[Fantasia in C., commonly called the "Moonlight Sonata," to designate this enthusiastic period of Beethoven's passion.]
In the year 1800, we find Beethoven engaged in the composition of his "Christ on the Mount of Olives." He wrote this work during his summer residence at Hetzendorf, a pleasant village, closely contiguous to the gardens of the imperial palace of Shönbrunn, where he passed several summers of his life in profound seclusion. A circumstance connected with this great work, and of which Beethoven many years afterwards still retained a lively recollection, was that he composed it in the thickest part of the wood, in the park of Shönbrunn, seated between the two stems of an oak, which shot out from the main trunk at the height of about two feet from the ground.
About this period Beethoven endured much family annoyance and domestic trouble. His brothers who had some years previously followed him to Vienna, began to govern him and to make him suspicious of his sincerest friends and adherents, from wrong notions or even from jealousy. Surrounded by friends who loved and esteemed him – his fame already established – with an ample income, he ought to have been completely happy; and he certainly would have been but for an infirmity which began to afflict him, and the persecution of his brothers. His misery both of mind and body, I can best describe by reading a portion of his extraordinary will, which he at this time executed, and having that song sung which he at the same time composed, with special reference to the torture he was undergoing.
Extracts from Beethoven's Will
"O ye who consider or declare me to be hostile, obstinate, or misanthropic, what injustice ye do me! Ye know not the secret causes of that which to you wears such an appearance. My heart and my mind were from childhood prone to the tender feelings of affection. Nay, I was always disposed even to perform great actions. Born, with a lively, ardent disposition, susceptible to the diversions of society, I was forced at an early age to renounce them and to pass my life in seclusion. If I strove at any time to set myself above all this, O, how cruelly was I driven back, by the doubly painful experience of my defective hearing! And yet it was not possible for me to say to people, 'Speak louder, for I am deaf.' Ah! how could I proclaim the defect of a sense, that I once possessed in the highest perfection, in a perfection in which few of my colleagues possess or ever did possess it? Indeed, I cannot. Forgive me then, if ye see me draw back when I would gladly mingle among you.
"O God, thou lookest down upon my misery; thou knowest that it is accompanied with love of my fellow creatures, and a disposition to do good! O, men, when ye shall read this, think that ye have wronged me!
I go to meet death with joy; if he comes before I have had occasion to develop all my professional abilities, he will come too soon for me, in spite of my hard fate, and I should wish that he had delayed his arrival. But even then I am content, for he will release me from a state of endless suffering. Come when thou wilt, I shall meet thee with firmness. Farewell."
"There is a calm for those who weep;
A rest for weary pilgrims found;
And while the mouldering ashes sleep
Low in the ground,
The soul of origin divine,
God's glorious image, freed from day,
In Heaven's eternal sphere shall shine
A star of day."
[In Questa Tomba Oscura. Words by Göthe; Music by Beethoven.]
Let us proceed from grave to gay. I have already told you that Beethoven was a man of ardent feeling, and passionately in love with a young lady, Madame Von Arnim. I will read to you, one of his love letters, and I recommend the style to all the unmarried I have the pleasure to address: —
Vienna, August 11th, 1810.
"Dearest Bettine,
"Never was a fairer spring than this year's; this I say and feel, too, as in it I made your acquaintance. You must, indeed, have yourself seen, that, in society, I was like a fish cast on the sand, that writhes, and struggles, and cannot escape, until some benevolent Galatea helps back again into the mighty sea; in very truth, I was fairly aground. Dearest Bettine, unexpectedly I met you, and at a moment when chagrin had completely overcome me; but, truly, your aspect put it to flight. I was aware in an instant that you belong to a totally different world from this absurd one, to which, even with the best wish to be tolerant, it is impossible to open one's ears. I am myself a poor creature, and yet complain of others! this you will, however, forgive, with the kindly heart that looks out from your eyes, and with the intelligence that dwells in your ears– at least, your ears know how to flatter when they listen. Mine, alas! are a barrier through which I can have hardly any friendly intercourse with mankind, else, perhaps, I might have acquired a still more entire confidence in you. As it was, I could only comprehend the full, expressive glance of your eyes, and this has so moved me that I shall never forget it. Divine Bettine! dearest girl! Art! who comprehends the meaning of this word? With whom may I speak of this great divinity? how I love the recollections of the few days when we used to chat with each other, or rather correspond. I have preserved every one of the little scraps of paper on which your intelligent, precious, most precious replies were given – thus, at least, may I thank my worthless ears that the best portion of our fugitive discourse is retained in writing.
