by Suchet, John
He initially composed only the first movement. It opens with three descending chords, over which Beethoven wrote, ‘Le – be – wohl’ (‘Farewell’). He said he would write the second movement, entitled Die Abwesenheit (Absence), while Rudolph was absent from the city, and told him he would not compose the final movement, to be called Das Wiedersehen (The Return), until Rudolph’s safe return to Vienna.5
Napoleon established his headquarters at Linz, less than a hundred miles in a straight line west of Vienna, and sent his commanders to the capital to demand its surrender. It was in Linz that Johann van Beethoven, a year before, had bought a pharmacy, and the ensuing conflict was to make his fortune, as well as earning him a lifetime’s contempt for having, in effect, collaborated with the enemy.
The defence of the imperial capital was in the hands of sixteen thousand soldiers, bolstered by around a thousand students and artists, and an ill-equipped and under-trained civil militia, all under the command of a junior member of the royal family, Archduke Maximilian. The Emperor, from the safety of exile, ordered Maximilian to resist the French and defend the city at all costs. Thus Maximilian rejected the demand to surrender, effectively signing a suicide note for Vienna.
The French commanders unhurriedly set up their new short-barrelled howitzer cannon on rising ground in Spittelberg, a suburb a short distance west of the city wall, the Bastei. A day passed in quiet anticipation, the people of Vienna bracing themselves for what they knew was coming. A contemporary wrote that people milled around in the streets, swapping jokes and light-hearted banter to keep spirits up, and then when dusk fell retreated indoors, until no sound could be heard inside the city wall.
At nine o’clock on the evening of 9 May 1809, as daylight finally faded, twenty cannon opened fire. The bombardment continued through the night, pounding the inner city mercilessly. Any defence was rendered useless by the distance and range of the howitzers. The soldiers and militia had nothing to fight against except shells dropping onto them from the sky. Surrender was inevitable, and it was not long in coming. At half-past two the following afternoon the white flag was raised.
And where was the city’s most famous resident, its leading artist, during this traumatic period? At home, in his apartment, which abutted the Bastei on the inner, city side and was therefore almost in direct line of fire.
Why Beethoven did not leave the city for the safety of the surrounding countryside, we do not know. It is even more incomprehensible given his penchant for rural calm, and his escape almost every summer to the peace of small villages. We can safely assume he had no shortage of offers. All the city’s leading aristocrats left the city for the safety of their country estates, including Prince Lichnowsky. Did the Prince attempt to mend their relationship by suggesting Beethoven accompany him and his wife? We do not know.
Beethoven’s brother Carl did not leave Vienna either, and we know from Ferdinand Ries that the two brothers had intimate contact at this time, despite the antagonism between them. Ries says in his memoirs that Beethoven was ‘very frightened’ by the bombardment of the city, and spent most of it in the cellar of his brother Carl’s house, ‘where he covered his head with pillows to shut out the sound of the cannon’. Carl and his family lived in an apartment building on the corner of Rauhensteingasse and Himmelpfortgasse close to St Stephansdom in the heart of the city, and so they must all have been in extreme danger. This, added to Beethoven’s overt contempt for Johanna and dislike for his brother, coupled with the presence of an infant not yet three years of age, must have made for a highly tense time.6
After the bombardment, Vienna was a changed city. Prices soared, to such an extent that copper coins were done away with. Food, bread in particular, became expensive – always guaranteed to upset the populace – and the French demanded huge sureties, requisitioned enormous amounts of supplies, and levied a tax on all property. Never was Beethoven more grateful for his annuity, from which he had begun to receive the first payments.
There was an added element, true of all military occupations. Foreign soldiers in uniform patrolled the streets, heaping humiliation on top of other hardships on the populace. If any resident of Vienna was likely to let resentment at this boil over, it was Beethoven. And he did. A young musical colleague reported that Beethoven, seeing a French officer in a coffeehouse, shook his fist at him, and shouted, ‘If I, as a general, knew as much about warfare as I, the composer, know of counterpoint, I’d be able to give you a lesson or two!’ One imagines that from anyone else this would have led to immediate arrest, but not from the universally known, admired, eccentric and harmless composer.
