Part 9

From the time Beethoven settled permanently in Vienna, which he was soon induced to do by the kindness of his aristocratic friends, the only noteworthy external features of his career are the productions of his compositions. In spite of the usual hostile criticism for obscurity, exaggeration and unpopularity, his reputation became world-wide and by degrees actually popular; nor did it ever decline, for as his later works became notorious for their extravagance and unintelligibility his earlier works became better understood. He was no man of business, but, in a thoroughly unpractical way, he was suspicious and exacting in money matters, which in his later years frequently turned up in his conversation as a grievance, and at times, especially during the depreciation of the Austrian currency between 1808 and 1815, were a real anxiety to him. Nevertheless, with a little more skill his external prosperity would have been great. He was always a personage of importance, as is testified by more than one amusing anecdote, like those of his walks with Goethe and his half-ironical comments on the hats which flew off more for him than for Goethe; and in 1815 it seemed as if the summit of his fame was reached when his 7th symphony was performed, together with a hastily-written cantata, _Der glorreiche Augenblick_ and the blazing piece of descriptive fireworks entitled _Wellingtons Sieg oder die Schlacht bei Vittoria_, once popular in England as the _Battle Symphony_. The occasion for this performance was the congress of Vienna; and the government placed the two halls of the Redouten-Saal at his disposal for two nights, while he himself was allowed to invite all the sovereigns of Europe. In the same year he received the freedom of the city, an honour much valued by him. After that time his immediate popularity, as far as new works were concerned, became less eminent, as that of his more easy-going contemporaries began to increase. Yet there was, not only in the emotional power of his earlier works, but also in the known cause of his increasing inability to appear in public, something that awakened the best popular sensibilities; and when his two greatest and most difficult works, the 9th symphony and parts of the _Missa Solemnis_, were produced at a memorable concert in 1824, the storm of applause was overwhelming, and the composer, who was on the platform in order to give the time to the conductor, had to be turned round by one of the singers in order to _see_ it.

Signs of deafness had given him grave anxiety as early as 1708. For a long time he successfully concealed it from all but his most intimate friends, while he consulted physicians and quacks with eagerness; but neither quackery nor the best skill of his time availed him, and it has been pointed out that the root of the evil lay deeper than could have been supposed during his lifetime. Although his constitution was magnificently strong and his health was preserved by his passion for outdoor life, a post-mortem examination revealed a very complicated state of disorder, evidently dating almost from childhood (if not inherited) and aggravated by lack of care and good food. The touching document addressed to his brothers in 1802, and known as his "will," should be read in its entirety, as given by Thayer (iv. 4). No verbal quotation short of the whole will do justice to the overpowering outburst which runs almost in one long unpunctuated sentence through the whole tragedy of Beethoven's life, as he knew it then and foresaw it. He reproaches men for their injustice in thinking and calling him pugnacious, stubborn and misanthropical when they do not know that for six years he has suffered from an incurable condition, aggravated by incompetent doctors. He dwells upon his delight in human society, from which he has had so early to isolate himself, but the thought of which now fills him with dread as it makes him realize his loss, not only in music but in all finer interchange of ideas, and terrifies him lest the cause of his distress should appear. He declares that, when those near him had heard a flute or a singing shepherd while he heard nothing, he was only prevented from taking his life by the thought of his art, but it seemed impossible for him to leave the world until he had brought out all that he felt to be in his power. He requests that after his death his present doctor, if surviving, shall be asked to describe his illness and to append it to this document in order that at least then the world may be as far as possible reconciled with him. He leaves his brothers his property, such as it is, and in terms not less touching, if more conventional than the rest of the document, he declares that his experience shows that only virtue has preserved his life and his courage through all his misery.

And, indeed, his art and his courage rose far above any level attainable by those artists who are slaves to the "personal note," for his chief occupation at the time of this document was his 2nd symphony, the most brilliant and triumphant piece that had ever been written up to that time. On a smaller scale, in which mastery was the more easily attainable as experiment was more readily tested, Beethoven was sooner able to strike a tragic note, and hence the process of growth in his style is more readily traceable in the pianoforte works than in the larger compositions which naturally represent a series of crowning results. Only in his last period does the pianoforte cease to be Beethoven's normal means of expression. Accordingly, if in the discussion of Beethoven's works, with which we close this article, we dwell rather more on the pianoforte sonatas than on his greater works, it is not only because they are more easily referred to by the general reader, but because they are actually a key to his intellectual development, such as is afforded neither by his life nor by the great works which are themselves the crowning mystery and wonder of musical art.

