Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph (155 page)

22. This bon mot may be traditional or may be Thayer's.

23. Pfeiff,
Bonn
, 43.

24. Wetzstein/Fischer, 11nn33–34.

25. Thayer/Forbes, 1:17.

26. Ibid., 1:11.

27. Valder-Knechtges, “Andrea Luchesi,” 46.

28. Wetzstein/Fischer, 13 and n42, 151.

29. Solomon, “Economic Circumstances,” 334.

30. In Germany and Austria, the “first” floor of a building is the one above the ground floor. In American terms, then, the Beethovens rented the third floor of the Fischer house. Here, American floor numbers will be used.

31. Wetzstein/Fischer, 7.

32. Ibid., 27.

33. Thayer/Forbes, 1:18–19.

34. Wetzstein/Fischer, 14.

35. Ibid., 12n35.

36. Ibid., 12. As in much of Gottfried Fischer's memoir, this would have been his sister Cäcilie's recollection, because old Ludwig died before Gottfried was born.

37. Wegeler/Ries, 14.

38. Closson, “Grandfather Beethoven,” 372.

39. Wetzstein/Fischer, 22.

40. Thayer/Forbes, 1:50–51.

41. Wetzstein/Fischer, 21–22.

42. Ibid., 29 and n113.

43. Ibid., 33.

44. Schiedermair, 97.

45. Wetzstein/Fischer, 28.

46. Thayer/Forbes, 1:23. In January 1773, a singer applying to fill Ludwig's place in the court choir describes him as “incapacitated.” Wetzstein/Fischer, 7n18, says that Amelius is the painter's correct first name, not Thayer/Forbes's Johann.

47. The description of this painting is based on Owen Jander's article, “Let Your Deafness,” 54–60. The detail concerning where Ludwig's finger points is mine. It seems significant that Ludwig points not toward the musical score but rather to his hand turning the page, which suggests that it was not only music itself that saved him but also his engagement with it.

48. Closson, “Grandfather Beethoven,” 371.

49. Thayer/Forbes, 1:55.

50. Solomon, “Economic Circumstances,” 337–38.

51. Davies,
Character of a Genius
, 4.

52. Solomon, “Economic Circumstances,” 336n22.

53. Wetzstein/Fischer, 32n129.

54. Ibid., 27n107.

55. Zehnder,
Die Bühnen des Rokoko
, 153.

 

2. Father, Mother, Son

 

1. My sense of a prodigy's upbringing and the risks and problems it entails comes from a variety of sources about rearing children in exacting disciplines such as music and athletics, but mainly from an interview of ca. 1984 with the celebrated violin teacher Dorothy DeLay about musical prodigies she had known and taught at Juilliard.

2. Wetzstein/Fischer, 45–46. Again, memories of Ludwig van Beethoven's first thirteen or so years that appear in Gottfried Fischer's memoir would have largely come from his sister Cäcilie, because Gottfried was born ten years after Ludwig, and Cäcilie eight years before.

3. To a degree, this is speculation about Johann's goals for his son, based on old Ludwig's training of Johann, which would have been his model—but with the added element that Ludwig the younger was far more talented than his father and was trained as a keyboard soloist rather than as a singer.

4. Wetzstein/Fischer, 46–47.

5. Skowroneck, “Keyboard Instruments,” 154–57. He points out that Johann sometimes forced Ludwig to play in the middle of the night. This implies he was playing the quiet clavichord so as not to disturb the Fischer family one floor below.

6. Wetzstein/Fischer, 22.

7. Ibid., 57–58. This story also shows that Johann, like his son, honored old Ludwig's memory.

8. Ibid., 65–66.

9. Solomon, “Economic Circumstances,” 11.

10. Wetzstein/Fischer, 36n140; Thayer/Forbes, 1:17. Belderbusch did not yet have the title
Graf
, or Count.

11. Ohm, “Zur Sozialpolitik,” 193.

12. Quoted in Solomon,
Beethoven
, 47–48.

13. Im Hof,
Enlightenment
, 27.

14. Quoted in Marek,
Beethoven
, 145.

15. Blanning,
Pursuit of
Glory
, 518.

16. Quoted in Brandt, “Banditry Unleash'd,” 20.

17. Gutzmer,
Chronik der Stadt Bonn
, 76.

18. Pfeiff,
Bonn
, 47. Wetzstein/Fischer, 48, includes a contemporary print of the fire showing the injured and dead lying in the courtyard.

