Herr Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was born seemingly equipped for both personal tragedy and greatness. His father, Johann van Beethoven was a court musician and tenor vocalist who made a living but never lived up to his musical ambitions.

Lacking the natural ability, self-discipline, or simply opportunities necessary for recognition, Johann pinned his hopes (and his pain) on Ludwig. Relentlessly and mercilessly, Johann drilled young Ludwig, trying desperately to form a child-genius akin to Mozart. Whenever Ludwig faltered in his energy or made a mistake, he risked anything from a whack on the hand to a savage alcohol-induced beating.

While modern psychologists would predict that such treatment would cause young Ludwig to detest playing music, let alone composing it, the boy developed the talent that must have been within him all along. He began performing in public by age seven, and before he was a teenager he was a published composer with his Nine Variations for Piano in C Minor achieving modest acclaim. He earned his first court appointment as a musician at the tender age of 14 (at 14 I was pretty good at the NES), and world-class musicians began to take note of him.

When Beethoven was 17 years old, he met and played for none other than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who quipped something like "Watch this lad, one day he will force the world to talk about him."

While Beethoven was trained in the mathematically precise style of classical music, as in Mozart or Hayden, his turbulent personality began to form a new age in music. Nearly everyone noted his disheveled hair and haphazard dress, and no one could ignore the look in his eyes, as if he was ready to explode. To say that he was moody would be an understatement. His natural talent, coupled with the countless beatings at the hands of his father had forged a new kind of music; a music not just of the mind, not just of the soul, but a music of the inner pathos: passion--passionate love and passionate rage. His compositions were a blend of mathematical proportion (a la classical style) and a new blood stirring, emotional quality. When famed classical composer Joseph Hayden first heard Beethoven performed, he was disturbed by the turbulent nature of Beethoven's music. He would later train under Hayden's supervision, but nothing that Hayden could teach seemed to control Beethoven's style. Other's, however, recognized Beethoven's new spirit and admired him for it. Observing him in later years, John Russell described Beethoven at the piano:

"He seems to feel the bold, the commanding, and the impetuous, more than what is soothing or gentle. The muscles of the face swell, and its veins start out, the wild eye rolls double wild, the mouth quivers, and Beethoven looks like a wizard, overpowered by the demons whom he himself has called up."

Beethoven not only composed music outside of the norm, he distributed it abnormally by working essentially as a free agent, selling his works and organizing concerts for profit. Ironically, this stage of his life brought the moments when he started to recognize the first signs of his impending deafness. At first it was seemed, perhaps, like nothing but paranoia: just a slight causeless noise in the background. However, by 1801 the sound that he described as a buzzing or whistling noise became constant. Soon, he could not make out low tones, especially in speech, and any background noise overwhelmed him.

Could there be a worse fate for a virtuoso and master composer, to know slowly, painfully slowly, that he was losing his most treasured of the five senses? In a letter of July 1801, Beethoven confessed to his friend, Karl:

"How often I wish you were here, for your Beethoven is having a miserable life, at odds with nature and its Creator, abusing the latter for leaving his creatures vulnerable to the slightest accident. . . . My greatest faculty, my hearing, is greatly deteriorated."

As the symptoms progressed, Beethoven withdrew from friendships and society, to wallow in his secret shame: "How can I, a musician, say to people, "I am deaf!" I shall, if I can, defy this fate, even though there will be times when I shall be the unhappiest of God's creatures. . . . I live only in music." At other times, he was as obstinate as his reputation: "I will seize Fate by the throat. It will not wholly conquer me! Oh, how beautiful it is to live, and live a thousand times over!"

One thing became clear: Beethoven could no longer perform in concert. He could retire completely and sink into an alcoholic abyss (as his father had), or he could turn to the music of his heart. The music that he could hear inside, even if he could hear nothing outside. He began to compose.

As he came to grips somewhat (he never really did) with his handicap, Beethoven began to appreciate more the things that he saw. Nature became his muse, and his Second Symphony was written as a tribute to it. But still, he writhed back and forth between inspiration and despair, to the point that many believed he had gone mad.

He would at one moment be hopeful and at the next morose. But soon he felt inspired by the dashing Corsican in command of an army meant to spread a new ideal. The ideals were liberty, equality, and fraternity; and the Corsican was Napoleon Bonaparte. Beethoven himself was a revolutionary of sorts, in music, and his music was the dawn of a new age. In Napoleon, he saw a different branch of that new age, and he latched on to it as a surrogate hope.

Beethoven composed his Third Symphony Eroica for Napoleon. And as Napoleon tore down the vestiges of old Europe, Eroica tore down the axioms of classical music. It was, perhaps, more revolutionary, for Napoleon betrayed his revolution when he pronounced himself Emperor--to which Beethoven raged to a friend, "Now he will crush the rights of man. He will become a tyrant." But while Napoleon played Judas, the Eroica never turned on itself. It left many listeners baffled. Others were horrified. But most were simply awed. What came across in so many ways as random, uncontrolled tonal emotion had behind it an order. It was not mathematical precision, as in Mozart or Hayden. It was mathematical passion.

