Beethoven

by Suchet, John

  It seemed pretty harmless. Soon after completing the ‘Eroica’, Beethoven composed a mighty piano sonata, almost as if he needed to get back to the piano. For reasons that remain unclear, he dedicated it to his old patron from the Bonn days, Count Waldstein, so that it is known to posterity as the ‘Waldstein’ Sonata.6 The original second movement of the sonata was considered too long, and after some persuading Beethoven agreed to remove it, publish it separately, and substitute a new, shorter, movement.

  The original was published as an Andante in F. It became so universally popular that Beethoven himself christened it ‘Andante favori’, the title by which it became known, and remains known today. When Beethoven first played it for Ries, the younger man was so delighted with it he urged Beethoven to play it again. On his way home, Ries called in on Prince Lichnowsky to tell him of the ‘new and glorious composition’. The Prince made him play it, and Ries did as best as he could from memory. As he played he remembered more passages, and the Prince made Ries teach it to him. Together the two men hatched an innocent little plot.

  The following day Prince Lichnowsky called in on Beethoven and said he had composed something for piano that wasn’t at all bad, and he would like Beethoven’s opinion on it. Beethoven said gruffly he was not interested, but Lichnowsky took no notice, sat at the piano, and played a goodly portion of the Andante. He played on, fully expecting Beethoven to appreciate the joke.

  He miscalculated. Beethoven was livid. He ordered Lichnowsky out of his apartment, and Ries reports that his extreme anger accounted for the fact that ‘I never heard Beethoven play again’. This could well be the case. Several months later Beethoven still held a grudge against the hapless Ries, reducing him to tears in front of company. Not much later Ries left Vienna, and although he returned for a brief period a little later, another row blew up between them over something entirely different. None of this, though, was to stop Ries championing his master’s music when he moved to London, as we shall learn. Beethoven’s friends might have been few, but on the whole they were unswervingly loyal to him.

  BARON BRAUN was having something of a midlife crisis. In late August 1804 he reinstated Beethoven at the Theater an der Wien. He probably realised he needed that opera Beethoven had pledged to write, and would certainly have known that after abandoning Vesta’s Feuer, Beethoven had begun to collaborate with a lawyer, who had a sideline in translating French plays into German, on Jean-Nicolas Bouilly’s play Léonore, ou L’Amour conjugal.

  The lawyer, Joseph Sonnleithner, was a member of a family well connected in music and theatre, and he and Beethoven had met. Beethoven quickly realised Sonnleithner was in a different league from Schikaneder, and the two men began to make progress on a new opera, based on Bouilly’s play.

  Beethoven revelled in Braun’s discomfort, writing to Sonnleithner, ‘I am used to the fact that [Braun] has nothing good to say about me – let it be – I shall never grovel – my world is elsewhere.’

  To say that Beethoven was stretched would be an understatement. But he was stretched in exactly the way he loved. He was involved in rehearsals and first performances of his colossal ‘Eroica’ Symphony. He also composed another new piano sonata, which was his mightiest to date. It would become one of his best known and most loved, given a name by the publisher who recognised its unparalleled intensity, a name that would stick for all time: ‘Appassionata’. And now, as if that was not enough, he was making huge progress on his first opera.

  Something else was happening too, something that would have a profound effect on him. He was once again in love.

  1 It remains thus today, staging mainly musicals, although it is no longer suburban and the Wien now runs several metres below the street. The fruit and vegetable market that lined the river bank opposite the theatre two centuries ago is now a covered market, offering everything from fruit and vegetables to fast food and clothing.

  2 Today the pavilion, bearing a plaque stating that Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert all performed there, is a porcelain factory.

  3 This improvisation by Bridgetower did not survive in the published version of the sonata.

  4 He completed one scene, the last section of which he adapted later as the great love duet in Act II of Fidelio, ‘O namenlose Freude’.

