CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER II.1795-1806.THE EROICA AND FIDELIO.

1795-1806.

THE EROICA AND FIDELIO.

Music in Vienna—Society in Vienna—Beethoven’s Dedications—Lichnowsky—The Eroica and Fidelio—Beethoven’s First Great Exploits—Plans for Future Work—Decides to Remove to the North—New Compositions—His Improvisations—Disappointment in North Germany—Prince Louis Ferdinand—Makes His Home in Austria—Neglects His Health—His Deafness—Origin of the Eroica—Napoleon I—Bernadotte—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.

Thegolden 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 nobler existence. A consequence of this was that more attention was paid to chamber music than any other; and we accordingly find that the greater number of Beethoven’s compositions, written at this period, are of thatstyle 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 have the three trios op. 1, dedicated to Prince Karl von Lichnowsky. The man who had been the pupil and friend of Mozart might be glad, indeed, to see a substitute found so soon for that departed genius. A quartet consisting of the able artists Schuppanzigh, Sina, Weiss and Kraft, played at his house every Friday. Dr. Wegeler informs us that Beethoven, in 1794, lived with the Prince, who, at a later date, paid him a salary of twelve hundred marks. The variations onSeht er Kommt, (See he comes) 1797, were dedicated to his consort, the Princess Christiane,neeThun. She prized Beethoven very highly, and, as he once said of her himself, 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 Beethoven was not very intimate, although the commission to write the mass op. 86 was given byNicholas 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 “merchant.” The sonata op. 7 (1797), is dedicated to Countess Keglevics. The first concerto, which was finished in 1794, is dedicated to the same person, then known as Princess Odescalchi. The trios op. 9, as well as the brilliant sonata op. 22, belong, by right of dedication, to the Russian Count Browne, whom Beethoven himself calledle 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 Lichnowsky is evidenced by the dedication to him of op. 14, thePathetique(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, wasdedicated the sonata op. 26 with the beautiful funeral march (1802). The two lovely sonatas 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 theFidelio; and the quintet op. 16 which was finished in 1797 to Prince Schwarzenberg. When we connect the name of Prince Lobkowitz with the first quartets op. 18, composed in 1797-1800; that of Baron von Swieten the lover of the well-tempered clavichord 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. Reichart, that the Austrian nobility of this period loved and appreciated music better probably 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 disturbance of their pecuniary circumstances consequent on the wars which came to an end only in 1815, and which diminished their favorable influence on the cultivation of the art of music. But our artist had all the advantagesof 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 giving expression to the ideas of life. The first real exploits of our artist were theEroicaand theFideliowith 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 subsequently 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 remuneration 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 musicpublishers 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 husband’s Hymn to Joy—Freude schoener Goetterfunken—to music. We thus see that he, even now, harbored those great ideas which engaged him at the close of his labors, in the composition 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 possible in South-German Austria. But in the North, the memory of “old Fritz” still lived; there the stern rule of mind and conscience,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 1796. “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 ariaAh 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 playedthe violincello. The very first impression received by Beethoven seems to have been decisive. K. Czerny, to whom he taught the piano, tells us something from his own recollection 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 improvisation was very brilliant, astonishing in the highest degree.... No matter in what society he was thrown, he made such an impression on all his hearers that it frequently happened that not a dry eye was to be seen, while many broke into sobs. There was something 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 improvisation 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 children?’ and for that reason alone he once declined an invitation extended to him by the king of Prussia, after an improvisation of this kind.”

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 Voltaire’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 person in Berlin who seemed to Beethoven a man, in the full sense of the word, was Prince Louis Ferdinand. With genuine frankness, he remarked 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-enthusiastic characterfound 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 example 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 counterpoise 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.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 significance 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 consequences 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.From this time his deafness kept on increasing.” 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 courage. 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 character; 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 memorable work of his genius—to theEroica, followed 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 conquerhim.” 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 contemporaries men of sovereign ambition, only one person, Napoleon Bonaparte, able to make any great impression on a man who had chosen for his motto: “Power 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. General 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 belonged to the middle class; he was the representative of the Republic, and could, therefore, indulge, unconstrained, in personal intercourse with whomsoever he pleased.

The celebrated violinist, Rudolph Kreutzer, to whom Beethoven’sKreutzer 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 friendship for him, should have been more than usually intimate. Bernadotte, who was sincerely devoted to Napoleon, and who must have felt himself drawn still more closely to Beethoven, because of his enthusiasm for the general, suggested to him the idea of celebrating the exploits of his hero by a symphony. Beethoven so informed his amanuensis, Schindler, in 1823, and his account is corroborated by other facts, that such was the first impulse to the composition of theEroica.

