Beethoven

by Suchet, John

  But the judges of the Landrecht had no need to waste their time trying to establish the truth of the matter. Beethoven had admitted he did not have documentary proof of nobility, and that was enough to allow them to wash their hands of the matter. This was not a case for the Landrecht, and they referred it – no doubt with some relief – to the Magistrat, the lower court, the court of the ‘common people’.

  It was, for Beethoven, much more than a disappointment; it was a public humiliation. In no time the news raced round Vienna. Beethoven, who counted the aristocracy among his friends, who could call on the Emperor’s brother without so much as an appointment, who was lauded in the highest salons in the land ... was himself of no higher status than the ordinary people in the street.

  There was another, more practical, reason for his distress. He knew perfectly well that the Magistrat, the lower court, was a champion of ordinary people, with a reputation for finding in their favour when they ran into trouble with the nobility. It was certain to take a dim view of the fact that he had taken his case to the court of the nobility when he was in fact on the same level before the law as any other common citizen.

  His fears were well founded. The new year had barely begun when the Magistrat found against Beethoven, withdrew Karl from his guardianship, and returned him to his mother. Beethoven was devastated.

  BUT BEETHOVEN was not finished. He was determined to win this fight. It had been going on for more than three years, and he was in no mood to give up. Five times during the year 1819 he wrote to the Magistrat pleading with them to reconsider. Some of the letters were brief, some rambling. He received no reply.

  Then, in the autumn of that year, Beethoven took on a new legal adviser, Johann Baptist Bach. In February 1820, with Bach’s help, he drew up a lengthy document – the longest piece of writing in Beethoven’s hand – divided into seven parts. It details every aspect of the case, and is unstinting in its characterisation of Johanna as a wicked and immoral woman, with a criminal record, with no education whatsoever, and utterly unsuited to bringing up her son.

  Bach submitted the document, not to the Magistrat, but to the Court of Appeal, the highest court in the land. Three weeks later, on 8 April 1820, the court ruled in Beethoven’s favour. Johanna made a direct appeal to the Emperor to intervene personally. He refused.

  Finally, Beethoven had won. Karl was his. Johanna had lost. Was that not proof he had been right from the start? But what on earth could have brought about this extraordinary turnaround? We shall never know. One of Beethoven’s friends had told him that the Magistrat was known to be corrupt, and if he had used bribery he would undoubtedly have won at that earlier stage. Might he have used bribery with the Court of Appeal? There is no evidence he did, but there wouldn’t be, would there?

  Karl was at last Beethoven’s, at the end of a four-and-a-half-year struggle. But at what a cost. He was soon to fall seriously ill, and was never again to enjoy complete good health in the remaining six years of his life.

  The court case he pursued so relentlessly against Johanna is an episode for which it is hard to forgive him. One of his modern biographers writes:

  The lawsuit over his nephew brought out the worst in Beethoven’s character, and during its course he exhibited self-righteousness, vindictiveness, unscrupulousness, lack of self-control, and a wholesale disregard for any point of view but his own.2

  Perhaps the most we can say is that the mind of a true genius is often found to be wanting in other areas; that the balance between different parts in the brain of a genius is not always as it should be. The genius might be supreme in the area of his genius, but in other areas – which to the non-genius may seem straightforward and obvious – he is left floundering.

  But what is also clear is that Beethoven had a conscience. There is evidence even he knew deep down that what he was doing was wrong. There is the quotation already cited: ‘What will people say? They will take me for a tyrant!’ And in his diary he wrote, ‘This one thing I clearly perceive: life may not be the greatest good there is, but the greatest evil is certainly guilt.’

  A little later: ‘It would have been impossible without hurting the widow’s feelings, but it was not to be. Thou, almighty God, who seest into my heart, know that I have disregarded my own welfare for my dear Karl’s sake, bless my work, bless the widow, why cannot I entirely follow my heart and from now – the widow – God, God, my refuge, my rock ...’ Little wonder he suddenly enquired after Johanna’s health when he heard she had been unwell, and offered her money.

