LIFE OF BEETHOVEN.CHAPTER I.1770-1794BEETHOVEN’S YOUTH AND EARLIEST EFFORTS.
LIFE OF BEETHOVEN.
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.
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.
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.
Ludwig van Beethovenwas 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 December 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 theparental 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 respectable 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, Josepha Poll, fell a victim to the vice of intemperance, 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 tasting of wine from a very early age,” says the account of his playmates. It was not long before 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.
We here get a glimpse at a period in Beethoven’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 respectable position occupied by his grandfather, of his own early appointment as court organist, and of the rapid development of his talent, Beethoven soon enjoyed the society of the higher classes, and was employed in the capacity of musician in the families of the nobility and at court. Yet, we are told, whenever it happened that he and his two younger brothers were obliged to take their intoxicated father home, they always performed that disagreeable task with the utmost tenderness. He was never known to utter a hard or unkind 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 disposition 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 Beethovenwas 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 the grandfather had earned a very good position for himself, and always so deported 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 comparatively humble social position, he had made a mistake in marrying below his station.
Johann van Beethoven took Magdalena 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 this woman was not acceptable to the courtcapellmeister, 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 awing of the house, number 515, in 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-serviceand 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, was himself 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 Beethoven’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 subsistence 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 exerciseson 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 expostulations 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 public 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 several concertos for the piano, when, he flattered himself, he would be able to afford a distinguished 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 enhancethe 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 happened 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 thesuccess 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 niggardly 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 divine 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 influence on Beethoven, and Beethoven, in after years, thanked him for the good advice he hadgiven 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, you will have contributed to making me such.” Neefe 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 sonata-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 Neefe was able to appoint him his “substitute,” and thus to pave the way for his appointment as court organist. 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,” thatne plus ultraof 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.
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 Mozart. 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 steadily greater. We are told that when he became 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 hiscapellmeisterLuchesi, 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 appropriate for a really great master of art; and, indeed, we find the court organist of Bonn with Mozart in Vienna, in the spring of 1787.
Beethoven’s appearance was not what would be called imposing. He was small of stature, 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 parade. 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 instruction from Mozart, who was so deeply engaged, just at this time, with the composition of hisDon Giovanni, and so sorely tried by adverse circumstances, that he played very little for him, and could give him only a few lessons. 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 mother, was snatched from him by death, and his father’s unfortunate weakness for strong drinkobtained 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 character 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 metropolis, Vienna; 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 training, 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 predecessors,who had left the country in a state of corruption and destitution. He everywhere 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 organist is to be reckoned, were, we are told, very intelligent, right thinking men, of elegant 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,” writesthe 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 lifted 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 became 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 intellectualleanings did not prevent him from being, as the painter Kuegelgen said of himself, lovingly devoted to his art. And his own beloved art of music was, at this very time, cultivated in Bonn with a greater earnestness and devotion than any other.
The writer referred to above, speaking of the Elector, says: “Not only did he play himself, 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 audience.” And no wonder; for the musical instruction 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 himthe 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, Maximilian Francis had organized an orchestra, and our young court organist took a place in it as a player of the tenor violin. The violinist, Ries, and Simrock, a performer on the French horn, were also members of it. Ries and Simrock had henceforth much to do with Mozart. The following year, a troupe visited Bonn, and gave Italian operas, French vaudevilles, as well as Gluck’sAlceste and Orpheus. They were followed by Grossmann, a person of rare intellect, and one who holds a distinguished 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 became acquainted early in life. In 1788, Maximilian 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 greatabilities of Beethoven. In the orchestra we find such men as Andreas, Bernhard Romberg and Anton Reicher, 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’sTree of Diana, Mozart’sElopement