Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph

by Swafford, Jan

  On March 19, 1799, Joseph Haydn publicly unveiled the work he considered his magnum opus, the oratorio The Creation, on a libretto by Baron van Swieten. Haydn considered oratorios and masses the most important musical genres and the crowns of his work, and he wanted to leave behind something to place beside the Handel oratorios, above all Messiah, which he had come to admire in London. The old master worked slowly and carefully on the piece, praying to God for inspiration as always, but now sketching more elaborately than he had done in his decades as a palace servant, when he had to turn out a constant stream of works to order.45

  Presumably Beethoven attended the premiere of The Creation at the Burgtheater. He subdued his jealousy as best he could, admired the scope and splendor of the music as best he could. His agitated state of mind around the premiere is perhaps indicated by a rare wrangle he had with Zmeskall over tickets, the only time on record when there were strong words between them. “You seemed to be offended with me yesterday,” Beethoven wrote, “perhaps because I declared rather heatedly that you had acted wrongly in giving away the tickets . . . etc., etc.” The Creation drew the largest crowd ever seen in the court theater. Its legendary opening masterstroke is the hair-raising proclamation of “Let there be light!” in a great C-major effulgence bursting from the depiction of Chaos. It was an effect not only in music but in his audience that Haydn had calculated as precisely as the eponymous fortissimo explosion in the Surprise Symphony. Knowing that moment would begin the piece with a coup de théâtre, Haydn swore the musicians and choir to secrecy. At the premiere it caused the sensation he knew it would. The oratorio went on to be, for many years, one of the most popular large choral works in the repertoire.

  Jammed in amid the throng of adoring listeners in the Burgtheater, Beethoven might have sensed with a touch of relief that the wild acclaim was not quite earned. The music had manifold splendors, but when all was sung and done, vocal works of Handelian scope were not really Haydn’s forte any more than opera had been, and the style of The Creation was generally operatic. The aria depicting the creation of the earth, for one example, starts in a furioso mode suitable for a revenge aria on the stage. In the end, Haydn was at his best on a more immediate and intimate scale: a string quartet, a piano sonata, a symphony whether witty or elegant or judiciously Sturm und Drang.

  It would not have required an inordinate gift of prophecy for Beethoven to foresee that this kind of scope and ambition was actually his own forte, even if he did not yet know when and how he could manage it. For him, when great works were in question, Handel would become the prime model and challenge, not Haydn (given that Beethoven and his time hardly knew the large works of J. S. Bach). Nor would it have been especially humbling for Beethoven to realize that he might never write a better string quartet than Haydn’s greatest ones, and several of those greatest ones were brand-new.

  The Creation would remain with Beethoven as a challenge and a goad. For the rest of his life, the oratorio weighed on his mind, along with Haydn’s Austrian national anthem, until at last he found his own ways—not in oratorio but in more congenial genres—to respond to them.

  The main threat to Beethoven’s productivity was hardly the challenge of Haydn but rather the financial necessity of teaching piano. It was a job he hated except when it involved exceptionally talented students or attractive young females of whatever talent. Exemplars of the latter appeared in spring 1799. They were Therese and Josephine, two of three teenage daughters—Charlotte was the third—of Countess Anna von Brunsvik. At that point, the family was visiting Vienna for only some eighteen days.

  Therese von Brunsvik showed up at Beethoven’s flat in St. Peter’s Square with his op. 1 Trios under her arm, sat down, and played away at his out-of-tune piano, singing the string parts as she went. Beethoven was hopelessly charmed by this teenager. For the moment, he largely gave up work on the string quartets to go to the family’s hotel and give lessons to Therese and her sister Josephine, turning up faithfully sixteen days in a row. “He did not tire,” Therese perhaps innocently recalled in her memoirs, “of holding down and bending my fingers, which I had been taught to raise and hold flat.” The lessons were nominally an hour long, but he often stayed three or four hours. Therese was delicate and had a deformed spine.46 His main attention fell on the more attractive Josephine. That interest would keep simmering while Josephine, under fierce pressure from her mother, made a forced and loveless marriage with Count Joseph Deym.