Deafness causes inconvenience in conversation long before it is noticeable in music, and in 1806 Beethoven could still conduct his opera _Fidelio_ and be much annoyed at the inattention to his nuances; and his last appearance as a player was not until 1814, when he made a great impression with his B flat trio, _op._ 97. At the end of November 1822 an attempt to conduct proved disastrous. The touching incident in 1824 has been described, but up to the last Beethoven seems to have found or imagined that ear-trumpets (of which a collection is now preserved at Bonn) were of use to him in playing to himself, though his friends were often pained when the pianoforte was badly out of tune, and were overcome when Beethoven in soft passages did not make the notes sound at all. The instrument sent him by Broadwood in 1817-1818 gave him great pleasure and he answered it with a characteristically cordial and quaint letter in the best of bad French. His fame in England was often a source of great comfort to him, especially in his last illness, when the London Philharmonic Society, for which the 9th symphony was written and a 10th symphony projected, sent him L100 in advance of the proceeds of a benefit concert which he had begged them to give, being in very straitened circumstances, as he would make no use of the money he had deposited in the bank for his nephew.

This nephew was the cause of most of his anxiety and distress in the last twelve years of his life. His brother, Kaspar Karl, had often given him trouble; for example, by obtaining and publishing some of Beethoven's early indiscretions, such as the trio-variations, _op._ 44, the sonatas, _op._ 49, and other trifles, of which the late _opus_ number is thus explained. In 1815, after Beethoven had quarrelled with his oldest friend, Stephan Breuning, for warning him against trusting his brother in money matters, Kaspar died, leaving a widow of whom Beethoven strongly disapproved, and a son, nine years old, for the guardianship of whom Beethoven fought the widow through all the law courts. The boy turned out utterly unworthy of his uncle's persistent devotion, and gave him every cause for anxiety. He failed in all his examinations, including an attempt to learn some trade in the polytechnic school, whereupon he fell into the hands of the police for attempting suicide, and, after being expelled from Vienna, joined the army. Beethoven's utterly simple nature could neither educate nor understand a human being who was not possessed by the wish to do his best. His nature was passionately affectionate, and he had suffered all his life from the want of a natural outlet for it. He had often been deeply in love and made no secret of it; but Robert Browning had not a more intense dislike of "the artistic temperament" in morals, and though Beethoven's attachments were almost all hopelessly above him in rank, there is not one that was not honourable and respected by society as showing the truthfulness and self-control of a great man. Beethoven's orthodoxy in such matters has provoked the smiles of Philistines, especially when it showed itself in his objections to Mozart's _Don Giovanni_, and his grounds for selecting the subject of _Fidelio_ for his own opera. The last thing that Philistines will ever understand is that genius is far too independent of convention to abuse it; and Beethoven's life, with all its mistakes, its grotesqueness and its pathos, is as far beyond the shafts of Philistine wit as his art.

At the beginning of 1827 Beethoven had projects for a 10th symphony, music to Goethe's _Faust_, and (under the stimulus of his newly acquired collection of Handel's works) any amount of choral music, compared to which all his previous compositions would have seemed but a prelude. But he was in bad health; his brother Johann, with whom he had been staying, had not allowed him a fire in his bedroom, and had sent him back to Vienna in an open chaise in vile weather; and the chill which resulted ended in a fatal illness. Within a week of his death Beethoven was still full of his projects. Three days before the end he added a codicil to his will, and saw Schubert, whose music had aroused his keen interest, but was not able to speak to him, though he afterwards spoke of the Philharmonic Society and the English, almost his last words being "God bless them." On the 26th of March 1827, during a fierce thunderstorm, he died.