from the Seraglio, Salieri’sGrotto of Trophonius, Dittersdorf’sDoctor and Apothecary, andLittle Red Riding Hood, Gluck’sPilgrim of Mecca, besides Paisiello’sKing Theodore, and greatest of all,Don Giovanni. The music “pleased connoisseurs;” andFigaro’s Marriagegreatly charmed both singers and the members of the orchestra, who vied with one another 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 “characters in tone” played a decided part in the development of an artist who was destined to infuse into instrumental music so much ofpoetical and even of dramatic life. We are informed that Beethoven’s power of delineating character in the language of music was so great, even at this time, that when improvising, which he was very fond of doing, he was frequently asked “to describe the character of some well-known person.” One distinguishing 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 accurate observation of musical light and shade, or of theforteandpiano.” This musical peculiarity was introduced into the Bonn orchestra by a formercapellmeister, Mattioli, “a man full of fire and refined feeling,” who had learned orchestral accentuation and declamation from Gluck, and whose musical enthusiasm 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 orchestrain Mergentheim, the seat of the German 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 octet of wind instruments. All eight players were, he says, masters who had reached a high degree of truth and perfection, especially in the sustaining of tones. Does not this remind one of Beethoven’s exquisite septet op. 20? How Ries 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 observance of thepianoand theforteand therinforzando, 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, andstruggling 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 performers 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 example, on the organ and the piano, in the theater 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 comprehended and appreciated Mozart especially, is attested by what he once said to John Cramer, the only piano player to whom Beethoven himself applied terms of high praise. The two were walking, in 1799, in the park in Vienna, listening to Mozart’s concert in C minor.“Cramer! Cramer!” Beethoven exclaimed, when he heard the simple and beautiful theme near the close: “We shall never be able to accomplish anything like that.” “What a modest 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 instruction in music from Ries, 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 sufferings 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 thatname 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 successfully. The useful and agreeable were found combined in the little social entertainments of family 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 everything about him contributed to cheer him and to develop 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 hisfirst lessons in social etiquette, it is easy to estimate the value to him 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 intercourse 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 Breuning’s. She took delight in teasing our young musician, and playfully addressed him, singing:
“Mich heute noch von dir zu trennen,Und dieses nicht verhindern koennen,Ist zu empfendlich für mein Herz!”[A]
“Mich heute noch von dir zu trennen,Und dieses nicht verhindern koennen,Ist zu empfendlich für mein Herz!”[A]
“Mich heute noch von dir zu trennen,
Und dieses nicht verhindern koennen,
Ist zu empfendlich für mein Herz!”[A]
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 master. He was just as much taken with the sweet and beautiful Miss W. (Westherhold),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 anecdotes about it. What he thought of his acquaintance with the Breuning family and these two young persons may be inferred from the words in which he dedicated the variationsSe vuol ballare, to his friend Lorchen (Eleonore 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 endeavored to keep Beethoven’s eye fixed on the one place in the world in which he could receive the final touch to his musical education,—Vienna.The very multitude of Beethoven’s ideas, and the height to which his intellect had soared, showed him that he was far from having reached perfection in the artistic representation of those ideas. His readiness of execution 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 sufficient 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 presented to the orchestra by Maximilian Francis, in person. He returned in the summer of 1792, and as Mozart had died in the meantime, 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 musician’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 greatman,” etc. But what was there that is not expected from such a person? Waldstein expressed the “realization of his long contested wishes” by 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 thesans culottesand 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. Maximilian 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 Johann an apothecary. They soon followed him to Vienna, where it was not long before they renewed the scenes of his home life in Bonn.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 theMagic Flute, afterwards under the dry-as-dust Albrechtsberger, the teacher of counterpoint, 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 developed and his fancy too lofty to learn anything 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 composition already mentioned, a concerto for the piano written in 1784, and three quartets for the piano written in 1785, which were afterwardsmade use of in the sonatas op. 2, we must add, as certainly dating from this period of Beethoven’s life in 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’sMailied, a part of the Bagatellen op. 33 which appeared in 1803, the two preludes op. 39, a minuet published in 1803, the variationsVieni 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 probability, 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, onEin Maedchenoder Weibchen, from theMagic Flute(published in 1798); the variations onGod 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 onSe vuol ballarefrom Mozart’sFigaro; theEs War Einmalfrom Dittersdroff’sLittle Red Riding Hood, the “See He Comes,” the Messias, and a theme by Count Waldstein (appeared 1793, 1797), theEasy Sonatain 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 composed, 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 activity, 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; andadmit 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 fortune 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.