  5 Beethoven frequently wrote his forename both in French, ‘Louis’, and Italian, ‘Luigi’.

  6 Waldstein became obsessed with defeating Napoleon, and raised an army to do so. It bankrupted him. It was reported he was in Vienna in 1805 in disguise to escape his creditors. It was possibly on hearing this that Beethoven dedicated the Piano Sonata in C, Op. 53, to him. There is no evidence the two men met.

  Chapter

  NINE

  O, Beloved J!

  IT HAD BEGUN A LITTLE OVER five years earlier when, in May 1799, a Hungarian widow by the name of Anna Countess von Brunsvik brought two of her daughters to the Habsburg capital to introduce them into society, to develop their interest in the arts, and, possibly uppermost in her mind, to find them wealthy husbands.

  We owe the elder daughter, Therese, a debt of gratitude for the comprehensive memoirs she wrote later in life, providing us with considerable insight into the on-off, and ultimately off, relationship between Beethoven and her sister Josephine.

  A family friend advised the mother to ask Beethoven to give the two girls piano lessons, warned her that Beethoven was unlikely to respond to a letter, but that if she and her daughters were prepared to climb three flights of a narrow spiral staircase and knock on his door, they ‘might have a chance’. This they did, and it is easy to see Beethoven, hitherto so unlucky in his relationships with women, being somewhat bowled over at the sight of a no doubt smartly attired and coiffed noblewoman and her two daughters, the younger of whom was by any standards very beautiful, calling to see him.

  Whether the Countess’s request for Beethoven to give her daughters piano lessons was helped by the fact that they were cousins of Giulietta Guicciardi, or whether it was just that Beethoven saw this as an opportunity for an amorous relationship, we do not know. What is certain is that for a man who thoroughly hated teaching, he not only said yes, but took up the project with extraordinary zeal. According to Therese, he came to the hotel where they were staying every day for sixteen days, and from twelve noon stayed not just for the allotted hour but often until four or five o’clock in the afternoon to give the girls lessons.

  Unfortunately for Beethoven, the Brunsviks also met the owner of an art gallery by the name of Müller, who saw ‘the incomparable beauty which lay hidden in Josephine as in a bud, and from the moment he set eyes on her he burned with a fierce passion’. This ‘Müller’ had a rather colourful past, having had to flee the country temporarily after a youthful duel, and changing his name to make good his escape. He might or might not have come clean about this to the Countess, but he certainly left her in no doubt of his passion for Josephine and his desire to marry her.

  He would have impressed her, too, by claiming the Emperor, no less, as a personal friend, a claim he was able to prove when he went to the Emperor and asked for a pardon for his past misdemeanour. This was granted and his title returned to him, so that he could truthfully present himself to Countess Brunsvik as the highly eligible Count Joseph Deym. Since he was the owner of a renowned art gallery, famous for its wax portraits and copies of classical works of art, there was no doubt either about his wealth.

  The Countess was suitably impressed, brushing aside any doubts over the fact that the Count was forty-seven years of age, her daughter Josephine just twenty. When one morning at the end of the Brunsviks’ brief stay in Vienna, Count Deym called on the Countess, requesting a private talk, no one was in any doubt as to what it was about, nor of the outcome. Therese records that,

  after a few minutes, Josephine was called into the room, and my mother introduced her to – Count Deym. ‘Dear Josephine,’ she said, ‘you can make me and your sisters very happy!’ After a painful pause a scarcely audible ‘Yes’ f
loated from her trembling lips – and to this ‘Yes’ she was to sacrifice a whole lifetime’s happiness, so nobly and with such courage. She had no idea what she was letting herself in for. Soon afterwards she threw her arms round my neck and shed a flood of tears.

  Within weeks Deym and Josephine were married. Any hope Beethoven might have had of a relationship with his beautiful young pupil was dashed.

  Soon after the marriage, Josephine and her mother were horrified to discover that Deym’s supposed wealth was a lie. He was, in fact, heavily in debt. The deception might actually have been two-way. Deym blamed his financial problems on the fact that a promised dowry from the Brunsvik family had not materialised.

