the quartets 
 themselves. The more he became interested 
 in these works — and what works were better 
 
172 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 calculated to interest a composer of such po- 
 etic power — the more did these ideas become 
 interwoven into the works themselves. They 
 generated the peculiarly grand style and 
 the monumental character which distinguish 
 these last quartets. The soul-pictures from 
 Faust especially are here eloquently re-echoed 
 in the most sublime monologues. And, in- 
 deed, the Prince, who had given him the com- 
 mission to write them, seemed to be the very 
 man to induce Beethoven to achieve what was 
 highest and best in art, even in such a narrow 
 sphere. For he had so arranged it that, even 
 before its production in Vienna, that "sublime 
 masterpiece," the Mass, was publicly performed. 
 He informs us that the effect on the public 
 was indescribable; that he had never before 
 heard anything, not even of Mozart's music, 
 which had so stirred his soul; that Bee- 
 thoven's genius was centuries in advance of 
 his age, and that probably there was not 
 among his hearers a single one enlightened 
 enough to take in the full beauty of his mu- 
 sic. On the other hand, there reigned in 
 Vienna that weak revelry of the period of the 
 restoration, with its idol Bossini, a revelry 
 
COMPOSITIONS. 173 
 
 which had driven all noble and serious music 
 into the background. Besides, the Prince had 
 ordered that the costs for musical composition 
 should be curtailed "to any desired sum." 
 
 Beethoven now went to work in earnest, 
 and this composition was destined to be his 
 last. 
 
 He had already made a great many drafts 
 of the works above mentioned, one for op. 127 
 in the summer of 1822, one for the succeeding 
 quartet in A minor (op. 131), in the year 
 1823, when he was completing the Ninth 
 Symphony. Both op. 127 and the quartet 
 in A minor remind us, in more ways than 
 one, of the style of the Ninth Symphony — the 
 latter by its passion so full of pain, the former, 
 with its adagio, where the longing glances 
 to the stars have generated a wonderful, 
 melancholy peace of soul. The immediately 
 following third quartet (op. 130) stands out 
 before us like a newly created world, but one 
 which is "not of this world." And, indeed, 
 the events in Beethoven's life became calcu- 
 lated more and more to liberate him, heart 
 and soul, from this world, and the whole com- 
 position of the quartets appears like a pre- 
 
174 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 paration for the moment when the mind, 
 released from existence here, feels united with 
 a higher being. But it is not a painfully 
 happy longing for death that here finds ex- 
 pression. It is the heartfelt, certain and 
 joyful feeling of something really eternal and 
 holy that speaks to us in the language of a 
 new dispensation. And even the pictures of 
 the world here to be found, be they serious or 
 gay, have this transfigured light — this out- 
 look into eternity. There is little in the 
 world of art, in which the nature of the 
 religious appears so fully in its substance and 
 essence without showing itself at any time 
 otherwise than purely human, and therefore 
 imperishable — never clothed in an accidental 
 and perishable garb. This explains how a 
 people not noted for any musical genius, but 
 who are able to understand the spirit and 
 meaning of music, the English, whom Bee- 
 thoven himself esteemed so highly, considered 
 his music "so religious." And, indeed, his 
 music is religious in its ultimate meaning and 
 spirit. This character of his music finds its 
 purest and most striking expression in the last 
 quartets; and these quartets enable us to 
 
DOMESTIC TROUBLES. 175 
 
 understand the saying of Richard Wagner, 
 Beethoven's truest pupil and successor, that 
 our civilization might receive a new soul from 
 the spirit of this music, and a renovation of 
 religion which might permeate it through and 
 through. 
 
 We now pass to an account of the details 
 of the origin of these works. 
 
 The bitterness which Beethoven was des- 
 tined henceforth to taste proceeded for the 
 most part from his own relatives. "God is 
 my witness, my only dream is to get away 
 entirely from you, from my miserable brother, 
 and from this despicable family which has 
 been tied to me," he writes, in 1825, to his 
 growing nephew. We cannot refrain from 
 touching on these sad things, because now, 
 especially, they exercised the greatest influ- 
 ence on his mind and on his pecuniary cir- 
 cumstances, and because they finally led to a 
 catastrophe which played a part in bringing 
 about his premature death. 
 
 His weak and " somewhat money-loving" 
 brother, Johann, had, indeed, in consequence 
 of Beethoven's own violent moral interference, 
 married a silly wife. He found it impossible 
 
176 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 to control her course, or even to get a divorce 
 from her, because he had made over to her a 
 part of his property, and was "inflexible" on 
 tbis very point. And so tbe brother was not 
 able, spite of many invitations, to induce 
 Beethoven to visit him even once on bis estate 
 of Wasserhof, near Gneixendorf, on the Dan- 
 ube. Ludwig wrote bim, in the summer of 
 1823: "O accursed shame ! Have you not a 
 spark of manhood in you ? Shall I debase my- 
 self by entering such company?" Yet, his 
 sister-in-law was " tamed " by degrees. But 
 tbe mother of the boy continued, now that he 
 was beginning to mature, to draw him into her 
 own baneful circle, and, as Beethoven wrote 
 in the summer of 1824, into the poisonous 
 breath, of the dragon; and levity, falsehood 
 and unbecoming behavior towards his uncle, 
 who was at the same time a father to him, 
 followed. Carried away by the impulses of 
 his moral feelings, the latter was severe even 
 to harshness with the boy, and yet could not 
 dispense with the young man's company be- 
 cause of his increasing age and isolation. The 
 natural craving for love, moral severity and 
 the consciousness of paternal duty, wove the 
 
