THE ROMANTICISM OF BEETHOVEN.

ByELEONORE D’ESTERRE-KEELING.

Thetitle of this paper will probably surprise many of my readers who have been accustomed to regard Beethoven solely as the king of classic music.

I have not set myself so foolish a task as the attempt to prove that this is not his true position. Undoubtedly Beethoven is king of classic music, but—how much more than that he is!

It must have struck everyone that there is a certain quality in Beethoven’s music which is absent from that of every other classic composer, a quality which appeals to each one of us personally, and which does not appeal in vain.

THE HOUSE WHERE BEETHOVEN WAS BORN.

If we play consecutively three or four Sonates by Haydn or by Mozart, what is almost invariably the result?

In each case we like the first one and probably the second one; at the third we begin to feel bored, and at the fourth we shut up the book. And yet how lovely they all are! Haydn takes us to play with the children; Mozart introduces us to the ballroom. But Haydn did not spend his life’s days on a merry-go-round, and Mozart was not perpetually paying compliments. Quite the contrary. Haydn, as we know, never had any children, and that disagreeable wife of his left little happiness for his home. As for Mozart—well, Mozart had a charming wife, but he was so pitifully poor that one winter’s morning, when the snow lay thick on the ground outside, a friendly neighbour, calling in to see how the young couple were getting on, found them dancing a waltz on the bare boards of their scantily furnished room. They had no fire, and this was the only means that they could devise for keeping themselves warm.

When Mozart went on a journey, he wrote the prettiest love-letters to his Stanzerl. Here is a bit of one of them:—“Dear little wife! If I only had a letter from you! If I were to tell you all that I do with your dear likeness, how you would laugh! For instance, when I take it out of its case, I say ‘God greet thee, Stanzerl, God greet thee, thou rascal, shuttlecock, pointy-nose, nick-nack, bit and sup!’ And when I put it back, I let it slip in very slowly, saying, with each little push, ‘Now—now—now!’ and at the last, quickly—‘Good night, little mouse, sleep well!’” There is nothing in all Mozart’s music the least little bit like that. And why?

Mozart’s music is strictly classical and anti-romantic. His character is stamped upon it, as the character of Haydn is stamped upon his music, but his circumstances, the events of his daily life, have no part in it, and whether he had been rich or poor, successful or despairing, his music would have been exactly the same.

With Beethoven quite the reverse is the case. If it were possible to play the whole volume of Beethoven’s Sonates at one sitting, the last thing player or listener could complain of would be the monotony which culminates in boredom.

There would be Beethoven tender, Beethoven sublime, Beethoven ferocious, Beethoven serene, and as many more Beethovens as there are adjectives in the dictionary. And this is the secret of Beethoven’s popularity.

For the musician there is the perfect form, the exquisite mode of expression; for the amateur there is the man, with all the hopes and fears and aspirations which he shares with his fellow man.

Beethoven wrote the most meagre of letters, but every emotion that swayed him found utterance in his music, and this it is which gives to his music the quality known as Romanticism.

Many definitions have been given of the terms classical and romantic, but the clearest and cleverest definition that I have met is that given by the French writer, Monsieur Brunetière,—“Classicism makes the impersonality of a work of art one of the conditions of its perfection, while Romanticism means Individualism.” In other words, classicism confines itself to the thing done; romanticism is more interested in the doer of that thing.

Beethoven’s earliest works in each branch of his art are purely classical. During their composition he was leaning on Haydn and Mozart. Life had not yet become to him a matter of absorbing interest, for he still regarded it from the standpoint of the student.

The Fantasie Sonate, Op. 27, No. 2 (ignorantly called the “Moonlight Sonata”), opens to us the first page of the tone-poet’s life. It was written in 1801, when Beethoven was thirty-one.

Thirty-one! At this age a man feels life at its best; it is then that his pulse beats strongest, that, his powers being fully developed, he sees the years stretch smiling beforehim, like the vision of a promised land. All this Beethoven felt, and he was fully conscious of his power. “The Eroica,” the great ‘C Minor,’ “The Choral Symphony,” “Fidelio,” locked within that mighty brain, awaited only the master’s bidding to come forth and delight a world.