  When Therese and her family left town, Beethoven got back to the string quartets and other pieces, putting aside anxieties about his hearing. He endured an emotional loss in June when his beloved friend Karl Amenda left Vienna for good, to take care of family matters back home in Courland. As a testament to their friendship, Beethoven gave Amenda the manuscript of the F Major Quartet, eventually no. 1 of the set. For the moment he considered the piece finished, but he changed his mind about that.

  In October he delivered to Prince Lobkowitz the first three of the commissioned six quartets and received a fee of 200 florins.47 Work on the next three was sporadic for a while as he turned to other projects needing attention, including sketches for a C-major symphony that for years had refused to take wing.

  Another keyboard rival, nearly the same age as Beethoven, arrived in Vienna for an extended stay in autumn 1799. This was Johann Baptist Cramer, German born and reared in England, where he had studied with Clementi. Cramer was a prolific if unoriginal composer, then in the process of becoming the supreme piano virtuoso of his generation in Europe. Cramer’s admirers soon included Beethoven, who coveted the fineness and control of his touch. Having just lost the friend he felt closest to, Beethoven embraced this new acquaintance, who was one of the few musicians he felt he could learn from, and a man to whom he could expose his (never very profound) insecurities. An old story has them walking together in the Prater park and in the distance hearing the haunting Mozart C Minor Piano Concerto, K. 491. Beethoven stopped, swaying to the music (his failing ears still permitted him to hear it), and groaned, “Cramer, Cramer! We’ll never be able to do anything like that!”

  Apparently Beethoven was generous toward Cramer’s music too, but that part of the relationship was not reciprocated. Later Cramer would give his famous friend mixed reviews. As a player, he said, Beethoven could be brilliant and focused one day, eccentric and confused the next. (Confused with the aid of wine, perhaps. It hardly seems likely that Beethoven composed with a glass at hand, but he may have played after a few glasses sometimes.) Cramer later told his students, If you haven’t heard Beethoven improvise, you have never heard improvisation at all. One day he had turned up to visit Beethoven and stopped in the anteroom when he heard him improvising alone in the next room. Cramer stood listening for a half hour, enthralled. Finally, knowing Beethoven did not like to be overheard, he left without a greeting.48 But Cramer’s admiration was limited. He was among the musicians who were not prepared to follow Beethoven into new territories of sound and feeling. Though he did play some of the Beethoven sonatas, ­Cramer’s idols were Handel and Mozart. To a student enthusiastic about Beethoven’s works, he scoffed, “If he emptied his inkstand on a piece of music paper, you’d admire it!”49

  Which is all to say that as the new sensation, the new controversy, the new rebel, Beethoven and his music and motives were always questioned. There would always be the unconvinced, the bad reviews, the outright enemies. But as a new century approached he found more admirers, more enthusiasm. Looking over the op. 10 Piano Sonatas in autumn 1799, the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung reviewer confessed,

  It is not to be denied that Hr. v B. is a man of genius, has originality and goes his own way. In addition, his unusual thoroughness in the higher manner of writing and his own extraordinary command of the instrument he writes for unquestionably assure him of his rank among the best keyboard composers and performers of our time. His abundance of ideas . . . still too often causes him to pile up ideas without restraint and to arrange them in a
bizarre manner so as to bring about an obscure artificiality or an artificial obscurity . . . [Yet] this critic . . . has learned to admire him more than he did at first.50

  Early next year the AMZ response to the Pathétique was still warmer and more insightful: “This well-written sonata is not unjustly called pathetic, for it really does have a definitely passionate character. Noble melancholy is announced in the effective . . . and flowingly modulated Grave in C minor, which occasionally interrupts the fiery Allegro theme that gives much expression to the very vigorous agitation of an earnest soul.”51 The tastes of reviewers were broadening, though it would be a while before the AMZ found critics whose prose could evoke this new music.

  The two piano sonatas that followed the Pathétique as op. 14 were another pulling back to warmer and lighter music: each comprises three concise movements with no foreboding, no slow movements, no virtuosity, and overall a delicious playfulness and joie de vivre—yet they are no less fresh in their pianism than the sonatas that precede and follow them. A feature of no. 1, in E major, is a new, urgent theme in the first-movement development. That had been part of the conception from the beginning: Beethoven wrote on an early sketch, “zweiter Theil, ohne das Thema durchzuführen” (second part [i.e., the development], without working out the theme). He was aiming for a more through-composed effect. The opening motif of op. 14, no. 2, in G major, is a wry little fillip containing an octave leap and a three-note hook figure that will mark themes throughout the sonata, down to a droll final gurgle in the bass.

