Beethoven

by Suchet, John

  good [sic] morning on 7 July – even lying in bed thoughts of you force themselves into my head, my Immortal Beloved, now and then happy, then again sad, in the hands of Fate, to see if it will heed us – I can only live with you wholly or not at all, yes, I have even decided to wander helplessly, until I can fly into your arms, and say that I have found my haven there, my soul embraced by you to be transported to the kingdom of spirits – yes, sadly that must come – you will accept it more readily, knowing I am true to you, that never can another woman possess my heart – never, never – Oh, God, why do we have to be so far apart from what we love? And yet my life in V. now is such a wretched existence – Your love makes me at once the happiest and unhappiest of men – at my time of life I need stability, calmness of life – can that exist in a relationship like ours? – Angel, I have just been told that the post leaves every day – and so I must close, so you can get the letter immediately – be calm, only through reflecting calmly about our existence can we reach our goal to live together – stay calm – love me – today – yesterday – what tearful longing for you – you – you – my Love – my all – Farewell – Love me still – never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved

  L.

  eternally thine

  eternally mine

  eternally ours2

  Now the questions begin. Let us start with the most mundane element, the date. That’s clear enough, isn’t it? No, it isn’t. For a start you’ll notice that although he is precise about the date and time, and in the second part the day, he does not give the year. During Beethoven’s lifetime 6 July fell on a Monday in 1795, 1801, 1807, 1812, 1818. Nineteenth-century scholars could not agree on the year, and it was not until the twentieth century that 1812 became accepted, as far as I am aware, without question.

  There was a mutual, reciprocal love affair between Beethoven and a woman

  But here’s something else to consider. Beethoven was notoriously unreliable when it came to dates. A huge number of his letters, including lengthy ones as opposed to mere notes, are undated. Scholars have since assigned dates to them all, but not with certainty. Yet here he is being precise even about the time of day. Why? There is no need for him to be so precise, since it is clear he and the woman were together possibly on the 5th, or shortly before, and she was aware of his travel plans. This attention to detail is totally unlike Beethoven.

  Is he falsifying the date, and leaving the year out, deliberately, in case the letter falls into the wrong hands? It is certainly possible he feared the letter might go astray, since it is extraordinarily free of detail. For instance, nowhere does he use the woman’s name, or even give her an initial. The only two initials are for place names. ‘V’ is clearly Vienna, and ‘K’ more than likely Karlsbad,3 the only town beginning with ‘K’ within easy reach of Teplitz and which matches the times for the mail coach.

  There is a further mystery in that the letter was found hidden in his desk after his death. This means he kept it with him for the rest of his life. He must surely have been reminded of it every time his desk was moved. There are two possible explanations: either he never sent it, or the woman received it and gave it back to him. The envelope has not survived; maybe there never was one, or maybe he kept it in a blank envelope after deciding not to send it. Certainly there are no stamps or sealing-wax marks on the letter. It is a reasonable assumption that he never sent it.

  But if he was worried about the letter falling into the wrong hands, so worried even that he decided not to send it, why did he keep it? Simpler, surely, to destroy it, and thereby destroy the evidence.

  Unless he wanted it to be found after his death, to show that he did have more success when it came to love than his friends gave him credit for. After all, it is very possible he wanted the Heiligenstadt Testament to be found so that the grief his deafness caused him would be there in writing.

  One theory I am certain can be discounted, that the letter was an elaborate hoax by Beethoven, that no such woman, no such love affair existed. If you are going to set out to do that, would you really put in details of an uncomfortable coach ride, problems with finding a hotel room, complications over mailcoach timings?

  And this is Beethoven, remember, who once said, ‘I would rather write ten thousand musical notes than one letter of the alphabet.’ No, it was not a hoax.

  We can, I believe, be sure that there was a love affair between Beethoven and a woman, a mutual, reciprocal love affair. Was it consummated? The letter does not make it clear for certain one way or the other. Beethoven tentatively expresses the hope that the two might live together. Some researchers have taken this as evidence of a physical relationship, others have drawn the opposite conclusion. It is almost as if Beethoven is loath to commit to paper anything that is definitive.

  But all these questions pale before the single most important question of all, which has been asked by every Beethoven biographer since the first almost two centuries ago; which has been answered in many different ways; which has been considered solved time and time again, but about which whole books continue to be published, films created, documentaries made, articles written.

  Who was the woman? Who was Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved?

  I NEED FIRST to sketch in a little background, before describing how events unfolded. The period following the rejection by Therese Malfatti proved to be difficult for Beethoven. His health was causing real problems. The perennial problems of colic and diarrhoea debilitated him. One can imagine that the trauma of yet another rejection aggravated things. So did something else beyond his control.

  The Austrian economy was crippled by the effects of war. After the value of the currency became weaker and weaker, it was officially devalued in March 1811. This had the effect, not only of forcing prices to rocket, but of robbing Vienna’s richest aristocrats overnight of their wealth. One, our old friend Prince Lobkowitz, dedicatee of several of Beethoven’s most important compositions, was bankrupted and suffered the humiliation of having his estates seized.

