Beethoven

by Suchet, John

  More likely to hurt him emotionally, he returned to the city to find that his brother Carl was seriously ill with tuberculosis, the disease that had killed their mother. In fact so grave was Carl’s health that in April 1813 he made a declaration in which he called on his brother Ludwig to undertake sole guardianship of his son Karl. The one-paragraph document was signed by Carl, Beethoven, and three witnesses. It does not mention Johanna by name, but the obvious effect of it would be to exclude Johanna from playing any part in the upbringing of her son.

  This, on the face of it, was an extraordinary decision. Exactly what turned Carl against his wife is not known. Most certainly Beethoven himself would have pressured his brother, and we might find it surprising with modern eyes that three witnesses were persuaded too. But that was nothing compared with the turn of events that would follow.

  In fact Carl’s health improved in the following months, and the declaration was not enacted, but it was a foretaste of what was to come.

  BEETHOVEN’S behaviour in this period was giving his friends cause for concern. He had given up caring about his appearance, or even his hygiene. Restaurants – those that would admit him – kept a solitary table at the back of the room, so that his eating habits did not deter other guests.

  It is from this time that rumours began that he visited prostitutes regularly. There has been enormous controversy over this, derived from the fact that in notes and letters to his close friend Zmeskall there is nothing specific, but he uses oblique words and phrases that are capable of different interpretations. If he did visit prostitutes, as a single man in his forties it would certainly not be unusual, but for Beethoven the moralist it comes under the same category as conducting an affair with a married woman. It is possible, though highly unlikely.

  That his emotions were in a dire state, though, is not in doubt. ‘So many unfortunate incidents occurring one after the other have really driven me into an almost disordered state,’ he wrote to Rudolph. Most important of all, he had composed nothing substantial, nor published anything for over a year.

  More than anything it was his volatility, his unpredictability, that made him so difficult to be with, that made his friends, even his family, so reluctant to involve themselves with him. His brother Carl, even as his health was being sapped by tuberculosis, was not immune from his elder brother’s wrath – or from the overwhelming remorse that followed it.

  Carl, Johanna, and their six-year-old son Karl were at the dinner table some time in late 1812 or early 1813. Suddenly the door opened and Beethoven burst in. ‘You thief! Where are my manuscripts?’ Carl, physically weak, either denied he had taken anything, or told his brother he had no idea what he was talking about. A violent quarrel ensued, which threatened to come to blows, or possibly even did, since Karl recalled later that his mother had difficulty separating the two men. Carl tore himself away, with his wife’s help, crossed the room, opened a drawer, took out the ‘missing’ manuscript pages, and threw them down in front of Beethoven.

  Visible proof that his brother had not stolen the pages was enough to calm Beethoven down, who actually went so far as to apologise. In reality he had no choice, in the face of the evidence. But righteous indignation – quite possibly a culmination of smaller aggressive incidents – got the better of Carl, and he refused to be placated. He continued to hurl abuse at his elder brother, who rushed out of the room – leaving the offending manuscript pages behind. Carl continued to shout after him, saying he did not want that ‘dragon’ (Drachen) to set foot in his home again.

  According to Karl, a short time after the incident he and his father were crossing a bridge over the Danube Canal, when by coincidence Beethoven was crossing in the opposite direction. Beethoven saw Carl, and gasped to see the physical deterioration in his brother. He threw his arms around Carl’s neck and covered him in kisses with such passion that ‘people stared in complete bewilderment’.

  Beethoven’s contrition might be commendable, but its excessiveness, and the fact that it was delivered so publicly, suggest a certain lack of proportion. However we look at it, we are left to struggle with the knowledge that one of the greatest artists who ever lived came to physical blows with both his brothers, and that in each case the dispute was entirely of his making.

  ARGUABLY BEETHOVEN, in 1813, was at the lowest ebb in his life. A failed love affair, continuing ill-health, domestic tribulations, blocked creativity, worsening deafness ... You begin to wonder how much more he could take, what might come along that might tip him over the edge. Those words at the end of his first entry in the Tagebuch – ‘nothing at all must chain me to life’ – take on a truly ominous ring.

