Beethoven

by Suchet, John

  It seems they got their way over rehearsals. Beethoven was confined to a room at the back of the building, and the concert master Seyfried would come to him between pieces to get his view. Given that Beethoven’s deafness was now serious, one can imagine how difficult this was for him. In effect he was unable to make constructive criticism – no doubt just what the players had aimed for – and clearly held back, possibly as a bargaining tool to ensure he conducted. He got his way at least on that.

  When you look at the pieces Beethoven had programmed, you certainly feel a twinge of sympathy for the musicians. The concert was to be a gigantic undertaking, guaranteed to stretch the most accomplished instrumentalists, not to mention the inherent difficulties of working with this particular composer.

  This is how the concert was advertised in the Wiener Zeitung:

  On Thursday, December 22, 1808, Ludwig van Beethoven will have the honour to give a musical Academie in the Theater-an-der-Wien. All the pieces are of his composition, entirely new, and not yet heard in public.

  First Part:

  1. A Symphony, entitled: ‘A Recollection of Country Life’, in F major

  2. Aria

  3. Hymn with Latin text, composed in the church style with chorus and solos

  4. Pianoforte Concerto played by himself

  Second Part:

  1. Grand Symphony in C minor

  2. Holy, with Latin text composed in the church style, with chorus and solos

  3. Fantasia for pianoforte alone

  4. Fantasia for the pianoforte which ends with the gradual entrance of the entire orchestra and the introduction of choruses as a finale

  No fewer than eight pieces, with a total running time of around four hours, depending on how long item 3 in Part II was, an improvisation by Beethoven. Clearly the two showpieces were the new symphonies, one to begin each part of the concert. And just in case you are in any doubt, these are the ‘Pastoral’ to open the first part, the Fifth to open the second.

  This concert, as scheduled, demanded musicianship of the very highest level from the orchestral players, superlative singing from a chorus, and an audience prepared to be patient and long suffering in the extreme. With the benefit of hindsight, we can envy the audience for being present at the first performance ever of three of Beethoven’s greatest works, if we include the Piano Concerto, even if the musical demands outstripped the players’ competence.

  To flesh out the other pieces, the Aria was ‘Ah! Perfido’, composed for soprano and orchestra some years earlier; the Hymn was the Gloria from the Mass in C, composed the previous year; the Piano Concerto was to be the newly completed No. 4; the Holy was the Sanctus from the Mass in C, and the final Fantasia was the Choral Fantasia.

  Two of these other pieces presented particular problems – in each case problems of Beethoven’s own making. His preferred choice to sing the aria was the soprano who had created the title role in Leonore, Anna Milder-Hauptmann.5 She accepted immediately, but ‘an unlucky quarrel provoked by Beethoven’ resulted in her refusing.6 Several other sopranos were tried, but found wanting. Finally he engaged the sister-in-law of his friend Schuppanzigh, the violinist Josephine Killitschky, who was both young and inexperienced.

  There was potentially a much larger problem with the final piece in the programme, the Choral Fantasia. This had only just been composed by Beethoven, and consisted of a long solo piano introduction, joined first by the orchestra, and then the chorus. In fact so recently had he composed it, that he had not written out the piano introduction. This meant, in effect, that the orchestra had no idea when to come in. One can imagine there was some rehearsal – Beethoven being permitted into the rehearsal room for this, at least – with Seyfried assuring the orchestra that if he could turn pages for Beethoven when confronted by nothing more than a few squiggles, he could be sure to lead them in at the right point.

  These incidentals, certainly in Beethoven’s eye, were merely irritants compared to the much larger issue of a successful performance of the pieces on which he knew his reputation hung, the two new symphonies.

  Beethoven leapt up from the piano, stormed over to the orchestra and hurled insults

  As for the audience, they had something else to contend with too. It was a bitterly cold December evening, and the Theater an der Wien was unheated. With four hours of music to look forward to, it does not take much imagination to see them turning up in heavy coats, scarves, gloves, hats, possibly stamping their feet to keep warm and blowing into their hands. Not exactly conducive to a good evening’s music-making.