But the advocate of power was destined soon to swell to the proportions of the hero of intellectual courage. “For thus does fate knock at the gates.” Beethoven used these words in 1823, in speaking “with uncontrollable enthusiasm” of that wonderfulmotiveat the opening of the symphony in C minor. The last movement of the work, the fanfare-likefinale, so expressive of the joy of victory,shows that he here described a victory indeed, the surmounting of the obstacles and darkness of life, even if those obstacles and that darkness consisted only of “the infirmities of the body.” The sketches of this movement, however, 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 theadagiowas 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 thesemotivestook 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 understoodby all who would understand Beethoven’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 triumph 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 hisAdelaide, which appeared in 1797, gained for him the hearts of all persons of fine feeling; 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 inadagio, which he is said to have written in a tempest of “passionate feeling”;of op. 10, with its genuine masculine profile; of the revolutionary sonata in C minor, with the mysterious struggle in theallegrettoin No. II., and the brilliant exultation of victory in theallegroin No. III., the tragic song of thelargo, the gentle grace of the minuet—here used exceptionally in the place of thescherzo, as we find it already in op. 1; and, last of all, the droll question of little Snub Nose, in thefinale. And yet these were followed by thePathetique, with its exquisite and enrapturingadagio, 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 overflowing; by theadagioof No. I, another Romeo-and-Juliet grave scene; by theadagioof 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 beginningof 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 magnificent verses:

“Wie schön, O Mensch, mit deinem PalmenzweigeStehst du an des Jahrhunderts Neige,In edler stolzer Männlichkeit!Mit aufgeschlossnem Sinn, mit Geistesfülle,Voll milden Ernsts, in thatenreicher Stille,Der reifste Sohn der Zeit.Frei durch Vernunft, stark durch Gesetze,Durch Sanftmuth gross und reich durch Schätze,Die lange Zeit dein Busen dir verschwieg.”

“Wie schön, O Mensch, mit deinem Palmenzweige

Stehst du an des Jahrhunderts Neige,

In edler stolzer Männlichkeit!

Mit aufgeschlossnem Sinn, mit Geistesfülle,

Voll milden Ernsts, in thatenreicher Stille,

Der reifste Sohn der Zeit.

Frei durch Vernunft, stark durch Gesetze,

Durch Sanftmuth gross und reich durch Schätze,

Die lange Zeit dein Busen dir verschwieg.”

And now began for Beethoven a period of severe trials, brought upon him by himself. Absorbed in work, he neglected to take sufficient care of his physical health. His trouble with his hearing was increasing, but he paid no attention to it. His carelessness in this regard 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, inKurland, who had left Vienna two years before. He says:

“Your own 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 sadness 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 Beterinin which he gives us a description of a daughter praying for her noble father, who has been condemned to death. But in this painful struggle with self, we also hear the stormof passion, in words as well as in tones. Beethoven’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 execrated 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 thunders of power may be heard in thefinaleof that sonata. When it was published, the following year, its dedication ran:Alla damigella contessa Giulietta Guicciardi. The celebrated Giulietta! Her friendship was, indeed, a cheering ray of sunshine in Beethoven’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,Count Guicciardi, originally from Modena, was one of the families of the higher class with whom Beethoven had formed an intimate acquaintance through his art. Guicciardi’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 onIch denke 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 physical strength has been increasing more than ever before,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. 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 entirely. O, 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 intellectual 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 questionings of fate in the opening chord; the jubilant, tempestuous enjoyment of pleasure; the expression of woe, more terrible in anticipationthan 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. Beethoven, as the master of the intellectual world of tones, began his career with this sonata in D minor. From this time forward, his every piece is a psychological picture 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 during every moment of his existence. For thus it was now with Beethoven. The deepest sorrow endows him with untrammeled serenityof mind. Darkness becomes to him the parent 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 symphony (op. 36). It had its origin in the “sublime feeling” which “animated” him in the beautiful summer days of 1802; as had also the brilliantKreutzer 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 theEroica. To this period belongs the so-called “Heiligenstadt Will,” which discloses to us the inmost 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 hopelessness. 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 ofwhat 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 disposed. 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 temperament, 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 harbors beneficence and love for human kind. Oyou 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 preponderantly the musician of life, force and of the brilliant play of the intellect; and his compositions are still pre-eminently works of art and of the fancy. TheEroica(op. 55), which was finished in 1803, possessed these characteristics 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 hadacted 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 me 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 better things?”

Beethoven had said of himself that he had something to do in the world besides marrying. His ideal was not to live in such cramped circumstances. He knew of “nobler and better things.” Yet it seems that he offered his hand to the “lovely, charming girl” in this year 1803, when he began to have a prospect of permanently bettering his condition, and that Giulietta was not disinclined to marry him. But family considerations prevented the decisive step; and she was married in the fall of the same year to Count Gallenberg. “Despising” her—whether rightly or wrongly we have no means of determining, but we do know that she was not happy—Beethoventurned 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, because that remarkable letter to his “immortal love,” of which we shall yet have occasion to speak, was erroneously supposed to be addressed 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 ambition 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 littlepoems 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, theEroica. This sacrifice 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—mais je la méprisaisbut still more from the ideal of the value of faithful love which now became rooted in his soul, and which we see reflected in theFidelio, that immediately followed theEroica, and which presents us with the most beautiful of all female characters. In its composition, we find united that warmth of heart and that intellectual 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 theEroicafrom the elevating nature of humanitarian ideas transferred to the region of public life.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 Republic might very well suggest to him, at the beginning 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 theEroicadescribes the most varied 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 existence, one more worthy of human beings. But, at the close of the movement, the victorious 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 longings of the heart in the dark robes of resignation.

