Beethoven, a character study Part 12

On April 3, Mozart's Requiem was sung at the church of the Augustines, and shortly thereafter, Cherubini's Requiem was sung for him at the Karlskirche.

The magnificence of his funeral, when compared with his simple mode of life, calls to mind the great contrasts which he was always producing in his music. Equally great contrasts had always come up in his life.

Living in the proudest most exclusive and bigoted monarchy in Europe, at a time when feudal authority had not yet been entirely abolished, he held himself to be as good or better than Emperor or Cardinal. On receiving a request one morning from the Empress of Austria to call on her, he sent back word that he would be busy all that day, but would endeavor to call on the following day. There is no record of his having gone at all. His unjustifiable conduct toward the Imperial family, while at Toplitz with Goethe, has been touched on in a previous chapter.

Frimmel states that something similar occurred at Baden, but does not give his authority. Beethoven arraigned the Judiciary, even when writing conciliatory letters to the judges. In his letters to the different magistrates during the litigation over his nephew, he is often satirical and sarcastic in spite of himself. His criticisms of other judges, his references to the manner in which justice is administered in Austria, ill.u.s.trate his temerity and independence. His scorn of the King of Saxony, on account of being dilatory in paying the subscription for the Grand Ma.s.s, was p.r.o.nounced. He alludes to him as "the poor Dresdener" in his letters, and he even went so far as to talk about suing him when the payment was still longer withheld.[F] All this from a man who at times did not have a decent coat to wear, or a second pair of shoes; who sometimes accepted advances from his housekeeper for the necessaries of life. His life was so simple and circ.u.mscribed that he never saw the ocean, or a snow-covered mountain, although living within sight of the foothills of the Alps. He never returned to his native city though living not a great distance from it.

[F] Kalischer. _Neue Beethovenbriefe_. Berlin, 1902.

The immediate cause of death, as demonstrated by the post-mortem held the day after his decease, was cirrhosis of the liver, the dropsy, of which Schindler makes such frequent mention, being an outcome of, and connected with, the liver trouble. The organ showed every indication of chronic disease. It was greatly shrunken, its very texture being changed into a hard substance. That alcoholism is the commonest cause of cirrhosis is well known, but in Beethoven's case some other cause for the disease must be found. He was in the habit of taking wine with his meals, a practice so common in Vienna at that time that not to have done so would have been regarded as an eccentricity, but he never indulged in it to excess, except possibly on a few occasions when in the company of Holz. It can hardly be brought about by the use of wines, but is produced by the inordinate use of spirituous liquors, something for which Beethoven did not care. Cirrhosis was probably the cause of his father's death, as he was a confirmed inebriate; but this cannot be connected with the cirrhosis of the son; the disease is not transmissible.

Beethoven's deafness probably began with a "cold in the head" which was neglected. The inflammatory process then extended to the Eustachian tubes. When it reached this point it was considered out of the reach of treatment in his time, and for long after. Even in our own time, in the light of advanced medical science, such a condition is serious and is not always amenable to treatment, some impairment of the hearing frequently occurring even with the best of care and under conditions precluding the thought of a congenital tendency. The difficulty as revealed by the post-mortem, lay in a thickening of the membrane of the Eustachian tubes. The office of these tubes is to supply air to the cavity on the inner side of the drum-membrane, known as the middle ear.

As is well known, a pa.s.sage exists from the outer ear to the drum. The Eustachian tubes connect the middle ear with the upper portion of the throat from whence the air supply to the middle ear is obtained. We cannot imagine a drum to be such unless there is air on both sides of the membrane. Exhaust the air of an ordinary drum, and its resonance would be gone. A similar condition obtained with Beethoven. With the closure of the Eustachian tubes the air supply to the middle ear was cut off; the air in the cavity finally became absorbed, and a retraction and thickening of the drum-membrane with consequent inability to transmit sound vibrations followed.

