The Great Work of Your Life

by Stephen Cope

  There was a crudeness in Beethoven’s appearance that all witnesses remark upon. He could be unpolished even when decked out in finery. But his friends found him often exuberant, lively, and talkative. Czerny remembered him as “always merry, mischievous, full of witticisms and jokes.” Nonetheless, all contemporary accounts also remark on his moodiness, his emotional fragility, and a tendency toward melancholy.

  Beethoven clung heroically to his life’s work. There is absolutely no question that he understood that music would be his only path to wholeness. He understood the meaning of his gift. And he felt a profound responsibility to it. He knew that he could not live as other people lived. “Live only in your art,” he wrote in his diary, “for you are so limited by your senses. This is nevertheless the only existence for you.”

  Beethoven understood that if he were to survive, he would have to privilege his art—his dharma—above all other activities in life. He would, in fact, have to pare away everything that was not his art. This evidenced a solid understanding of Krishna’s doctrine of unity of purpose. “Everything that is called life should be sacrificed to the sublime and be a sanctuary of art,” Beethoven wrote in his diary.

  As a result of this view, Beethoven created a life that was organized in every way to support his dharma. His daily schedule is instructive. He rose at daybreak, ate breakfast, and went directly to his desk, where he worked until midday. After lunch he ordinarily took a long walk—sometimes twice around the city—which could occupy a good part of the afternoon. This walking practice is redolent of Thoreau, of Frost, and indeed of many great writers. Beethoven discovered that his most productive work hours were in the morning, and so he protected this time, and made sure that he arrived fresh at his desk in the morning, ready to commune with his muse. He usually retired to bed early.

  Beethoven pared away what most of us think of as “fun,” but the truth of the matter is that there was nothing more fun for him than his music. He sketched musical ideas constantly, whether at home, on the street, in a tavern, or lying on his side in a meadow. “I always have a notebook … with me, and when an idea comes to me, I put it down at once,” he told young Gerhard von Breuning. “I even get up in the middle of the night when a thought comes, because otherwise I might forget it.” He filled a vast number of notebooks during his lifetime, and retained them for reference until his death.

  6

  Work was a kind of sustaining play for Beethoven. But what exactly was he working on? Nothing small or insignificant. He was attempting nothing less than mastery of the entire Western musical tradition.

  By the time he was in his midtwenties, Beethoven had mastered the tools and vernacular of the greatest living musical masters: Haydn (his teacher for a time) and Mozart. Early in his career, Beethoven had taken on an intensive study of the forms and patterns of the Western classical tradition. He had, in particular, begun a close study of the central form of this tradition—what we today call sonata form.

  Sonata form was the organizing paradigm of Western music. This form, carefully developed over the course of centuries, helped a composer develop the logic of a piece of music. Sonata form was organized around three main components: the exposition of a theme, or the declaration of a musical “argument” embedded in a harmonic structure; the gradual development of some of the interesting possibilities inherent in that harmonic structure and direction; and, finally, the recapitulation of the theme and harmonic structure—now transformed and deepened in some important way. This form provided a brilliant way of developing a musical thought—investigating its possibilities and bringing it to a resolution or conclusion. Most important, it created a container for all the components of drama: for creating and sustaining tension, for expressing development and transformation, for giving us the feeling of forward movement. Sonata form is a remarkably psychological approach to music. It connects us with something quintessentially human.

  Sigmund Freud himself would have appreciated the possibilities for “working through” psychological conflict that are inherent in sonata form. Freud, of course, called this conflict “neurosis.” Neurosis is simply conflict between parts of the self—conflict, say, between our desires and our conscience; or conflict between our sometimes monstrously driven cravings and our more prudent selves, or even conflict between an overweening scrupulosity and normal human wishes.

  All of the most mature forms of human play involve us in the “working through” of these conflicts. When “work is play for mortal stakes,” as it was for Beethoven, it helps us to resolve doubt and division, and to at least briefly experience a sense of resolution, of “union,” and of well-being.

  So, sonata form provided Beethoven with an effective form for working through his inner conflicts. Some might protest that this working through was only symbolic. It was in fact very, very real. The working through provided to Beethoven by his music was central to his psychological survival. It was essential that Beethoven plumb the depths of musical form, because in doing so he was plumbing his own depths.

  Piano sonatas were Beethoven’s first laboratory for investigating the transformational possibilities of sonata form. Through his development of the piano sonata, he was able to investigate the plasticity of sonata form itself. What was the form’s real capacity for holding conflict? For helping him endure the tension of opposites? How much of himself could he pour into this form?

  We have said that deliberate practice leads to heightened pattern recognition. There is no greater example of this heightened pattern recognition than Beethoven, who found astonishing new patterns within the structure of Western music. He found patterns within patterns, just as Thoreau did in nature and Corot did in painting. Beethoven found within the sonata form new, unexplored possibilities. As Solomon tells us, he explored “thematic condensation; more intense, extended and dramatic development; and the infusion of richer fantasy and improvisatory materials into an even more highly structured classicism.” Beethoven saw possibilities in this form that only a highly developed musical imagination could perceive.