And the passion deepened.

His Fifth Symphony, perhaps his most famous (though not his best--that would be the Ninth Symphony) Beethoven faced his arch-nemesis, Fate (those notes at the beginning? That's Fate knocking at the door), and he took it by the throat.

His Sixth Symphony was another dedication to nature. The man oscillated such.

He would compose three more symphonies, all of them brilliant. Nothing, however, touches the Ninth, known for its "Ode to Joy" chorus, based upon the poem by Friedrich von Schiller. I will not attempt to describe the music beyond saying that it is the most beautiful thing ever composed, and it makes the heart leap and the soul sing. Hearing it, one can scarcely believe that the man who composed it was completely deaf.

Schiller's words are translated from Beethoven's original score as follows. Reputedly, the vocal part of the 4th Movement (the "Ode to Joy Chorus" is one of the most challenging tasks for even the most skilled singers).

Joy, beautiful spark of the gods,
Daughter of Elysium,
We enter fire imbibed,
Heavenly, thy sanctuary.

Thy magic reunites those
Whom stern custom has parted;
All men will become brothers
Under thy gentle wing.

May he who has had the fortune
To gain a true friend
And he who has won a noble wife
Join in our jubilation!

Yes, even if he calls but one soul
His own in all the world,
But he who has failed in this
Must steal away alone and in tears.

All the world's creatures
Draw joy from nature's breast;
Both the good and the evil
Follow her rose-strewn path.

She gave us kisses and wine
And a friend loyal unto death;
She gave lust for life to the lowliest,
And the Cherub stands before God.

Joyously, as his suns speed
Through Heaven's glorious order,
Hasten, Brothers, on your way,
Exulting as a knight in victory.

Joy, beautiful spark of the gods,
Daughter of Elysium,
We enter fire imbibed,
Heavenly, thy sanctuary.

Be embraced, Millions!
This kiss for all the world!
Brothers!, above the starry canopy
A loving father must dwell.

Can you sense the Creator, world?
Seek him above the starry canopy.
Above the stars He must dwell.

Be embraced, Millions!
This kiss for all the world!
Brothers!, above the starry canopy
A loving father must dwell.

Can you sense the Creator, world?
Seek him above the starry canopy.
Above the stars He must dwell.

Joy, daughter of Elysium
Thy magic reunites those
Whom stern custom has parted;
All men will become brothers
Under thy gentle wing.

Be embraced, Millions!
This kiss for all the world!
Brothers!, above the starry canopy
A loving father must dwell.

Joy, beautiful spark of Gods!,
Daughter of Elysium,
Joy, beautiful spark of Gods!

Over many protests, Beethoven decided to conduct the orchestra for the symphony's first audience. Since he could hear nothing, colleagues placed an alternate conductor behind him and ordered the musicians to follow the alternate's timing. Unaware of the conductor behind him, unaware that the musicians paid him no heed, unaware that he was even before an audience of hundreds, Ludwig van Beethoven conducted his final symphony. At the moment of its final note, Beethoven's arms fell to his sides, and he stood there motionless. He could not hear the music stop, but he knew it. What he did not sense, what he had to be taken gently by the shoulders and turned to see was the audience. The audience of dignitaries, wealthy men and women, sophisticated types, were on their feet cheering and applauding in a grand ovation.

He died three years later, still composing, still defying fate. In his final moments, from his deathbed, Beethoven lifted his head and opened wide his eyes. He raised his fist with "a serious, threatening expression on his face," then relaxed and died.

With his final match with Fate over, friends recovered several documents including his will, sealed with instructions that it be opened only after his death. Beethoven wrote it twenty-four years before his passing, but it sums the last half of his life, and echoes the sentiment of and breaths logic into his later works. These words, though only a fragment of the original, express in language what Beethoven expressed in music:

"O you men who accuse me of being malevolent, stubborn, and misanthropical, how you wrong me! You do not know the secret cause. Ever since my childhood, my heart and mind were disposed toward feelings of gentleness and goodwill, and I was eager to accomplish great deeds; but consider this: for six years I have been hopelessly ill, aggravated and cheated by quacks in the hope of improvement but finally compelled to face a lasting malady. . . . I was forced to isolate myself. I was misunderstood and rudely repulsed because I was as yet unable to say to people, "Speak louder, shout, for I am deaf." . . . With joy, I hasten to meet death. Despite my hard fate . . . I shall wish that it had come later; but I am content, for he shall free me of constant suffering. Come then, Death, and I shall face thee with courage."

Thanks to Bill at lucare.com for many of the factual particulars in this post, including several of the quoted passages. Thanks to you, also, if you read this far.