Chapter 7 No.7

ToC

THE ETERNAL FEMININE

If that beauty of Shiraz would take my heart in hand, I would give for her dark mole Samarkand and Bokhara.

-Hafiz.

n Beethoven's time, Vienna was the gayest capital in Europe, the Paris of the world. The population was 300,000, every nationality in Europe being represented. It was cosmopolitan in the widest sense. The Germans of course predominated; then there were Hungarians, Italians, Sclavs, Sczechs, Magyars, Poles and Turks. The Italian element was particularly strong, and these southern and eastern races with their tendency toward art in any form, and the particular bias of the Italians toward music had an important influence on the Germans, modifying their seriousness.

The theatres were splendidly equipped and there were at least four large orchestras. Concerts for the general public were not common, the orchestras being required for operatic performances in private houses, which were splendidly given, as well as for state balls and other functions. The chief business of the well-to-do (and Vienna was a rich city), was to gratify a love for music. The cultivated class lived a life of elegant leisure, music being its alpha and omega. As already stated, it was an established custom with the wealthy to maintain a small orchestra, consisting of four or five pieces for the performance of chamber-music in their homes. Prince Karl Lichnowsky gave concerts every Friday evening, frequently taking a part in the orchestra. Regular weekly concerts were given by Baron von Swieten, Prince Lobkowitz, Count Rasoumowsky and many others. It is stated that at this period there were ten private theatres in Vienna, each with its complement of actors. It was a common occurrence to give operettas at these private theatres,-the ordinary parts being taken by amateurs.

How could they, we naturally ask, get an audience, when so many performances were in progress, and how could the people get around to so many places? The answer is: these performances were given daily, including Sunday, and at all hours of the day, some concerts being given as early as six o'clock in the morning. It was indeed a "golden age for Beethoven," as Schindler remarks. Thayer gives a list of twenty-one great houses open to Beethoven, nine of which belonged to princes. The young musician was often the guest of honor at the various musical functions given by these people, and received much attention from illustrious persons who were attracted to him by the force of his character as well as his genius. Not in any degree a society man, rough in exterior and careless of appearance, he was sought after by the most exclusive of Vienna society.

That a man of such force and originality, such independence, should have won the lifelong friendship of those of his own sex, goes without saying. His very scorn for the conventions and refinements of life, the manliness which was reflected in his every act, in the tones of his voice and the expression of his face, all this, united to such talents, would be sure to win the enthusiastic admiration of his fellow-men. But that the beautiful society women of the capital should have been attracted to a man so uncouth may at first sight seem surprising, until we consider that he attracted them in spite of these drawbacks and on account of other qualities, such as his sensibility, his earnestness and devotion to his art, and the wealth of his emotional and intellectual nature. He thoroughly enjoyed standing so well socially with these ladies, who in family connections were above him, but who were willing to sit at his feet in homage to his genius. Beginning with hero worship on the part of these devotees, the sentiment usually developed into the more intimate relation of friendship or love. The "Ewig Weibliche" appears constantly in his music and was always in his life. He formed many romantic attachments which may not always have been Platonic, but they were always pure. Beethoven had as chivalrous a regard for women as had any knight of the middle ages.

Among those with whom he became intimate are the Baroness Ertmann, the Countess Erd?dy, the sisters of the Count of Brunswick and many others. It is interesting to note the affectionate familiarity which these ladies permitted him. Taking into account the extreme sensibility of the artistic temperament and the sentimental character of the Germans, it is still surprising to meet with a letter to the Countess Erd?dy, which he begins: "Liebe, liebe, liebe, liebe, liebe Gr?fin" ("Dear, dear, dear, dear, dear Countess"), although the letter itself is simple enough and ends: "Ihr wahrer Freund und Verehrer." He begins another letter to this lady in a strain courtly and dignified, in marked contrast to the excessive warmth of the previous example: "Alles Gute und Sch?ne meiner lieben, verehrten, mir theure Freundin, von ihrem wahren und verehrenden Freund." The Countess Erd?dy, who is described as being witty, cultivated and beautiful, exercised a very strong fascination on the susceptible heart of our master, and on her side, she seems to have been powerfully drawn to him. The friendship lasted many years. Music, the bond that united them, sanctified their intimacy and kept it always on a high level. Beethoven lived at her house for a time. He used to allude to her as his father confessor. Madame Erd?dy erected in honor of Beethoven, in the park of one of her seats in Hungary, a temple, the entrance to which is decorated with a characteristic inscription expressing her homage to the great composer. Later in life she was banished and died in Munich.