LONDON. 177 
 
 texture of which our artist's shroud was made. 
 .The correspondence of this year, 1824, 
 turns principally upon the pecuniary realiza- 
 tion from his new, great works ; for he wanted 
 to be in London in the fall without fail. We 
 have also a letter of his about his will, to his 
 lawyer, Dr. Bach, dated in the summer. He 
 writes: "Only in divine art is the power 
 which gives me the strength to sacrifice to the 
 heavenly muses the best part of my life." 
 We hear also the celestial sounds of the 
 adagio, op. 127, ringing in our ears. He was 
 himself filled with this true " manna ; " for 
 he exclaims in these same summer days, 
 "Apollo and the muses will not yet allow me 
 to be delivered over to the hands of death, for 
 I yet owe them what the Spirit inspires me 
 with and commands me to finish. I feel as if 
 I had written scarcely a note." And we 
 even now find the sketches of those pieces 
 expressive of a happiness more than earthly, 
 or else, in gay irony, of contempt for the ex- 
 isting world, or of the mighty building up of 
 a new world ; the alia danza tedesca and the 
 poeo scherzando of op. 130, as well as the 
 great fugue, op. 133, which was intended to 
 12 
 
178 THE LIFE OP BEETHOVEN. 
 
 be the original finale of op. 130, and which, 
 by its superscription, "overture" and the 
 gigantic strides in its theme, reminds us of 
 the plan of the Bachouverture. Even the un- 
 speakably deep melancholy and, at the same 
 time, blissful, hopeful cavatine of the same 
 third quartet op. 130, blossoms forth now 
 from the feeling of his heart, which has taken 
 into itself the full meaning of the eternal, and 
 is filled with a higher joy. "We here find, as 
 in the last tones of Mozart's soul, the germs 
 of a new and deep-felt language of the heart, 
 a real personal language, acquired to human- 
 ity for the expression of its deepest secrets, and 
 which, in our own day, has led to the most 
 touching soul-pictures in art — to the transfig- 
 uration of Isolde, and to Bruennhild's dying 
 song of redeeming love. 
 
 A mighty seriousness overpowers him. The 
 desolate horrors that surround him endow him 
 with the power to understand more clearly 
 the higher tasks of the mind in which his 
 art bad a living part. We see plainly that 
 his nature tends more and more towards the 
 one thing necessary — " All love is sympa- 
 thy," sympathy with the sorrows of the world, 
 
CHARACTERISTICS. 179 
 
 says the philosopher. And so while his vis- 
 ion takes an immense sweep over the field 
 of existence, we see that an inexhaustible 
 source of patient goodness and of the kindest 
 and most heart-felt love, springs, up within 
 him. " Prom childhood up it was my great- 
 est happiness to be able to work for others," 
 he once said; and again when the overture, 
 op. 24, was reproduced: "I was very much 
 praised on this account, etc. But what is 
 that all to the great Master of Tones above — 
 above — above! rightly the Most High, when 
 here below it is used only for purposes of rid- 
 icule. Most high dwarfs ! ! ! " We here listen 
 to the sublime irony of his tones in op. 130, 
 but also to the lustrous mildness of the adagio 
 of op. 127, in which in the little movement in 
 E major, the human soul itself, filled with the 
 spirit of the Eternal, so to speak, opens its eyes 
 and looks upward. "I am what is, I am all 
 that is, that was and that will be. No mortal 
 man has lifted my veil. He comes from Him- 
 self alone, and to this Only One all things 
 owe their existence." Beethoven wrote out 
 this Egyptian saying in this summer of 1824, 
 framed it and placed it on his writing table 
 
180 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 before him. He well knew what the really- 
 creative and preserving deity in human life 
 is. That deity lived in his own most heartfelt 
 thought and feeling. It was to him a contin- 
 ual source of bliss. It inspired his pen. To 
 it he was indebted for the poetic creations 
 which sprung unbidden from his brain. 
 
 The quartet in A minor, op. 132, belongs to 
 the spring and summer of 1825. His journey 
 to London had been postponed. Schindler 
 gives as the reason of this, the "bad behavior 
 of his dearly beloved nephew, which had be- 
 come somewhat notorious." How could his 
 "son" be abandoned, thus unguarded, to "the 
 poisonous breath of the dragon?" But as the 
 invitation was renewed, the Tenth Symphony 
 was again taken in hand, and from the 
 sketches oMt now made, we know all that is 
 certain about it. It was intended to do no 
 less than to add the "beautiful to the good," 
 to wed the spirit of Christianity to the beauty 
 of the antique, or rather to transfigure the 
 mere worldly beauty of the antique in the 
 light of the superterrestrial. We find, indeed, 
 a picture of this kind, a direct, intentional, 
 higher picture of the world in the adagio, 
 
A MINOR QUARTET. 181 
 
 in modo lidico, in the second quartet. It is 
 called the "Song of Thanksgiving of a Con- 
 valescent to the Diety," and is a choral be- 
 tween the repetitions q£ which, ever richer 
 and more heartfelt, the joyful pulsations of 
 new life are expressed. Beethoven had been 
 seriously sick during this spring. His affec- 
 tion for his nephew had assumed, in conse- 
 quence of one continual irritation of his feel- 
 ings, the nature of a passion which tormented 
 the boy to death, but which, like every pas- 
 sion, brought no happiness to Beethoven him- 
 self. The first movement of this quartet in 
 A minor is a psychological picture — a poem of 
 the passions — the consuming character of 
 which can be explained only by this very 
 condition of the artists' own soul. And how 
 Beethoven's creations always canje from his 
 own great soul, that soul so fully capable of 
 every shade of feeling and excitement! The 
 account left us by the young poet, Rellstab, 
 written in the spring of 1825, gives us a per- 
 fect description of the state Beethoven was in 
 at this time. He describes him "a man with a 
 kindly look, but a look also of suffering." 
 Beethoven's own letters comfirm the correct- 
 
182 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN". 
 
 ness of this description. "In what part of me 
 am I not wounded and torn?" he cries out to 
 his nephew, whose frivolity had already begun 
 to bear evil fruit. On another occasion he 
 said: "O, trouble me no more. The man 
 with the scythe will not respite me much 
 longer." 
 