"Since you went, I have had many uncomfortable hours, in which the power to do anything is lost. After you had gone away, I rambled about for some three hours in the Museum at Schönbrunn; but no good angel met me there, to chide me into good humour, as an angel like you might have done. Forgive, sweetest Bettine, this transition from the fundamental key – but I must have such intervals to vent my feelings.
"And you have written of me to Göethe, have you not? saying that I would fain pack up my head in a cask, where I should see nothing and hear nothing of what passes in the world, since you, dearest angel, meet me here no longer. But, surely I shall at least have a letter from you. Hope supports me – she is, indeed, the nursing mother of half the world, and she has been my close friend all my life long – what would have become of me else? I send with this 'Knowest thou the land,' which I have just composed, as a memorial of the time when I first became acquainted with you."
This song will now be sung for you. The words are from the German of Göthe.
("Knowest thou the land where the sweet citron blows.")
Beethoven's interviews with Bettine were not all wasted in rhapsodies of love. In one of his conversations with this accomplished lady he thus eloquently describes the power of poetry and the philosophy of music: —
"Göthe's poems exercise a great sway over me, not only by their meaning but by their rhythm also. It is a language that urges me on to composition, that builds up its own lofty standard, containing in itself all the mysteries of harmony, so that I have but to follow up the radiations of that centre from which melodies evolve spontaneously. I pursue them eagerly, overtake them, then again see them flying before me, vanish in the multitude of my impressions, until I seize them anew with increased vigour no more to be parted from them. It is then that my transports give them every diversity of modulation: it is I who triumph over the first of these musical thoughts, and the shape I give it I call symphony. Yes, Bettina, music is the link between intellectual and sensual life.
"Melody gives a sensible existence to poetry; for does not the meaning of a poem become embodied in melody? The mind would embrace all thoughts, both high and low, and embody them into one stream of sensations, all sprung from simple melody, and without the aid of its charms doomed to die in oblivion. This is the unity which lives in my symphonies – numberless streamlets meandering on, in endless variety of shape, but all diverging into one common bed. Thus it is I feel that there is an indefinite something, an eternal, an infinite to be attained; and although I look upon my works with a foretaste of success, yet I cannot help wishing, like a child, to begin my task anew, at the very moment that my thundering appeal to my hearers seems to have forced my musical creed upon them, and thus to have exhausted the insatiable cravings of my soul after my 'beau ideal.'
"Music alone ushers man into the portal of an intellectual world, ready to encompass him, but which he may never encompass. That mind alone whose every thought is rhythm can embody music, can comprehend its mysteries, its divine inspirations, and can alone speak to the senses of its intellectual revelations. Although spirits may feed upon it as we do upon air, yet it may not nourish all mortal men; and those privileged few alone, who have drawn from its heavenly source, may aspire to hold spiritual converse with it. How few are these! for, like the thousands who marry for love, and who profess love, whilst love will single out but one amongst them, so also will thousands court Music, whilst she turns a deaf ear to all but the chosen few. She, too, like her sister arts, is based upon morality —that fountain-head of genuine invention! And would you know the true principle on which the arts may be won? It is to bow to their immutable terms, to lay all passion and vexation of spirit prostrate at their feet, and to approach their divine presence with a mind so calm and so void of littleness as to be ready to receive the dictates of fantasy and the revelations of truth. Thus the art becomes a divinity, man approaches her with religious feelings, his inspirations are God's divine gifts, and his aim fixed by the same hand from above which helps him to attain it."
And he adds: – "We know not whence our knowledge is derived. The seeds which lie dormant in us require the dew, the warmth, and the electricity of the soil to spring up, to ripen into thought, and to break forth. Music is the electrical soil in which the mind thrives, thinks, and invents. Music herself teaches us harmony; for one musical thought bears upon the whole kindred of ideas, and each is linked to the other, closely and indissolubly, by the ties of harmony."
Hearken to proof of the truth of this eloquent and beautiful description of music.
(Waltz. – Beethoven.)