19. Wetzstein/Fischer, 50n183.

20. Quoted in Schiedermair, 173.

21. The story of the Electoral Residence fire is in Wetzstein/Fischer, 47–52.

22. Ibid., 30.

23. Solomon, “Economic Circumstances,” 347–48.

24. Wetzstein/Fischer, 41.

25. The stories on these pages are from ibid., 37–42 passim.

26. Ibid., 57.

27. Zehnder,
Die Bühnen des Rokoko
, 162.

28. Thayer/Forbes, 1:57–58. Barry Cooper, in
Beethoven
, 4, notes that “concerto” in this case probably means a concerto arranged for one player, as was often done in those days. The “trios” are more puzzling unless there were other players involved.

29. Solomon doubts that Johann deliberately lied about Ludwig's age (
Beethoven
, 4). I am inclined to think Johann did, for three reasons: It is unlikely that both parents would lose track of their son's real age. When Ludwig later went to Holland with his mother and played at court in the Hague, his correct age was listed on the program. And adjusting his son's age to make him look more Mozartian seems like a typical scheme of Johann's. Probably because of Johann's deception, for most of his life Beethoven himself was confused about his age.

30. Skowroneck, “Keyboard Instruments,” 155, votes for early instruction in clavichord, then harpsichord, organ, and piano; Thayer/Forbes votes for piano.

31. Clive,
Beethoven and His World
, 99.

32. The Pfeifer stories are in Wetzstein/Fischer, 64–74. Cäcilie Fischer remembered the flutist fondly; there is much warmth in the stories recalled by Gottfried Fischer, who was born after Pfeifer left Bonn.

33. Schiedermair, 38. The Bonn court musical establishment was larger in the early 1700s than it was in Ludwig van Beethoven's childhood.

34. Gutzmer,
Chronik der Stadt Bonn
, 73.

35. Mozart, quoted in Sisman, “Spirit of Mozart,” 46.

36. Thayer/Forbes, 1:37.

37. Bodsch, “Das kulturelle Leben,” 68.

38. Christian Neefe report, in Thayer/Forbes, 1:37.

39. Braubach, “Von den Menschen,” 109.

40. The public-versus-private performance equation varied from place to place: by the later eighteenth century, for example, England had a tradition of public performances of orchestra music, oratorio, and the like—some of that due to the efforts of producer Johann Peter Salomon—while in Vienna, musical life was still largely centered in private salons.

41. Sisman, “Spirit of Mozart,” 46.

42. Gutzmer,
Chronik der Stadt Bonn
, 72.

43. Ibid., 79.

44. Landon,
Beethoven
unabridged, 24.

45. Matthäus, “Beiträge zur Musickgeschichte Bonns,” 138–39.

46. Wetzstein/Fischer, 98.

47. Ibid., 41; B. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 4.

48. Wetzstein/Fischer, 98–100. Years later Cäcilie remembered Maria's words in detail—and Cäcilie never married.

49. Ibid., 58–59.

50. Ibid., 61.

51. Ibid., 63.

52. Ibid., 114.

53. Memory of court musician B. J. Mäurer, in ibid., 65n238.

 

3. Reason and Revolution

 

1. Wetzstein/Fischer, 54. The console and pedals and bench from the Minorite Church organ Beethoven played now reside in the Beethoven House in Bonn.

2. Thayer/Forbes, 1:58–59. It is not known exactly when Beethoven started school, but he likely attended five years at most. After he left the Tirocinium, someone named Zambona tutored him in Latin, logic, French, and Italian (Wetzstein/Fischer, 45n172). In adulthood his French was sketchy, his Italian reportedly fair.

3. Wetzstein/Fischer, 52.

4. Ibid., 91.

5. Gottfried Fischer's copious account of Johann's journeys with his son is in ibid., 90–98. (His spelling of Rovantini shows the Bonn pronunciation: Ruffangtini.) While he cites people and places in detail, Gottfried is probably enfolding a series of summer trips the Beethovens made in that period.

6. Gutiérrez-Denhoff.
Die gute Kocherey
, 33–34.

7. Wetzstein/Fischer, 100–102. Cäcilie Fischer said the kindly and handsome Rovantini was the only man she would ever have married.