 Notwithstanding this, however, or perhaps 
 because of this extreme excitement of his 
 whole nature, the summer of 1825 was very 
 rich in productions. "Almost in spite of him- 
 self," he had to write the quartet in C sharp 
 minor (op. 131) ; after that in B major (op. 
 130). The last quartet also, that in F major, 
 had its origin in that "inexhaustible fancy" i 
 —a fancy which always tended to the produc- 
 tion of such works. Hence it is that the 
 number of movements increases. The second 
 has five; the third (B major), six; and the 
 fourth (C sharp minor), seven — as if the old 
 form of the suite, or the divertimento of the 
 septet was to be repeated. But a moment's 
 comparison immediately shows the presence of 
 the old organic articulation of the form of the 
 sonata. These movements are in fact only 
 transitions to, and connecting links between, 
 
F MAJOR QUARTET. 183 
 
 two colossal movements. They increase the 
 usual number of movements, although fre- 
 quently nothing more than short sentences, 
 and at times only a few measures. But the 
 introductory movement and the finale in the 
 quartet in A minor loom up like the pillars 
 of Hercules, and determine the impassioned 
 character and the dramatic style of the whole. 
 Beethoven himself called it a piece of art 
 worthy of him. The same may be said of op. 
 130, when the great fuge, op. 133, is considered 
 a part of it, which in our day it should always 
 be conceded to be. And how immensely great 
 is this spirit when, in the quartet in C sharp 
 minor, it awakes from the most profound con- 
 templation of self to the contemplation of the 
 world and its pain. — " Through sorrow, joy!" 
 We must refer the reader to the third 
 volume of Beethoven's Leben, published in 
 Leipzig in 1877, for a detailed account of the 
 desolation of our artist, produced by the nar- 
 row circle with which the restoration of Met- 
 ternich and Gentz surrounded him, at a time 
 when his own mind and feeling were expand- 
 ing to greater dimensions than ever before. 
 To the same source we must send him for a 
 
184 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 description of the full earnestness and great- 
 ness of this last period in the life of our artist. 
 In that work was for the first time presented 
 to the public, from original sources, and es- 
 pecially from the records of Beethoven's writ- 
 ten conversations, extant in the Berlin library, 
 the comfortless — but at the same time, and 
 spite of continual torment, intellectually ex- 
 alted — picture of his character. " Words are 
 interdicted. It is a fortunate thing that tones 
 are yet free," wrote Ch. Ruffner, the poet of 
 the oratorio, Saul and David, to him at this 
 time — a work in which he wished to give ex- 
 pression both to his own relation as a human 
 being to his "David," and to the wonder- 
 working nature of his art. The execution of 
 this plan was prevented only by death. The 
 general demoralization which had invaded 
 Vienna with the Congress made its effects felt 
 directly in his own circle, through the agency 
 of his nephew, and thus paved the way for 
 disaster to himself. "Our age has need of 
 vigorous minds to scourge these paltry, mali- 
 cious, miserable wretches," he cries out at this 
 very time to his nephew, who had permitted 
 himself to make merry, in a manner well cal- 
 
HIS NEPHEW. 185 
 
 culated to irritate, at the expense of a genuine 
 faijak — as Beethoven was wont now to call 
 the good Viennese — the music-dealer Has- 
 linger; and the matter had become public. 
 But he adds to the above: "Much as my heart 
 resists causing pain to a single human being." 
 And, indeed, his heart knew nothing of such 
 anger or vengeance. It was always a real sym- 
 pathizer with the sorrows born of human 
 weakness — a sorrow which with him swelled 
 to the dimensions of the world-sorrow itself. 
 To this feeling his op. 130 in B major is 
 indebted for its series of pictures, in which 
 we see the world created, as it were, anew with 
 a bold hand, with the ironic, smiling, melan- 
 choly, humorous, cheerful coloring of the 
 several pieces — pieces which, indeed, are no 
 mere sonata movements, but full pictures of 
 life and of the soul. The cavatina overtops 
 it as a piece of his own heart, which, as he 
 admitted himself to K. Holz, always drew from 
 him "fresh tears." 
 
 "Imitate my virtues, not my faults," he 
 implores his "son." Speaking of the rabble. 
 of domestics, he says: "I have had to suffer 
 the whole week like a saint;" and, on another 
 
186 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 occasion, still more painfully: "May God be 
 with, thee and me. It will be all over soon 
 with thy faithful father." His days, so 
 strangely divided between the loftiest visions 
 of the spirit and the meanest troubles of life, 
 henceforth render him more and more indif- 
 ferent to the latter. We find persons invade 
 his circle whom otherwise he would never 
 have permanently endured about him, and 
 who frequently led him into minor sorts of 
 dissipation even in public places. This re- 
 acted on the nephew, whose respect for the 
 character of his "great uncle" could not long 
 stand a course of action apparently like his 
 own. But even now we see a picture in tones 
 of which one of the faijaks, the government 
 officer and dilletante, Holz, who copied it, 
 writes to Beethoven himself: "When one 
 can survey it thus calmly, new worlds come 
 into being." We have reference to the quar- 
 tet in C sharp minor, op. 131. "With a look 
 beaming with light, dripping with sorrow and 
 joy," young Dr. Rollett saw him at this 
 time in beautiful Baden, and, indeed, this 
 work, which he himself called the "greatest" 
 of his quartets, discloses to us, in a manner dif- 
 
HIS NEPHEW. 187 
 
 ferent from the Ninth Symphony, the mean- 
 ing of his own life, which he here himself, as 
 Richard Wagner has said, displayed to us, a 
 wild melody of pleasure and pain. But we 
 now recognize more clearly that something 
 "like a vulture is devouring his heart." We, 
 indeed, are drawing near to the catastrophe 
 which led to his premature end. 
 