  In effect, then, Beethoven became a musical seer. Like the mystical rishis of ancient India, he perceived aspects of reality that were beyond the perceptual range of ordinary people. Very few of his contemporaries could understand the musical leaps he had made. And of course, not seeing the genius of his refined perception, his critics called him “mad.”

  They were only half right. Throughout his life, Beethoven was indeed constantly threatened by the forces of disintegration planted in his childhood. But his music became a laboratory in which he could bring these forces to the surface, work them out, master them. This is the very hallmark of great dharma. Each of us must find the form that allows this naming, this working through, and, finally, this mastery. We may find these forms in sports, in the arts, in finance, in academia, in relationship building, in child-rearing—or, indeed, in stamp collecting. But find them we must.

  7

  By his midtwenties, at the very apex of his meteoric rise to the top of musical Vienna, Beethoven was harboring a devastating secret. He was slowly going deaf. He had no idea what this might mean for his music. It was clear that he would no longer be able to conduct or perform. But would he even be able to compose? Beethoven was justly afraid that he might not be able to psychologically survive the loss of his creative life. In an effort to deny his increasing infirmity—both to others and to himself—he became more and more withdrawn. His social and emotional isolation added an almost unbearable burden to an already heavily stressed psyche. His fragile compromise with life was breaking down.

  Beethoven describes his increasing misery in a now-famous letter to his friend Franz Wegeler: “… my ears continue to hum and buzz day and night. I must confess that I lead a miserable life. For almost two years I have ceased to attend any social functions, just because I find it impossible to say to people: I am deaf. If I had any other profession I might be able to cope with my infirmity; but in
my profession it is a terrible handicap … Heaven only knows what is to become of me. Already I have often cursed my Creator and my existence.”

  Ludwig van Beethoven had made a fragile compromise with life. Now the whole house of cards was threatening to collapse. As his deafness increased, so did his anxiety, his dread, and his depression.

  In the spring of 1802, Beethoven moved to the quiet little village of Heiligenstadt, north of Vienna on the Danube, where he apparently remained for almost half a year. This move had been suggested by a physician, who assured him that a period of enforced rest and quiet would make a difference in his hearing. When it became clear that even radical quiet was not having the slightest positive effect, he began to unravel. In Heiligenstadt—alone, desperate, despairing—he seriously contemplated suicide. He most likely remained at serious risk of taking his own life for a period of some weeks, or even months.

  Throughout the course of this ordeal, the composer searched his own soul. He raged at heaven. He prayed. He most likely wrote in his journal—though we have no writing from the very center of this crisis. What we do have, miraculously, is a document that Beethoven wrote after he had finally made the decision to live. It is a remarkable piece of personal testimony—now known as the Heiligenstadt Testament—in which he bares his soul to his family and his friends. The Testament, written in the form of a letter to his brothers, was never mailed. It was discovered in his desk drawer after his death.

  The Heiligenstadt Testament recounts Beethoven’s wrestling match with suicidality. It describes the razor’s edge on which he then lived, and makes a full accounting of the consequences—both personal and professional—of his deafness. And it describes his decision to go on living. He would live, henceforth, he says, for his art alone: “It was only my art that held me back [from suicide] … Ah, it seemed to me impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me. So I endured this wretched existence … Patience, they say, is what I must now choose for my guide, and I have done so—Perhaps I shall get better, perhaps not; I am ready.—Forced to become a philosopher already in my twenty-eighth year.—Divine One, thou seest my inmost soul; thou knowest that therein dwells the love of mankind and the desire to do good …”

  Beethoven had faced death. And he had decided to live. As a result of this ordeal, he was less afraid of either death or suffering. The experience of utter despair profoundly changed him. “Stay in the center and embrace death with your whole heart,” says the Tao te Ching, as you will recall. Though Beethoven had not discovered the Tao te Ching in his vast reading of Eastern literature, nevertheless, he had independently discovered this same principle of dharma. Embrace death with your whole heart and you will endure forever

  “With joy I hasten to meet death,” he writes toward the end of the Heiligenstadt Testament. “—If it comes before I have had the chance to develop all my artistic capacities, it will still be coming too soon despite my harsh fate, and I should probably wish it later—yet even so I should be happy, for would it not free me from a state of endless suffering?”

  Beethoven finished his Testament with a strange good-bye, “Thus I bid thee farewell,” he ends. To whom was he saying good-bye? It seems clear that he was saying good-bye to an earlier version of himself.

  In the years leading up to Heiligenstadt, Beethoven had angrily railed against the injustice of his condition. He was Job with his fist raised toward Heaven. But for the most part during those earlier years, he kept his despair a secret. He confided it to no one. He intended to use his anger to keep him alive, to keep his creative spirit moving. He would overcome. “I will take Fate by the throat,” he had declared.