The talents of a Haydyn and Mozart raised instrumental composition in Germany to an astonishing elevation; and Beethoven may be said not only to have maintained the art in that stupendous altitude, but even in some respects to have brought it to a still higher degree of perfection. "Haydyn," says Reichardt, "drew his quartets from the pure source of his sweet and unsophisticated nature, his captivating simplicity and cheerfulness. In these works he is still without an equal. Mozart's mightier genius and richer imagination took a more extended range, and embodied in several passages the most profound and sublime qualities of his own mind. Moreover, he was much greater as a performer than Haydyn, and as such expected more from instruments than the latter did. He also allowed more merit to highly-wrought and complicated compositions, and thus raised a gorgeous palace within Haydyn's fairy bower. Of this palace Beethoven was an early inmate; and in order adequately to express his own peculiar forms of style, he had no other means but to surmount the edifice with that defying and colossal tower which no one will probably presume to carry higher with impunity.
"If any man," says an able writer in the Quarterly, "can be said to enjoy an almost universal admiration as composer, it is Beethoven – who, disdaining to copy his predecessors in any, the most distant manner, has, notwithstanding, by his energetic, bold, and uncommon style of writing, carried away a prize from our modern Olympus."
Beethoven, like most great men, had many peculiarities.
In winter, well as in summer, it was his practice to rise at daybreak, and immediately to sit down to his writing-table. There he would labour till two or three o'clock, his usual dinnertime. Scarcely had the last morsel been swallowed, when, if he had no more distant excursion in view, he took his usual walk – that is to say, he ran in double quick time, as if hunted by bailiffs, twice round the town – whether it rained, or snowed, or hailed, or the thermometer stood an inch or two below the freezing point – whether Boreas blew a chilling blast from the Bohemian mountains, or whether the thunder roared, and forked lightnings played, what signified it to the enthusiastic lover of his art, in whose genial mind, perhaps, were budding, at that very moment, when the elements were in fiercest conflict, the harmonious feelings of a balmy spring.
The use of the bath was as much a necessity to Beethoven as to a Turk – and he was in the habit of submitting himself to frequent ablutions. When it happened that he did not walk out of doors to collect his ideas, he would, not unfrequently, in a fit of the most complete abstraction, go to his washhand basin, and pour several jugs of water upon his hands, all the time humming and roaring. After dabbling in the water till his clothes were wet through, he would pace up and down the room with a vacant expression of countenance, and his eyes distended, the singularity of his aspect being often increased by an unshaven beard. Then he would seat himself at his table and write; and afterwards get up again to the washhand basin and dabble and hum as before. Ludicrous as were these scenes, no one dared venture to notice them, or to disturb him while engaged in his inspiring ablutions, for these were his moments of profoundest meditation.
Many anecdotes are told of him likewise.
The wife of an esteemed pianoforte player, residing in Vienna, was a great admirer of Beethoven, and she earnestly wished to possess a lock of his hair – her husband, anxious to gratify her, applied to a gentleman who was very intimate with Beethoven, and who had rendered him some service. Beethoven sent the lady a lock of hair cut from a goat's beard– and Beethoven's own hair being very grey and harsh, there was no reason to fear that the hoax would be very readily detected. The lady was overjoyed at possessing this supposed memorial of her saint, proudly showing it to all her acquaintance; but, when her happiness at its height, some one who happened to know the secret, made her acquainted with the deception that had been practised on her – the lady's wrath who will attempt to describe?
Beethoven's name I have already told you was Ludwig Von Beethoven. In some legal proceedings in which he was concerned, it was intimated by the court that the word von, of Dutch origin, does not ennoble the family to whose name it is prefixed – according to the laws of Holland – that, in the province of the Rhine in which Beethoven was born, it was held to be of no higher value – that, consequently, the halo of nobility ought to be stripped from this Von in Austria also. Beethoven was accordingly required to produce proofs of his nobility. "My nobility! My nobility!" he exclaimed – "Why, my nobility is here, here!" – clapping his forehead.
Right, Beethoven, brains are the highest nobility, if not the richest. I love birth, and ancestry, when they are incentives to exertion not the title deeds to sloth. Who would not prefer being the descendant of a Stephenson, an Arkwright, or a Crompton, or any other of those great architects of their own fortunes, and to feel some of their noble energies, firing their blood to efforts of industry, than to be for ever falling back on some legend or fiction of ancestry; and in the absence of any personal claim to greatness to be referring back and depending on those great mistakes of our forefathers, when he who waded through slaughter to a peerage was honoured above those whose brains and whose industry were the means of promoting the comfort of their fellow men. Believe me, my young friends, the highest honour of earth, is the honour of independence, and the highest nobility, to be the Rodolph of your own fortune, and a benefactor to mankind.