_Beethoven's Music._--The division of Beethoven's work into three styles has become proverbial, and is based on obvious facts. The styles, however, are not rigidly separated, either in themselves or in chronology. Nor can the popular description of Beethoven's first manner as "Mozartesque" be accepted as doing justice to a style which differs more radically from Mozart's than Mozart's differs from Haydn's. The style of Beethoven's third period is no longer regarded as "showing an obscurity traceable to his deafness," but we have, perhaps, only recently outgrown the belief that his later treatment of form is revolutionary. The peculiar interest and difficulty in tracing Beethoven's artistic development is that the changes in the materials and range of his art were as great as those in the form, so that he appears in the light of a pioneer, while the art with which he started was nevertheless already a perfectly mature and highly organized thing. And he is perhaps unique among artists in this, that his power of constructing perfect works of art never deserted him while he revolutionized his means of expression. No doubt this is in a measure true of all the greatest artists, but it is seldom obvious. In mature art vital differences in works of similar form are generally more likely to be overlooked than to force themselves on the critic's attention. And when they become so great as to make a new epoch it is generally at the cost of a period of experiment too heterogeneous and insecure for works of art to attain great permanent value. But in Beethoven's case, as we have said, the process of development is so smooth that it is impossible to separate the periods clearly, although the ground covered is, as regards emotional range, at least as great as that between Bach and Mozart. No artist has ever left more authoritative documentary evidence as to the steps of his development than Beethoven. In boyhood he seems to have acquired the habit of noting down all his musical ideas exactly as they first struck him. It is easy to see why in later years he referred to this as a "bad habit," for it must often take longer to jot down a crude idea than to reject it; and by the time the habit was formed Beethoven's powers of self-criticism were unparalleled, and he must often have felt hampered by the habit of writing down what he knew to be too crude to be even an aid to memory. Such first intuitions, if not written down, would no doubt be forgotten; but the poetic mood, the _Stimmung_, they attempt to indicate, would remain until a better expression was forthcoming. Beethoven had acquired the habit of recording them, and thereby he has, perhaps, misled some critics into over-emphasizing the contrast between his "tentative" self-critical methods and the quasi-extempore outpourings of Mozart. This contrast is probably not very radical; indeed, we may doubt whether in every thoughtful mind any apparently sudden inspiration is not preceded by some anticipatory mood in which the idea was sought and its first faint indications tested and rejected so instantaneously as to leave no impression on the memory.

The number and triviality of Beethoven's preliminary sketches should not, then, be taken as evidence of a timid or vacillating spirit. But if we regard his sketches as his diary their significance becomes inestimable. They cover every period of Beethoven's career, and represent every stage of nearly all his important works, as well as of innumerable trifles, including ideas that did not survive to be worked out. And the type of self-criticism is the same from beginning to end. There is no tendency in the middle or last period, any more than in the first, to "subordinate form to expression," nor do the sketches of the first period show any lack of attention to elements that seem more characteristic of the third. The difference between Beethoven's three styles appears first in its full proportions when we realize this complete continuity of his method and art. We have ventured to cast doubts upon the Mozartesque character of his early style, because that is chiefly a question of perspective. While he was handling a range of ideas not, in a modern view, glaringly different from Mozart's, he had no reason to use a glaringly different language. His contemporaries, however, found it more difficult to see the resemblance; and, though their criticism was often violently hostile, they saw with prejudice a daring originality which we may as well learn to appreciate with study. Beethoven himself in later years partly affected and partly felt a lack of sympathy with his own early style. But he had other things to do than to criticize it. Modern prejudice has not his excuse, and the neglect of Beethoven's early works is no less than the neglect of the key to the understanding of his later. It is also the neglect of a mass of mature art that already places Beethoven on the same plane as Mozart, and contains perhaps the only traces in all his work of a real struggle between the forces of progress and those of construction. We will therefore give special attention to this subject here.

The truth is that there are several styles in Beethoven's first period, in the centre of which, "proving all things," is the true and mature Beethoven, however wider may be the scope of his later maturity. And he did not, as is often alleged, fail to show early promise. The pianoforte quartets he wrote at the age of fifteen are, no doubt, clumsy and childish in execution to a degree that contrasts remarkably with the works of Mozart's, Mendelssohn's or Schubert's boyhood; yet they contain material actually used in the sonatas, _op._ 2, No. 1, and _op._ 2, No. 3. And the passage in _op._ 2, No. 3, is that immediately after the first subject, where, as Beethoven then states it, it embodies one of his most epoch-making discoveries, namely, the art of organizing a long series of apparently free modulations by means of a systematic progression in the bass. In the childish quartet the principle is only dimly felt, but it is nevertheless there as a subconscious source of inspiration; and it afterwards gives inevitable dramatic truth to such passages as the climax of the development in the sonata, _op._ 57 (commonly called _Appassionata_), and throughout the chaos of the mysterious introduction to the C major string-quartet, _op._ 59, No. 3, prepares us for the world of loveliness that arises from it.