The hypothesis of heredity, sometimes brought forward to account for his deafness, would have more weight had the lesion shown itself in the case of either of his other brothers. As it is, there is no hint to be found of even a tendency to deafness in any other of the Beethovens, whether Johann, Karl, or the nephew. In any event a congenital tendency of this kind would have been more likely to develop itself in Karl, the weakling, than in the st.u.r.dy Ludwig.

The master's known impulsiveness and carelessness in matters connected with the preservation of his health, lead to the conclusion that he himself contributed much to his deafness. He was fond of pure air outside, but sometimes had for a sleeping room an alcove wholly without ventilation, so dark that he had to dress in another room. We hear much of his practice of taking brisk walks on the ramparts or in the suburbs, in the intervals of his work. There is at least one instance on record,--there were probably many such cases,--of his coming in after a walk, overheated, perspiring, and seating himself before an open window in a draught. Another hygienic measure which he abused was his custom of frequently bathing his head in cold water while at work, probably to counteract the excessive circulation of the blood in the head brought about by his brain-work. A chilling of the body, particularly in the neck and the back of the head when overheated is a frequent cause of inflammation of the middle ear. Von Frimmel calls attention to the dust-storms which are a feature of Vienna. They were probably worse in Beethoven's time than now, as but little attention was paid to hygienic measures in those days. This no doubt aggravated the trouble.

CHAPTER XIX

LIFE'S PURPORT

Das Grenzenlose braust um mich. Weit hinaus glanzt mir Raum und Zeit. Wohlan! Wohlauf! altes Herz.

--FRIEDERICH NIETZSCHE.

Beethoven's life in its devotion to the attainment of a single end, the perfection of his art, affords an object lesson, which cannot fail to encourage and stimulate every one engaged in creative work of any kind.

His earnestness and industry is the key-note to his achievement. He worked harder than any composer we have any record of, with the possible exception of Wagner. If we consider how the compositions improved in his hands, while being worked over, as is shown by the sketch-books, a simple process of reasoning will convince the reader that any man's work, in any line, can be improved by adopting the same methods.

Beethoven's own words in this connection are, "the boundary does not yet exist, of which it can be said to talent cooperating with industry, 'Thus far shalt thou go and no farther.'" The more he worked over his compositions the better they became. When he required a theme for a particular purpose, if the right thought did not at once come to mind, his practice was to write as near it as possible. By the time this was done an improvement would suggest itself. He would then write it again, and before the ink was dry, would start at it yet again, each effort bringing him nearer the goal, and this progress was the incentive that led him to continue until the idea he was reaching for became a reality.

His intuitive faculties were highly developed, and he had Goethe's "heavenly gift" of imagination, but this would have been as nothing without his power of concentration. All his abilities were focused on his art. He made everything else subservient to the one idea of attaining perfection in it. He succeeded too, by giving his genius free play, by allowing his individuality to shape itself in accordance with its own laws. The circ.u.mstances of his life favored this action.

Responsible to no one for years before reaching maturity, he was nowhere hampered or repressed as might have been the case had he had a home life. Strong characters are best left alone to work out their own development. It is only the weak ones that have to be supported. He met every demand that his art made on him. It was only by a complete surrender, by a concentration of all his forces into one channel, that he attained his results. By losing the world, he gained it. The great ones in every age, in every art or calling,--those who attained to saintship,--seers,--prophets,--all went this road.

He had absolute confidence in his judgment. He seldom considered what his audience would like. The best that was in him was what he gave to the world. He knew its value, and if others could not understand it, he knew the time would come when it would be appreciated. In art as in religion, faith is a necessary preliminary to all great achievements.

In going so far beyond us, in pushing the art to the limit of its possibilities, Beethoven has made portions of his work inaccessible to the large body of people who look upon music as an art for enjoyment only. The same kind of problem that is presented to this generation in the works of his last years, confronted his contemporaries in those of his middle life, which were as far beyond the comprehension of his own generation as the more abstruse works of his last years are beyond the ability of the present. To a future age, seemingly, has been relegated, as an heritage of the past, the best fruit of Beethoven's genius. When the Ma.s.s in D and the last Quartets can be heard frequently, a new era in the art will have been inaugurated.