  One chilly winter day around 1800, a father brought his ten-year-old son to play for Beethoven. The boy was Carl Czerny, and he carried with him the music for Adelaide and the newly published Pathétique, which he had already learned. Father and son were shepherded by an early Beethoven devotee, violinist Wenzel Krumpholz. He had at some point given fiddle lessons to Beethoven (to apparently little effect: in adulthood, Beethoven was a laughable violinist). They spent much time together, Beethoven playing new pieces and improvising, poking fun at Krumpholz’s ecstatic responses. In the habit of giving nicknames to his friends, Beethoven dubbed this disciple his “court jester”; the two stayed close for many years. Besides his fondness for the man, Beethoven appreciated the value of having a champion like Krumpholz in the ranks of leading Viennese performers.

  When Czerny father and son turned up, Beethoven was living in a fifth- or sixth-floor flat on Tiefer Graben, near the Hofburg—the imperial palace—in the center of town. After Krumpholz had the Czernys climb what seemed like endless creaking flights of stairs, a shabby-looking servant showed them in. There they found their genius inhabiting a bare room with bare walls, the floor littered with boxes, clothes, and papers, with few places to sit other than a rickety chair parked before a Walter piano (the leading Viennese make of the day, once Mozart’s favorite). Several people were present, including the celebrated Mozart pupil Franz Süssmeyer, violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh, and one of Beethoven’s brothers (probably Carl, who was not at this point on Beethoven’s enemies list).

  Young Czerny knew about Beethoven’s dangerous reputation. His works, Czerny later recalled, “were totally misunderstood by the general public, and all the followers of the Mozart-Haydn school opposed them with the most intense animosity.” That may have been an exaggeration, but not by much. Czerny wrote that his first sight of Beethoven reminded him of Robinson Crusoe: brown in complexion, his stubble of whiskers reaching nearly to his eyes, his thick hair coal-black and bristling. That day he wore a dark gray morning coat and matching trousers. Young Czerny noticed a strange detail: Beethoven had his ears stuffed with cotton stained by some yellowish medicine.

  Beethoven agreed to hear the boy play. Shoving down his anxiety, Czerny started with the solo part of the Mozart C Major Concerto, K. 503. Soon Beethoven stepped to the piano and began playing bits of the orchestral part around the boy’s hands. Reassured, Czerny went on to play the Pathétique and to accompany his father in Adelaide.

  Once, Beethoven had himself been a ten-year-old prodigy, so he was not inordinately impressed. His response was matter-of-fact: “The boy has talent. I will teach him myself and accept him as my pupil. Send him to me several times a week. First of all, however, get him a copy of Emanuel Bach’s book on the true art of piano playing, for he must bring it with him the next time he comes.” Here began a historic career. As Czerny’s teacher, Beethoven shaped not only a musician and a disciple, but what became a lasting school of piano pedagogy.52

  Some other new acquaintances from this period also bore fruit in one degree or another. Beethoven got to know pianist and composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel, once Mozart’s favorite pupil. There are two notes Beethoven wrote around 1799 whose addressee tradition would assign to Hummel. The first dismisses him in contemptuous third person: “Don’t come to me anymore. He is a false dog, and may the hangman do away with all false dogs.” Then on the next day: “Dear Little ’Nazy of my Heart! You are an honest fellow and I now realize that you were right. So come to me this afternoon. You will find Schuppanzigh here too and we shall both blow you up, batter and shake so that you will have a thoroughly good time. Kisses from your Beethoven, also called Dumpling.”53

  Beethoven was still outgoing and sociable in this period, interested in any new musical phenomenon that turned up. Another traveling virtuoso visiting Vienna in 1799 was double bass soloist Domenico Dragonetti, acclaimed for transforming a workaday instrument into a thing of beauty. As one critic said, Dragonetti “by powers almost magical, invests an instrument, which seems to wage eternal war with melody . . . with all the charms of soft harmonious sounds.”