  What is truly extraordinary is that Johanna, despite all that Beethoven had inflicted on her, appears never to have written or spoken out against her brother-in-law during the rest of her long life, which outlived Beethoven’s by forty-one years and ended in her early eighties. Nor is there any evidence that she ever tried to make money from her closeness to Beethoven – memoirs, reminiscences, what today’s newspapers would call ‘kiss and tell’, of the great composer into whose family she married – despite ending her life in some degree of poverty.

  It is all the more surprising given the macabre events that would befall her son Karl, for which his uncle was directly, if unwittingly, responsible.

  1 With one major exception, of which more later.

  2 Martin Cooper, Beethoven: The Last Decade 1817–1827 (Oxford University Press, 1970).

  Chapter

  FIFTEEN

  A Musical Gift from London

  BEETHOVEN’S HEALTH had caused him problems all his adult life, and it concerned his digestive system. He complained of bloated stomach, colic, diarrhoea, indigestion. Today he might well have been diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome, or something similar. Certainly he did nothing to ease the problems. He drank excessively, mostly local red wine. He smoked a pipe when drinking in a tavern. (A pipe with its bowl filled with tobacco could be bought at the counter.)

  His eating habits would appal any doctor – he ate irregularly, would miss dinner and get up in the night to eat, eat enormous quantities one day and practically nothing the next, sometimes devouring a meal so quickly it was bound to give him digestive problems. In a restaurant he was known on some occasions to skip a main course, on others to order two. Once, dissatisfied with the lamb chops put in front of him, he hurled the plate at the waiter, who reacted by pretending to enjoy the taste of the gravy as it trickled over his lips.

  Eating for Beethoven was rarely a pleasure; it was simply a means to an end. Not that he was entirely unthinking when it came to food. He employed a cook, and sacked several for not cooking to his satisfaction. It appears he was not averse to trying his hand in the kitchen himself. He sent a note to a local fishmonger, undated but probably in 1822, enclosing 5 gulden, and requesting them ‘most politely’ to let him have ‘a carp weighing 3 or 4 lbs, or better still, a pike of at least 3 lbs. If you have neither of these kinds of fish, then please send me some other fish of about the same weight.’

  It is possible, of course, that he was ordering the fish on behalf of his cook. But we know for certain that he did on occasion cook, thanks to his musical colleague, and Egyptian-hieroglyphic page-turner Ignaz Seyfried, who relates that on one occasion, being without a cook, Beethoven decided to invite friends to supper and cook the meal himself. Their host greeted his guests wearing a blue apron and nightcap. After a wait of an hour and a half, Beethoven served up ‘soup of the kind dished up to beggars, half-done beef, vegetables floating in a mixture of water and grease, and roast that seemed to have been smoked in the chimney’. Beethoven, alone, was proud of his efforts, and the situation for the guests was saved, says Seyfried, only by the ‘unadulterated juice of the grape’.

  Mercifully for Beethoven (and his friends), these occasions were rare, and for the most part he ate in restaurants or at friends’ houses. But there is no denying his eating and drinking habits exacerbated whatever underlying health problems he had.

  For one thing, he seems to have suffered from a painfully distended stomach. He wrote
to his tailor, ‘I need a new body belt. This one is no good, and owing to the sensitive condition of my abdomen it is quite impossible for me to go out without a strong protecting belt.’

  The court case made matters far, far worse. From 1816, the year it took over his life, his health deteriorated and continued to do so. In October, the month after Karl’s hernia operation, he wrote that he was suffering from ‘a violent, feverish cold, so that I had to stay in bed for a very long time, and only after several months was I allowed to go out, even for a short while’. He details the treatment he was prescribed: six powders daily and six bowls of tea, a healing ointment to be rubbed into his skin three times a day, another medicine, and a tincture of which he was to swallow twelve spoonfuls daily.

  None of it worked to his satisfaction, so he sacked his doctor. This was the estimable Dr Malfatti, a relative of his former inamorata Therese. He will make a dramatic reappearance in the final stages of Beethoven’s life. A new doctor diagnosed severe catarrhal inflammation of the lungs and warned Beethoven he would be ill for a long time.

