by Suchet, John
He then talks of his health in general, and absurd remedies various doctors have given him – evidence that he has at least begun seeking medical advice – which might have helped his diarrhoea and colic, but has done nothing to improve his hearing, as they assured him would happen.
Then, a few sentences later:
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, simply 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 ... As for the spoken voice, it is surprising that some people have never noticed my deafness. But since I have always been liable to fits of absent-mindedness, they attribute my hardness of hearing to that. Sometimes I can scarcely hear a person who speaks softly. I can hear sounds, it is true, but cannot make out the words. But if anyone shouts, I can’t bear it. Heaven alone knows what is to become of me.
This is absolutely remarkable. For a start he gives a graphic description of his symptoms. Secondly he acknowledges how much more devastating this is for a musician than for anyone else. Thirdly, he provides evidence he has tried to conceal the problem, and – arguably most remarkable of all – he admits not only to absent-mindedness, but to the fact that everybody knows he’s absent-minded!
Only in the privacy of a letter to an old and much trusted friend could we expect someone of Beethoven’s character to pour his heart out like that. It is more than a cri de cœur, it is an act of self-confession.
Unsurprisingly he begs Wegeler to say nothing to anyone about his deafness, not even to Lorchen,8 but urges him to write to the doctor he is currently seeing in Vienna. We do not know whether Wegeler did.
One other nice detail. Beethoven asks Wegeler to send the portrait of his grandfather, the Kapellmeister, to him in Vienna. This is the painting Beethoven knew as a child, and that his father pawned. This Wegeler did. Beethoven treasured it, and it hung on the wall of every apartment he lived in until his death.
‘My ears continue to hum and buzz day and night’
We owe Wegeler an enormous debt of gratitude for preserving the letter. Sadly, Beethoven was not as careful with the letter that Wegeler wrote in reply. None survives. But we know he replied, because Beethoven wrote again to him five months later, and began by thanking him for his concern, and saying he was applying herbs to his belly, as Wegeler recommended.
This is another remarkable letter, for two very different reasons. First, taken with the earlier letter, it gives an extraordinary insight into just what the doctors in Vienna were putting him through. One prescribed cold baths, another warm baths. A third put almond oil in his ears, which made his hearing even worse. There was a suggestion that he try a new-fangled technique called Galvinism, though there is no evidence he actually did. The doctor who prescribed warm baths, a distinguished army surgeon, whose daughter Stephan von Breuning was to marry, then came up with something entirely novel.
He soaked the bark of the poisonous plant Daphne mezereum in water, strapped it to Beethoven’s arms, and told him to allow the bark to dry. As it dried, it shrank, tightening the skin underneath and causing blisters to form. These the doctor lanced – to relieve Beethoven’s deafness. It might have failed to achieve that (although Beethoven writes that he cannot deny the humming and buzzing in his ears was slightly less), but what it did do was cause Beethoven enormous pain in his arms, and make playing the piano impossible. He soon gave it – and the doctor – up.
The second reason this letter is important is that it contains a sentence so extraordinary, so unexpected, that you really do have to read it several times to make sure it says what you think it says. There he is, writing about his hearing problems again, when suddenly ...
My poor hearing haunted me everywhere like a ghost, and I avoided – all human society. I seemed to be a misanthrope, but I really am not one any longer. This change has been brought about by a dear charming girl who loves me and whom I love. After two years I am again enjoying a few blissful moments, and for the first time I feel that – marriage might bring me happiness. Unfortunately she is not of my class – and at the moment – I certainly could not marry – I really am far too busy bustling about ...
Beethoven was in love! Despite all his problems, health and otherwise, the thought of marriage was on his mind, though the letter rambles on in some detail about his work and problems without mentioning love or marriage again.9
So who was the object of his affections, the young woman whom he considered below his class, and who he believed was as much in love with him as he was with her? The evidence points conclusively to one of his pupils, Countess Giulietta (Julia) Guicciardi, aged sixteen in 1801. His description of her as being beneath him socially seems somewhat disingenuous. Her father was a senior Austrian civil servant at the Austro-Bohemian court chancellery in Vienna, and her mother closely related to the aristocratic Hungarian family Brunsvik (who will feature again in these pages).