  Good was what it was not. Frustratingly there are no reviews of the concert – it’s hard to understand why this is the case, other than the probability that the critics decided to cover the other concert that night in the Burgtheater – but several of Beethoven’s friends and colleagues have left eyewitness accounts.

  These accounts choose not to comment on the opening piece, the ‘Pastoral’, but I believe the audience will have been stunned by the birdcalls towards the close of the second movement. These are not incorporated into the music as other composers had done with birdcalls (notably Handel), but are standalone, and stand-out, solo passages for flute, oboe and clarinet.

  Is it too much of an exaggeration to suggest that the birdcalls, which Beethoven repeats a few bars later, drew laughter from the audience? Possibly not, since the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, in a review of a performance of the ‘Pastoral’ only a few months later in the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, wrote elliptically of the birdcalls:

  Even a few incidental imitations of certain little natural manifestations (especially towards the end), treated jokingly, can only be received with a benign smile even by those who otherwise dislike that kind of thing, because they are so aptly portrayed and, as previously stated, only introduced jokingly.

  The aria, which followed the ‘Pastoral’, we can assume was pretty dreadful. Thayer writes, albeit without attribution, that poor Josephine Killitschky was so nervous, and made even more so by the nervousness of her friends on her behalf, that when Beethoven led her on to the stage and let her hand go, she became overwhelmed with fright and ‘made wretched work of the aria’.

  We know nothing of how the Gloria from the Mass went, but the Fourth Piano Concerto, directed by Beethoven from the keyboard, has left us with an image of Beethoven that has lodged in legend and coloured our thinking of him ever since.7

  Early on in the first movement, at the first attacking passage, Beethoven apparently forgot he was the soloist, leapt up from the piano stool, and conducted the orchestra so vigorously, waving his arms so wide, that he knocked both candles from the music stand off the piano. The audience, not unreasonably, laughed. Beethoven saw this, lost his temper, and made the orchestra start again.

  While the players rearranged their music, Seyfried hurriedly sent two choirboys on stage to stand either side of Beethoven with a candle. The boy on the right side stepped close to Beethoven so he could follow the piano part. At the same point in the first movement Beethoven flung his arms out again, hitting the boy in the face and causing him to drop his candle. The other boy, seeing it coming, ducked.

  ‘If the audience had laughed the first time, they now indulged in a truly Bacchanalian riot,’ Spohr wrote. ‘Beethoven broke out in such fury that when he struck the first chord of the solo he broke six strings.’

  And so Part I of this historic concert ended.

  Again we know, frustratingly, nothing of how the Fifth Symphony went, or the Sanctus, and we do not know any details of the piano improvisation. We most certainly do know what happened when it came to the Choral Fantasia.8

  Beethoven, it appears, had agreed to the dropping of a passage that comes soon after the orchestra joins the piano, possibly as a concession to the lateness of the hour and the chill in the theatre. But in performance he forgot this, and so while the orchestra ploughed on, he played the repeat. This exposed the clarinettist, who appeared – to Beethoven at least – to come in at the wrong
place.

  Orchestra and soloist struggled to come together again, but it was impossible: ‘Like a runaway carriage going downhill, an overturn was inevitable.’ Beethoven leapt up from the piano in a fury, stormed over to the orchestra and hurled insults at the players so loudly that the audience heard every word. He stabbed at the music and demanded they start the piece again. Several musicians – including, most probably, the offending clarinettist – stood and threatened to leave the stage.

  Maybe Beethoven mumbled an apology, or at least calmed down, because eyewitnesses agree the piece started again (presumably from the entrance of the orchestra) and this time went without a hitch.