But between him and this glorious future there fell a shadow which was destined to rob life of all that made life dear. He plainly saw that shadow.

In a letter to a friend, written at this time, he says, “How sadly must I live! All that I love I must avoid. The years will pass without bringing that which my talent and my art had promised. Mournful resignation, in which alone I can find refuge!”

Already the gates of his ears were closing, and deafness was shutting him out from the world which he had just begun to love.

Then he met the beautiful Countess Julie Guicciardi. She was sixteen, she was poor, and he gave her music lessons without payment, accepting only in return linen which her pretty fingers had stitched.

She was flattered by his homage (what girl would not be flattered by the homage of a Beethoven!) and she encouraged his attentions. Perhaps even she really loved him.

Again he wrote to a friend: “Somewhat more agreeably I live now, going more among people. This change has been wrought by a dear, bewitching girl, who loves me and whom I love. At last after two years’ misery, some happy moments have come, and I feel for the first time that marriage could make me happy.”

Poor Beethoven! Countess Julie’s father had other plans for his young daughter, and her music master was scornfully dismissed.

The mental conflict of this period found expression in the “Fantasie Sonate.” The mournful resignation of the first movement contrasts vividly with the thunder of the finale.

In a letter to his friend Wegeler, Beethoven now wrote:—“If nothing else is possible I will defy my fate, though moments will always come in which I shall be the wretchedest of men.”

He spoke so much more eloquently in music than he did in words, that I should like to take my readers to the piano and tell his story there. But let us beware of playing the Sonateromantically. In interpreting an emotional work this is a danger which must always be carefully avoided. We should not repeat the poet’s story as it affects us, but as it affected him.

The resignation of the first movement must be the resignation of a strong nature—there is fire beneath it. A Beethoven does not shed tears.

In the second movement the poet conjures up before his mind the memory of happy hours, gone for ever. His child-love appears before him in all her grace and witchery. There must be something phantom-like about it, something very tender, almost intangible.

The last movement is a song of anguish and despair. The proud spirit “defies its fate,” but there are moments in which we recognise “the wretchedest of men.”

Thus ended Beethoven’s first love-story. There was no tender parting between him and Julie; the “Fantasie-Sonate,” dedicated to her, was his last love-letter, and with it he dismissed her from his mind. “Strength,” he said proudly, “is the characteristic of men who distinguish themselves above others, and it is mine!” It was his.

BEETHOVEN.

All Europe was now ringing with the fame of Napoleon, the only person on earth—except Goethe—whom Beethoven regarded as his equal, while of him, even, he said, when, in 1806, news of Napoleon’s victory at Jena was brought, “What a pity that I don’t understand war as I understand music.Iwould conquer him!”

In this mood the Eroica Symphony was written. It is a chapter of history.

But I have not space to follow the great Romanticist through all his moods and their outpourings. I must confine myself to a few of them.

In October 1802 Beethoven was sent by his doctors to Heiligenstadt, a quiet village not far from Vienna. He was in a state of the deepest despondency. The shadows were closing round him, and the voices of the world reached him but faintly.

In the stillness of the country he found peace, the exquisite Sonate in D minor, op. 31, no. 2, was written there. Let us take it to the piano too, and listen to its tragic story.

The long drawn out arpeggios with which it opens are the longings of his heart. (He was still only thirty-two!) Joy dances fantastically round him and vanishes. Another sigh,another vision of joy, and then heaven opens and he looks in.

COUNTESS THERESE.

I do not think that even Beethoven ever wrote anything more wonderful, more full of the ecstasy of being, than that glorious first movement.

ROOM IN BEETHOVEN’S HOUSE.

The second part of the Sonate is very slow, and at first it seems to promise peace for the troubled soul. It is in B flat major, which should and does suggest rest. But after such a struggle as the first movement indicated, peace does not come at once; listen to the throbbing, shuddering triplets in the bass; they begin at the seventeenth bar, and every time that they occur they are followed by a lament in the minor. They accompany that lament. Further on, we find a lovely song-like passage in F major (bar 31), and now see how beautifully Beethoven arrives at that song. Laying a gentle hand on his triplets (bar 27) he smoothes them into even notes, changes the sad C minor for C major, and then brings in his song. But that song is only a rift in the clouds; the storm comes on again, always heralded by the triplets, and note the curious accompaniment given later on to the left hand. Right up at the top of the key-board it begins and slowly it creeps down, always down. Hope would ascend—that passage marks despair. Once again comes the song of comfort, this time in B flat major, and the movement closes calmly in the same key.

