Revival: Beethoven (1933)

Harvey Grace

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351346825
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

The original intention was that this book should be entirely biographical. If it be true, however, that out main interest is (or ought to be) in what a composer did rather than in what he was, the truth applies especially to Beethoven, and above all at the present time. The scheme of the book has therefore been modified so as to include a survey of his work. An attempt to make such survey cover the whole of Beethoven's output would result in little more than a catalogue, with annotations to brief as to convey hardly anything of the essential quality of the music. It seemed, therefore, that the limited space would be best used, and the needs of the general reader more fully met, by a much less rigid and comprehensive method. My aim has been to indicate some, at least, of the more important characteristics of Beethoven's works, and to show their influence on his successors.

LUDWIG VAN
BEETHOVEN

PART I

CHAPTER I

Birth—Parentage—Early Studies—The Prodigy—A Sequence of Teachers—The Young Organist—A Visit to Holland.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN was born at Bonn on December 16th, 1770,¹ of a consumptive mother and a drunken father ; his paternal grandmother was also a dipsomaniac, and spent the last few years of her life as a compulsory abstainer in a convent. The painful facts concerning his parentage are set out at the very beginning of this book, because a just estimate of the man and his work is possible only when his terrible handicap is borne in mind. It warped his outlook, soured his temper, adversely affected his work both in quality and quantity, and no doubt shortened his life, for he died at fifty-seven, when his creative power was at its height.

The family was of Belgian origin, the first traceable members living near Louvain, whence one of them removed to Antwerp in 1650.

The composer’s grandfather, Louis, ran away to Louvain to take up an appointment as bass singer, going a short time after to Bonn (1732), where he was appointed Court Musician to the Elector Clemens August.¹ Louis Beethoven had much of the forceful personality that showed itself later in his grandson. He was an excellent musician, and a man of marked integrity. Ludwig had grounds for claiming a physical likeness to him, for Wegeler tells us that the grandfather was dark-complexioned, short of stature, muscular, “with extremely animated eyes”—a description which fits the grandson in adult years. Though he died when Beethoven was little more than three years old, he left so vivid an impression on the child that his portrait was treasured and his memory honoured throughout the composer’s life.

Johann, Beethoven’s father, was a tenor in the Royal Choir, an appointment he no doubt owed to the paternal influence. He was tall and handsome, vain and weak in character, irregular in habit, and only moderately endowed in voice and musicianship. His wife was an estimable woman and a typical hausfrau, “much occupied with sewing and knitting,” but with too little force of character to influence the thriftless Johann. The utmost she could do, apparently, was to refuse to pay his drinking debts. One of the few happy features of the family life was the tender feeling that always existed between her and her son. A lodger in the Beethoven house gives us a pleasant picture of a domestic celebration in her honour:

Each year the feast of St. Mary Magdalene (her birthday and name-day) was kept with due solemnity. The music stands were brought from the Tucksaal and placed in the two sitting-rooms overlooking the street, and a canopy, embellished with flowers, leaves, and laurels, was put up in the room containing Grand-father Louis’s portrait. On the eve of the day, Madame van Beethoven was induced to retire betimes. By ten o’clock all was in readiness; the silence was broken by the tuning up of instruments, Madame van Beethoven was awakened, requested to dress, and was then led to a beautifully draped chair beneath the canopy. An outburst of music roused the neighbours, the most drowsy soon catching the infection of gaiety. When the music was over the table was spread, and, after food and drink, the merry company fell to dancing (but in stockinged feet to mitigate the noise) and so the festivities came to an end.¹

So long as Grandfather Louis lived there was a measure of comfort and stability in the Beethoven menage; with his death began the domestic troubles that his presence had warded off. The father’s drunken habits increased; the mother’s health declined.

