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The nineteenth century was caught up not in longing toward an end but in longing for the delirium and pain of longing itself.
difference between Enlightenment and Romantics
“An die Freude” (Ode to Joy).
Schiller's Ode to Joy
And, as an Illuminatus, he proclaimed the imperative of morality and how it must shape one’s life and work: to be a good artist, you must first be a good man.
Beethoven's instructor: to be a good artist you have to be a good man.
Beethoven was not only incapable of taking any path but his own, he was incapable of understanding any path but his own.
both incapable of taking any path other than his own, but incapable of understanding any path other than his own
you shall receive Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands.
You shall recsive Mozart's spirit from Haydn's
hands
“The situation is desperate,” runs an old Viennese saying, “but not serious.”
Situation is desperate but not serious
That young fellow must be in league with the devil. I’ve never heard anybody play like that! I gave him a theme to improvise on, and I assure you I’ve never heard even Mozart improvise so admirably.
That fellow must be in a league with the devil-- ever heard such improvising
In youth he had been taught by the ancients and by the Freemasons and Illuminati around him that the foundation of wisdom is “know thyself.” As his letters show over and over, his self-knowledge ranged from insightful to delusional.
Although he took Freemasons's "Know thyself" as personal Credo, his self-knowlege was delusional
collapse of the Bonn court lost him a good deal of income but was otherwise a gift, freeing him from having to account to anybody for anything he was doing. He would never have to report upward again.
Collapse of Bonn court cost him money, but meant he never had to 'report upward' again
Beethoven was composing the finale for the C Major Piano Concerto, handing each page of score with the ink still wet to four copyists sitting in the hall, who were writing out the instrumental parts for a rehearsal the next day. At the same time Beethoven was wretchedly sick to his stomach, a familiar condition for him. So Wegeler watched his friend finish a rondo finale for piano and orchestra virtually in one sitting, his work interspersed with violent fits of vomiting. The next day Wegeler heard the concerto
Composing the C Major Piano concerto while vomiting, handing pages to 4 copyists for next days dress rehearsal
Other than death itself, going deaf is the worst thing that can happen to a musician. That is easy to understand, terrible to bear.
Deafness worse than death
So his creative rhythm was set. Day after day, year after year: improvise, sketch at the table, go out and walk. Walking was as much a part of the process as the rest of it.
cretive rhythm -- write, walk,write
A day or so before the concert Ries had arrived at Beethoven’s flat at dawn to assist him and found him in bed scribbling on sheets of paper. “What is it?” Ries asked. “Trombones,” Beethoven said. The trombones played from those parts in the premiere of Christus.
a day before concert, Beethoven in bed scribbling trombone psrts
Beethoven had not had time to write down the piano part of the Third Concerto before the concert—only the orchestral parts. So the solo music existed only in his head, to be fleshed out with improvisation en route. No one in those days publicly played from memory. Beethoven arrived onstage, took his bow, sat down at the piano, and placed a sheaf of music on the stand. Young conductor Ignaz von Seyfried, who had helped out through the marathon rehearsal, was the designated page-turner. When Beethoven opened the solo part, Seyfried discovered that the pages were largely full of empty measures,
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Beethoven didnt write the piano part for his Third concerto; page turner saw a near-empty score on piano and was terrified
He would never stop producing items designed for popular appeal, but in his major works he no longer worried about challenging his audience (though he still loathed bad reviews). Now he was prepared to make demands.