 As early as in the fall of 1825 he had wit- 
 nessed "stormy scenes." An uncontrollable 
 love of gaming and a habit of loitering about 
 the streets had led the young man into worse 
 and worse courses, to 'falsehood and embez- 
 zlement. And when these were discovered, 
 he secretly ran away from home. It was not 
 long, however, before the loving weakness of 
 his uncle called him back. The only effect 
 of this was henceforth to condemn Beethoven 
 himself to a slavish, too slavish life, one which 
 would have been a torment even to an ordinary 
 mortal, but which must have been doubly so 
 to a passionate, great man who was deaf. The 
 nephew found fault with his uncle, with his 
 "reproaches" and "rows." He accused him 
 even of having led him into bad company. 
 He dreaded other reproaches still and was 
 
188 THE MFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 afraid of even personal violence. At last, one 
 day in the summer of 1826, the uncle received 
 the frightful news that his son had left his 
 dwelling with a pair of pistols, and intended to 
 take his own life. A long and terrible morn- 
 ing was spent searching for the unfortunate 
 youth, who was finally led home, with a 
 wound in his head, from Baden. "It's done 
 now. Torment me no longer with reproofs 
 and complaints," he writes; and his disposition 
 and feeling may be inferred from the words 
 found in his conversation leaves: "I have 
 grown worse, because my uncle wanted to 
 make me better;" and from these others ; 
 "He said it was not hatred, but a very dif- 
 ferent feeling, that moved him against you." 
 The uncle, alas! understood these expres- 
 sions better than those about him. These had 
 only words of reproach for the reprobate deed. 
 " Evidences of the deepest pain were plainly 
 to be seen in his bent attitude. The man, firm 
 and upright in all the movements of his 
 body, was gone. A person of about seventy 
 was before us — yielding, without a will, the 
 sport of every breath of air." So wrote 
 Schindler. Beethoven called for the Bible 
 
FOREBODINGS. 189 
 
 " in the real language into which Luthre 
 had translated it." A few days later, we 
 find in his conversations the following mem- 
 orandum: "On the death of Beethoven." 
 Did he mean his own death, or the death 
 of the beloved boy with whom he had, so to 
 speak, lost his own life? Be this as it 
 may, he now sang the deepest song of his 
 soul, and it was destined to be his dying song. 
 We refer to the adagio in the last quartet, op. 
 135. His harp soon after this grew silent, and 
 forever. Henceforth we have only projects or 
 fragments of works. But he touched it once 
 more, like King Gunther in the Edda, " seated 
 among serpents," the most venomous of 
 which — the pangs of his own conscience — 
 menaced him with death. Among the pictures 
 in which he paints the meaning of a theme 
 similar to that of this adagio (pieces thus in- 
 dependent of one another cannot rightly be 
 called variations), there is one whose minor 
 key and rhythm show it to be a funeral ceremo- 
 ny of touching sublimity. But whatever guilt 
 he may have incurred he atoned for in his 
 heart of hearts by love. Such is this picture. 
 His soul is free. This the theme itself 
 
190 THE LIFE OP BEETHOVEN. 
 
 tells us, eloquently and distinctly. Here the 
 soul, in melancholy stillness, revolves about its 
 own primeval source, and towards the close 
 plumes its wing for a happy, lofty flight, to 
 regions it has longed to enter. The other 
 pictures show us this full, certain and joyful 
 possession of one's self, and the last even seems 
 to resolve the soul into its faculties when it 
 floats about the Eternal Being in the most 
 blissful happiness — a vision and condition 
 which, of all the means of expression of the 
 intellect, only music is able to describe, and 
 which proves to us that, in the case of our 
 artist, both fear and death had long been over- 
 come. 
 
 And thus it comes that a "movement with 
 which there is none to be compared, one which 
 to our feelings is the richest and most perfect of 
 all movements, and, at the same time, of the 
 most brilliant transparency, made its way into 
 a work which otherwise shows no trace of the 
 magnitude of this his last effort. For the 
 finale is only a sham-play of those magic 
 powers which our master so well knew how 
 to conjure up, both in sublime horror and in 
 saving joy. 
 
ILLNESS. 191 
 
 But his physical condition was soon destined 
 to be in keeping with the condition of his soul 
 above described. When, indeed, Karl was 
 convalescing as well as could be desired, and 
 he had decided to follow the military calling, 
 Beethoven's friends noticed that, externally 
 at least, he again looked fresh and cheerful. 
 "He knew," says Schindler, "how to rise 
 superior to his fate, and his whole character 
 bore an 'antique dignity.'" But even now 
 he told the old friend of his youth, "Wegeler, 
 that he intended " to produce only a few more 
 great works, and then, like an old child, to 
 close his earthly career somewhere among good 
 men." And, indeed, his whole inner nature 
 seemed shattered. " What dost thou want ? 
 Why dost thou hang thy head ? Is not the 
 truest resignation sufficient for thee, even if 
 thou art in want?" This one conversation 
 with Karl tells us everything. 
 
 Besides, serious symptoms of disease ap- 
 peared. A single blow, and his powerful, 
 manly form was shattered like that of the 
 meanest of mortals. And, indeed, that blow 
 was struck with almost unexpected violence. 
 