  The audience went home no doubt chilled to the bone, but content that as usual a concert by Beethoven did not disappoint, even if for reasons unconnected with the supreme works they had just heard. The orchestra seethed backstage afterwards, several of them swearing they would never play for Beethoven again.

  Seyfried gives a rather nice coda:

  At first Beethoven could not understand that he had in a manner humiliated the musicians ... But he readily and heartily begged the pardon of the orchestra for the humiliation to which he had subjected it, and was honest enough to spread the story himself and assume all responsibility for his own absence of mind.

  In circumstances, therefore, bordering on the bizarre, Beethoven had given the world his Sixth Symphony, the ‘Pastoral’; his Fifth Symphony, and his Fourth Piano Concerto.

  1 Now Opava, near the border between the Czech Republic and Poland.

  2 It was common practice, before publication, for a work to be sold to a patron for a limited period of time for exclusive use.

  3 The autograph manuscript is today in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, in Paris.

  4 Beethoven made this claim in a letter to his publisher the following January. It is unlikely his suspicions were founded.

  5 Described by Haydn, endearingly, as having ‘a voice like a house’.

  6 They evidently made it up later, since Milder went on to sing the role of Leonore in the revamped Fidelio some years later.

  7 The account that follows was given by the composer Louis Spohr in his memoirs published fifty years later, and he attributes it to Seyfried. Given the passage of time, and the fact that it is second hand, it is not impossible that some elements are exaggerated.

  8 There are several eyewitness accounts, which I have amalgamated to give a clear narrative.

  Chapter

  ELEVEN

  Under Cannon Fire

  BEETHOVEN LIVED IN squalor. If that seems like an exaggeration for such a supreme artist, consider this description by a senior French(!) army officer and diplomat1 who visited him in his apartment only a few months after the benefit concert:

  Imagine the dirtiest and most disorderly room possible. There were water stains on the floor, a rather ancient piano on which the dust struggled for supremacy with sheets of paper covered with handwritten or printed notes. Under the piano – I do not exaggerate – an unemptied chamber pot. Next to it, a small walnut table that had ink spilled on it, a large number of quills encrusted with ink ... and yet more music. The chairs nearly all had straw seats, and were covered with plates filled with the remains of last night’s supper, as well as clothes.

  It was for precisely this reason that a certain member of the Habsburg royal family decided to take action when he heard of Beethoven’s intention to leave Vienna for Kassel, coupled with the composer’s deafness and a general lack of social awareness.

  This was no ordinary member of Habsburg royalty; this was Archduke Rudolph, youngest brother of the Emperor, no less. Rudolph had one quality certain to endear himself to Beethoven, no obvious admirer of royalty. He was an extraordinarily gifted musician. He was an excellent pianist, and a talented composer too. Beethoven met him for the first time, probably at a soirée, around 1808 or possibly earlier, and agreed to give him tuition, both on piano and in composition. In fact he was the only person Beethoven ever took on as a pupil of composition, so Beethoven must have been seriously impressed.2

  In a sense it is fair to say that Rudolph stepped into the vacuum left by Prince Lichnowsky, both artistically and financially. And even more than that. As an accomplished musician, he recognised Beethoven’s genius and instinctively understood and forgave his shortcomings. As brother of the Emperor, he was able to gain access for Beethoven into the highest salons in the city. Lessons with Beethoven took place in Rudolph’s private quarters in the Hofburg Palace, the seat of the Emperor, and so Beethoven was able to come and go as he pleased in the heart of the royal establishment.

  Rudolph, although seventeen years younger than Beethoven, took it upon himself to be, in effect, Beethoven’s guardian, to protect him as a supreme artist from the vicissitudes of life. A word from the Archduke would instantly smooth matters over, and Beethoven was most certainly not averse to dropping his patron’s name when he needed to.

  Rudolph was perfectly placed to help Beethoven. Poor health had prevented the Archduke from pursuing the military career his position fitted him for, so instead he had entered the Church and taken minor vows.3 This meant he was domiciled in Vienna, free to indulge himself in the city’s artistic activities.