The Baroness Ertmann was also a good friend to Beethoven. He called on her frequently and her ability to interpret his works acceptably must have cemented the friendship between them. Others with whom he came in contact were the Countess Babette de Keglivics (Princess Odeschalchi), and Julia Guicciardi, who became the Countess Gallenberg, and to whom he dedicated the Sonata Fantasia, which is called the language of resignation.

These people on the whole were quite democratic in their relations toward artists. There was a very elaborate ceremonial at court, but elsewhere, cultivated people met on common ground. Ries relates an incident illustrating the cameraderie existing between Beethoven and the aristocratic ladies of his circle. In this instance. Princess Lichnowsky, who was a Countess Thun, and connected with some of the best families in Europe, was the central figure. One evening at Count Browne's, Ries was asked to play a sonata with which he was not familiar. Ries preferring to play something else, begged to be excused from playing this particular one. The company was obdurate, however, and finally appealed to Beethoven, knowing that he, if any one, could carry the point. Beethoven turned to Ries and asked him to play it, saying: "I am sure you will not play it so badly that you would not want me to hear it," whereupon Ries complied, Beethoven turning the leaves for him. He made a break in the bass part, at which Beethoven tapped him on the head with his finger, whether to discipline him or only in play does not appear. Later in the evening Beethoven played a sonata (opus 21), entirely new, with which he himself was not very familiar. Princess Lichnowsky, who had observed Beethoven's act in disciplining Ries earlier in the evening, stationed herself back of Beethoven's chair, while Ries turned the pages. When Beethoven made a mistake similar to that of Ries, the Princess playfully hit him several taps on the head with her hand, saying: "If the scholar is punished for making a slight mistake, the master should not escape, when making a graver one," at which all laughed, Beethoven taking the lead. Then he began again and fairly outdid himself, particularly in the Adagio, in which the mistake occurred.

The virtuosity of some of the Viennese of the period was marvellous. Allusion has been made to the ability of the professional musicians, but the amateur performers were in many cases equally proficient. It is related that Beethoven's friend, Marie Bigot, played the Appassionata Sonata at sight from the manuscript for the delectation of some friends. Madame Bigot was the wife of the librarian of Count Rasoumowsky and evidently took a prominent part in these entertainments. Sight-reading before a critical audience is surely a difficult enough task under the most favoring conditions; how much more so from the manuscript, with its excisions and corrections and general indistinctness! It was, however, an every-day matter especially in chamber-music. Hümmel is reported as saying: "In Vienna there are a hundred ladies who can play the piano better than I." Another musician, writing from Vienna in 1820, said: "In every house there is a good instrument; at one, a banker's, there are five."

On one occasion, some one laid before Beethoven a quartet in manuscript which had just been composed. The band essayed it, of course at sight, not one of the party having seen the manuscript before. The cellist got out in the first movement. Beethoven got up, and while he kept on playing his own part, sang the cellist's part. When this was commented on, he remarked that the bass part had to be this way if the composer understood his business. The composer in this instance was F?rster, his old teacher.

On another occasion, Beethoven played at sight a new and difficult composition which had been brought him. The composer told him that he (Beethoven), had played the Presto so fast that it would have been impossible to see the single notes. "That is not necessary," Beethoven replied. "If you read rapidly, many misprints may occur; you do not heed them, if you only know the language." Wagner in his life of Beethoven says: "The power of the musician is not to be appreciated otherwise than through the idea of magic." It would seem so in very fact. Consider the million combinations of which the brain has to take cognizance while doing so comparatively simple a thing as transposing. Not to play the particular notes which are indicated on the staff, but some others, one or two steps higher or lower; to play four or five at a stroke, as in piano, and to do it quickly, sixty or eighty or a hundred in a minute,-this is almost like magic, but it is nothing to what Beethoven frequently did in music. At a public concert at which he played, he asked his friend Seyfried, a distinguished composer and all-round musician, to turn the leaves for him of a new concerto written for the occasion. "But that was easier said than done," said Seyfried who told the story. "I saw nothing but blank leaves with a few utterly incomprehensible Egyptian hieroglyphics which served him as guides, for he played nearly the whole of the solo part from memory, not having had time to write it out in full; he always gave me a sign, when he was at the end of one of these unintelligible passages." Seyfried, thorough musician that he was, understood the difficulties of the position for Beethoven, and was so apprehensive of turning a page at the wrong time, that his nervousness was observed by the master, who afterward rallied him about it. Extempore playing is not to be compared with this, as the concerto was written for strings and piano, Beethoven taking the piano part.