What certainly is true is that the Guicciardi family was not particularly well off, did not move in the same social strata as Beethoven’s patrons, and would certainly have derived some cachet from the famous composer’s obvious attraction to Julia. We know few details about the progress of the romance, or whether it really was a mutual attraction. But Thayer, who evidently spoke to people in Vienna who had direct knowledge, albeit many years after the event, states that it is his opinion that Beethoven went so far as to propose marriage, and that Julia was ‘not indisposed’ to accept it, that her mother was in favour of the match, but that her father forbade it on the grounds that Beethoven was
a man without rank, fortune, or permanent engagement; a man, too, of character and temperament so peculiar, and afflicted with the incipient stages of an infirmity which, if not arrested and cured, must deprive him of all hope of obtaining any high and remunerative official appointment, and at length compel him to abandon his career as the great pianoforte virtuoso.
Another painful rejection, then, for Beethoven, no doubt made worse by the knowledge that his deafness lay behind it, and that his affliction was now common knowledge.
As for Julia, she went on to marry a mediocre musician by the name of Count Gallenberg, with whom she moved to Italy.10 Her place in history is assured, though, through Beethoven’s decision to dedicate his new piano sonata to her, a sonata published under the title ‘Sonata quasi una fantasia’, but known to us today – thanks to a music critic who compared it to the moon setting over Lake Lucerne – as the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata.
ONCE AGAIN Beethoven’s deafness had stood in the way of his aspirations, in this case desires and longing of the most personal kind. How long would it be before this dreadful affliction began to affect his life’s work, his raison d’être, his calling, the sole path he was capable of pursuing?
And then, in early 1802, one of his doctors, Dr Johann Adam Schmidt, came up with the only sensible suggestion any doctor ever made to him. He advised Beethoven to get out of Vienna, to leave the dust and dirt and bustle of the city behind, to free his ears of the rasping jangle of carriage wheels grinding over uneven cobbles, to distance himself from the demands of publishers, to go somewhere where his hearing loss would not be an obvious problem, not lead to questioning and veiled comment. And also to allow him to put the pain of marital rejection behind him. In short, to rest, relax, and compose.
Dr Schmidt had a friend who owned a small cottage for rent in a small village north of the city, known for its warm springs, its gently meandering stream, its woodland, its calm. The name of the village was Heiligenstadt.
1 Dragonetti was unusually tall, and had an extra tall double-bass specially made for him, with just three strings. It hangs on a wall today in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
2 The rapid alternation of notes to create tension and drive, honed to perfection a century or more later with the piano accompaniment to sile
nt movies.
3 In his lifetime he would compose several ballets and operas, eight piano concertos, and nearly five hundred chamber works.
4 Countess Marie Wilhelmine von Thun, who on one occasion got on bended knee to beg Beethoven to play for her. He refused.
5 It was the wind players in Bonn who considered the two cantatas unplayable. What was it about nineteenth-century wind players?
6 There was some disappointment that the expected lead female dancer was replaced, after causing a stir the previous time she appeared with her ‘lavish display of the Venus-like graces and charms of her exquisite form’. She wore a flesh-coloured costume, which gave the impression she was naked.
7 Diminutive of Stephan.
8 Eleonore von Breuning, shortly to become Wegeler’s wife.
9 It does contain one memorable passage, beloved of biographers when describing Beethoven’s character: ‘I will seize Fate by the throat – I shall not allow it to bend or crush me completely.’
10 Gallenberg turned out to be impotent. For this reason he allowed Julia to take a lover, Count von Schulenburg, with whom she had one illegitimate son and four illegitimate daughters. For this information I am indebted to Lady Pia Chelwood, née von Roretz, who is the great-great-granddaughter of the illegitimate son of Julia and Schulenburg. Lady Chelwood, born into Austrian nobility whose family seat is at Breiteneich in Austria, is widow of the former Conservative MP Sir Tufton Beamish, later Lord Chelwood, and currently resides in East Sussex. She has in her home a marble bust of Julia sculpted from life.
Chapter
SEVEN
Only My Art Held Me Back
THE BEETHOVEN WHO arrived in Heiligenstadt in April 1802 was a very different man from that of two years earlier. Then, he was the undisputed supreme piano virtuoso in the city; he had staged his first benefit concert, which even with mixed results established him firmly as the city’s leading composer (a mantle the ageing Haydn was quite content to cede), and he was falling in love with a girl who appeared to be reciprocating his interest. There was a problem with his hearing, certainly, but several doctors were trying to tackle it, at the same time assuring him it was only a matter of time before the problem was solved.
Two years on, and Baron Braun had reneged on his promise of a second benefit concert (despite the inducement of more dedications), his amorous ambitions had been quashed, and his deafness was worse. In fact it had become so much worse that he had finally lost faith in his doctors, and now believed nothing would stop the deterioration. If the best that medicine could come up with was a recommendation to take a break, it showed there was nothing more that science could offer.