  However, not for the first time in life external events came, obliquely, to his rescue, and once again they concerned the adventures of the Corsican-born commander and Emperor who was rampaging across Europe at the head of the Continent’s most powerful fighting force.

  ON 21 JUNE 1813, Arthur Wellesley, at the head of 79,000 British, Portuguese and Spanish soldiers, routed the French army under King Joseph of Spain at the Battle of Vitoria. Joseph had been placed on the throne of Spain by his younger brother Napoleon Bonaparte three years earlier. The battle cost Joseph all his guns, supplies, treasure – and his kingdom. The loss of Spain was a devastating blow to the French Emperor, all the more so for coming less than a year after his own humiliation in Russia.

  In Vienna there were wild scenes of jubilation on the streets, in the parks, along the high paths of the Bastei. No one doubted that this was the beginning of the end of Napoleonic hegemony in Europe. For a country whose army had suffered so often at the hands of Napoleon, whose capital city, seat of empire, had been shelled into surrender, it was a sweet moment.

  To what did the people of Vienna turn to celebrate? Music, of course. And to whom? It was just what Beethoven needed. He gave two hugely successful concerts, at which he conducted the first public performances of his Seventh Symphony,4 as well as the piece he had composed to celebrate the Battle of Vitoria, Wellingtons5 Sieg6 (Wellington’s Victory). This was followed by a third concert, including again the Seventh Symphony, and the first performance of the Eighth.

  And what did the Emperor and the ruling elite of Austria do to celebrate? What they had done many times before: declare war on France. This time Austria joined the allies in a new coalition, which resulted in Napoleon, at the head of 195,000 men, facing 365,000 Austrian, Prussian, Russian, and Swedish soldiers at the Battle of Leipzig, known as the Battle of the Nations.

  Defeat for France was inevitable, though in the event French losses were nothing like as great as those of the allies, when considered proportionately. But defeat it was. The disastrous Russian adventure, the loss of Spain, now defeat on the battlefield – the Napoleonic era was nearing its end.

  The allies followed up their victory by invading France in January 1814. Less than three months later Napoleon was deposed by the French Senate, forced to abdicate in favour of his son, and was exiled to the Mediterranean island of Elba.

  The question was what to do now. It was decided that, with Napoleon Bonaparte finally defeated, a Congress of European leaders would be held to redraw the post-Napoleonic map of Europe. Where would this triumphal meeting be held? In the city that had so suffered at the hands of Napoleon and his army: Vienna.

  It was actually by virtue of the successful concerts, not the decision to hold the Congress in Vienna (which came some months later), that the theatre directors decided to approach Beethoven and make a rather bold suggestion. Would he consider reviving his opera Leonore, which had been so ill-fated eight years earlier?

  Perhaps to their surprise, he agreed, on condition that the libretto be extensively revised. His choice for this was a German-born playwright and librettist, Georg Friedrich Treitschke, whose work he admired. The directors agreed.

  It really is remarkable – in a way that so often characterises Beethoven’s life – that, despite the extreme depression into which he had sunk so recently, and co
nsidering the traumatic events that had surrounded the first two productions of his opera, he not only agreed to rework it, but did so with gusto, apparently establishing a comfortable working relationship with Treitschke.

  Beethoven clearly gave Treitschke carte blanche, and even when they disagreed he allowed himself to be persuaded. Treitschke tightened up the first act, entirely rewriting the end, so that the prison governor’s anger is a natural consequence of the prisoners being allowed out into the daylight, and his order that they return to their cells bringing the first act to a satisfying close.