The three quartets, opus 59, known as the Rasoumowsky Quartets, to which a passing reference has been made, take their name from having been dedicated to Count Rasoumowsky, who was the Russian ambassador. The Count had married a sister of the Princess Lichnowsky and was a cultivated man whose greatest delight was music. He lived in great state in a palace, then on the outskirts of Vienna, now used as the Geological Institute. He was closely identified with the musical life of Vienna, and shortly after these quartets appeared, formed a string quartet of distinguished musicians, which he maintained for many years, taking the part of second violin himself. It is almost needless to state that Beethoven's work took precedence in the repertoire.

The first of the three quartets, the one in F, has an Adagio movement on which Beethoven inscribed in the sketch-book, "Eine Trauerweide oder Akazienbaum aufs Grab meines Bruders." [A weeping willow or acacia tree over my brother's grave.] Beethoven had indeed lost an infant brother twenty-three years before this event, but it is not likely that he was thus tardily commemorating him. His brother Kaspar Karl was married the day before this quartet was begun and it is probably a humorous allusion to that circumstance. But if his brother's marriage was an occasion for humor at the beginning, it lapsed afterward into the sternest tragedy in its effect on the master's life, as will be seen further on in these pages.

These quartets are monuments to Beethoven's genius and are classed among the best examples of chamber-music. The Adagio of the second one was thought out by Beethoven one night while contemplating the stars. Somewhat of the infinite calm and serenity of his mood is imparted to it. The incident is related by Czerny to whom it was related by Beethoven himself. The quartets were generally disliked and condemned by musicians when first produced. Cherubini said that they made him sneeze. Others said that Beethoven was music-mad, that they could not be called music, that they were too difficult, unintelligible, and so on. That was close onto a century ago, and they are still unintelligible to some, but we now know that this is not the fault of the quartets as was so naively assumed at that time. The condemnation of them by the performers has a show of reason in it as they taxed their capacity too severely. Wagner had the same thing to contend with for the same reason.

After the withdrawal of Fidelio, noted in the last chapter, and with the advent of summer, Beethoven left Vienna on a visit to Count Brunswick, at his seat in Hungary. The Count was a man of exceptional intellectual ability, who had the greatest reverence and admiration for Beethoven's genius. Beethoven was also on excellent terms with the Count's sisters, and later became engaged to one of them, the Countess Therese. It is well known that the Countess Therese exercised a powerful fascination over him, but so did many another of the gifted Vienna ladies in the course of his life.

So vast a quantity of work was accomplished by the master during this summer, that it is likely the proximity of these friends only served to stimulate his genius. The Appassionata Sonata was worked over, the Rasoumowsky Quartets were finished, as well as the Fourth Symphony, besides lesser works, so that he could not have spent much time in social intercourse. He was in the period of his greatest productivity; the creative instinct was strong in him and impelled him onward in his work to the exclusion of other desires. Even friendship had to give way in great measure to the passion for creating which had become a necessity of his existence.

That the life was a tranquil and contented one may be inferred by the character of the Fourth Symphony. Beethoven loved country life, and surrounded as he was by his friends, whose first thought was for him, he had everything to make him satisfied. The serenity which speaks to us through the Fourth Symphony is something for which the world should ever be grateful. Our highest happiness often comes to us through the frame of mind superinduced by external influences. This symphony is a song of joy, ecstatic in its pure exuberance of spirits; again, it is a benediction that breathes into our minds somewhat of its own spirit of calm and content. The storm and stress of life is forgotten; all is holiday humor. We are in the midst of a Shakespearian comedy, with its alternations of humor and sentiment, its joyous atmosphere, its idyllic simplicity; the forest of Arden has come to us. It was written to celebrate his engagement to the Countess Therese. In it he is inspired by the very genius of happiness. It is as if, having obtained his heart's desire, he invites us to partake with him the joy that the gods have provided.

But it is only for once, as if to emphasize the fact that happiness is not the object of existence and is not even our right primarily. He gives few instances in which the element of pain or sadness does not enter to some extent. His works abound in psychological suggestion; they illustrate every phase of life. The philosophic import of the Fourth Symphony is plain. He demonstrates the rarity of pure unalloyed happiness in actual life by the few examples in his compositions in which it reigns supreme. Joy enters incidentally into most of his works. Often it dominates them. He recognized it as part of the scheme of life, but it is usually qualified by other conditions and is only attained through persistent effort; it is never our portion until earned. It does not come unsought like pain and suffering. The Fourth Symphony is lighter than the "Eroica" which preceded it, or the C minor which comes next. The language of joy is always more or less superficial. The tragedies of life have to be told in stronger language, since they go deeper. Happiness is negative, pain positive. The comedies of Shakespeare, in which the note is usually buoyant and felicitous, do not stir us as do the tragedies.