with Third Symphony, Beethoven stopped worrying about challenging his audience and started making demands
In a transport of rage, Beethoven cried to Ries, “So he too is nothing more than an ordinary man! Now he also will trample all human rights underfoot, and only pander to his own ambition. He will place himself above everyone else and become a tyrant!” He snatched up the title page of the symphony, ripped it in two, and threw it to the floor.32
So, Napoleon is just an ordianry man--in it for the glory! Crumples first page of Third symphony
At one point when she had lost a child, Beethoven invited her over, sat down at the piano, and said, “Now we will converse in music.” For more than an hour he improvised for her. “He said everything to me,” Ertmann later told Felix Mendelssohn, “and finally gave me consolation.”16 It must have been a heartrending scene, Beethoven making music for a bereaved woman who played and understood his work as well as anybody alive. He gave voice to her grief and offered her hope. Here was a microcosm of what all his music does: it captures life in its breadth of sorrow and joy, spoken to and for the
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Playing for a cello player who lost her infant son; beneath the paranoid, misanthropic often unbearable surface, Beethoven among the most generous of men
he stalks far ahead of the culture of mankind. Shall we ever overtake him? . . . Everything that he can tell you about is pure magic, every posture is the organization of a higher existence, and therefore Beethoven feels himself to be the founder of a new sensuous basis in the intellectual life . . .
Betinna: Beethoven far ahed of us in intellectual life
The last candidate is, on the face of it, the most likely one: Bettina
Betinna as Imortal Beloved?
Could Beethoven have been courting a newly married and then pregnant woman at a distance? Could Bettina have reciprocated to the extent that she thought seriously of leaving Achim, with or without her newborn, and running off with Beethoven?
Betinna had just had first child--would she really have left husband and baby?
The Heiligenstadt Testament had been written when he was younger, healthier, in the middle of his fame as a virtuoso, his work running strong and in demand, his wounds fresh, and there were fewer old scars. Then his response to suffering had been defiance, not resignation, not submission. By the time of the Tagebuch submission was the only path left for him.
By the time of his diary, submission was the only path left to him
Every woman he had truly loved—including Julie Guicciardi, the singer Magdalena Willmann, Josephine Deym, Therese Malfatti, his Immortal Beloved—had rejected him or had been lost because of forces outside his control. Now he gave up on women, gave up hopes for love and romance and family.
Every woman rejected him -- now he gave up on them
few listeners forget the first time they hear the stately and mournful, sui generis dance of the second movement, in A minor.16 It was a hit from its first performance. Here commences, as much as in any single piece, the history of Romantic orchestral music.
Few listeners forget first time they hear 2nd mvt of Seventh symphony -- here starts history of Romantic orchestral music
is music arrived at by improvisation in a deep raptus, when Beethoven forgot his mental and physical travails in the same way that he forgot to eat.
Beethoven composing in Raptus
that the best of us obtain joy through suffering.”
Joy through suffering
new elements of the late music: unconventional harmonic moves and tonal structures; long periods without harmonic resolution; new angles on traditional formal patterns, sometimes with overt recalls of earlier movements; familiar forms still in place but often obscured; long-breathed lyricism; a new emphasis on counterpoint.
Elements of Beethoven's late music -- the poetic period
If no one would marry him, to protect himself he rejected marriage.
if no one would marry him, he would reject marriage
What is difficult is beautiful and good.
what is difficult is beautiful and good
The slow movement of op. 10 sounds like sorrow itself;
Slow movement of Sonata 106 sounds like sorrow itself
this is not music exalting a hero but rather music heroic in its essence. To a large extent, the hero in question is the performer, and after that the listener.
no longer exhaults the hero; now, hero is performer and listener
were but of noble birth.”
admits not of noble birth in custody hearing
Some products of his imagination did him great harm—in the end, far more harm to him than to anyone else. But they did not wreck his art. It may appear too easy to say that the darkness never polluted the beauty and the beauty never illuminated the darkness, but that seems to have been what it was with him.
immagination hurt him but not his art in late period
Politically they were progressive, which is to say that they hoped someday for the return of an enlightened emperor like Joseph II, or even Napoleon. In May 1820, Bernard wrote, “The whole of Europe is going to the dogs. N[apoleon] should have been let out for ten years.”