Although with Beethoven the desire to express new thoughts was thus invariably both stimulated and satisfied by the discovery of the necessary new means of expression, he felt deeply the danger of spoiling great ideas by inadequate execution; and his first work in a new form or medium is, even if as late as the Mass in C, _op._ 89, almost always unambitious. His teachers had found him sceptical of authority, and never convinced of the practical convenience of a rule until he had too successfully courted disaster. But he appreciated the experience, though he may have found it expensive, and traces of crudeness in such early works as he did not disown are as rare as plagiarisms. The first three pianoforte sonatas, _op._ 2. show the different elements in Beethoven's early style as clearly as possible. Sir Hubert Parry has aptly compared the opening of the sonata, _op._ 2, No. 1, with that of the finale of Mozart's G minor symphony, to show how much closer Beethoven's texture is. The slow movement well illustrates the rare cases in which Beethoven imitates Mozart to the detriment of his own proper richness of tone and thought, while the finale in its central episode brings a misapplied and somewhat diffuse structure in Mozart's style into direct conflict with themes as "Beethovenish" in their terseness as in their sombre passion. The second sonata is flawless in execution, and entirely beyond the range of Haydn and Mozart in harmonic and dramatic thought, except in the finale. And it is just in the adoption of the luxurious Mozartesque rondo form as the crown of this work that Beethoven shows his true independence. He adopts the form, not because it is Mozart's, but because it is right and because he can master it. The opening of the second subject in the first movement is a wonderful application of the harmonic principle already mentioned in connexion with the early piano quartets. In all music nothing equally dramatic can be found before the D minor sonata, _op._ 31, No. 2, which is rightly regarded as marking the beginning of Beethoven's second period. The slow movement, like those of _op._ 7 and a few other early works, shows a thrilling solemnity that immediately proves the identity of the pupil of Haydn with the creator of the 9th symphony. The little _scherzo_ no less clearly foreshadows the new era in music by the fact that in so small and light a movement a modulation from A to G sharp minor can occur too naturally to excite surprise. If the later work of Beethoven were unknown there would be very little evidence that this sonata was by a young man, except, perhaps, in the remarkable abruptness of style in the first movement, an abruptness which is characteristic, not of immaturity, but of art in which problems are successfully solved for the first time. This abruptness is, however, in a few of Beethoven's early works carried appreciably too far. In the sonata in C minor, _op._ 10, No. 1, for example, the more vigorous parts of the first movement lose in breadth from it, while the finale is almost stunted.

But Beethoven was not content to express his individuality only in an abrupt epigrammatic style. From the outset breadth was also his aim, and while he occasionally attempted to attain a greater breadth than his resources would properly allow (as in the first movement of the sonata, _op._ 2, No. 3, and that of the violoncello sonata, _op._ 5, No. 1, in both of which cases a kind of extempore outburst in the coda conceals the collapse of his peroration), there are many early works in which he shows neither abruptness of style nor any tendency to confine himself within the limits of previous art. The C minor trio, _op._ 1, No. 3, is not more remarkable for the boldness of thought that made Haydn doubtful as to the advisability of publishing it, than for the perfect smoothness and spaciousness of its style. These qualities Beethoven at first naturally found easier to retain with less dramatic material, as in the other trios in the same _opus_, but the C minor trio does not stand alone. It represents, perhaps, the most numerous, as certainly the noblest, class of Beethoven's early works. Certainly the smallest class is that in which there is unmistakable imitation of Mozart, and it is significant that almost all examples of this class are works for wind instruments, where the technical limitations narrowly determine the style and discourage the composer from taking things seriously. Such works are the beautiful and popular septet, the quintet for pianoforte and wind instruments (modelled superficially, yet closely and with a kind of modest ambition, on Mozart's wonderful work for the same combination) and, on a somewhat higher level, the trio for pianoforte, clarinet and violoncello, _op._ 11.