Beethoven
My Summary
Highlights
Beethoven wrote nine symphonies; Mozart forty-one; Haydn an extraordinary 104. — location: 58
We can say that Beethoven’s music lifts the spirit, that to listen to his music makes you feel you can overcome any problem life may throw at you. After all, if he can conquer the greatest affliction to befall a musician – deafness – then by listening to his music we can surely be inspired to overcome ours. — location: 87
Beethoven’s music is his autobiography. — location: 115
it is likely that Beethoven was born on 16 December, — location: 167
I find it beguiling to think that the famous composer of the ‘Choral’ Symphony and Fidelio stole hens’ eggs as a child. — location: 369
some time around 1784, Wegeler, who was acquainted with the Breunings, suggested he take Ludwig along to meet them. It is not an exaggeration to say that this marked a turning point in the life of the teenage musician. — location: 764
In late March 1787, Ludwig van Beethoven, aged sixteen and a quarter, left Bonn and left his family to travel to the capital of the Holy Roman Empire, and the capital city of European music. Vienna. — location: 842
Mozart became more and more impressed, and finally, without saying anything to Ludwig, went into the adjoining room where some — location: 865
friends were sitting, and said, ‘Watch out for that boy, one day he will give the world something to talk about.’ — location: 866
Waldstein made another request: that the music should be published under his name. And indeed it was: Musik zu einem Ritterballet (Music for a Ballet of the Knights) by Count Waldstein. — location: 1018
He quickly came to hate this, and in later years in Vienna, where the demands intensified as his fame spread, he would point blank refuse. On one occasion a titled lady went down on her knees in front of him in one of the most aristocratic salons in the city, and still he refused. — location: 1083
The older man joined in, and soon they were urging him to play. This is something Beethoven was by now used to. So virtuosic was he at the keyboard that he was forever being asked to demonstrate his skills. He quickly came to hate this, and in later years in Vienna, where the demands intensified as his fame spread, he would point blank refuse. On one occasion a titled lady went down on her knees in front of him in one of the most aristocratic salons in the city, and still he refused. — location: 1082
Here was an audience of genuine music-lovers who appreciated what he was doing, not a collection of aristocrats eager to be seen to be supporting the arts. — location: 1092
So why do I bother recounting this anecdote, when it first appeared in print almost two centuries ago, and rarely finds its way into modern biographies? Because this is the real Beethoven, not the permanently choleric and uncooperative Beethoven of myth. — location: 1094
To me, the thought of the twenty-year-old Beethoven being given the lowliest of kitchen duties is one of the most enchanting images from his Bonn years. — location: 1140
He played variation after variation, including some of the most technically demanding, from memory. Then, in the midst of playing, announcing he could not recall the remaining variations, he instantly improvised entirely new ones, of a complexity equal to the most difficult of those he had already played. To round things off, he imitated Sterkel’s style of playing, exaggerating its lightness and refinement, making it appear ‘almost ladylike’, no doubt drawing discreet chuckles from those present. — location: 1198
The same traveller wrote: One cannot enter any fashionable house without hearing a duet, or trio, or finale from one of the Italian operas currently the rage being sung and played at the keyboard. Even shopkeepers and cellar-hands whistle the popular arias … No place of refreshment, from the highest to the lowest, is without music. Bassoonists and clarinettists are as plentiful as blackberries, and in the suburbs at every turn one alights upon fresh carousing, fresh fiddling, fresh illuminations. — location: 1416
Beethoven was to live in Vienna for just over thirty-four years until his death. For the first half of that time, roughly, Vienna was a city at almost permanent war; for the second half it was what today would be called a police state, as Foreign Minister and later Chancellor Metternich clamped down on political freedom. Cataclysmic events were taking place across Europe. Beethoven absorbed the drama, the tension, the danger, and it all left its mark on his music. — location: 1443
Small, thin, dark-complexioned, pockmarked, dark-eyed … with looks of the Moor about him … His front teeth protruded, owing to the extraordinary flatness of the roof of his mouth, and this thrust out his lips. His nose, too, was rather broad and decidedly flattened, while his forehead was remarkably full and round … in the words of Mähler, who twice painted his portrait, a ‘bullet’. — location: 1473
‘I took lessons from Haydn, but never learned anything from him.’ Beethoven is quoted as saying this in later years by Ferdinand Ries — location: 1496
defiance, an insult almost, to the older and much venerated composer. Haydn was to wreak small revenge before too long, but in early 1794 he unwittingly did Beethoven a great favour by leaving for London. — location: 1508
Extraordinarily, on the third night, at a concert arranged by Mozart’s widow, Beethoven performed a Mozart piano concerto. — location: 1530
annus mirabilis — location: 1532
He would have been grateful he had music to turn to. There, no one could laugh at him. — location: 1572
In later years his pupil Czerny recounted how, when Beethoven improvised at the piano, people in the salon would break into tears and loud sobs, so moved were they by what they heard. — location: 1593
As for Julia, she went on to marry a mediocre musician by the name of Count Gallenberg, with whom she moved to Italy.* Her place in history is assured, though, through Beethoven’s decision to dedicate his new piano sonata to her, a sonata published under the title ‘Sonata quasi una fantasia’, but known to us today – thanks to a music critic who compared it to the moon setting over Lake Lucerne – as the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata. — location: 1824