  Of direct relevance to our story is the fact that Lobkowitz was one of the two senior aristocrats who joined Archduke Rudolph in agreeing to pay Beethoven the annuity that kept him in Vienna. In September 1811, after only two years of payments, Lobkowitz was no longer able to continue.

  It got worse for Beethoven. Two months after that, the other aristocrat who contributed to the annuity, Prince Kinsky, was thrown from his horse and killed. His payments too were halted, and Beethoven began a long-running dispute with his estate to try to get the payments continued.

  As ever with Beethoven, there is a paradox. He continued to compose at a furious rate: the ‘Archduke’ Piano Trio, music for two plays, König Stephan and Die Ruinen von Athen, and most importantly the Seventh Symphony completed and the Eighth begun.

  By the summer of 1812 he needed a break – in fact, another break. The previous summer he had visited the spa town of Teplitz, and decided to do the same again in 1812.

  On either the evening of Sunday, 28 June, or the morning of Monday, the 29th, he left Vienna for Prague. He arrived in Prague on Wednesday, 1 July, and checked into the hotel Zum schwarzen Ross (‘At the Black Steed’). The following day he attended a meeting regarding the Kinsky annuity. The day after that, the 3rd, he failed to keep an appointment scheduled for the evening. On Saturday, 4 July, before noon, he left Prague for Teplitz. He arrived in Teplitz at 4 a.m. after a difficult journey during which his carriage lost a wheel. He found a room at the hotel Die goldene Sonne (‘The Golden Sun’). The next morning, Monday, 6 July, he began the letter to the Immortal Beloved. He added to it that evening, and again the following morning. Later that day he moved into the hotel Zur Eiche (‘At the Oak Tree’), where he stayed for some weeks.

  A close reading of the letter, fitting it into this time frame, indicates that Beethoven met the Immortal Beloved on Friday, 3 July, probably in the evening when he failed to keep a pre-arranged appointment. How long the two were together, whether they spent
the night of the 3rd together, we do not know. After this, he left for Teplitz, and she left for Karlsbad. That they met cannot be in doubt – she gave him her pencil.

  While we can be relatively certain of Beethoven’s movements, therefore, through the evidence of hotel ledgers and police registers, the same is most certainly not true of the Immortal Beloved, for the simple reason that we are not sure what name we are looking for.

  It is surely safe to assume the woman must be someone who was well known to Beethoven in Vienna. The passion in the letter is not credible if this is a woman he met in Prague and fell in love with on the same day (or the day after). It also would be entirely out of character for Beethoven to behave like that.

  Only one name that Beethoven definitely knew appears in registers both in Prague and then Karlsbad on the right dates. Her name is Antonie Brentano, and the American musicologist and Beethoven biographer Maynard Solomon, in his exhaustive biography published in 1977,4 came to the unequivocal conclusion that Antonie was the Immortal Beloved. He presented powerful evidence of an intimate friendship between them, regarding her presence in the two right locations at the right time as conclusive proof.

  So certain was he that he wrote in the biography, ‘The weight of the evidence in [Antonie Brentano’s] favour is so powerful that it is not presumptuous to assert that the riddle of Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved has now been solved.’

  In that if nothing else, he was mistaken. Several names have been proposed since, some for the first time, some not, and in 2011 alone two full-length books were published arguing the case for different women.5

  The argument against Antonie Brentano is that she was a married woman with children, and in fact was with her husband Franz and one of their children staying at the Rothes Haus (‘Red House’) hotel in Prague. Is it realistic to assume she would be able to absent herself from husband and child for a clandestine meeting with Beethoven, which might well have lasted for several hours, if not an entire night, and which was clearly emotionally fraught? And even if she had, would Beethoven, whose strong moral rectitude was beyond doubt, have entertained such a meeting with a woman who was a wife and mother?

  For every argument, there is a counterargument. For precisely that reason, it could be argued, he expressed himself so strongly in the letter, stating unequivocally that the love affair could not proceed, however much they both might wish it. There remains the question, though, of whether Antonie could have absented herself from her husband and daughter to pursue an affair, consummated or not.

  The argument against Antonie is further weakened by the fact that three weeks after arriving in Teplitz, Beethoven went to stay with Antonie and her husband and daughter in Karlsbad. Could that really have happened, all together under the same roof, if Beethoven and Antonie were desperately in love with each other and had met secretly in Prague?

  After Beethoven left them in Karlsbad, he never met them again. But they stayed in touch, and Beethoven was to dedicate compositions to Antonie much later, very substantial compositions. There is also evidence that a decade later Franz Brentano advanced Beethoven a considerable sum of money when he was in need. If Franz knew Beethoven and his wife had had a love affair, his generosity is truly remarkable. If he never found out, he was at best naïve.

  There can be no doubt that Beethoven was very close to the Brentanos, but under the circumstances outlined above – even given the fact that Antonie can without doubt be placed in Prague and Karlsbad on the right dates – I find it hard to believe he and Antonie were lovers, requited or unrequited.

