Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph

by Jan Swafford

But it is not entertaining to work with a student, however talented, who clearly considers you a sloppy teacher at the same time that he hates being told what to do.

Teaching Can be not fun. students who think you know little and dont want to change

To make up things about one’s relationship with a historic figure like Beethoven was a convenient way to engrave one’s name in history. It was also a good way to settle scores.

Why lie

composer-pianist

Dual role

Haydn, the three Lichnowskys, Zmeskall, Swieten, Schuppanzigh—these musicians and cognoscenti were the leading edge of Beethoven’s triumph in Vienna.

The list of the many men (7) who helped Beethoven's career

behavior which did me so little honor

"A behavior which did me so little honor"

Beethoven, of course, knew no way to learn anything other than his way—the hard way.

Wise? Flawed?

As his letters show over and over, his self-knowledge ranged from insightful to delusional.

I wonder about my own self assessment

Even less did he understand anybody else.

Fascinating Are these independent facts? do people who know themselves know others?

his teacher was another rival, jealous and conniving, who wished him ill, who wanted to suppress the very work that could put Beethoven on the map.

This is a way of thinking but not always right

His eternal obstacles in that journey would be, first, the limitations of the human body and mind and creative potential against which he struggled relentlessly,

Body and mind

the limitations of the instrument he was writing for. He would never be satisfied with his pianos or with the piano itself, though it would evolve considerably during his lifetime—that evolution partly flowing from him.

The tool

If Beethoven’s episodes of rudeness, petulance, and scorn ever seriously alienated his audiences, there is no record of it. From early on, his temperament was part of his reputation.

Rude artist. maybe some Bayesian dissociation, some gap between predicted and observed emotions of the audience . In fact the prior page says as much. Beethoven wanted laughter and claps, not tears

But Stephan von Breuning was premature in judging Beethoven changed. He was not a better judge of men or a better friend; he was simply in the best of health and the best of moods. None of that would last in the coming year, least of all the good health. Still, luck and talent had given Beethoven a splendid year.

Mood baased on circumstances

It was a benefit for the string-playing and composing cousins Andreas and Bernhard Romberg, more refugees from Bonn, the French occupation, and the breakup of the court Kapelle.

Beethoven was a German Enlightenment man. Why did he flee the French Revolution and its Enlightenment ideals?

As is perennial with bards and musicians, Beethoven had begun to attract female attention.

Ladies ove artists

For Beethoven, the fact that Haydn and not Beethoven had written such an anthem would burn in him until his own last years.

Jealousy

Given that this was music of revolution and struggle, funeral marches were a favored genre.

Revolution Inspires funeral music

The central element was strong, memorable melody designed to be grasped and sung by the people. It was massive music to elicit mass emotions, art as communal ritual.

National music

For the Festival of the Supreme Being, part of the Revolution’s campaign to replace the church with a state religion,

State religion in an Enlightenment state. Meant mainly to dislodge Catholicism

In a way no government had done before, the French Revolution placed music near the center of public life as an essential element of education, morality, enlightenment, and propaganda.

Music was propaganda

Beethoven found not only a monumental humanistic style but something like an ethos of music—an ethos exalted but secular, epic in its ambitions: music as revolutionary ritual, part of the remaking of humanity.

How secular?

Here joined together were art, life, progress, history.

Humanistic music

By 1798, the first parts of a great puzzle were falling into place for him. The parts included the enlightened and revolutionary ideals of his childhood in Bonn, the French Revolution, the rise of Napoleon, the new idea of revolutionary and national anthems, Haydn’s masses reflecting the historical moment, and the collection of revolutionary music shown to him in Vienna by Kreutzer and Bernadotte. These things would contribute to solving a looming crisis in Beethoven’s work: How and in what terms could he get past the plateau where he was languishing?

A new idea of music, an ideal, he sought

How could he step out of the role of entertainer and into the stream of history?

More sublime

how can a mingling of tragedy and comedy be said to have unity when they are in the same work?

Why is that a question? is not life the same?

Which is to say: for all the sound and fury of the Allegro, the inner melancholy remains.

Indeed 'tis the peculiar melancholy of those who have all to want more , to resist the temporary joys of life for something permanent

For the time being, this voice would be one of several Beethoven wielded—some current, some prophetic, some backward-looking.

Different voices

Nature perversely makes it impossible to get more than one key at a time even near in tune on a keyboard.

I did not know

the dominant philosophy of keyboard tuning had been to get a certain range of keys passably well in tune and simply not use any other keys, because they were unbearably out of tune. So for centuries, most keyboard music was written in keys between three sharps and three flats. But the unavailable keys were a standing frustration for composers.