  There was then something of a transformation of loyalties. The Countess, realising that the marriage offered neither social nor financial advantage, pressed for a separation. Her daughter reportedly had furious rows with her mother, refusing to break her marriage vows.

  Within three years of marrying Deym, Josephine gave birth to three children and was pregnant with a fourth when, at the beginning of 1804, she was widowed. Deym contracted consumption and died. Josephine suddenly found herself with four infant children, an art gallery to administer, and the letting of eighty rooms owned by Deym to manage.

  Josephine’s mental health was, according to her sister, already fragile. Later in the year that Deym died, she began to have attacks of fever, which were particularly bad at night. ‘Sometimes she laughed, sometimes she wept, after which she suffered from extreme fatigue.’

  Beethoven, despite any disappointment over Josephine’s marriage, remained close to the Brunsvik family, so must have been aware of the sad events that had overtaken Josephine. At the end of 1804, now reinstated at the Theater an der Wien and working hard on his opera, he decided to press his suit.

  In the period 1804–7 he wrote an extraordinary series of thirteen letters to Josephine Deym, which came to light only as recently as 1949, and were published in 1957. The majority of these letters are, quite simply, passionate declarations of love. The first letter to contain such language was written in the spring of 1805,1 and suggests that his hand was forced.

  In December 1804 Beethoven had composed a song entitled ‘To Hope’ (‘An die Hoffnung’). Prince Lichnowsky saw the manuscript in Beethoven’s apartment, and it appears Beethoven had written Josephine’s name on the title page. Lichnowsky assured Beethoven he would remain tight-lipped. Beethoven relays this to Josephine in the letter, then writes:

  Oh, beloved J, it is no desire for the opposite sex that draws me to you, no, it is just you, your whole self with all your individual qualities ... When I came to you – it was with the firm resolve not to let a single spark of love be kindled in me. But you have conquered me ... Long – long – long-lasting – may our love become – For it is so noble ... Oh you, you make me hope that your heart will long – beat for me – Mine can only – cease – to beat for you – when – it no longer beats – Beloved J ...

  This is an unequivocal declaration of love, such as Beethoven had never before put to paper, as far as we are aware. And certainly, to begin with, Beethoven had good cause to believe the love was mutual, even if Josephine was being slightly ambiguous. She replied:

  You have long had my heart, dear Beethoven. If this assurance can give you joy, then receive it – from the purest heart ... You receive the greatest proof of my love [and] of my esteem through this confession, through this confidence! ... Do not tear my heart apart – do not try to persuade me further. I love you inexpressibly, as one gentle soul does another. Are you not capable of this covenant? I am not receptive to other [forms of] love for the present ...

  If Beethoven took this as encouragement, one can hardly blame him. It would appear he did, both in writing and probably in person, because later in the year Josephine decided to end any ambiguity:

  This favour that you granted me, the pleasure of your company, would have been the finest jewel in my life, if you could have loved me less sensually2 – that I cannot satisfy this sensual love – does this make you angry with me – I would have to violate holy bonds if I were to give in to your desire.

  That is an unequivocal rejection of a physical relationship. More than that, it could be read as a refusal of a proposal of marriage. In her memoirs Therese wrote, ‘Why did not my sister J, as the widow Deym, accept [Beethoven] as her husband?’

  Beethoven did not immediately give up. From later letters to Josephine, it appears he went to her house to try to see her, but was refused admittance by the servants, which he found humiliating. This was enough to convince him that he was pursuing a lost cause. In the final letter of the thirteen, he writes:

  I thank you for still wishing to make it appear as if I were not entirely banished from your memory ... You want me to tell you how I am. A more difficult question could not be put to me – and I prefer to leave it unanswered, rather than – to answer it too truthfully – All good wishes, dear J. As always, your Beethoven, who is eternally devoted to you.

  That ‘eternal devotion’ seems more like politeness, given what comes before it. Josephine now leaves our story, but will come right back into it when I discuss the identity of the Immortal Beloved, the one woman who as far as we know returned Beethoven’s love.