It would be a mistake to suppose that Beethoven was a pessimist, or a misanthrope. Placed here to live and suffer, not knowing why it should be so, he yet teaches that relentless fate cannot prevail against those who make a good fight. "I did not wish to find when I came to die that I had not lived," said Th.o.r.eau, paraphrasing from Voltaire, (most men die without having lived). "I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear." Beethoven's idea of the purport of life was similar. He believed, and put his theory into practice, that each man has within himself the potentialities with which he shapes his own destiny. Fate and Destiny are verities that have to be faced, but they do not have all their own way with us. Each of us has the power to control his destiny to some extent. By willing it so the tendency is toward betterment.

Always the highest powers are on our side. Life, after all, is worth while. This was the gist of his philosophy. He sought to establish an optimistic view of life, with the object of making the problem easier to solve.

Fichte, in his work "uber das Wesen des Gelehrten", gives the literary man the place of priest in the world, continually unfolding the G.o.dlike to man. This was also Beethoven's aim. Haydn charged him with being an atheist, but his works as well as his life refute this charge. The Kyrie and the Agnus Dei of the Ma.s.s in D, could never have been produced had he been other than a devout, religious man. In his journals he continually addresses the G.o.dhead. Outwardly, however, he gave no sign.

"Religion and general-ba.s.s," he said once, with a touch of humor, "are in themselves two inscrutable things (_abgeschlossene Dinge_) about which one should not argue."

He was solicitous that his nephew should receive proper religious instruction, and made this a point in his letters to the magistrates while the lawsuit over him was in progress. After giving his ideas as to the proper education of the young man, in which French, Greek, music and drawing take a prominent place, he adds, "I have found a holy father who has undertaken to instruct him in his duties as a Christian, as well as a man, for only on this foundation can we bring up genuine people."

Again, "It is for his soul's welfare that I am concerned. Wealth can be achieved, but morality must early in life be inoculated" (_eingeimpft_).

He saw the necessity of religion; that it has been called forth through the consciousness of utter helplessness in the individual. Man is encompa.s.sed on all sides by inexorable laws, produced and perpetuated by a power beyond and outside the comprehension. The expression of the religious sentiment is his effort at propitiation, and is his one resource. This is the point of view on which Beethoven projected the grand ma.s.s. It is what governed his life.

An inner pressure led him to choose a life of self-abnegation and rect.i.tude. He saw through and over and beyond the illusions and allurements of the senses, and so was enabled to live entirely in harmony with the moral order of the world, in an age, and among a people, largely given over to the pursuit of pleasure.

A long life is generally considered the best gift which the Fates have to bestow. In the summary of a man's life it is usually treated of as implying special virtues in the subject. But a long life in itself is as nothing in comparison to the quality of the life that is lived. It is by achievement only that its value can be determined.

WAGNER'S INDEBTEDNESS TO BEETHOVEN

FOREWORD

Beethoven, in Wagner's estimation, is a landmark in music, just as Shakespeare is in literature, as Jesus or Buddha in religion. He is the central figure; all others are but radii emanating from him. To Beethoven was it given to express clearly what the others could but dimly perceive. The relation of men like Bach or Handel toward Beethoven, Wagner held to be a.n.a.logous to that of the prophets toward Jesus, namely, one of expectancy. The art reached its culmination in Beethoven. This is Wagner's summary of the significance of Beethoven's work, and he proclaimed it continually, from the housetops. It was in some sort a religious exercise to him to make propaganda for the master to whom he felt himself so deeply indebted. The burden of his utterances on the subject of the musician's art is, "A greater than I exists. It is Beethoven."

Chiefly, perhaps, of the philosopher and the poet must we needs feel that if any genius reaches out into an interpenetrating spiritual world, _theirs_ must do so.--F.W.H. MYERS, Human Personality, Chapter on Genius.

In art the best of all is too spiritual to be given directly to the senses; it must be born in the imagination of the beholder, although begotten by the work of art.--SCHOPENHAUER.