  Now, at Heiligenstadt, came a great surrender. And not just a surrender to a terrible fate, but a true acceptance of that fate. At first, of course, his surrender looked more like resignation. But at Heiligenstadt, he found the beginnings of a true acceptance of his situation. After Heiligenstadt there was a deep change in Beethoven. He had discovered the link between his suffering and his art. His sacrifice now had meaning. He had discovered one of the central principles of dharma.

  By the end of the summer of 1802, as J. W. N. Sullivan tells us, Beethoven had discovered that his work was mightier than his suffering. He had discovered, in fact, that his work could not be destroyed by his suffering: “… he found that his genius, that he had felt called upon to cherish and protect, was really a mighty force using him as a channel or servant … only when the consciously defiant Beethoven had succumbed, only when his pride and strength had been so reduced that he was willing, even eager, to die and abandon the struggle, did he find that his creative power was indeed indestructible and that it was its deathless energy that made it impossible for him to die.”

  “In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer,” wrote Albert Camus, in the midst of a similar period of despair. An invincible summer.

  “Never again was [Beethoven’s] attitude toward life one of defiance,” writes Sullivan. “He had become aware within himself of an indomitable creative energy that nothing could destroy.” Beethoven, exulting in this newfound freedom, wrote the following note to himself in the margins of his great C Major string quartet, “In the same way that you are now able to throw yourself into the whirlpool of society, so you are able to write your works in spite of all social hindrances. Let your deafness no longer be a secret—even for art.”

  Beethoven came to see that complete surrender to his situation in life—to his deafness, to his various neuroses—was absolutely essential for his own spiritual development and for the development of his art. He accepted the apparent mystery that his art and his suffering were inextricably linked.

  8

  After Heiligenstadt, Beethoven’s creativity burst forth, unrestrained, at least temporarily, by inner conflict. Having worked through a nearly fatal series of doubts and self-division, Beethoven entered a period of unity of purpose and of certitude. “I live entirely in my music,” he wrote, “and hardly have I completed one composition when I have already begun another. At my present rate of composition, I often produce three or four works at the same time.” This burgeoning of creativity reminds us of Thoreau at Walden, of Frost in England, or of Whitman after the Civil War. The music, Beethoven says, seems to be writing itself. The Master now experienced a new dimension of trust in The Gift. He understood that his gift was not personal. That he was not the Doer. That his responsibility was not to create The Gift—that was a done deal—but only to sustain it, to husband it, to nurture it in every way possible. This newfound faith in The Gift had a paradoxical effect: It relaxed him and energized him at one and the same time.

  What emerged next was what some biographers call Beethoven’s “heroic period.” The term “heroic” is usually thought to refer to Beethoven’s fascination with power, and with powerful men—specifically Napoleon, to whom he had first dedicated his magisterial Third Symphony, the Eroica. In fact, “heroic” refers to Beethoven’s own newly exuberant experience of faith.

  Beethoven now truly began to intuit the connection between The Wound and The Gift. He would never again try to cover up The Wound. In fact, he would open it for all to see. He would submit to the mystery of his fate, and trust it. He would allow himself to be a sacrifice. “Submission, deepest submission to your fate, only this can give you the sacrifices—for this matter of service,” he wrote in his Tagebuch (his diary). What does this mean? The theme of sacrifice and submission colors many of his entries in the Tagebuch henceforward. It means that he accepts his life as a sacrifice. But now a willing sacrifice. Even an eager one. He began to understand that The Wound itself is an aspect of The Gift. They cannot be divided.

  Solomon grasps this essential point: “Like Henry James’s obscure hurt and Dostoevsky’s holy disease, even [Beethoven’s] loss of hearing was in some sense necessary or at least useful, to the fulfillment of his creative quest.” Mysteriously, The G
ift issues forth out of The Wound. It does not quite heal The Wound, but it makes sense of it. It gives it meaning. And meaning is everything.

  With this newfound understanding, Beethoven now perceived altogether new possibilities in sonata form—precisely for giving voice to The Wound. Sonata form had not yet been stretched to its capacity—to express either heroic or tragic levels of experience. But Beethoven now saw that it was uniquely suited to this task. He grasped (as Solomon tells us) “its unique ability simultaneously to release and to contain the most explosive musical concepts within binding aesthetic structures.”

  Krishna and Arjuna give us the field of battle. Is this just a symbol? No, it is not. It is quite real. The battlefield is an absolutely central component of the Gita. Our conflicts and inner divisions—all that separates us from our true selves—must be worked out on the field of real life. On the field of relationships. Of work. Of effort. Of hobbies. Of callings. This is what dharma is. Dharma calls us not to just any old battlefield, but to the battlefield where we will suffer most fruitfully. Where our suffering will be most useful to ourselves, to our souls, and to the world.

  The ongoing argument in Bhagavad Gita scholarship about whether the battlefield at Kurukshetra is symbolic or real is a red herring. The battlefield is both entirely symbolic and entirely real. This is the genius of Krishna’s teaching on action. The soul must be purified through action. Beethoven gives us another kind of field of battle, in which great forces fight with one another, and in which dharma, truth, and unity eventually triumph.