The last part of the Sonate had a curious origin. Seated in his silent room, which looked out upon the little-frequented high road leading to the village, the composer became conscious of the trab-trab of a horse whose rider was passing by. The rhythmic movements of the animal’s hoofs, heard as they were but faintly by the half deaf musician, resolved themselves into a phrase in his mind which he jotted down mechanically, and this phrase persistently reiterated, formed the conclusion to the Sonate which was then filling heart and brain.

Only Beethoven would have conceived psychology so good as that. How often in the most crucial moments some trifling, quite irrelevant detail forces itself upon our notice, and absorbs attention which we should be unwilling to acknowledge.

BEETHOVEN, 1786-1827.

The portrait of the great composer’s soul, which he painted for us in the D minor Sonate,would have been less perfect had he withheld the trivial circumstance which awoke him from his dreams, and gave him again to the world.

At this country retreat the famous Heiligenstadt will was also written.

It shows us another side of Beethoven’s character, and leads to another phase of his Romanticism.

The will begins thus: “Oh, you men, you who have thought of me as defiant, stubborn, misanthropic, what wrong you have done me! Bethink you that for six years an incurable condition has befallen me, made worse by foolish doctors who from year to year deceived me with hopes of improvement. Though born with a fiery temperament, and even susceptible to the charms of society, I have had to separate myself from everyone, and pass my years in loneliness.

“What mortification when someone, standing beside me, caught from afar the sound of a flute and I heard nothing!

“Such incidents brought me to the verge of madness, and little more was wanted to make me put an end to my existence.

RELICS OF BEETHOVEN.

“Only my art held me back. Ah, I felt that it was impossible to leave the world before I had accomplished my mission!

“Great God, Thou who lookest down upon me, Thou seest my heart and Thou knowest that love and goodwill abide there.”

Immediately after this will, the six sacred songs, to words by Gellert (op. 48), were composed.

There is something infinitely pathetic in the thought of this great, lonely man, so profoundly ashamed of his bodily infirmity, and so conscious that he was misunderstood by all his fellow-men, turning thus in the hour of his sorest need to the One whom he could trust. The first of the six songs is a Prayer, the last a Song of Repentance. They are all very simple, as such songs should be, and through them the strong, personal note is unmistakable.

The quiet life at Heiligenstadt had another beneficial effect upon Beethoven. Both the Pastoral Symphony and the Pastoral Sonate trace the source of their inspiration to the pine forests, the rustic surroundings and Sabbath stillness of this picturesque village. The Symphony of course was a later work, but it was also composed at this, Beethoven’s favourite holiday resort.

But ardent lover of Nature though he was, he was not the sort of man who could pass his days in sylvan solitude. He was extremely sociable, even, in his way, extremely domestic.

Probably if he had secured the happy home life for which he so often longed, we should have been the losers, for he might truly have said, with Heine—

“Out of my great sorrows I make the little songs.”

When he made his will at Heiligenstadt he believed himself to be dying. At the close of it came this prayer—

“O Providence, let once a day of pure happiness shine upon me!”

That prayer was granted, and he found many days of pure happiness by the side of the Countess Therese of Brunswick, the aunt of the faithless Julie.

Countess Therese was the right woman for him, and nobody knows why their marriage did not take place. They were certainly betrothed, and Therese’s brother Franz was Beethoven’s most intimate friend. To him the Sonate Appassionata was dedicated, surely the grandest tribute that could be paid to any friendship. It was written during the composer’s visit to the Brunswicks’ estate in Hungary in the summer of 1806, and probably was intended as a message for Therese, which her lover could not trust himself to deliver.