As a coda to the occupation, twenty days after the bombardment, quietly and practically unnoticed, the world lost one of its finest composers. Franz Joseph Haydn died at the age of seventy-seven.
BEETHOVEN HAD more reason than the obvious to be grateful for his annuity payments. The mythical woman of his letter to Freiburg had materialised. He was once again in love, and this time he was determined to present himself as an irresistible catch, and that meant smartening up.
For the first time in his life, he paid exquisite attention to his appearance
The lady in question was the eldest of two daughters of a family of Italian extraction by the name of Therese Malfatti. Her father had made his fortune in the silk trade, enough to branch out and establish his own sugar refinery, and owned a sumptuous house just off the fashionable Kärntnerstrasse, and a country estate in Walkersdorf about forty miles northwest of Vienna.
Therese was known to be a volatile, impetuous young lady – eighteen years of age in 1810 – and was said by those who knew her to have more of the fiery Italian temperament in her than her slightly younger sister or any other family member.
Perhaps Beethoven’s friends warned him of this, but if so he paid little heed. They might have pointed out to him too that he was about to turn forty years of age, and that Therese was therefore young enough to be his daughter. If they did, he again brushed it aside.
He no doubt saw himself as a prime catch. He could now – for the first time in his courting experiences – offer financial security, thanks to the annuity. He was a friend of the Emperor’s brother, and could reasonably expect court engagements. Even if his compositions were not universally understood, they were accepted as masterworks, and brought him unrivalled recognition. More lucrative commissions were sure to come.
So, for the first time in his life, he paid exquisite attention to his appearance – even if he admitted he found it thoroughly alien to him. He wrote to one friend asking if he could borrow his mirror – ‘Mine is broken’ – and to another, Ignaz Gleichenstein,7 sending him 300 gulden, asking him to buy linen or Bengal cotton which the society tailor Joseph Lind would make into shirts for him, as well as at least half-a-dozen neckcloths.
Please do this at once, he added, ‘since not only do I understand nothing whatever about such matters, but also such matters are profoundly distasteful to me.’
He was clearly in no doubt that Therese would agree to a marriage proposal, since he wrote to Wegeler asking him to send urgently his baptismal certificate, offering to pay all expenses, including Wegeler’s travel from Koblenz (where he was now living with Eleonore and their two children) to Bonn, and cautioning him not to confuse him with his elder brother Ludwig Maria, who had died at six days old.
Beethoven had been introduced to the Malfatti family by Gleichenstein, was instantly attracted to Therese, and soon began heaping lavish (and certainly exaggerated) praise on her piano skills, offering to give her lessons. Knowing as we do how Beethoven hated giving lessons, the attraction must have been very strong indeed.
It did wonders for his spirits. He sent Gleichenstein another 50 gulden for neckcloths, saying in the accompanying letter that he felt whatever wickedness people had inflicted on his soul ‘could be cured by the Malfattis’. As evidence of his acceptance into the Malfatti household, he teased Gleichenstein in the letter that he, Gleichenstein, was not the
only person the family dog Gigons was happy to see.8
To set the seal on his amorous intent, he did what only he could do, or at least with such a degree of prestige and kudos. He composed a piece of piano music for Therese, making it deliberately simple so that she could play it.9 The clincher, as far as he was concerned.
But once again, as on every previous attempt at forming a lasting relationship with a woman, he was seriously misjudging the situation.
For a start, it seems Therese had given him no clear indication of her feelings. In repeated notes to Gleichenstein, he asked him – given his closeness to Therese’s sister Netty – to try to find out whether he had reason to be optimistic that a marriage proposal might meet with a favourable response. Clearly his frustration was building. Therese was certainly flattered by the attention of Vienna’s most famous musician,10 and it was possible – given her flighty nature – that she flirted with him.
It is known she had other suitors at the time, and she might well have led Beethoven on, keen as she must have been to retain his friendship, even playing him off against the others. The point clearly came when he felt she was more than interested in him, and he decided to take things further.
Then it all went disastrously wrong. Exactly what happened we do not know, but we can surmise from surviving correspondence that Beethoven was at the Malfatti house, possibly alone with Therese, became drunk on very strong punch, and made a clumsy lunge at her. She was utterly appalled, and rejected him in no uncertain terms.