Constraints of technology

Most tended to see D major, for example, as a bright, pure key for bright feelings. It was, wrote one theorist, “the perfect key for funny pieces and joyful dances . . . The key of triumph, of Hallelujahs, of war-cries, of victory-rejoicing.”20 Theorists’ responses to G minor are more varied and flowery: “It is suited to frenzy, despair, agitation, etc.”; “the lament of a noble matron, who no longer has her youthful beauty.”21

Different keys

C major, said Galeazzi, was “a grandiose, military key, fit to display grand events, serious, majestic.” As for C minor, it was “a tragic key . . . fit to express grand misadventures, deaths of heroes, and grand but mournful, ominous, and lugubrious actions.” D minor was “extremely melancholy and gloomy”; B-flat major, “tender, soft, sweet, effeminate, fit to express transports of love, charm, and grace”; E major, “very piercing, shrill, youthful, narrow and, somewhat harsh”;22 E-flat major, “a heroic key, extremely majestic, grave, and serious: in all these features it is superior to that of C”; A major, “totally harmonious, expressive, affectionate, playful, laughing, and cheerful.”

The keys

Despite the advent of the scientific method, medicine had made little progress since the Middle Ages.

Things take time.

He met extraordinary suffering with extraordinary endurance and courage. He needed that strength. Other than death itself, going deaf is the worst thing that can happen to a musician. That is easy to understand, terrible to bear.

Tough fate

his frequent daring deviations from one motive to another, whereby the organic connection, the gradual development of ideas was broken up, did not escape me.

Too innovative .

The singular and original seemed to be his chief aim.”

Too innovative

“Passions, violent or not, must never be expressed to the point of disgust, and music must never offend the ear . . . but must always be pleasing.”

No emotions?

whether a mood of irresistible fate, or the spell of dance, or the blissful trance of a summer day.

Music to memory and emotions; evoked experiences

To that end, he shaped a narrative both personal and universal. Its subject is the encroachment of depression.

Encroachment of depression

The idea of humanity being illuminated by art and science is a high-Aufklärung theme that struck deep resonances in Beethoven.

Illuminated or elevated ?

“I haven’t been able to look at the papers for the last fortnight, I feel so sickened by these abominable butchers . . . The [revolutionary] attempt of the French people . . . has plunged not only that unhappy people itself, but a considerable part of Europe and a whole century, back into barbarism and slavery.”

Maybe his understansing of humanity was shallow ?

learning of beauty and art makes a human being free, moral, and ethical, thereby able to mold lives and societies that are harmonious and happy.

Maybe. id say learning of Gd throught are and study and cwork . karma and bhakti and jnana

he began to understand how he could join his art to the social, ethical, moral, and spiritual ideals of the age. That train of thought took him beyond youthful brilliance and craftsmanship to his full maturity.

Cool epiphany on his part

Confused about what that meant, Haydn replied, “That is true, it is not yet a Creation, and I very much doubt whether it will ever succeed in being.” And they took their leave, both of them baffled and annoyed.3 If Haydn’s reply to Beethoven’s attempted compliment meant anything, it was not the absurd statement that Prometheus could never turn into a Creation but that its composer would never rise to a Creation. Haydn kept up with what Beethoven was putting out, and he could not have liked much of what he heard.

I dont understand what happened

And so it came to pass that a historic turnaround of opinion concerning Beethoven in Germany’s leading musical journal was stage-managed behind the scenes by Beethoven himself.

Opinion matters. do i believe that?

to be a first-rate artist, you must be a first-rate fellow. The essence of both is duty to humankind.

Duty to mankind

But that jealous demon, my wretched health, has put a nasty spoke in my wheel; and it amounts to this, that for the last three years my hearing has become weaker and weaker. The trouble is supposed to have been caused by the condition of my abdomen which, as you know, was wretched even before I left Bonn, but has become worse in Vienna where I have been constantly afflicted with diarrhea and have been suffering

Health was his demon

A deaf composer. It was unthinkable. The glorious hopes for his old friend’s career appeared to be collapsing.

Thwarted ambition

“Resignation, what a wretched resource! Yet it is all that is left to me.”

Resignation ?

His mode of response to any challenge was defiance and aggression.

Karma yoga is the antidote?

Standing between Beethoven and the women he yearned for were his health, his high-mindedness, their social position, his eccentricity. Just how outlandish he could be sometimes is seen in a letter he wrote to

Interesting Summary