8. Schiedermair, 140–41.

9. Andraschke, “Neefe's Volkstümlichkeit,” passim.

10. Schiedermair, 151.

11. Ibid., 149; Weck, “Wer ist ein freier Mann?” 853.

12. Ohm, “Zur Sozialpolitik,” 198.

13. Quoted in Cadenbach, “Neefe als Literat,” 151. Cadenbach adds that Neefe in fact was “no matador” of the tonal art.

14. Schiedermair, 143.

15. Irmen, “Neefe,” 179.

16. Marek,
Beethoven
, 5–8.

17. Berlin,
Age of Enlightenment:
“The unprecedented successes of the mathematical method in the seventeenth century left its mark on philosophy . . . This led to notable successes and equally notable failures, as the over-enthusiastic and fanatical application of techniques rich in results in one field, when mechanically applied to another . . . commonly does . . . The eighteenth century is perhaps the last period in the history of Western Europe when human omniscience was thought to be an attainable goal” (14). My overall conception of the Enlightenment here is close to the spirit of Berlin's conclusion: “The intellectual power, honesty, lucidity, courage, and disinterested love of the truth of the most gifted thinkers of the eighteenth century remain to this day without parallel. Their age is one of the best and most hopeful episodes in the life of mankind” (29). As we will see, Beethoven, for all his paranoia and bitterness, his lack of a coherent political agenda (except his admiration for the British parliamentary system), and his scarcely democratic contempt for most of the people around him, never really departed from the Aufklärung ideals of his youth.

18. The quotations and points from Kant are from his “What Is Enlightenment?” passim; and in Schmidt,
What Is Enlightenment?

19. Berlin,
Age of Enlightenment
, 24.

20. Parsons, “Deine Zauber binden wieder,” 5–7.

21. Blanning,
Pursuit of Glory
, 470.

22. Some of this paragraph derives from Gay,
Age of Enlightenment
, 11–12. As that book notes, even if the Enlightenment was not innately antireligious, there was a common belief among philosophers that “when science advanced, religion had to retreat” (20). Kant was troubled by the thought that his ideas might weaken religion partly because he insisted that humanity had to rely on itself rather than on God. In the end, Kant's ideas did often have the effect on philosophy that he feared.

23. Anderson, vol. 2, no. 376.

24. Quoted in Im Hof,
Enlightenment
, 270.

25. Quoted in Blanning,
Pursuit of Glory
, 296.

26. Dülmen,
Society of the Enlightenment
, 4. Dülmen views the German Aufklärung as largely a struggle for power and status by the new German bureaucratic middle class—so it was an effort to challenge the hegemony of the aristocracy at the same time that the civil servant class diligently served the aristocracy.

27. Levy,
Beethoven
, 8.

28. Solomon, “Beethoven, Freemasonry,” 108.

29. Quoted in Solomon,
Beethoven
, 47.

30. Quoted in Kross, “Aufklärung,” 10.

 

4. Loved in Turn

 

1. A reproduction of the title page is in Lockwood,
Beethoven: Music
, 54. Forbes, in Thayer/Forbes, 1:66, notes that the countess was wife of Ignaz von Metternich, president of the High Court of Appeals.

2. Thayer/Forbes, 1:66.

3. The suggestion that the
Dressler
Variations may be a memorial for Franz Rovantini comes from Barry Cooper, in
Beethoven
, 7.

4. Bodsch, “Das kulturelle Leben,” 68.

5. Schiedermair, 83–84.

6. Gutzmer,
Chronik der Stadt Bonn
, 77.

7. Wegeler/Ries, 13 and 17.

8. Thayer/Forbes, 1:92–93.

9. One of the startling things about the
Electoral
Sonatas is how many of Beethoven's future “innovations” are already in place in them. The “radical” idea in the
Pathétique
of repeating the introduction within the first movement he had already done in the F Minor
Electoral
. Meanwhile it is often noted that Beethoven expanded the frequency and variety of expression marks in music, especially in his piano music. He used more expressions than anyone ever had, and he made regular use of the extreme dynamic marks,
ff
and
pp
, which are infrequent in Mozart and Haydn. Yet Beethoven's mature piano music uses significantly
fewer
articulation elements and dynamic effects than the
Electoral
Sonatas. The difference is that in the mature works, these elements contribute to the total effect, whereas in the earlier ones, they often don't; they are forced attempts at idiomatic piano writing. Here as much as anywhere we are reminded that this is still a preteen boy composing his first pieces. There is also the question of how much his teacher Neefe helped Beethoven with these sonatas. One would expect Neefe to critique and edit them, but it is hard to imagine that the awkwardness of the markings would have escaped a professional like Neefe. Maybe that is something Beethoven did on his own. (It should be noted that some dynamic and articulation elements that are awkward to impossible on modern instruments may have been less so on the pianos of Beethoven's day.)