The family repaired to the estate in Walkersdorf and summoned Gleichenstein to join them. To him was given the unenviable task of writing to Beethoven to spell out the family’s displeasure, and make it clear to him that they did not wish Beethoven to continue seeing their daughter in any capacity. The letter has not survived – who could blame Beethoven if he tore it up? – but his reply to Gleichenstein expressed his deep hurt: ‘Your news has plunged me from the heights of the most sublime ecstasy down into the depths.’ And the news that he was being barred even from continuing to give Therese piano lessons drew from him a sentence of extraordinary pathos, even self-pity: ‘Am I then nothing more than a Music-Man for yourself or the others?’
Beethoven here uses the untranslatable German word Musikus, which carries a derisory, even insulting connotation. ‘Mr Music Man’ might be the closest English rendition.
Beethoven wrote one final lengthy letter to Therese. He berates her gently for her flighty nature: ‘Our fickle T who treats so lightheartedly all the affairs of life.’ He confesses that he is leading a lonely and quiet life. He teases her about a theme he composed for her when they were together, inviting her to find its hidden meaning, but cautioning her in a painful reference to his own indiscretion: ‘Work it out for yourself, but do not drink punch to help you.’ He even – in shades of his mea culpa to Eleonore von Breuning nearly twenty years before – writes, ‘Remember me and do so with pleasure – Forget my mad behaviour.’
Thus another amorous adventure ended in failure, and Therese passed out of Beethoven’s life. But not out of musical history. For what was the piece of music he composed specially for her, that was undemanding enough for her to be able to play, and that was found in her effects after her death forty-one years later?
It is a small piece, and Beethoven gave it the innocuous title ‘Bagatelle’. But it is what he wrote at the top of the title page that has exercised musicologists and scholars ever since. This is what he wrote: ‘Für Elise am 27. April zur Erinnerung an L. V. Bthvn’ (‘For Elise on 27 April to remind you of L. V. Bthvn’).
The question is, who was Elise? One theory that gained acceptance was that Beethoven’s handwriting was notoriously difficult to decipher, and that the publisher mistook ‘Therese’ for ‘Elise’. But that stretches credulity – the two names do not resemble each other even closely. More likely is that Therese had the family nickname ‘Elise’. Her sister Anna was known as ‘Netty’, and such nicknames were common practice.11 Beethoven too had a propensity for giving people nicknames – there are numerous examples in his correspondence – so he might even have invented the name himself (though he does not use it in correspondence with her). Another possible explanation is that after the debacle of Lichnowsky spotting Josephine Brunsvik’s name on the manuscript of the song ‘An die Hoffnung’, he deliberately disguised Therese’s name. Or finally, maybe this is not the piece that he composed for her at all. He composed it for a woman named Elise about whom we know nothing, and she passed it on to Therese.
What we do know is that the Bagatelle known around the world today as ‘Für Elise’ is quite possibly the single best-known piece of piano music ever written by anyone,12 and is beloved by under-talented pianists of all generations, who may well boast that they can play Beethoven. ‘Für Elise’ is what they play.
DID BEETHOVEN finally, once and for all, abandon all hope of a relationship with a woman who might return his love? Most certainly not. We are now approaching the single closest and most intense relationship he was ever to have.
It did not result in marriage, it did not even last long. In fact we know far more about what did not happen than about what did. Most frustratingly of all, we do not know beyond doubt who the woman in question was. She is known to posterity simply as ‘The Immortal Beloved’.
1 An interesting comment on the unpredictability of Beethoven’s likes and dislikes is that he welcomed this particular French officer, Baron de Trémont, whom he had never met before, into his apartment, despite his antagonism towards the French officers at Lichnowsky’s Silesian estate.
2 Recordings of Rudolph’s piano and chamber works are available on CD today, but are rarely performed.
3 A similar set of circumstances to Beethoven’s royal patron in Bonn, Archduke Maximilian Franz.
4 Fatefully giving Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, the opportunity to gain a firm foothold in Portugal, which would ultimately lead to French defeat in Spain.