In one sense, getting away for a break was the last thing Beethoven needed. He would be on his own in a small cottage – no one to converse with, eat and drink with, step out to the tavern with. He would have hour upon hour in which to brood, which would lead him naturally to magnify his problems. If he arrived depressed, that was likely to become worse as the weeks passed.
On the other hand, Beethoven liked solitude. There are countless anecdotes of how he would be oblivious to everything around him while composing, how his favourite activity was to walk for hours across country, beating time to imaginary sounds in his head, stopping to jot down thoughts on scraps of paper. If nothing else, he would have time to compose without distraction.
And compose he did. He brought his Second Symphony to fruition, and embarked on new piano sonatas and piano variations.1 Also, Heiligenstadt was only an hour’s carriage ride from the city – it was not unreasonable to expect visits from family and friends.
That is what happened. Brother Carl, who was now handling his elder brother’s business affairs – upsetting publishers with demands for ever larger amounts of money – came to see Beethoven to discuss a commission for new piano sonatas from a Swiss publisher. And Ferdinand Ries had arrived in Vienna a few months earlier and was proving himself invaluable to Beethoven.
Ries was the son of the leader of the electoral orchestra in Bonn, Franz Ries, who had given Beethoven violin lessons. He was fourteen years younger than Beethoven, and as a tousle-haired boy had been sent by his father to the teenage Beethoven for piano lessons. Their friendship thus went back a long way, and only the age difference prevented Ries being as close a friend to Beethoven as Wegeler and Stephan von Breuning.
With the French occupying the Rhineland, young men were being enlisted to fight alongside the French. But Ries had a problem with vision in one eye, and needed to wear an eye patch. This exempted him from service.
Ries had shown remarkable musical talent very early in life, and his father sent him to Vienna in 1801 to further his career.2 He wrote to Beethoven asking him to look out for his son. In the event Ries, who was totally dedicated to Beethoven, did far more for him, acting as secretary, helper, assistant, and endured all his moods and vicissitudes with patient good grace. His memoirs, written with Wegeler, provide unique insights into Beethoven. Indeed it is his report of one incident, which almost certainly took place in Heiligenstadt, that provides stark and graphic evidence of just how far Beethoven’s deafness had progressed.
He decided to write his Last Will and Testament
One beautiful morning, after breakfast, Beethoven suggested he and Ries take a walk in the surrounding countryside. At one point Ries drew Beethoven’s attention to a shepherd in amongst the trees who was playing sweetly on a flute made from lilac wood. Beethoven could not hear him. They stayed in the same spot for half an hour, but still Beethoven could not hear the sounds of the flute. Ries remarks that Beethoven became extremely quiet and gloomy. He assured Beethoven that he couldn’t hear the flute either (which wasn’t true), but it did nothing to lift his mood.
Fleshing out the bare detail Ries gives us, we can imagine that both men could see the shepherd, that Beethoven strained to hear, changed his position, walked a bit nearer, retreated again, but after half an hour of this, still nothing. Ries writes that Breuning had told him in Vienna that Beethoven was having problems, but this was graphic evidence of the seriousness of it.
In a final line to the anecdote, Ries writes that when Beethoven was occasionally really happy, he could be almost boisterous, ‘but this rarely happened’.
Ries must have worried about leaving Beethoven alone in the cottage, and probably tried to persuade him to return to the city. But Beethoven was staying put. At least Ries knew he was composing, so his creativity was not being affected by loneliness or worry over his hearing. Even if he had not been able to hear the shepherd, he was still able to hear the piano in his room and the sounds of music in his head.
Also Ries knew he was comfortable. The cottage had a housekeeper and daughter who between them provided Beethoven with all his meals, and kept his room tidy. The cottage was beautifully situated, with windows looking out on a stream, fields and woods in one direction, and towards St Michael’s Church in the other.3 Ries knew too that Beethoven paid frequent visits to the spa, basking in the natural warm waters that welled up from below. It might not help his deafness, but it would certainly improve his well-being.
Beethoven’s stay was not planned with a definite departure date, but probably no one – himself included – expected him to stay beyond the summer. In the event he stayed a full six months, not leaving until mid-October. During the final few weeks an extraordinary change came over him.
As summer gave way to autumn and the evenings became longer, so Beethoven withdrew within himself. He carefully and methodically weighed up where he was in life, what was happening to him, what was likely to happen in the future. It resulted in a remarkable decision, one that he could have allowed to plunge him even further into despair. Instead, it had quite the opposite effect.