  But Treitschke’s revisions to Act II were far more far-reaching. Beginning with Florestan’s heart-rending cry from his dungeon, he rewrote Florestan’s aria so that a man being starved to death experiences a last blaze of life before he dies. This met entirely with Beethoven’s approval. Treitschke – earning our eternal gratitude – has left a riveting account of Beethoven in the white heat of inspiration:

  What I now relate will live for ever in my memory. Beethoven came to me about seven o’clock in the evening. After we had discussed other things, he asked how matters stood with the aria. It was just finished; I handed it to him. He read it, ran up and down the room, muttered and growled, as was his habit instead of singing – and tore open the piano. My wife had often begged him to play, but in vain. Today he placed the text in front of him and began to play wonderful improvisations, which sadly no magic could cause to remain solid in the air. Out of them he seemed to conjure the motif of the aria. The hours passed, but Beethoven continued to improvise. Supper, which he had intended to share with us, was served, but he would not allow himself to be disturbed. Finally, at a late hour, he embraced me, and declining an invitation to eat, he hurried home. The next day the admirable composition was finished.

  This is quite possibly the only eyewitness account we have of Beethoven actually involved in the compositional process – I am not aware of any other. It is made all the more precious because the aria he composed that night and completed the following morning is the aria we know today. It is one of the most famous, and poignant, moments in all opera: Florestan, starving to death in the underground dungeon, lets out a piercing cry, followed by a lament, but now ending in a kind of trance, seeing a vision of his wife Leonore as an angel leading him to freedom in Heaven. Any operatic tenor will confirm what a challenge it is, beginning with the crescendo cry, going through an extensive range of emotions, and ending in an extremely high register – all sung from a lying and sitting position.

  With his fine sense of theatricality, Treitschke moved the final scene into the town marketplace, in other words up into the daylight – both previous versions of the opera had taken place entirely in the dungeon. This allowed the rescue to be fully celebrated, for the reunited couple to sing a joyous duet accompanied by full chorus, as well as giving the psychologically satisfying transition from darkness into light.

  It was as if, this time, Beethoven’s opera was pre-ordained to be a success. It went into rehearsal in April 1814, and was performed several times over the following weeks. Changes continued to be made, and on 18 July it was performed in its final version, the version we know today. Beethoven composed yet another overture, the fourth, crisper, more dramatic than its predecessors, and again that is the overture played today.

  It had been around a decade in coming, and had caused Beethoven more pain and heartache than any other composition, but Fidelio was at last complete, and in a form he was satisfied with. Small wonder that when the organisers of the Congress of Vienna decided to arrange a gala evening for the crowned heads of Europe in September, they chose to stage Fidelio. Small wonder too that Beethoven henceforth turned his back on the operatic form, and never composed another.

  Before we leave the Congress, which has entered history more for the entertainment it provided – ‘le congrès ne marche pas, il danse’, with the Viennese amusing themselves in a new game of spotting the King or Prince hurrying through the streets at night in disguise on the way to his mistress – than any concrete political results, it had one more direct effect on Beethoven’s musical output.

  To honour the presence of so many crowned heads, he set absurd lyrics to music in a composition entitled ‘Der Glorreiche Augenblick’ (‘The Glorious Moment’). The piece has survived, is rarely played today, and is usually treated as an aberration.7

  So why did he agree to set to music the simplistic words of a certain Alois Weissenbach, Professor of Surgery and Head Surgeon at St John’s Hospital in Salzburg? More than that, why did he invite Professor Weissenbach to call on him for breakfast, and greet him with a warm handshake and even a kiss? Because Professor Weissenbach was profoundly deaf. ‘It was pitiful to hear them shout at each other,’ wrote an eyewitness. I suspect it wasn’t at all pitiful, and that they relished each other’s company, two men barely able to hear a word the other said.

  The frivolities and philandering were brought to a sudden end at the beginning of March 1815, when word reached Vienna that the unthinkable, the impossible, had occurred. Napoleon Bonaparte had escaped from Elba, landed in southern France, and was marching north, gathering an army around him.

  But it is unlikely this impinged much on Beethoven. He had a far more serious problem to contend with, a crisis that had been in abeyance for two years, but that now returned with a vengeance.

  1 In the Schlosspark in Bad Teplice there is today a small monument by the side of the path, and a plaque set into the path, commemorating the incident.