Beethoven’s musical studies began early, but not phenomenally so; nor is there any evidence of infantile precocity such as was shown by Mozart and even by some lesser geniuses. In the dedication of his early piano Sonatinas to the Elector we read: “Music became my first youthful pursuit in my fourth year.” But we know what Beethoven himself discovered only late in life, namely, that his father, anxious to exploit the child as a prodigy, falsified his age and made him out to be two years younger than he really was. Until his fortieth year Beethoven believed himself to have been born in 1772, and this date is given in most, if not all, of the early biographies. From the dedication quoted above it is evident that he was set to work when six years old. No doubt his father, remembering the triumphant and lucrative progress from court to court of the youthful Mozart—a progress that included a visit to Bonn in 1764—saw in him a means of restoring the family fortunes. That the boy was made to serve with rigour is certain, though we may discount some of the reports of the father’s brutality. One so notoriously faulty as Johann Beethoven was hardly likely to be judged leniently in this or any other respect. “Give a dog a bad name.” … When, therefore, we read that Cäcilia Fischer and Doctor Wegeler often saw from a window in the Fischer’s house “the little Louis van Beethoven standing in front of the clavier and weeping,” we must not hastily accept it as a proof of paternal cruelty. Many a small boy has moistened his five-finger exercises with tears, not because his father was brutal, but because his task was irksome. Beethoven never took kindly to instruction at any period of his life, and the uninteresting early stages of clavier and violin technique would hardly be attractive to him, the more so as his father was not qualified, either as musician or teacher, to make the best use of the lesson hours.

No time was lost in bringing the prodigy to market, and the following announcement appeared in the press (reproduced in the Kölnische Zeitung of December 18th, 1870):

Avertissement

Today, March 26, 1778, in the musical concert-room in the Sternen-gasse the Electoral Court Tenorist, Beethoven, will have the honour to produce two of his scholars, namely, Mlle. Averdonck, Court Contraltist, and his little son of six years. The former will have the honour to contribute various beautiful arias, the latter various clavier concertos and trios. He flatters himself that he will give complete enjoyment to all ladies and gentlemen, the more since both have had the honour of playing to the greatest delight of the entire court.

Beginning at five o’clock in the evening. Ladies and gentlemen who have not subscribed will be charged a florin. Tickets may be had at the aforesaid Akademiesaal, also of Mr. Claren auf der Bach in Mühlenstein.

No record exists as to the programme, nor do we know how far the venture was successful.

It is evident that an eight-year-old could not be set to work thus strenuously at piano and violin without detriment to his general education. Ludwig attended an elementary school, probably in a fitful manner, and in any case his practising and lessons would leave him little zest for school work. On many a morning it must have been a very tired youngster who left his home in the Rheingasse for the day’s schooling. Small wonder that he failed to distinguish himself, even in so humble an academy. Among his schoolmates was a future Electoral Councillor, Wurzer, who in his memoirs wrote:

One of my schoolmates was Luis van Beethoven, whose father held an appointment as Court Singer. Apparently his mother was already dead at the time, for Luis v. B. was distinguished by uncleanliness, negligence, etc. Not a sign was to be discovered in him of that spark of genius which glowed so brilliantly in him afterwards. I imagine that he was kept down to his musical studies from an early age by his father.

Wurzer was wrong in deducing from Beethoven’s neglected appearance that his mother was dead. Nor need we assume that she was to blame. She must have had her hands full with her dissipated husband, three growing boys, and the job of making ends meet. For the wolf was always at the door, and for this ailing woman to have kept him outside was something of a feat. The fact seems to have been that Beethoven was constitutionally untidy—even dirty—in his habits. He inherited much of his grandfather’s sterling strength of character, but there was a streak of his father’s irregularity as well. No doubt it showed itself thus early in such details as a sketchy method of washing that took no account of the less accessible portions of the neck and ears.

Beethoven’s school life was short as well as unsatisfactory: it ended when he was eleven years old, and he was never able to make good the deficiencies later. He had a smattering of French and Latin but he was always a poor hand at two of the “three R’s.” His actual writing was fair —at the start, that is—but his spelling and punctuation were always speculative. Even weaker was his arithmetic. All his life, when faced by calculations other than the simplest, he was forced to help himself by the use of the fingers; and there is no more tragi-comic picture in the history of music than that of the composer of the Ninth Symphony whiling away some of the hours on his death-bed by wrestling with the mysteries of the multiplication table.¹

Inevitably his musical attainments soon got beyond the limited range of his father, and there ensued a succession of teachers, mostly unsatisfactory. The old Court organist, van den Eeden, tried his hand when the boy was eight years old, but apparently he was a failure. A tenor singer in a theatrical company, and a good pianist, Friedrich Pfeiffer succeeded him. Pfeiffer was a man of parts, but a scapegrace; he appears to have lodged with the family, and to have become a boon companion of the father. Painters have often idealized the childhood of famous musicians, showing them picturesquely at the clavier, practising secretly by moonlight, or holding admiring groups spellbound. Nobody seems to have depicted a scene that frequently occurred during the boyhood of Ludwig: Johann Beethoven and Pfeiffer reeling in at midnight, and dragging the nine-year-old from his bed, to the key-board, where they would sometimes keep him till it was time to consider breakfast and school. No wonder he struck his schoolmate Wurzer as neglected, dirty, and dull!