  It is certain that towards the end of 1808 Beethoven would have lost no time in telling Rudolph of the offer he had received from Kassel, and his intention of accepting it. Rudolph recognised immediately that the move would be a mistake for Beethoven, potentially a fatal one. People in Kassel did not know him; they would not understand his eccentricities, and would soon tire of making allowances for his increasing deafness.

  Rudolph recognised Beethoven’s genius and instinctively forgave his shortcomings

  But how to persuade him to remain in Vienna? What incentive could he offer? He came up with a brilliant solution. He called in two of the city’s senior aristocrats, patrons of the arts, and together they offered Beethoven a lifetime annuity of 4000 florins on the sole condition that he agree to remain in Vienna, ‘or some other town situated in the hereditary lands of His Austrian Imperial Majesty’. There were no other stipulations. He did not have to agree to compose, or perform, just remain where he could be looked after and protected.

  It did not take much working out, even for Beethoven, to see that this was an offer he could not refuse. Despite having formally accepted the offer from Kassel, he thought nothing of pulling out, and agreed to Archduke Rudolph’s proposal. Maybe with renewed peace of mind, he began work on a new composition. It was to be his Fifth Piano Concerto (named the ‘Emperor’ by the publisher, despite Beethoven’s objections), his mightiest by far, and in gratitude he was to dedicate it to Rudolph, along with the Fourth, and several other works, including the monumental ‘Hammerklavier’ Piano Sonata and the Missa Solemnis. In fact, Rudolph was to receive more dedications from Beethoven than any other single individual, and we can say without hesitation that he deserved it.

  The renewed peace of mind led to a development in another direction as well. It appears he was ready to chance his luck once again at love. Within days of signing the contract with Rudolph, he wrote to a young male friend in terms that were unusually light-hearted, with a touch of arrogance, and which give a nice insight into his priorities:

  Now you can help me look for a wife. Indeed you might find some beautiful girl where you are at present [Freiburg], and one who perhaps now and then would grant a sigh to my harmonies ... If you do find one, however, she must be beautiful, for it is impossible for me to love anything that is not beautiful – or else I should have to love myself.

  It was, apparently, less unusual than you might think for Beethoven to appreciate female beauty, and not always in the subtlest of ways. Ries wrote in his memoirs:

  Beethoven very much enjoyed looking at women. Lovely, youthful faces particularly pleased him. If we passed a girl who could boast her share of charms, he would turn round and examine her through his glasses, then laugh or grin when he realised I was wat
ching him. He often fell in love, but usually only for a short time. When once I teased him about his conquest of a certain beautiful lady, he confessed that she had captivated him more intensely and longer than any other – seven whole months.

  Ries frustratingly gives no clue as to who this ‘certain beautiful lady’ might be, and there is no indication that Beethoven had any particular woman in mind in his letter to his Freiburg friend.

  If Beethoven had indeed found new peace of mind, with the annuity solving any financial problems and giving him freedom to compose as and when he liked, it was to be shattered once again – and this time it really was not his fault.

  AUSTRIA HAD quite simply not learned from its mistakes. It declared war on France again. Napoleon, newly returned to Paris from Spain, decided once and for all to give Austria a hiding from which it would not recover. He left immediately to take command of his army in Germany,4 and began his march on Vienna.

  A few skirmishes out of the way, Napoleon advanced rapidly across Germany, into Austria, and east towards the imperial capital. In scenes similar to those of three and half years earlier, there was a mass exodus from the city, amid scenes of some panic as word spread that this time Napoleon was in no mood to be benevolent.

  The exodus reached right to the top. On 4 May the Empress left Vienna with the royal family, including Archduke Rudolph. This had an unexpectedly beneficial – and indeed unusual – effect on Beethoven’s musical output. He decided to compose a piano sonata to commemorate Rudolph’s departure.