  2 Anton Bruckner was later to be organist at Linz Cathedral from 1856 to 1868.

  3 Beethoven composed three short pieces for four trombones (equale signifying a piece for equal, or similar, instruments). Two of them, adapted for four male voices, were sung at the composer’s funeral.

  4 The composer Louis Spohr, playing in the violin section of the orchestra, has left a vivid description of Beethoven conducting at these concerts: ‘When a sforzando occurred, he tore his arms which were crossed across his chest with great vehemence asunder. At piano he crouched down lower and lower to indicate the degree of softness. When a crescendo entered he gradually rose again, and at the entrance of the forte he jumped into the air. Sometimes he shouted to strengthen the forte ... It was obvious that the poor man could no longer hear the piano passages of his own music.’

  5 Arthur Wellesley was not, in fact, elevated to the dukedom until the following year.

  6 Beethoven composed it, remarkably, for the Panharmonicon, a mechanical instrument that reproduced the sounds of the orchestra, invented by Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, known to musical history as the inventor of the metronome. So successful was it that, at Mälzel’s suggestion, he orchestrated it.

  7 Sample verse: ‘And Wellington, the Spanish horde/Battled against with trust in the Lord/ And at Vitoria struck them he/Till home with shame they had to flee.’

  Chapter

  FOURTEEN

  Into the Witness Box

  CARL VAN BEETHOVEN HAD fallen ill again with tuberculosis, and this time it was clear to everybody that it was terminal. The ramifications of this, and what followed, were to have the most profound effect on Beethoven, indeed it is not an exaggeration to say that they were to affect him for the rest of his life.

  It is possible to pinpoint the beginning of it to the exact day: 14 November 1815. Carl van Beethoven lay dying. He was forty-one years of age. On that day Beethoven went to see his brother. By chance, he discovered Carl’s Will lying on a sideboard. He had not known either that the Will had been written or what its terms were.

  He picked it up, read it – and Clause 5 hit him like a thunderbolt: ‘Along with my wife I appoint my brother Ludwig van Beethoven co-guardian [of my son Karl].’

  He angrily told his brother there and then that the Will could not stand as it was. It flatly contradicted the declaration of two and half years before, when the tuberculosis first took hold, which stated Carl’s wish that, in the event of his death, his brother Ludwig should become Karl�
�s guardian. He insisted that Clause 5 had to be changed. Carl acquiesced. He took a pen and crossed out the words ‘Along with my wife’ and ‘co-’.

  It must have been an extraordinary scene. Carl was less than twenty-four hours from death. One imagines him propped up in bed, his small frame ravaged by disease, his cheeks flushed in the characteristic sign of tuberculosis, probably racked by coughing, a handkerchief flecked with blood held to his lips, gazing in despair with feverish watery eyes ... as his brother strode across the end of his bed, waving his arms and ranting against Johanna.

  Beethoven himself wrote of it later, in a memorandum to the Court of Appeal, in measured tones. Having discovered the Will and read it, he realised ‘[certain] passages had to be stricken out. This I had my brother bring about since I did not wish to be bound up in this with such a bad woman in a matter of such importance as the education of the child.’ In reality one can only envision the vitriol he poured out to his dying brother against the woman he had loathed since the day he had set eyes on her – and, given her reputation, before. Clearly the passage of time had not exactly mellowed Beethoven’s antagonism towards his sister-in-law.

  Thanks to his timely arrival at his brother’s bedside, however, he had averted disaster. Satisfied with his efforts, he left his brother, but not for long. Some sixth sense, possibly, caused him to return just an hour and a half later. If he had suspicions, they were justified. The Will had gone. There followed yet another confrontation between Beethoven and his dying brother. We do not know exactly what was said, but we know the circumstances, and I have therefore allowed myself to presume Beethoven’s words.

  ‘What has happened to it? Where is it? Who has taken it?’ Beethoven demanded to know. Carl summoned his failing strength and told his brother – haltingly, no doubt, knowing even so close to death the torrent it would unleash – that something had been added to the Will, and he had been made to sign it.