 After his recovery, Karl was released by 
 
192 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 the police on the express condition that he 
 would remain in Vienna only one day more. 
 His scar, however, prevented his entering the 
 service. Where, then, could he go, now that 
 the fall was just beginning? His brother, 
 Johann, invited him to his Wasserhof estate 
 near Gneixendorf. He could no longer answer 
 as he had once : non possibile per me — impossi- 
 ble for me. But his sojourn in a country 
 house not constructed so as to guard against 
 the cold and dampness, a want of attention to 
 his growing infirmity, misunderstandings with 
 his brother's wife, a violent quarrel with the 
 brother himself, who, after it, refused him the 
 use of his close carriage, and, lastly, his de- 
 parture in the cold of winter in the " devil's 
 own worst conveyance." All these causes con- 
 spired to send our patient back to Vienna, the 
 subject of a violent fit of sickness. In addition 
 to all this, his nephew delayed to call a phy- 
 sician, and none visited his sick bed until the 
 third day after his return. The doctor who 
 came was not Beethoven's customary physician, 
 and totally misunderstood the nature of the 
 disease. Other shocks succeeded, and the con- 
 sequence was a violent attack of dropsy, the 
 
LAST ILLNESS. 193 
 
 symptoms of which had first shown themselves 
 in Gneixendorf. 
 
 His long, painfully long end was now be- 
 ginning. His constitution, powerful as that of 
 a giant, "blocked the gates against death" for 
 nearly three months. As labor of any kind 
 was out of the question, the arrival of Han- 
 del's works from London, which came to him 
 as a present, supplied him with the distrac- 
 tion he wished for, in his own sphere. It 
 was not long before attacks of suffocation at 
 night distressed him and it became necessary 
 to perform the operation paracentesis. When 
 he saw the stream of water gush forth, he re- 
 marked, with that sublimity of humor so pe- 
 culiarly his own, that the surgeon reminded 
 him of Moses, who struck the rock with his 
 rod; but, in the same humorous vein, he added : 
 "Better water from the stomach than from the 
 pen." With this he consoled himself. But 
 he grew worse> and a medical consultation 
 seemed necessary to his friends. His own 
 heart forebode him no good, and he again 
 made his will on the 3rd of January, 1827. 
 He made his beloved nephew "sole heir to all 
 he possessed." The nephew had gone to join 
 13 
 
194 THE LIFE OE BEETHOVEN. 
 
 his regiment the day before, and this had a 
 good and quieting effect on Beethoven. He 
 knew that the young man would be best pro- 
 vided for there, and testified his gratitude to 
 General von Stutterheim, who had received 
 him, by dedicating to that officer his quartet 
 in C sharp minor — his "greatest" quartet. 
 He urged that Dr. Malfatti should be called. 
 But he had had a falling out years before with 
 him, and the celebrated physician did not now 
 want to excite the displeasure of his colleagues. 
 Schindler tells us: "Beethoven wept bitterly 
 when I told him the doctor's decision." 
 
 But Malfatti came at last, and, after they had 
 exchanged a few words, the old friends lay 
 weeping in each other's arms. The doctor 
 prescribed iced punch to " quicken the organs 
 of digestion, enervated by too much medi- 
 cine." The first physician who was called to 
 attend him tells us: "The effect of the prescrip- 
 tion was soon perceptible. He grew cheerful, 
 was full of witty sallies at times, and even 
 dreamt that he might be able to finish his ora- 
 torio Saul and David." From his written 
 conversations, we see that a great many of his 
 friends had gathered about hh bed. He 
 
THE ENGLISH. 195 
 
 thought of finishing the Bach overture for one 
 of Schindler's concerts, and even began to 
 busy himself with the Tenth Symphony once 
 more. He bad again to. experience the feeling 
 of pecuniary embarrassment while in tbis con- 
 dition — an embarrassment now more painful 
 than ever — brought about more especially by 
 the necessity of procuring a military outfit for 
 Karl. Galitzin had, indeed, expressly prom- 
 ised a short time before to send him money, 
 but he proved a " princely boaster;" and there 
 was no prospect of an income from any other 
 source. All his completed works had been 
 sold, and the little fortune he had laid aside 
 at the time of the Congress of Vienna was 
 irrevocably pledged to Karl by his will. 
 
 His thoughts now turned to the " magnani- 
 mous" English, who had already promised 
 him a " benefit." His disease lasted a long time. 
 The third operation had been performed. His 
 long-continued solitude had alienated men 
 from him in Vienna; and, especially after his 
 experiences with the Akademie in 1824, he 
 had no confidence in the devotion and en- 
 thusiasm for art of his second home. This 
 induced Schindler to write to England : " But 
 
196 THE LIFE OE BEETHOVEN". 
 
 what afflicts him very much is, that no one 
 here concerns himself in the least about him ; 
 and, indeed, this total absence of interest in 
 him is very surprising." After this, we find 
 only his most intimate friends at his bedside. 
 Among these was Gleichenstein, who happened 
 to be in Vienna on a short visit. He writes : 
 " Thou must bless my boy as Voltaire blessed 
 Franklin's son.'' Hummel, who was travel- 
 ing and giving concerts, also saw him, and at 
 the sight of his suffering — he had just under- 
 gone the fourth operation — burst into tears. 
 Beethoven had, at the moment of Hummel's 
 visit, received a little picture as a present, and 
 he showed it to him, saying : " See, my dear 
 Hummel, the house in which Haydn was 
 born — the miserable peasant hut, in which so 
 great a man was born ! " 
 
 He asks his Rhenish publisher, Schott, who 
 had purchased his Mass and his Ninth Sym- 
 phony, and who was destined one day to be- 
 come the owner of the Niebelungen, for some 
 old wine to strengthen him. Malfatti recom- 
 mended an aromatic bath ; and such a bath, it 
 seemed to him, would surely save h±m. But 
 it had the very opposite effect, and he was 
 