  On top of all this, and far more detrimental to his well-being, was his deafness, which now, as he approached his fifties, was severe.

  But, in late 1817, a totally unexpected event occurred that was to help him turn the corner. I say ‘help’, because it is not clear which came first, the unexpected help or his own decision to compose a major new work.

  ‘Major’ is an understatement. ‘Monumental’ is better. ‘Gigantic’ is not an overstatement.

  Some time around late November or early December, Beethoven received a visit from a certain Thomas Broadwood Esq., of the London firm of piano manufacturers, John Broadwood & Sons. We do not know how the meeting came about – Thomas Broadwood was on a tour of European capitals, probably to secure orders – but it would undoubtedly have been set up by a musical colleague who suspected Beethoven might be interested.

  Beethoven’s style of playing had always been markedly different from that of other pianists. He held his hands flat over the keys, using the strength of his forearms and wrists to push his fingers, with little bend at the joint, into the keys. This contrasted starkly with the established style of playing, as used for instance by Hummel, hands arched high over the keys, fingers fully bent at the joint, giving a much more delicate style of playing.

  Without doubt his deafness influenced his action, as he struggled more and more to hear what he was playing, and his compositions favoured it – it is hard to imagine a pianist such as Hummel giving necessary weight to the great opening chord of the ‘Pathétique’ Piano Sonata, for instance. It was known in Vienna that English pianos were built with a heavier action than those in Vienna and Paris, and were thus more suited to Beethoven’s style. At their meeting, Broadwood confirmed this, and in an extraordinary act of generosity – unwittingly earning his company, still going strong today, a place in musical history – he offered to send Beethoven a Broadwood concert grand as a gift from London.

  He kept his promise. In late January 1818 Beethoven took delivery of a brand new six-octave grand piano, which was shipped from London to Trieste and then taken overland to Vienna. One can only begin to imagine Beethoven’s excitement as he watched workmen break open the wooden shipping case reinforced with tin, at last leaving him alone to gaze at this wondrous gift.

  The piano was built of Spanish mahogany with a solid steel frame, triple-stringed throughout, inlaid with marquetry and ormolu, the brass carrying-handles formed of laurel leaves. Engraved on the board above the keys were the words: Hoc Instrumentum est Thomae Broadwood (Londini) donum, propter Ingenium illustrissimi Beethoven. His own name was inscribed in ebony, alongside ‘John Broadwood and Sons, Makers of Instruments to His Majesty and the Princesses. Great Pulteney Street. Golden Square. London.’ To the right of the keyboard, in black ink, the signatures of five prominent musicians active in London – among them his old friend and pupil Ferdinand Ries.1

  Beethoven expressed his unbounded gratitude in a letter to Broadwood written in excruciating French: ‘Jamais je n’eprouvais pas un grand Plaisir de ce que me causa votre Annonce de l’arrivée de cette Piano, avec qui vous m’honorès de m’en faire present ...’

  Immediately Beethoven set about – or continued – in earnest composing a new piano sonata, which was to be the longest, most complex, most profound sonata of any he had hitherto composed, or was ever to compose. He knew it. He told Czerny, ‘I am writing a sonata now which is going to be my greatest.’

  The finished work, which he completed in just a few months, begins with a huge two-octave leap in the left hand, followed by seven fortissimo chords, with a deliberate discord in the fourth. This is Beethoven, pure Beethoven. He was composing again, and the works that were to follow the ‘Hammerklavier’ – the name given to the sonata by Beethoven, quite possibly in honour of his new instrument – the Piano Sonatas, Opp. 109, 110, 111, the Diabelli Variations, the Missa Solemnis, the Ninth Symphony, the Late Quartets, were to be his greatest body of work, indeed the greatest body of work any composer would ever produce.

  But it was not straightforward. The ‘Hammerklavier’ was the single glorious exception to the barren years of the court case. In the final year of that lengthy trauma Beethoven began to compose the Diabelli Variations, but set them aside, unable to make progress. He promised a new sacred work to be performed at Archduke Rudolph’s enthronement as Archbishop of Olmütz, and indeed began work on a setting of the Mass to be called Missa Solemnis, but did not complete it until two years after the enthronement.