  Shortly after Solomon published his book, his arguments in favour of Antonie were challenged by one of Europe’s leading musicologists and Beethoven scholars, the German Marie-Elisabeth Tellenbach. Her candidate is Josephine Brunsvik. In fact, despite recent arguments in favour of other women, it is fair to say that the two leading candidates for identification as the Immortal Beloved are Antonie Brentano and Josephine Brunsvik.

  Tellenbach argues against Antonie for precisely the reasons I have outlined, that although she fits the facts, emotionally as wife and mother and in the company of husband and daughter, it is not realistic to postulate a love affair.

  She puts powerful arguments in favour of Josephine, not least that the letters discovered after World War II prove beyond doubt that Beethoven was in love with her and asked for a physical relationship. There is also the song ‘An die Hoffnung’, the discovery of which by Lichnowsky led to such embarrassment for Beethoven.

  No letters which might throw light on the events of July 1812 have survived

  But there are counter-arguments. Josephine remarried in February 1810. The marriage was disastrous, and her husband, Baron Stackelberg, an Estonian, was frequently absent from Vienna. Since there is no direct evidence that Josephine was in either Prague or Karlsbad on the relevant dates, it means she would have had to absent herself from Vienna for some weeks, travel between Vienna, Prague and Karlsbad, without being seen or reported by anyone. In other words, she would most probably have had to travel in disguise. For a married woman – happily married or not – this presents almost insurmountable practical problems.

  Solomon argues that with Europe at war, travellers were compelled to register with the police when crossing borders. Therefore it is impossible for Josephine to have done this incognito. Tellenbach counters that Prague and Karlsbad were both within the Austrian Empire, and so registration was not compulsory. Who is right? We cannot say.

  The emotional argument regarding Josephine can be seen in two ways. Would Beethoven, having been rejected by her while she was between marriages, want to rekindle his desires? Maybe, maybe not. Josephine was known to be emotionally unstable. How would this have affected Beethoven? It might have deterred him; it might have attracted him.

  A further example of how intractable the arguments are is that it appears self-evident that the Immortal Beloved has to have been in Karlsbad, following the tryst in Prague. Not necessarily. All that we need to be able to say is that Beethoven believed her to be in Karlsbad. She does not actually have to have been there. In fact, if at the last moment he realised that she was not where he thought she was, maybe that would explain why he did not send the letter. This weakens the case for Antonie, and strengthens it (possibly) for Josephine.

  There is a poignant coda to the candidacies of Antonie and Josephine. Both gave birth eight to nine months after the Prague encounter.

  Antonie gave birth to a son, Karl Josef, on 8 March 1813. At an early age Karl suffered partial paralysis of the legs. At the age of three he showed signs of severe mental illness, and suffered from seizures. Antonie took him to a succession of doctors, who could do nothing for him. In a letter Antonie wrote, ‘Oh, when one has to drink such a bitter cup of sorrow daily, hourly, how can there remain a last bit of joy and strength?’ Karl died at the age of thirty-seven.

  Josephine gave birth to a daughter on 9 April 1813. She named her Minona. Minona remained unmarried and lived to the age of eighty-four, almost into the twentieth century. She inherited her aunt Therese’s estate, including her papers and the diary she kept meticulously in which she wrote of her sister Josephine’s attachment to Beethoven. But no letters which might throw light on the events of July 1812 have survived. This has led to speculation that Minona, who treasured the memory of her mother, destroyed any evidence of an affair between her mother and Beethoven, and with it evidence that she, Minona, might have been Beethoven’s daughter.

  It has been pointed out that Minona is Anonim spelled backwards, ‘the child with no name’. There is a photograph of Minona taken in old age. She bears a striking resemblance to Beethoven, which proves nothing.

  TO RETURN TO the letter, the more intricately one examines it, the more unyielding it becomes. But I believe there is a danger. It is possible to over-analyse its meaning. Beethoven was never subtle with words. His many hundreds of letters exactly mirror his thoughts. For profundity of thought and emotion, listen to his music.

&n
bsp; This is a love letter, written in the white heat of passion. It is as if he is barely pausing to think. Towards the end of the letter, his writing becomes more frantic, the words more widely spaced, the lines shorter. He is emotionally wrought, quite possibly in despair. Looking at the writing, it is entirely feasible that he has drunk several glasses of wine.

  What I believe the letter gives us is unequivocal proof that Beethoven was in love with a woman, a woman who returned that love in equal measure – the only evidence we have in his whole life of his love being fully reciprocated. Yet he knew their love could not endure. Circumstances prevented it. ‘I can only live with you wholly, or not at all.’ Why? Because she was married? Or because he knew he could never give himself to her in the way a husband should, because of the demands of his music?

  One fact I can state with total certainty, without the slightest chance of contradiction. The arguments, theories, speculation will continue. If Beethoven’s letters to Josephine were discovered as recently as the 1940s, who knows what other evidence is inside a shoebox in an attic somewhere in the world?