Beethoven's progressive friends wished for returnof Napoleon
But Beethoven congratulated him for The Barber of Seville: “It will be played as long as Italian opera exists.” He had also looked over some of the serious operas. “Never try to write anything else but opera buffa,” he continued. “Any other style would do violence to your nature.” After a short meeting he sent him off with, “Write many more Barbers!” Rossini left in tears. That night he was the prize guest of a party at Prince Metternich’s. He pleaded with the assembled aristocrats, saying something must be done for “the greatest genius of the age.” They brushed him off. Beethoven is crazy,
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Meeting with Rossini "Do something for Beethoven, the greatest genius of our age"
All the late music was to take somewhere between decades and a century to emerge fully into the repertoire, free of questions of Beethoven’s sanity and mutterings of the harm that deafness did to his work.
author fla trombone player, but writes from te keyboard, not as much from violin, perspective.. does spend more.time on cello
In these incomparable pieces Beethoven largely left behind not only the heroic style of his middle music but also the heroic ideal, the dream of happiness bestowed from above by benevolent despots like Joseph II or conquerors like Napoleon—or by revolutions. In the late music power is overcome by tenderness and spirituality, narrative trumped by poetry.
from hero to poetry
Whether Beethoven actually said “Thus fate knocks at the door” is unknowable, but as a succinct metaphor regarding the first movement of the Fifth Symphony, it survived because it could hardly be bettered.
did he say "fate knocks at the door" about the Fifth?
Diabelli’s house brought out the variations on the publisher’s theme, in his advertisement he struck a note that must have made even Beethoven proud:
Diabelli variations
If it had not been so much the case before, with the advent of Schindler the dynamic of the circle around Beethoven began to be inflected by the question of who hated whom.
friends infected by "who hated.who"
Ninth Symphony was unveiled.
Ninth
The idea of mounting these movements and the Ninth with an amateur chorus and mostly amateur orchestra after a few rehearsals is painful to contemplate. Here could be at least one day in his life when Beethoven was lucky to be deaf.
Premiere with amateurs and few rehersals Beethoven lucky to be deaf
The soloists and chorus had been sitting waiting for their entrances, the audience waiting to hear what in the world the singers would do. There was no conception of what might happen because there had never before been voices in a symphony.
audience didnt know what singers were to do--never had been vocal parts in symphonies
Legend says that after the scherzo, or perhaps at the end of the symphony, he was still beating time, lost in the music in his head, when Karoline Unger pulled his sleeve to turn him around so he could see the ovation he could not hear.
had to be turnd to hear the appause--according to legend
However it happened, the thought of it is sad beyond description.
Were the bravos for the music, or for the man and his legacy? Surely it was mostly the latter.
bravos for the legacy, not the music
It took decades, and the advent of the modern specialist conductor, for the Ninth Symphony to be represented well and to enter the familiar repertoire. The Missa solemnis never did.
took 2 decades of specialized conductors before the Ninth entered the repertoire
Yet it is hard to put aside Beethoven’s conviction that it was his greatest work. That it was his greatest challenge for himself and for everybody else was, for him, part of its significance: What is difficult is good. In many ways its essence is a phrase he wrote on the manuscript at the beginning of the Kyrie: “From the heart—may it return to the heart.”
Beethoven thought Missa Solemnis was his greatest.work; but it's been orphaned
when the accented syllable is written as an upbeat, it is as if in its urgency to be heard the word has spilled over the bar line, come in early. That effect of spilling over will be heard myriad times in the mass, often at moments of greatest exaltation. A downbeat is an arrival; an upbeat points forward. It is that primal pointing forward, or more relevantly pointing upward, that Beethoven is concerned with. It begins on an upbeat pointing forward and upward.
Odd quality of starting on an up-beat: Ky -- RI - e
In theory he deplored overt pictorial representations in music, but he had enormous powers of musical description when he wanted to use them, and he had painted plenty of pictures in works including the Pastoral Symphony. In the mass there is not a single image suggested by the text that is not mirrored viscerally in the music: ascendit races up, descendit plunges down.
while not pictoral, his music brings imiages unbidden