Oh my friends, when you read this understand that you did me an injustice, and should there exist in the world any man as unfortunate as I, let him comfort himself in the knowledge that, as I have done, he too can accomplish everything that is within his power, and be elevated into the ranks of worthy artists and great men. — location: 1945
Beethoven has not only come to terms with, and therefore conquered, his deafness. He has taken control of his life. The Beethoven who arrived in Heiligenstadt six months earlier was to an extent a broken man. But the man who returned to the city had a new resolve. — location: 2033
On returning to Vienna he said to Czerny, ‘I am not very well satisfied with the work I have done thus far. From this day on I shall take a new way.’ And take a new way he most certainly did. He was about to embark on the richest period of his life, when the works that flowed from him were not just new, and different, but unlike anything any composer had written before. Not for nothing is it known as Beethoven’s Heroic Period. — location: 2036
And then the eccentric theatre director made the second decision of genius in his career. The first, for which the world remembers him today, was to write the libretto for Mozart’s The Magic Flute, playing Papageno in the premiere. — location: 2068
Emanuel Schikaneder became forever linked with two immortals of music. — location: 2075
Which, if nothing else, demonstrates that Beethoven was capable of a sense of humour at least after the event. Seyfried lived with the memory for years to come. To this day I cannot hear the Third Piano Concerto without thinking of the hapless Seyfried and Beethoven’s ‘Egyptian hieroglyphics’. — location: 2112
Beethoven heard Bridgetower play, almost certainly accompanying him on the piano, and was seriously impressed. — location: 2134
The performance was a triumph, so much so that Beethoven dedicated the sonata there and then to the Englishman. Sadly for Bridgetower that is not the end of the story. It might have been at the celebratory supper following the concert, or it might have been shortly afterwards, that Bridgsetower made a mistake. He made the mistake of his life. He made an off-colour remark about a lady. Beethoven was appalled, utterly appalled, so much so that he withdrew the dedication from Bridgetower. Bridgetower tried to reason with him, no doubt arguing that it was just a joke, he hadn’t meant anything bad by it. He might also have urged Beethoven’s friends to intercede on his behalf. But it was no good. Beethoven’s mind was made up. Nobody who could say such a thing was to have a Beethoven composition dedicated to him. — location: 2159
The sonata that bears his name, the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata, is now acknowledged as the greatest violin sonata by Beethoven, or anyone. — location: 2172
Beethoven’s Third Symphony changed the course of music. We are talking here about the ‘Eroica’. — location: 2185
But he did not entirely let go of his admiration for Napoleon. — location: 2221
‘Appassionata’. And — location: 2272
when, at the beginning of 1804, she was widowed. Deym contracted consumption — location: 2328
Beethoven, stunned and shocked at Braun’s words, stormed up and down the office, then shouted, ‘I do not write for the multitude – I write for the cultured!’ — location: 2500
To make matters worse, the organisers of the charity concert, in league with Vienna’s senior musician, Kapellmeister Salieri, threatened any Burgtheater musician who agreed to play for Beethoven with the sack. — location: 2701
But how to persuade him to remain in Vienna? What incentive could he offer? He came up with a brilliant solution. He called in two of the city’s senior aristocrats, patrons of the arts, and together they offered Beethoven a lifetime annuity of 4000 florins on the sole condition that he agree to remain in Vienna, ‘or some other town situated in the hereditary lands of His Austrian Imperial Majesty’. There were no other stipulations. He did not have to agree to compose, or perform, just remain where he could be looked after and protected. — location: 2844
It is a small piece, and Beethoven gave it the innocuous title ‘Bagatelle’. But it is what he wrote at the top of the title page that has exercised musicologists and scholars ever since. This is what he wrote: ‘Für Elise am 27. April zur Erinnerung an L. V. Bthvn’ (‘For Elise on 27 April to remind you of L. V. Bthvn’). — location: 2974
There is a photograph of Minona taken in old age. She bears a striking resemblance to Beethoven, which proves nothing. — location: 3183
In fact some years ago I was approached by a young French-woman who said just that – that her mother, who lived outside Paris, had a letter written by Beethoven which she kept in a shoebox in her attic. She said the handwriting had been authenticated as belonging to Beethoven, and the letter proved beyond doubt that Josephine Brunsvik was the Immortal Beloved. I arranged to meet her, but the meeting was cancelled by a family member. — location: 3197
As his health plummeted, he began work on a new string quartet, which was to become Op. 131, and which musicologists today rate as the greatest of them all. — location: 4291
Taking the man for Johann’s servant, she reached for a jug of rough open wine, poured a glass, and said, ‘He shall have a drink too.’ Later that night, when the doctor returned home and his wife recounted the visit, he asked her some pertinent questions, then exclaimed, ‘For goodness’ sake, woman, what have you done? Do you have any idea who that was? The greatest composer of the century was in our house today, and you treated him like a servant!’ — location: 4612
March 26th, 1827, was the sad day of Beethoven’s death. — location: 4917
What is fact is that at 6 p.m. on 26 March 1827 – at the age of fifty-six years and three months, and exactly forty-nine years to the hour and the day since he had first walked out to perform in public – the greatest composer the world had known died. — location: 4931
‘The Last Master, the tuneful heir of Bach and Handel, Mozart and Haydn’s immortal fame … He was an artist, but a man as well … Thus he was, thus he died, thus he will live to the end of time.’ — location: 5000
Just over a year and a half after Beethoven’s death, Franz Schubert – one of those pallbearers who had accompanied the coffin and stood at the graveside with lighted torch – was buried alongside the man he admired so much. — location: 5012
Created by Niall Bell (niall@niallbell.com)