Soon after leaving the Brunswicks Beethoven wrote to the Count—

“Dear, dear Franz! Only a line to tell you that I have made good terms with Clementi. Two hundred pounds I am to get, and over and above I can sell the same works again in Germany and France. Further, he has given me other orders, so that I may reasonably hope to attain the dignity of a true artist in early years. Kiss thy sister Therese, and tell her that I am afraid I shall become famous before she has erected a monument to me.”

At the same time, July, 1806, the much-discussed love-letter was written. This letter was found, after his death, among Beethoven’s papers, with the portrait of the Countess Therese, which is reproduced in this number ofThe Girl’s Own Paper. The original is an oil-painting, and on the back of it is written (in German of course):—

“To the rare genius, the great artist, the good man, from T. B.”

Every biographer of Beethoven has had a different theory as to the love-letter, but it is now generally granted that it must have been addressed to the Countess Therese, whom Beethoven in it calls “meine unsterbliche Geliebte.” (My immortal love). The letter begins:[1]“Mein Leben, mein Alles, mein ich” (My life, my all, my self), and the exquisite Sonate in F sharp, op. 78, which is so seldom played, translates those words into music. This Sonate was written in the autumn of 1809, when Beethoven was again with the Brunswicks in Hungary, and it is dedicated to the Countess Therese.

Rather an amusing incident in connection with it is related in a conversation between Beethoven and his pupil Czerny, at the end of which the composer exclaimed irritably—

“People always talk of the C sharp minor Sonate as if I hadn’t composed much better things. The F sharp Sonate is something very different!”

The C sharp minor Sonate was Julie Guicciardi’s, and it did not please Therese Brunswick’s lover to be reminded so often of that old love-story.

But he was quite right. The F sharp Sonate undoubtedly is a very different thing. It is less passionate, but it is much more finished. There is a sweet serenity about it which suits the noble face of the gracious lady who inspired it. My readers will need no guidance through it;one glance at Therese’s portrait will help them more than anything I could say. “Mein Leben, mein Alles, mein besseres ich” sings the little prelude, and then the piece glides along like a boat on a sunny sea. Lucky Beethoven and lucky Therese, the day of pure happiness has come!

There is one more phase of Beethoven’s character upon which I want briefly to touch. Everyone knows that during his last years he was often in great straits for want of money. Perhaps you, my readers, will not think that money troubles are a feature of Romanticism, but money troubles, like others, may be the cause of anxiety, heart-burning or disappointment, and when these feelings are expressed in any work, the personal element, with them introduced, is the source of Romanticism.

Amongst Beethoven’s MSS. there was found after his death a Rondo inscribed in his own handwriting—

“The rage over a lost penny, worked off in a Rondo.”

That Rondo is one of the prettiest and the wittiest things in music.

The average Englishman will scarcely be able to realise that a man like Beethoven, a genius, could make such a fuss over a lost penny, but those who know Germans will be less incredulous.

Perhaps, too, it was not just the penny; it may have been the principle!

At all times Beethoven was suspicious, and he always thought that he was being cheated. He very often was cheated, and when we remember that by this time he was stone-deaf, and that he had no sympathetic friend to whom he could confide his troubles, we shall begin to understand why he put his rage over a lost penny into his music, with all his other emotions.

The piece (op. 129) is not easy to play, for it requires a reckless self-abandonment which is only possible to those players to whom it offers no technical difficulties. Bülow’s edition of it, published by Cotta, is the best. In one of his notes the editor says, “You can see the papers fly from the table, while the furious hunt proceeds,” and he declares that the man who wrote this brilliant Rondo could have written anopera bouffeif he had tried.

Much more might be said about Beethoven’s Romanticism. I have not touched at all upon his more exalted phases of feeling, the patriotism which was so wonderfully expressed in the seventh Symphony, the philosophy of life which culminated in the Choral Symphony with its impossible “Ode to Joy,” telling in tones what Goethe tried to tell in words at the end of the second part ofFaust.

My object had been to show that musical form, or perfect classicism, was the beautiful vessel which Beethoven made use of to carry his own human thoughts and emotions, and that, as Maurice Hewlett says in his book,Pan and the Young Shepherd—

“Life goes to a tune, according as a man is tuneful, hath music.”

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