Wagner's achievement can be attributed, in part, to a certain quality of intellectual receptivity, by virtue of which he was enabled to appropriate to himself the genius of two of his predecessors for whom he had a special affinity. His epoch-making work was rendered possible through Shakespeare and Beethoven, who served him as models all his life.

Every great achievement is referable to some preceding one often quite as great but more obscure. No man stands alone in his deed. The doer of every great work has been helped thereto by his predecessors working the same soil. The greater the performance, the more prominently this comes out sometimes, as in the case of Shakespeare whose indebtedness to Christopher Marlowe and others will at once come to mind.

To Beethoven and to Shakespeare, Wagner paid tribute on all occasions.

Especially is this true in his relation to Beethoven, to whom he readily yields the palm in the realm of music. In the eight volumes of his _Gesammelte Schriften_, no single fact stands out more clearly than his recognition of Beethoven as his chief, his master, from whom proceeds all wisdom and knowledge and truth. One can hardly read any of Wagner's prose writings without seeing how readily he falls into the place of disciple of Beethoven. "I knew no other pleasure," he says in A Pilgrimage to Beethoven, "than to plunge so deeply into his genius that at last I fancied myself become a portion thereof." The Pilgrimage, though an imaginative work, is the medium he employed to give utterance to his regard for Beethoven. His letters to musical friends, to Liszt, to Fischer, especially those to Ulig, are filled with praise of the older master. In a letter to Meyerbeer, in 1887, he states how he came to be a musician. "A pa.s.sionate admiration of Beethoven impelled me to this step." The only one who was good enough in Wagner's eyes to be compared with Beethoven, was Shakespeare. These two names are frequently brought into juxtaposition in his works. No musician is worthy of comparison with his demiG.o.d. "Mozart died when he was just piercing into the mystery. Beethoven was the first to enter in," he says in his Sketches. As if even this praise were too great, he severely criticises Mozart's operas and symphonies elsewhere.

The deferential att.i.tude which Wagner a.s.sumes toward Beethoven is not accorded any other musician. Consciously or not, when he talks about other musicians (except Bach) he, for the most part, a.s.sumes the role of censor. But Beethoven comes in for unstinted praise. "It is impossible,"

he says, "to discuss the essential nature of Beethoven's music without at once falling into the tone of rhapsody."

Wagner seems hardly to have been able, when writing about music, to refrain from mention of Beethoven, he is so full of the subject. It has a bearing on every important event in his life. At the ceremonies attending the laying of the foundation-stone of the Festival Play House at Bayreuth, the Ninth Symphony was performed, and in a little speech he says: "I wish to see the Ninth Symphony regarded as the foundation-stone of my own artistic structure." In "Religion and Art" we find these words: "to whom the unspeakable bliss has been vouchsafed of taking one of the last four symphonies of Beethoven into his heart and soul."

Many enthusiasts have worked in Wagner's cause from Liszt down, but none have equalled Wagner in this respect--in enthusiasm for _his_ master. He pays tribute to Beethoven in all conceivable places. He first heard of him when told of his death. His first acquaintance with Beethoven's music was a year after the master's death, on his arrival at Leipzig at the Gewandhaus concerts. Wagner was then in his sixteenth year. "Its impression on me was overpowering," he says. "The music to his Egmont so inspired me that I determined not to allow my own completed tragedy to be launched until provided with such like music. Without the slightest diffidence I believed that I could write this needful music." He had up to this time no special leaning toward music. He had not previously entertained a thought of it as a career, but his first hearing of Beethoven's music decided him to adopt it, such was the kinship between these two minds. Through Beethoven he discovered that "music," to use his own words, "is a new language in which that which is boundless can express itself with a certainty impossible to be misunderstood."[G]

[G] Th.o.r.eau, in 1840, expressed himself similarly. We quote from the recently published Service. "Music is a language, a mother tongue, a more mellifluous and articulate language than words, in comparison with which speech is recent and temporary. There is as much music in the world as virtue. In a world of peace and love music would be the universal language and men greet each other in the fields in such accents as a Beethoven now utters at rare intervals at a distance."