  When Dragonetti arrived in Vienna, his fame preceding him, he and Beethoven naturally wanted to get acquainted. The defining moment in their acquaintance came when the two read through the Cello Sonata op. 5, no. 2, Dragonetti playing the cello part on his bass. At the end a delighted Beethoven jumped up from the piano and embraced player and instrument together.54 From that point on, Beethoven had a new appreciation of the orchestra’s basement. That inspiration, put into the pages of his symphonies, would oppress generations of orchestral bass players who had enjoyed their anonymity on the generally easy bass line. In his visits to Vienna, Dragonetti proved an amiable companion as well, going on about his collections of instruments, his paintings and musical manuscripts, snuff boxes and dolls.55 Dragonetti had more money than Beethoven ever did, and unlike Beethoven he knew how to have fun with it.

  In December 1799, the French Constitution of revolutionary year VIII declared Napoleon Bonaparte First Consul. He was now de facto dictator of the country. He soon returned to the battlefield, leading his armies in Italy against the Second Coalition, in which Austria was again the major player.

  As the new century began, Beethoven had a thick portfolio of works newly or nearly done. It was time to make his bid to become First Consul of music in Vienna.

  14

  The Good, the Beautiful, and the Melancholy

  THE PROGRAM READ, “Today, Wednesday, April 2nd, 1800, Herr Ludwig van Beethoven will have the honor to give a grand concert for his benefit in the Royal Imperial Court Theater beside the Burg.” At age twenty-nine, after more than seven years of living in Vienna, Beethoven was mounting his first concert in the city for his own benefit. For it he had secured the theater of the Hofburg, the imperial palace, which numbered among its legendary premieres Mozart’s Figaro and the recent one of Haydn’s Creation. His conquest of Vienna as a virtuoso had been quick and relatively easy. Now he needed to establish his name as a composer.

  The evening was one of the long patchwork programs of the time, seven numbers beginning with “a grand symphony by the late Kapellmeister Mozart.” Second and fifth were arias from The Creation by “the Princely Kapellmeister Herr Haydn.” With the orchestra, Beethoven played one of his first two piano concertos, probably the C Major. In central place was the public premiere of the new Septet for three winds and four strings, “most humbly and obediently dedicated to He
r Majesty the Empress.” Ignaz Schuppanzigh handled the nimble first-violin part. Before the final work, Beethoven improvised at the piano. For a finish, he premiered “a new grand symphony” in C major, his first.1 Haydn was probably present. It was a program he would approve of, one that acknowledged Beethoven’s roots.

  The size and enthusiasm of the audience was not reported in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung notice. The reviewer concentrates on the strong and weak suits of the program. Declaring it “probably the most interesting public concert for a long time,” he never quite gets around to explaining why. He gives passing praise to the concerto, the Septet, and Beethoven’s “masterly” improvisation. In the symphony he finds “very much art, novelty, and a wealth of ideas. However, the wind instruments were used far too much.” That means he found the symphony overscored—which, on the whole, it is.

  The main trouble, the reviewer continues at greater length and greater heat, was not the music but the musicians. He cites wrangles over who was to conduct; the players came close to rebelling at Beethoven’s choice. In the concerto the performers “did not make any effort to pay attention to the soloist. As a result there was no trace of delicacy in the accompaniment.” In the new symphony, “they became so lax that in spite of all efforts, no fire could any longer be brought forth in their playing . . . With such behavior, what use is any amount of skill . . . ?”2 It was a lukewarm review of a less-than-splendid evening, but still the concert did Beethoven more good than harm. In the next years, the C Major Symphony proved a popular addition to the orchestral repertoire, alongside those of Haydn and Mozart and a row of lesser lights.

  Beethoven’s gambit on this first outing was to be strong but not provocative. One item was manifestly designed to be a hit: the Septet, a divertimento in six movements, moderate and mellifluous, not too hard for amateurs to play or to hear. In short, meant to “please.” It begins with a stately introduction on a tone of high-Mozartian elegance, a mood from which it never strays. No formal experiments, no renegade keys, little break in the silken surface. It is glowingly scored, with a lively and memorable clarinet part as foil to the first violin.