  THERE IS AN irony in the fact that in 1805, the year Beethoven was actively pursuing Josephine, he was hard at work on an opera that tells the story of how the love of a wife rescues her husband from certain death.

  By the late summer of 1805 much of the work on Leonore had been done, but now the hard work began. Singers were hired, and although the females were adequate, some of the male singers were simply not up to the job. One in particular, chosen to sing the role of the prison governor Pizarro, had a high opinion of his own talent and told the company he believed there was no composer to touch his brother-in-law, Mozart. Beethoven decided to bring him down a peg by writing a truly tricky passage for him to sing. He found it impossible to master, dismissing it with contempt: ‘My brother-in-law would never have written such damned nonsense.’ It did not make for a happy company.

  Rehearsals were difficult – as always with Beethoven performances – and he let small matters get to him. At one rehearsal the third bassoon failed to turn up. Beethoven was furious, and when Prince Lobkowitz made light of the matter, he felt the force of the composer’s anger.3

  A date was set for the first performance of the opera, Tuesday, 15 October 1805. Then things really did go wrong. The censor stepped in and banned it. The plot – a man falsely imprisoned by the prison governor who plots his murder, his life saved by his wife who disguises herself as a man to get work at the prison – was simply too political. Yes, the wrongdoer is hauled off to face justice at the order of the provincial governor, but in the contemporary climate it just wouldn’t do. Couldn’t Beethoven write operas like Mozart and Cherubini, which by and large steered clear of political issues?

  Beethoven, on the surface, was furious, but actually to an extent the ban worked in his favour. The process of composition had been enormously difficult, even by his standards. It had filled the equivalent of over three sketchbooks (in contrast to the ‘Eroica’, which had filled half of a single sketchbook), and had taken him longer than any other work he had hitherto composed. In one sense that is not particularly surprising. There is no musical genre that uses quite as many forces as opera. He had written works for voices and orchestra – cantatas and an oratorio – but in these works the singers are static. An opera demands drama, choreography, theatrical production, as well as singing. There are also issues such as costumes and scenery, which one imagines Beethoven could hardly be bothered with.

  There is something else too. Beethoven, by his own admission, did not find it easy to compose for the human voice. He said that when he heard sounds in his head, they were the sounds of the orchestra. Singers, from his day to ours, have complained about his vocal composition, whether it be Fidelio, the Missa Solemnis, or the Ninth Symphony. All make demand
s on the voice that are to an extent not natural. As we shall see later, the premiere of the Ninth Symphony nearly did not happen, at least in part because of a revolt by the soloists who complained their parts were unsingable. Singers who complain today are aware, at least, of the unquestioned genius of Beethoven, and generally do their best to fulfil his demands. That was not the case two centuries ago. It really is no surprise Beethoven was never to write another opera.

  So when the censor banned opening night, Beethoven realised it gave him more time to work on the score and rehearse the singers and orchestra. Sonnleithner the librettist, however, had friends in high places, and a grovelling petition to the censor did the trick. The ban was lifted.

  Proof that the opera was nowhere near ready to be performed came with the decision to postpone opening night by five weeks, until 20 November. This could not have been a worse decision, due to circumstances totally outside the control of anyone in Vienna.

  Rehearsals were difficult – as always with Beethoven performances

  Earlier in the year Austria had joined a coalition to fight Napoleon. This was an annoying distraction from the French Emperor’s principal aim, which was to invade Britain. But Austria was an enemy he could easily deal with, and he decided to do so. Abandoning his camp at Boulogne, he marched at the head of his army into Germany, crossed the Rhine, and then headed south-east towards the Danube. The Austrian army made a stand at Ulm in Bavaria, but on 20 October Napoleon swatted it aside and continued his march into Austria.

  In Vienna there was total panic. Anyone who could left the city. This meant in effect the nobility, bankers, and wealthy merchants, those who had somewhere else to go, a residence in Bohemia or Hungary, perhaps, and who had the money and means to escape. Precisely the level of society in which Beethoven moved, those he could be certain would come to the Theater an der Wien to see his new opera.