The episode made a turning-point in his life. Hitherto his whole mind and thought had been placed on literature, the drama in particular, as a career. Through Beethoven he first learned what a power music possesses in the portrayal of the emotions and pa.s.sions. He had, as he says, an intimate love and knowledge of Mozart without apparently being much influenced thereby. Up to this time Shakespeare had been his archetype.

Now, with a fine discriminating intelligence, marvellous in a youth of sixteen, Beethoven is to be included in this hero-worship, and is eventually to supplant his former ideal. "It was Beethoven who opened up the boundless faculty of instrumental music for expressing elemental storm and stress," he says in the "Art-Work of the Future," and elsewhere in the same article, "the deed of the one and only Shakespeare, which made of him a universal man, a very G.o.d, is yet but the kindred deed of the solitary Beethoven, who found the language of the artist-manhood of the future."

Wagner's criticisms on music are admirable. Here he expresses his thoughts as plainly as in his compositions. His disquisitions on music as an art and on Beethoven in particular, are always lucid and forcible.

He may be misty in his philosophical speculations, but when he speaks on music it is in the authoritative tone of the master, familiar with every phase of his subject. He always contributes something of value, and his thoughts are an illumination.

Had Wagner never written a line of music, had he elected to be a literary man, a poet, a dramatist, philosopher, his fame to-day would still be world-wide. Had he confined his genius into this one channel of literary expression, as was his original intention, with his mental equipment, and a Napoleonic ambition that balked at nothing, the product would have been as original and extraordinary, we may be sure, as is his art-product in music. Wagner, the musician, is so commanding a figure that the literary man is obscured; but when we consider the magnitude of his literary achievement, the dramas Tannhauser, Lohengrin, Flying Dutchman, Tristan, Parsifal, the stupendous Ring of the Nibelung, the essays on music, philosophy, criticism and sociology, and reflect that it is, so to speak, a by-product, it becomes apparent that, had he made literature his chief aim in life, the result would have been notable in the annals of the century.

Wagner seriously contemplated writing a biography of Beethoven at one time, and devoted several months to collecting materials for it. But his finances were still in bad shape, and he was unable to undertake it without an order from some publisher, who would have been required to advance money. He was unable to find such a party, and the project was abandoned, most unfortunately, as he would have made a valuable contribution to the subject. The short biographical sketch he wrote on Beethoven on the centenary anniversary of the master's birth, shows marvellous insight, especially in relation to the critical and a.n.a.lytical parts of it. This work, instinct with worship of the master, is a product of Wagner's mature years. Here, as in his earliest utterances on Beethoven, he is the disciple glad to do homage to his master.

"A century may pa.s.s," said Schopenhauer in a letter to the publishers of the (English) Foreign Review and Continental Miscellany, offering to translate Kant for them, in response to a wish he had seen expressed in their journal that England might ere long have a translation of Kant, "a century may pa.s.s ere there shall again meet in the same head so much Kantian Philosophy, with so much English, as happen to dwell together in mine." Likewise centuries may elapse before another such musician will appear possessing the literary ability, critical faculty, ardor and enthusiasm that Wagner had for this work.

There is an affinity between them in which mind speaks to mind. When writing on Bach's influence on Beethoven, he says:[H] "If Haydn pa.s.sed as teacher of the youth, for the mightily unfolding art-life of the man, our great Sebastian Bach became his leader. Bach's wonder-work became his Bible; in it he read, and clean forgot that world of clangor heard no longer." This describes Wagner's own spiritual relationship to Beethoven, and the exaltation that must have been his on reading the symphonies, the Ma.s.s in D, the overtures. He exhausts himself in praise of each. He makes the Third Leonore Overture of as much account as the entire opera; he continually refers to the Egmont and the Coriola.n.u.s Overtures, and says that in the latter and in the Third Leonore, Beethoven stands alone and beyond all imitation.