Beethoven’s fancy as an artist fully comprehendedthe 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 sublime and solemn step of the funeral march; for, since the days of Cæsar 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 theEdition 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 that 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 funeralmarch. It is the ever-living, ever-awakening hero of humanity, the genius of our race, that is solemnly borne to the grave to the rhythm of this wonderful march—a march which has in it something of the tragic pathos of a Shakespeare or an Æschylus. Beethoven in this march became a tragic writer of purely instrumental music, and gave evidence of that quality 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 onthe floor and did not again look at it for a long time. When it appeared in 1806, it was under the name of theSinfonia 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 before 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 instrumental fresco painting of a hero who strives and suffers for the sake of what is most precious to man, and in Beethoven’s only opera, theFidelio, which made the latter the natural successor of theEroica. Florestan dared “boldly to tell the truth,” and this, his entering 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 between 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 ideallygreat, 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 balletPrometheus, which represents in a sense, the history of the creation of man in choreographic 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, Schikaneder, in the same spring of 1803, saw that the oratorioChristus am Oelberge(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,Alexander—a very suitable one, considering Beethoven’s own heroic style, and his feeling at the time. But nothing came of it. There can be no doubt, however, that a piece whichhe had sketched and intended to make a part of it, the duet,O Namenlose Freude(O Nameless Joy), was afterwards embodied in theFidelio. 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 success, and made a powerful impression on Beethoven. 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 frequently of his best friend!” A subject like that of theFideliomust, of itself, have taken strong hold of a man like Beethoven, becauseof 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 background 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 recognize them, and to understand their action from their inner feelings. This, in connection with a very powerful declamation, is the continuation of the dramatic characteristics which we greet in theFidelio. 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 theFidelio, Beethoven has given form to the language of thesoul 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 fragmentary 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 language was, like Mozart’s Cantilene, rich in soul. Yet melodies likeKomm, Hoffnung, lass den letzten Stern,In des Lebens FruehlingstagenandO namen, namenlose Freude, are of such a character that “humanity will never forget them.” Like the Holy Grail, they furnish food and light at the same time, and, like certain forces, produce a greater yield in proportion 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 evidence of a profundity of soul and of a development of mind which separate—toto coelo—Beethovenfrom 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, areWir muessen gleich zu Werke schreiten, the chorus of prisoners, the picture of Florestan’s dungeon, the digging of the grave, and above all the thrillingToet’ 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 calledLeonore, 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 importance 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 enthusiastic devotion was able to smelt the ore of the separate arias, duets and terzettoeswhich make up the matter of the whole; but this it could not do here fully enough to produce that natural flow which dramatic taste even now demanded. Moreover, the storm of war broke upon Vienna and deprived Beethoven’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 human voice. On the 13th of October, 1805, Napoleon entered Vienna, and after the 20th theFideliowas 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 muchexcited, and were it not for the prayers and entreaties of the gentle and tender Princess Christiane, 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 public, but Beethoven thought himself surrounded 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 overture and to a new poetical expression of the subject, to the greatLeonoren-Overture, known as No. 3, but which is properly No. 2. Beethoven, 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 hisLeonore; 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 rescuer; 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 loudest song of praise of freedom and happiness. The symphonic poem,Leonore, as a whole, far surpasses the dramatic work itself. Together with theEroica, 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: TheOpferlied(1st arrangement),Seufzer eines Ungeliebten, variationsquant’è più bello, about 1795; variations toNel cor piùand minueta la Viganowhich appeared in 1796; sonata op. 49, I, about 1796; sonata for four hands op. 6, the rondo op. 51, I, and variations to a Russian dance, in 1797; variationsto a Swiss song andMich brennt, 1798;Gretels Warnung,La partenza, composed in 1798; variations to theLa stessa,Kind, willst duandTaendeln 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; variations,Bei Maennernwhich appeared in 1802; terzetto op. 116, sonatas for violin, op. 30, variations op. 34 and 35, composed in 1802;Glueck der Freundschaft, op. 88 andZaertliche Liebewhich appeared in 1803; trio variations op. 44 and romance for the violin, op. 40, composed in 1803; three marches op. 45, variations to “Rule Brittannia,” and theWachtelschlag, 1804; sonata op. 53, together with theandantein F major, originally belonging to it, thetriple concertoop. 56, and the sonata op. 57, begun in 1804,An die 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;Empfindungen bei Lydiens Untreuebelonging probably to 1806.

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