TENTH SYMPHONY. 197 
 
 soon taken with violent pains. He wrote to 
 London : " I only- ask God that I may be pre- 
 served from want as long as I must here en- 
 dure a living death." The response was one 
 thousand guldens from the Philharmonic So- 
 ciety of that city " on account of the concert 
 in preparation." " It was heart-rending to 
 see how he folded his hands and almost dis- 
 solved in tears of joy and gratitude " when he 
 received them. This was his last joy, and the 
 excitement it caused accelerated his end. His 
 wound broke open again and did not close any 
 more. He felt this at first a wonderful relief, 
 and while he felt so he dictated some letters 
 for London, which are among the most beauti- 
 ful he has written. He promised to finish 
 the Tenth Symphony for the Society, and had 
 other "gigantic" plans, especially as regards 
 his Faust-music. "That will be something 
 worth hearing," he frequently exclaimed. The 
 overflow of his fancy was "indescribable, and 
 his imagination showed an elasticity which 
 his friends had noticed but seldom when he 
 was in health." At the same time, the most 
 beautiful' pictures of dramatic poetry floated 
 before his mind, and in conversation he always 
 
198 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEjST. 
 
 represented his own works as filled with such 
 "poetic ideas." But his sufferings soon became 
 "indescribably great. His dissolution was 
 approaching " with giaDt steps, and even his 
 friends could only wish for his end. Schindler 
 wrote to London on the 24th March : " He 
 feels that his end is near, for yesterday he said 
 to Breuning and me : ' Clap your hands, 
 friends; the play is over.'" And further: 
 "He advances towards death with really So- 
 cratic wisdom and unexampled equanimity." 
 He could well be calm of heart and soul. He 
 had done his duty as an artist and as a man. 
 This same day he wrote a codicil to his will 
 in favor of his nephew; and now his friends 
 had only one deep concern — to reconcile him 
 with heaven. The physician approved, and 
 Beethoven calmly but resolutely answered : 
 "I will." 
 
 The clergyman came and Beethoven de- 
 voutly performed his last religious duties. 
 Madame Johann van Beethoven heard him 
 say, after he had received the sacrament : 
 "Reverend sir, I thank you. You have 
 brought me consolation." 
 
 He then reminded Schindler of the letter 
 
DEATH. 199 
 
 to London. " May God bless them," he said. 
 The wine he had asked for came. " Too bad! 
 too bad! it's too late!" These were his very- 
 last words. He fell immediately after into 
 such an agony that he was not able to utter a 
 single syllable more. On the 24th and 25th 
 of March, the people came in crowds to see 
 him again. Even the faijaks, Hoslinger and 
 Holz, as well as the poet Castelli, were among 
 them. " All three of us knelt before his bed," 
 said Holz, subsequently, to Frau Linzbaur, 
 who, in relating the incident, added that when 
 Holz told it " his voice forsook him, and he 
 covered his face and wept. ' He blessed us,' 
 he said, with an effort ; ' we kissed his hand, 
 but never saw him again.' " This was the last 
 act of his life. 
 
 "On the 26th, the little pyramidal clock, 
 which he had received as a present from 
 Princess Christiane Lichnowsky, stopped, as 
 it still does when a storm is approaching. 
 Schindler and Breuning had gone to the 
 churchyard, to select a grave for him. A 
 storm of loud thunder and hail came raging 
 on about five o'clock. No one but Frau van 
 Beethoven and the young composer, Anselm 
 
200 THE LIFE OF BEETHOVEN. 
 
 Huettenbrenner, who had hurried hither from 
 Graz to look upon his revered master once 
 more, were present in the room of the dying 
 man. A stroke of lightning illuminated it 
 with a lurid flash. The moribund opened his 
 eyes, raised his right hand, and looked up with 
 a fixed gaze for several seconds : the soul of 
 the hero would not out. But "when his up- 
 lifted hand fell back on the bed, his eyes half 
 closed. Not another breath! Not another 
 heart-beat! It was I that closed the half-open 
 eyes of the sleeper." So says Huettenbrenner, 
 an eye-witness of our artist's last moment. 
 This was the 26th of March, 1827. 
 
 "No mourning wife, no son, no daughter, 
 wept at his grave, but a world wept at it." 
 These are the words of the orator of the day 
 on the occasion of the unveiling of the first 
 monument to Beethoven in 1845, in Bonn. 
 But his funeral on that beautiful day in spring 
 was a very brilliant one. A sea of twenty 
 thousand human beings surged over the street 
 where now the votive church stands; for in 
 the Scliwarzspanierhaus behind it, Beethoven 
 had lived during the last years of his life. 
 The leading eapellmeisters of the city carried 
 
HIS FUNERAL. 201 
 
 the pall, and writers and musicians the torches. 
 "The news of his death had violently shaken 
 the people out of their indifference," says Dr. 
 G. von Breuning. And, indeed, it was, as a 
 poor old huxtress exclaimed when she saw the 
 funeral procession, "the general of musicians" 
 whom men were carrying to the grave! The 
 * poet, Grillparzer, delivered the funeral oration. 
 He took for his text the words: "He was an 
 artist, and he was what he was only through 
 his art." Our very being and our sublimest 
 feelings are touched when we hear the name 
 of 
 
 LTTDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN. 
 
TALES FROM FOREIGN TONGUES, 
 
 COMPRISING 
 
 MEMORIES ; a story of gbrman love. 
 
 By MAX MULLER. 
 
 GRAZIELLA ; a story of Italian love. 
 
 By A. DE LAMARTINE. 
 
 MARIE : a story of Russian love. 
 
 By ALEX. PUSHKIN. 
 
 MADELEINE ; a story of french love. 
 
 By JULES SANDEAU. 
 
 In neat box, per set, ..... Price, $3.00. 
 Sold separately, per volume, ... Price, $1.35. 
 
 Of "Memories" the London Academy says: "It is a prose poem. 
 • * * It is seldom that a powerful intellect produces any 
 
 work, however small, that does not bear some marks of its special bent, 
 and the traces of research and philosophy in this little story are appar- 
 ent, while its beauty and pathos show us a fresh phase of a many-sided 
 mind, to which we already owe large debts of gratitude." 
 