  Why these problems? Once again domestic issues were hindering his creative process. In late 1820, shortly after the Court of Appeal’s final ruling in his favour over custody of Karl, he fell ill again. But this was nothing like his usual complaints. In fact so serious was it that in January 1821 the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung went so far as to report: ‘Herr von Beethofen [sic] has been sick with a rheumatic fever. All friends of true music and all admirers of his muse feared for him. But now he is on the road to recovery and is working actively.’

  ‘I am writing a sonata now which is going to be my greatest.’

  ‘All admirers feared for him ...’ This is nothing less than a suggestion that Beethoven’s life was in danger. That is how debilitating the whole protracted court case, and its concomitant problems, had become.

  As for the second sentence of that report, the newspaper was either correct but the recovery did not last, or it was completely wrong. Later in January the rheumatic fever took hold again, and Beethoven was ordered back to bed, where he remained for a full six weeks.

  At his lowest ebb he received news that is certain to have saddened him greatly. Josephine Brunsvik, once the object of his affections, died at the tragically early age of forty-two after a long illness. Her sister wrote that she died of ‘nervous consumption’, and ‘suffered from want, was lacking food and assistance of any kind’.

  This is unlikely, given that Therese was with her at the end, but it points to a mental collapse as well as a physical deterioration. Word of Josephine’s condition is bound to have reached Beethoven some time before, so he was not unprepared, but her death can only have exacerbated his own physical condition.

  That is what happened. No sooner had the rheumatic fever passed than he fell ill again, this time with jaundice. It was one thing after another. He remained unwell throughout the summer and into autumn, only writing that in November he had begun to recover his health.

  It did not last. He spent the entire first half of 1822 suffering from what he described as ‘gout in the chest’. At his lowest ebb he received a visitor, and what might under different circumstances have been a remarkable, even fruitful, meeting, was anything but.

  Vienna was experiencing something of a craze for the operas of a certain Italian composer by the name of Gioachino Rossini, who, keen to bask in the adulation of the musically sophisticated Viennese, came to the city on his honeymoon. Once there, he insisted on paying a visit to Be
ethoven, whom he greatly admired.

  There are two versions of what happened. One says that Beethoven, known to be less than enthusiastic about Italian opera, twice refused to receive Rossini. Rossini himself, though, insisted he did indeed call on Beethoven, and gave a fascinating account of what happened when the two composers met.

  As with so many stories and legends surrounding Beethoven, Rossini’s was given many years after the event – in this case nearly forty – and it is understandable that he would want to show the meeting in the best possible light. So there might well be exaggerations in his account, but – stripping it of its more obvious self-praise – it has the ring of truth in so many aspects that it is worth retelling.

  Rossini was appalled at the squalor in which Beethoven lived. He described being ushered into an attic that was ‘terribly disordered and dirty’. The ceiling had cracks through which the rainwater poured down ‘in streams’.

  Rossini says that Beethoven, after first ignoring him, then congratulated him, particularly on The Barber of Seville. One might expect Rossini to say this, knowing as he did late in life that The Barber was such a popular work. But he has a nice line in self-deprecation as well, not too proud to relate how Beethoven damned him with faint praise.

  ‘Do not ever try your hand at anything but opera buffa [comic opera],’ he quotes Beethoven as telling him. ‘You would be doing violence to your destiny by wanting to succeed in a different genre. In opera buffa none can equal Italians. Your language and your temperament predispose you for it.’

  Rossini describes how the meeting was necessarily short, since Beethoven was profoundly deaf, and neither understood the other’s language.

  That evening Rossini was guest at a gala dinner at the palace of the Austrian Chancellor, Prince Metternich. He relates how he berated the company, made up of court members and aristocracy, for allowing the ‘greatest genius of the epoch’ to live in such straitened conditions, and suggested the wealthy families of Vienna should contribute a small amount each to allow him to live in some degree of comfort.