Beethoven's visit at Count Brunswick's continued throughout the summer of 1806. He left the Brunswicks in October, but instead of returning to Vienna as was his wont in the autumn, he turned his face toward Silesia, on a visit to Prince Lichnowsky who had an estate there. But the idyllic life left behind at Count Brunswick's was not to be repeated here. His stay was destined to be short owing to a violent quarrel between the Prince and him, which caused an estrangement lasting some years. The circumstances leading up to it can be briefly narrated. When Beethoven arrived at the castle of Prince Lichnowsky, he found other guests there, uninvited but not unexpected, consisting of French officers who had been quartered on the Prince. Napoleon had overrun Germany, and was master wherever he went. Beethoven's rage against him for making himself Emperor had not abated; his dislike extended to the officers as well, and he was not there long before hostilities began in good earnest. It all came about from a desire on the part of the officers that Beethoven play for them. He had the penetration to know that he was regarded simply as a curiosity, that he was called on because no better entertainment was available. Had there been a juggler or a ballet-dancer on hand, these latter might have been preferred. At dinner, a staff-officer had asked him quite innocently if he could play the cello, to which no answer was given; the frown on Beethoven's face, however, boded ill for the evening's festivities. It had been announced that he would play for them, and they expected it as a matter of course.

In the nature of things it could not be expected that these men would be able to appreciate Beethoven, or understand much of his art. His reverence for it was great; he felt that it would be a degradation, in a sense, to play for them under the circumstances, and refused. The Prince, with the amiable desire of pleasing his guests, urged the matter, but Beethoven continued obdurate; upon which he told him, probably by way of a joke, that he must either comply or that he would be confined in the castle as a prisoner of war for disobeying orders. This persistence so enraged him that, although it was night, he left the castle without the Prince's knowledge, and walked three miles to Trappau, the nearest post-town. He remained here overnight, and, while waiting for the post-chaise, wrote the following letter to Prince Lichnowsky:

"Prince! what you are you owe to chance and birth. What I am, I am through myself. There has been, and will yet be thousands of princes, but there is only one Beethoven."[A]

[A] Frimmel's Beethoven.

It was raining when he left the castle, and the manuscript of the Appassionata Sonata, hastily packed, became water-soaked and blurred; it bears the marks of that night's journey to the present day.

Some difficulty was experienced in procuring his passport for Vienna. It could readily have been obtained by having recourse to Prince Lichnowsky, but Beethoven would not permit this. The matter was finally arranged, and he proceeded on his journey. He nursed his wrath all the way, and on reaching his quarters in Vienna, his first act was to smash a bust of the Prince which stood on a bookcase.

Although a reconciliation was effected later, the old cordial relations were never restored. There were times when the Prince called on Beethoven and was not received, when the latter was not in the mood for seeing him. Through his wilfulness, Beethoven lost the annuity which the Prince had settled on him on his coming to Vienna. The initiative in this matter was probably taken by Beethoven himself, as may be inferred from a letter he writes to a friend two years later: "My circumstances are improving without having recourse to people who treat their friends insultingly."

The winter of 1806-7 was a period of great activity for Beethoven, although a felon on his finger must have stopped all work for a while. Some important works were published, notably the Eroica Symphony and the Appassionata Sonata. Along with acceptances came commissions, so that his finances appear to have been in a flourishing condition for the time.

Beethoven's engagement to the Countess Brunswick was entered into with the consent of her brother. Count Brunswick, who was the only one permitted to share the secret. Every precaution was taken to prevent a knowledge of it coming to the ears of Therese's mother, who would not for a moment have listened to an argument leading to a possible union of her daughter with the poor musician.

That Beethoven had marriage in mind is evident from the fact that he once got so far as to write to Bonn for a copy of his baptismal certificate as a necessary preliminary. He wrote in his note-book on the subject as follows: "Oh God! Let me attain her who is destined to be mine and who shall strengthen me in virtue." But it never got any further. The secrecy so strictly enjoined, must have been specially unpleasant to a man of Beethoven's temperament. The opposition that was sure to be developed on the part of the Countess's family may have reverted on his sense of pride to such an extent as to lead him to sacrifice his love to it. He always had his work to fall back on. In the end, his art took precedence of all other considerations; while it permitted friendship, the serenity of which might aid him in his life-work, it excluded love, which might become a rival. His concept of life was to live simply, to entertain no project which would in any way divert his mind from his work. No mere desires of self were to be considered.

The Countess Therese never married, but occupied herself with philanthropic work on reaching middle-age. She founded a home for little children in Vienna, the first of its kind in Austria; her own means not being sufficient to maintain it, she enlisted the support of powerful friends from the Empress down, in its behalf. She died in 1861, aged 83.

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