 Of " Graziella" the Chicago Tribune says : " It glows with love of the 
 beautiful in all nature. * * * It is pure literature, a 
 
 perfect story, couched in perfect words. The sentences nave the rhythm 
 and flow, the sweetness and tender fancy of the original. It is uniform 
 with ' Memories,' and it should stand side by side with that on the 
 shelves of every lover of pure, strong thoughts, put in pure, strong 
 words. ' Graziella' is a book to be loved." 
 
 Of " Marie" the Cincinnati Gazette says: " This is a Russian love tale, 
 written by a Russian poet. It is one of the purest, sweetest little narra- 
 tives that we have read for a long time. It is a little classic, and a Russian 
 classic, too. That is one of its charms, that it is so distinctively Russian. 
 We catch the very breezes of the Steppes, and meet, face to face, the high- 
 souled, simple-minded Russian." 
 
 Of " Madeleine" the New York Evening Telegram says: " More than 
 thirty years ago it received the honor of a prize from the French 
 Academy and has since almost become a French classic. It abounds 
 both in pathos and wit. Above all. It is a pure story, dealing with love 
 of the most exalted kind. It is, indeed, a wonder that a tale so fresh, so 
 sweet, so pure as this has not sooner been introduced to the English- 
 speaking public." 
 
 Sold by loohellers, or mailed, postpaid, on receipt of price, oy 
 JANSEN, McCLURG & CO., Publishers, Chicago, 111. 
 
• It ought to be in the hands of every scholar and of every school- 
 boy." — Saturday Review, London. 
 
 Tales of Ancient Greece. 
 
 By the EEV. SIR G. W. COX, Bast., M.A., 
 Trinity College, Oxford. 
 
 12mo., extra cloth, black and gilt, . • . Price, $1.50. 
 
 " Written apparently for young readers, It yet possesses a charm of 
 manner -which will recommend it to all."— The Examiner, London. 
 
 " It is only when we take up such a hook as this, that we realize how 
 rich in interest is the mythology of Greece."— Inquirer, Philadelphia. 
 
 " Admirable in style, and level with a child's comprehension. These 
 versions might well find a place in every family."— The Nation, hew York. 
 
 " The author invests these stories with a charm of narrative entirely 
 peculiar. The hook is a rich one in every way."— Standard, Chicago. 
 
 " In Mr. Cox will be found yet another name to be enrolled among 
 those English writers who have vindicated for this country an honorable 
 rank in the investigation of Greek history."— Edinburgh Review. 
 
 " It is doubtful if these tales, antedating history in their origin , and yet 
 fresh with all the charms of youth to all who read them for the first time, 
 were ever before presented in so chaste and popular form."— Golden Bute, 
 Boston. 
 
 " The grace with which these old tales of the mythology are re-told 
 makes them as enchanting to the young as familiar fairy tales, or the 
 ' Arabian Nights.' * * * We do not know of a Christmas book which 
 promises more lasting pleasures."— Publishers? Weekly. 
 
 " Its exterior fits it to adorn the drawing-room table, while its contents 
 are adapted to the entertainment of the most cultivated intelligence. * 
 
 * * The book is a scholarly production, and a welcome addition to a 
 department of literature that is thus far quite too scantily furnished."— 
 Tribune, Chicago. 
 
 Sold by booksellers, or mailed, post paid, on receipt of price, by 
 JAKSEN, McCITJRG} & CO., Publishers, Chicago, 111. 
 
SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE, 
 
 FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. 
 
 By MISS E. S. KIKKLAND. 
 
 AUTHOR OF " SIX LITTLE COOKS," " DOHA'S HOUSEKEEPINO," ETC. 
 
 12mo., extra cloth, blach and gill, , . Price, $1.50. 
 
 "X very ably written sketch of French history, from the earliest times 
 to the foundation of the existing Republic." — Cincinnati Gazette. 
 
 " The narrative is not dry on a single page, and the little history may 
 be commended as the best of its kind that has yet appeared."— Bulletin, 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 "A book both instructive and entertaining. It is not a dry compen- 
 dium of dates and facts, but a charmingly written history."— Christian 
 Union, New York. 
 
 "After a careful examination of its contents, we are able to conscien- 
 tiously give it our heartiest commendation. We know no elementary 
 history of France that can at all be compared with it." — Living Church. 
 
 "A spirited and entertaining sketch of the French people and nation 
 — one that will seize and hold the attention of all bright boys and girls 
 who have a chance to read it."— Sunday Afternoon, Springfield, (Mass.) 
 
 " We find its descriptions universally good, that it is admirably simple 
 and direct in style, without waste of words or timidity of opinion. The 
 book represents a great deal of patient labor and conscientious study. — 
 Courant, Hartford, Ct. 
 
 " Miss Kirkland has composed her ' Short History of France' in the 
 way in which a history for young people ought to be written ; that is, she 
 has aimed to present a consecutive and agreeable story, from which the 
 reader can not only learn the names of kings and the succession of 
 events, hut can also receive a vivid and permanent impression as to the 
 characters, modes of life, and the spirit of different periods." — The 
 Nation, N. Y. 
 
 Sold by booksellers, or mailed, postpaid, on receipt of price, by 
 JANSEN, McCLTJKG & CO., Publishers, Chicago, 111. 
 
"Unequalled by anything of the kind with which we are ac- 
 quainted." — Christian Advocate, Sf. Y, 
 
 CUMNOCK'S CHOICE READINGS. 
 
 POR PURLIO AND PRIVATE ENTERTAINMENT. ARRANGED FOR THE 
 EXERCISES OF THE SCHOOL AND COLLEGE AND PUBLIC READER, 
 WITH ELOCUTIONARY ADVICE. EDITED BY ROBERT 
 MO'LAIN CUMNOCK, A. M., PROFESSOR OF 
 RHETORIC AND ELOCUTION, NORTH- 
 WESTERN UNIVERSITY. 
 
 Large lllmo., cloth, Price, $1.75. 
 