He decided, at the age of thirty-one and three-quarters, to write his Last Will and Testament.
This is such an extraordinary document, raising questions as well as answering them, that it merits close analysis. It is, for biographers, scholars, musicolo
gists, indeed for any lover of Beethoven’s music who wants to understand him better, the single most important piece of writing he ever produced that was not in the form of musical notes. Here it is in full:
For my brothers – Carl – and — Beethoven
Oh all you people who think and say that I am hostile to you, or that I am stubborn, or that I hate mankind, you do not realise the wrong that you do me. You think you understand, but you do not know the secret cause of my seeming that way. From my childhood on, my heart and mind were disposed only towards tenderness and goodwill. I even knew I was destined to accomplish great deeds. But consider this: for the last six years I have suffered from a terrible condition, made worse by stupid doctors, yet hoping from one year to the next that it would improve, but finally realising that I’d been deceived, that I would have to face the prospect of a lasting malady (at least that it would take many years to be cured, or even that it might never be). Born with an ardent and lively temperament, from an early age I had to cut myself off from society in all its diversity and lead my own life. And if from time to time I wanted more than anything not to have to do that, oh how hard I had to fight against the dreadful consequences of my poor hearing. And I wasn’t yet in a position where I could say to people: Speak louder, shout, for I am deaf. Ah, how could I possibly explain that I was deficient in the one sense that should have been more highly developed in me than anyone, a sense that I was once in full possession of, to an extent in fact that few in my profession are or ever were? Oh I cannot do it, so forgive me when you see me shrink back, although I really want to mingle with you. My misfortune is doubly bad, because through it people misjudge me. For me there can be no enjoyment in other men’s company, no stimulating conversations or exchange of ideas. I must be totally alone, except in cases of the direst emergency. I must live like an exile. If I go near to a group of people I am overcome with anxiety, and I am frightened I will be put in a position where my condition will be noticed. And so I was told by my one sensible doctor to spend these few months in the country, to rest my hearing as much as possible. Occasionally – albeit against my natural disposition – I have wished to have company. I have on occasions yielded to the temptation. But what a humiliation when someone next to me heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone heard the shepherd sing, and again I heard nothing. Such things have brought me near to despair. Only a little more and I would even have ended my life. Only my art, that is all that held me back. It would have been impossible for me to leave this world until I had brought forth everything that was within me, and so I continued to eke out a miserable existence – truly miserable, my condition so sensitive, that a sudden change of mood could plunge me from happiness into despair – Patience – that is what I must now let guide me, and what I have let guide me – I hope above all that I will be resolute enough to wait until pitiless fate determines to break the thread. Maybe my health will improve, maybe not. Whatever, I am prepared. Already in my 28th year I was forced to accept my fate, and that is not easy, in fact it is harder for an artist than for anybody. Divine One, you alone can see into my innermost soul. You understand me, you know that I love my fellow men and want only to do good. Oh my friends, when you read this understand that you did me an injustice, and should there exist in the world any man as unfortunate as I, let him comfort himself in the knowledge that, as I have done, he too can accomplish everything that is within his power, and be elevated into the ranks of worthy artists and great men. To you my brothers – Carl – and — , as soon as I am dead ask Professor Schmidt in my name, assuming he is still living, to describe my illness to you, and attach this document to my medical history, so that after my death, people might begin to understand just a little about me. Also I declare you both as the heirs to my small fortune (if it can be called that). Divide it fairly, be good friends and help each other. You know that whatever you did against me I have long since forgiven. You my brother Carl have my special thanks for the proven devotion you have shown me, especially of late. My wish is that you may both have a better more carefree life than I had. Teach your children Virtue, for it alone can bring them happiness, not money, and I speak from experience. It was Virtue which lifted me up when I was wretched. I owe it to Virtue, together with my art, that I did not end my own life. And so farewell and love one another. I thank all my friends, especially Prince Lichnowsky and Professor Schmidt. The instruments Prince L. gave me I wish to be kept by one of you. But do not quarrel over them, and if they can be of some use to you, go ahead and sell them. It makes me so happy to know I can help you, even from my grave – if that is to be the case, I would gladly hasten towards my death, and if it should come before I have been able to create all the art that I am capable of, then even given my harsh fate it will be too soon, and I will wish so much that it had come later – yet I shall still be satisfied, for will it not release me from my endless suffering? Come death when you will, I shall face you with courage. Farewell and forget me not when I am dead, for I deserve to be remembered, just as I so often remembered you during my life, and tried to make you happy: remain so –