5 This he did, Rudolph returning to Vienna in late January of the following year, and the complete sonata is regarded as one of Beethoven’s finest. When it was published in 1811 as Op. 81a, the publisher decided to give it a French name, ‘Les Adieux’, by which it is known today. Beethoven preferred to call it ‘Das Lebewohl’.
6 Recent scholarship has suggested that this incident happened in the aftermath of the bombardment, when Napoleon ordered the demolition of part of the Bastei. If that is the case, the element of danger would have gone, but not the family antagonism.
7 It was to Gleichenstein that Beethoven had written in Freiburg asking him to find a ‘beautiful girl’. Gleichenstein, a young musician who helped Beethoven in much the same way as Ries, was to marry Therese’s sister Netty, who outlived him by forty years.
8 One of only two references in all Beethoven’s letters and papers to domestic pets.
9 Thus not repeating the mistake he had made with the Piano Sonata in C sharp minor, Op. 27 No. 2, ‘Moonlight’, dedicated to Giulietta Guicciardi, the third movement of which is beyond the reach of any but highly accomplished pianists.
10 In old age she boasted she had been Beethoven’s pupil.
11 Josephine Brunsvik was known to her sisters as Pepi or Pipschen.
12 In the 1990s it was the most downloaded mobile-phone ringtone in the world.
Chapter
TWELVE
Immortal Beloved
THIS IS WHAT WE KNOW beyond any doubt. On the morning of 6 July Beethoven, in a hotel in the Bohemian spa town of Teplitz,1 wrote a four-page letter to a woman. That same evening he added two and a half more pages. The following morning, 7 July, he completed page seven and added three more pages. The letter contains declarations of love throughout, which become extremely intense towards the end, and the letter closes with an unequivocal declaration of eternal, and mutual, love. This letter was found – as was the Heiligenstadt Testament – in his effects after his death.
Here it is in full:
; 6th July, morning
My angel, my all, my very self – only a few words today, and even with pencil – (with yours) only tomorrow will I know definitely about my lodgings, what an awful waste of time – Why this deep sorrow when necessity speaks – How else can our love endure except through sacrifices, through not demanding everything from one another? How can you alter the fact that you are not wholly mine, I not wholly thine – Oh, God.
Look to nature in all her beauty and let her calm your heart about what must be – Love demands everything and rightly so, and that can only mean me with you and you with me – you forget so easily that I would have to live for myself and for you, only if we were completely united would you feel as little pain as I –
My journey was terrible. I did not get here until 4 in the morning yesterday. Because they were short of horses the coach took a different route, but it was a dreadful road. At the one to last stage they warned me not to travel at night, that I would have to go through a dangerous forest, but that spurred me on – and I was wrong. The coach, of course, had to break down on the dreadful road.
Esterházy took the other more usual route and had the same trouble with 8 horses that I had with four. Yet to a certain extent I got pleasure as I always do when I overcome a problem –
Now swiftly from external matters to internal ones. We will surely see each other soon. There is no time now to tell you what I have been thinking about these last few days regarding my life – if our hearts were only united I would not have to have such thoughts. My soul is so full of things to tell you – Oh – There are times when words are simply no use – be cheerful – remain my only true darling, my all, as I am yours. The rest is for the gods to decree, what is to be for us and what should be –
your faithful
Ludwig
Monday evening on 6 July
You are suffering my most precious one – only now have I discovered that letters must be posted very early in the morning. Mondays – Thursdays – the only days when the mailcoach goes from here to K. – you are suffering – Oh, where I am you are with me, with me and I can talk to you – if only we could live together, what a life it is!!!! now!!!! without you – Pursued by the kindness of people here and there, which I think – which I no more want to deserve than do deserve – humility of a human towards humans – it pains me – and when I regard myself in relation to the universe, what I am and what is He – I weep when I think you will probably not receive the first news of me until Saturday – as much as you love me – I love you even more deeply – do not ever hide yourself from me – Goodnight – taking the baths has made me tired – Oh go with, go with – Oh, God – so near! so far! is our love not truly sent from Heaven? And is it not even as firm as the firmament of Heaven?