 " It ought to become a special favorite among school and college 
 students and public readers." — Evening Post, New York. 
 
 " Taking into account the admirable type, the excellent taste, the 
 brevity of the rhetorical counsels, the unsurpassed variety, we prefer 
 Prof. Cumnock's book to every manual of the kind."— Christian Register, 
 Boston. 
 
 "Among the multitude of books issued for the same purpose during 
 the past ten years, we know of none so complete in all respects and so 
 well fitted to the needs of the elocutionist as the volume before us." — 
 Transcrixjt, Boston. 
 
 " No choicer casket of prose and poetry has been given to us by any 
 other author. These are the culled flowers from the bouquet of litera- 
 ture. They are of every nature known to the language, and each is of 
 the best of its kind."— The Post, San Francisco. 
 
 " Nearly 200 selections from the best prose and poetical literature of 
 the English language are here assembled for the uses of the student of 
 elocution. * * * The collection is valuable as a treasury of 
 literary gems, apart from its worth as a manual of declamation."— 
 Tribune, Chicago. 
 
 "The volume consists in a great measure of fresh specimens that 
 have recently found their way into current literature, and present the 
 charm of novelty with the merit of good writing. The ancient stream is 
 thus enriched with supplies from new fountains, and living productions 
 take the place of the veteran pieces which have grown old in the course 
 of protracted service. * • * They are illustrations of the best 
 literature of the day."— Tribune, New York. 
 
 Sold by boohetters, or mailed, postpaid, on receipt of price, by 
 
 JASFSEff, McCLUKG & CO., Publishers, Chicago, 111. 
 
"Dr. Oibson is a champion of more than ordinary skill." — Ga- 
 zette, Cincinnati. 
 
 The Foundations 
 
 OF 
 
 Christianity. 
 
 Bt Kev. J. MONRO GIBSON, D. D., 
 Author of " Ages Before Moses." 
 
 Square 10 mo., ...... Price, $1.00. 
 
 " Admirable because of its brevity and directness, and because it an- 
 swers, without any theological circumlocution, the objections which 
 modern infidelity puts forth so pertinaciously."— Inquirer, Philadelphia. 
 
 " The book, both in manner and matter, will be found to be just the 
 thing which many thoughtful yet perplexed persons need to direct their 
 inquiries and resolve their doubts. The style is fresh, vigorous and in- 
 cisive." — Canada Presbyterian, Toronto. 
 
 " The book will be read with genuine interest by any one who thinks 
 at all on these noble themes, and we are sure that its effect will be 
 wholesome and powerful in removing difficulties, strengthening de- 
 fenses, and establishing the spirit upon sure foundations." — Observer, 
 New York. 
 
 " Dr. Gibson's book, though so condensed, is admirable in method, and 
 vigorous and fresh in style, throughout. As a brief and popular presen- 
 tation of the fundamental truths, such as are apt to expand beyond or- 
 dinary ability to read in most hands, nothing more valr able has recently 
 emanated from the press." — Rev. Br. B. M. Meld, in. the Evangelist. 
 
 " The treatment is masterly. The author grapples the points essential 
 to the argument with courage and vigor, and in a style notable for its 
 trenchant force, sets them forth in convincing light. While others meet 
 the infidel argument more on the skirmish line, Christian people will 
 be glad to see one like Dr. Gibson bearing down upon the very centre of 
 the enemy's position." — Rev. Dr. J. A. Smith, in the Standard. 
 
 Sold oy ooohellers, or mailed, postpaid, on receipt of price, by 
 JANSEN, McCLUKG & CO., Publishers, Chicago, 111. 
 
'An exceedingly interesting narrative of an extraordinary life.' 
 — The Standard. 
 
 LIFE OF BENEDICT ARNOLD 
 
 His Patriotism and his Treason. 
 
 By Hon. I. N. AKNOLD, 
 
 AUTHOR OP " LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN." 
 
 Crown, Svo.y with Portrait, • • • Price, $2.50. 
 
 This Life of Arnold is full of new facts, now first given to the public. 
 Manuscripts from the family of Arnold, in England and in Canada, and 
 the Shippen manuscripts, have enabled the author to make new contri- 
 butions to Kevolutionary history of great interest. The unpublished 
 manuscripts of General Schuyler, to which the author has had access, 
 has thrown new light upon the expedition to Canada and the campaign 
 against Burgoyne. The author does not, to any extent, excuse Arnold's 
 treason, hut aims to do full justice to him as a soldier and patriot. For 
 Arnold, the traitor, he has no plea hut " guilty ; " for Arnold, the soldier 
 and patriot, he asks a hearing and justice. 
 
 "The biographer discriminates fairly between Arnold's patriotism and 
 baseness ; and while exhibiting the former and the splendid services by 
 which it was illustrated, with generous earnestness, does not in any de- 
 gree extenuate the turpitude of the other.— Harper's Monthly. 
 
 " The public is the gainer (by this book), as additional light is thrown 
 on the prominent actors and events of history. * * * Bancroft erro- 
 neously asserts that Arnold wai not present at the first battle of Saratoga. 
 Upon this point the author has justice and right on his side, and to 
 Arnold, rather than to Gates, the success of this decisive campaign seems 
 greatly attributable."— New England Historical and Genealogical Register. 
 
 " After a careful perusal of the work, it seems to us that Mr. Arnold has 
 accomplished his task wonderfully well. * * * It is rarely that one 
 meets in the pages of biographical literature a nobler woman than was 
 the devoted wife of Benedict Arnold; she mourned his fallen greatness, 
 but even in his ignominity was faithful to the vows by which she had 
 sworn to love and care for him until death." — Traveller, Boston. 
 
 Sold by booksellers, or mailed, postpaid, on receipt of price, by 
 JANSEN, McCLIJKG & CO., Publishers, Chicago, 111.