Pfeiffer taught him for a year, and then left Bonn—as he had left other cities—in a significant hurry. There followed some lessons on the violin and viola from a court musician named Rovantini.

Ludwig had always been attracted by the organ and (apparently at his own request) he became a pupil of a Franciscan friar named Koch, who was expert both in playing and in organ construction. The boy made such progress that he soon became Koch’s assistant. He also struck up an acquaintance with the organist in the Minorites cloister, and undertook to play at the six o’clock Mass. His practical interest in the organ is shown by the fact that one of his memorandum books contained the measurements of the pedalboard of the Minorite instrument. He is said to have studied also at this time with Jensen, the organist of the Münsterkirche at Bonn. (An interesting reminder of this side of his youthful activities is seen in a conversation, towards the end of his life, with a young organist named Freudenberg: “I, too, played the organ a great deal in my youth, but my nerves could not stand the power of the gigantic instrument. I place an organist who is master of his instrument first among virtuosos.”)

Mention should be made at this point of a journey to Holland with his mother, apparently a combination of concert tour and visit to a friend of the family. A glimpse of this undertaking is given us by the Widow Karth, who as a child lived in the upper storey of the Beethoven house. She remembered sitting on her mother’s knee, and hearing Beethoven’s mother, “a quiet suffering woman,” tell how, during the journey, the cold was so intense that she had to wrap up the boy’s feet and keep them in her lap to prevent frostbite. Ludwig played a great deal during the visit, created a sensation, and received valuable presents. But the actual pecuniary results must have been poor, for he is reported to have said on his return, “The Dutch are skinflints (Pfennigfuchser) ; I’ll never go to Holland again.”

Although tradition says that he already composed (we hear of a Funeral Cantata being written and performed in January, 1781, when he was eleven) he appears to have had no instruction in composition until Neefe took him in hand.

¹ Only the date of baptism is recorded—December 17th. As baptism usually took place on the day following birth, the 16th is assumed.

¹ It is worth noting that at least two other members of the Antwerp branch followed the arts: Gerhard, a sculptor; and Peter, a painter. There is record, too, of a priest van Beethoven in Brabant.

¹ Quoted in Bekker’s “Beethoven,” page 5.

¹ Thayer, iii. 194.

CHAPTER II

Neefe, Friend and Teacher—An Early Reference to Beethoven in the Press—Beethoven as Deputy-Kappellmeister—First Publications—Appointment as Assistant Court Organist—Word Portrait of Beethoven as a boy—Operatic Experiences.

THE name of Christian Gottlob Neefe would probably have been long since forgotten but for his connection with Beethoven. If he has received a kind of shadowy immortality it is no more than he deserves for his fostering care of young Ludwig. He came to Bonn in 1779 as musical director of the Grossmann theatrical company, on the invitation of the Elector, who wished to do his part in the attempt then being made to form a national theatre. Neefe succeeded van den Eeden as Court organist in 1781, to the disappointment of the Beethovens, who had hoped that Ludwig, already assistant, would step into the post. However, so busy a man as Neefe would need a responsible deputy, and the next best thing to the appointment itself was the post of assistant, with payment in the shape of all-round instruction. Neefe rose well to the responsibility of training such a boy. He was severe, but apparently not more so than was desirable in the case of a pupil who, as a result of frequently changing and generally indifferent tuition, must have developed much that was unsatisfactory in technique and taste. Moreover, we may be sure that the “prodigy” atmosphere had not been without ill-effects. Neefe seems to have recognized both the boy’s genius and the need of corrective discipline. He has been accused of undue severity, but he is acquitted by the results; and Beethoven’s own gratitude, handsomely expressed in after years, shows that, although the boy probably resented drastic criticism at the time, he ultimately realized its value. Ten years later, on his departure from Bonn for Vienna, we find him writing to Neefe: “I thank you for the counsel which you gave me so often in my progress in my divine art. If I ever become a great man, yours shall be a share of the credit.”

From Neefe himself came the first printed notice of Beethoven. Writing to “Cramer’s Magazine,” on March 2nd, 1783, concerning the musical life of Bonn, he said.

Louis van Beethoven, son of the tenor singer mentioned, a boy of eleven years¹ a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Masters of Music
• Original Title Page
• Edition
• Preface
• Contents
• Part I
• Part II Beethoven’s Personality
• Part III Beethoven the Composer
• List of Works
• Index of Names
• Index of Works