Beethoven

by Suchet, John

  Later that night, when the doctor returned home and his wife recounted the visit, he asked her some pertinent questions, then exclaimed, ‘For goodness’ sake, woman, what have you done? Do you have any idea who that was? The greatest composer of the century was in our house today, and you treated him like a servant!’

  The anecdote is perhaps just as illuminating for the way it highlights the obviously frosty relationship between the two brothers – wouldn’t you at least expect Johann to introduce his brother? – as it does Beethoven’s anti-social behaviour.

  The two brothers were together again when a similar occurrence happened. Johann took his brother with him when he went to call on a local government official to discuss some business. The official had his clerk with him. Johann sat opposite them, but Beethoven refused to move from the door, and stood there during the whole of the meeting, which took some time.

  The official clearly treated the morose and silent Beethoven with enormous – albeit un-reciprocated – respect throughout, because after the two brothers had left, he turned to his clerk and asked, ‘Do you know who that man was who stood by the door?’

  The clerk replied, ‘Judging by the respect you showed towards him, sir, I would imagine him to be someone important. Otherwise I’d have taken him for an imbecile.’

  Both stories are illuminating for showing that for those who did not know who Beethoven was, the figure he portrayed was about as diametrically removed from the genius we know him to be as it is possible to imagine.

  BEETHOVEN MIGHT have been fraught, tense, in ill-health, in pain, yet the eyewitness accounts of him waving his arms, singing and shouting – whether in the open countryside or at the table in his room – suggest musical ideas were forming in his mind. They were, but paradoxically – no surprise there – they were slightly at odds with his mental and physical state.

  Two months before the trip to Gneixendorf, almost as soon as he had finished composing the String Quartet in C sharp minor, Op. 131, Beethoven had begun work on a new string quartet, which was to become Op. 135. Now, in Gneixendorf, sitting at a table in his small salon, a piano to the side, and no doubt gazing at the murals of the River Rhine, which he had once known so well, he worked on it for the whole of September and the first half of October – in other words, for the first half of his stay in Gneixendorf.

  As I have already noted, the early part of the stay was relatively benign. Beethoven enjoyed the pleasant autumn weather, the long walks and fresh air. But things soon declined. He was difficult and uncooperative towards his brother and sister-in-law, constantly fretting over Karl and his bizarre decision to join the military, upsetting staff at the house and local people, and all the time struggling to cope with the terminal decline in his health.

  One would have every reason, therefore, to expect the String Quartet in F, Op. 135, to be among his most dense, even impenetrable, works. It is quite the opposite. It is on a smaller scale than its immediate predecessors, and seemingly light years away from Op. 133, the Grosse Fuge. In places it is carefree, even witty. The third movement is relatively short, and there seems to be none of the ‘angst’ that characterises the earlier quartets, in particular the Cavatina of Op. 130.

  Beethoven finished the new quartet by mid-October, and if his behaviour away from the composing table was erratic, when working at his music he was clear-minded and methodical enough to copy out all the parts himself, before dispatching Johann to Vienna with them to deliver to the publisher.

  That task completed, Beethoven turned his attention to a new final movement for the String Quartet in F, Op. 130, to replace the Grosse Fuge. This coincided with a deterioration on many levels, and yet again – as with Op. 135 – he worked rapidly, and after a few false starts completed the movement in around a month. Again like its predecessor there is a lightness to it, it is on a relatively small scale, and there is a pervading mood of optimism. All this in stark contrast to its creator.

  Once the work was finished, Beethoven dispatched it to the publisher. It was to be the last complete piece of music he would ever compose.

  THE WEATHER IN Gneixendorf became increasingly cold as autumn gave way to winter, and Beethoven became a more and more uncooperative guest, frequently complaining about the food and the coldness and damp in his quarters. There was also a further deterioration in his relations with Karl.

  We do not know exactly how the twenty-year-old Karl occupied himself during the stay in Gneixendorf. We can only assume he was somewhat bored. There was nothing for him to do in the country, and he probably yearned for the student life with his friends in Vienna. It appears he played four-hand pieces at the piano with his uncle, because Therese remarks on this and writes in a conversation book, ‘Karl plays very well.’

  But this belies the underlying, indeed overt, tension between nephew and uncle, ‘son’ and ‘father’. Beethoven continued to try to control Karl’s activities, as he had done in Vienna. Therese writes pointedly in a conversation book, ‘Do not be concerned. He will certainly come home by 1 o’clock. It seems he has some of your rash blood. I have not found him angry. It is you that he loves, to the point of worship.’

  Beethoven certainly used Karl. He sent him frequently to Krems for writing materials, a task Karl welcomed, taking advantage of it to go drinking and play billiards – no doubt incurring Therese’s reassurance to Beethoven in the conversation book.

  Karl made repeated entries in conversation books, not attempting to restrain his frustration, even anger, at Beethoven’s controlling attitude to him, which had clearly not been mollified by the suicide attempt. On one day, undated, Karl wrote:

  You ask me why I do not talk ... Because I have had enough ... Yours is the right to command, and I must endure it all ... I can only regret that I can give no answer to anything you have said today, since I know of nothing better I can do than to listen and remain silent as is my duty. You must not consider this insolent.

  And on another, clearly in despair at Beethoven’s suspicions:

  Have you ever seen me speak a word? Not very likely, because I wasn’t of a mind to speak at all. So nothing you have to say about intrigues even requires a rebuttal. Please, I beg of you, just leave me alone. If you want to leave, that’s fine. If not, that’s fine too. I only ask you once again to stop tormenting me as you do. In the end you may regret it, for I can take so much, but then it gets too much. You did the same thing to your brother today, completely without reason. You have to realise that other people are human beings too.

  Johann – a target as well, judging by Karl’s words – was clearly growing weary of having his difficult brother as house guest. The original stay of two weeks seemed to be stretching out with no finite end. By late November Johann decided to do something about it. Again, clear evidence of the tension between the two brothers, so great that a rational discussion was out of the question, is demonstrated by the fact that Johann chose to write his brother a letter, despite the fact they were both living under the same roof.

  He began by touching a nerve, pointing out that Karl had been in Gneixendorf for so long that he had given up doing anything constructive at all, and the longer he stayed the more difficult he would find it to get back to anything like a normal life. Tactfully he says both of them, as the boy’s uncles, are to blame, but that it is Beethoven’s duty to allow Karl to fulfil his dream of entering the army as soon as possible.

  It was to be the last complete piece of music he would ever compose

  After a few discursive lines, he comes straight to the point: ‘I think [your departure] ought to be by next Monday.’

  Karl, concerned about the scar on his temple, was clearly brought into the conversation, and suggests a small delay in departure:

  I cannot argue against it since we have been here longer than was planned. But Breuning himself has said that I cannot go to the Field Marshal until I am able to appear without any visible sign left of what happened to me, because he does not want the whole affair to be mentioned
. This is almost accomplished now except for a little bit which really won’t take much more time. Therefore I believe that we should stay until next week at the least. If I had hair ointment here then it would be unnecessary. Besides, the longer we remain here, the longer we can all be together. Once we return to Vienna, I will have to leave right away.

  Schindler (generally unreliable, but probably credible on this occasion) says Johann’s forthright request to his brother to leave, and leave soon, upset Beethoven considerably, which probably accounted for Karl’s rather diplomatic suggestion that they stay a little bit longer.

  In any case there was a problem over transport. Johann, it appeared, had only one covered carriage (presumably the one he had sent to Vienna to pick up Beethoven and Karl two months earlier). It had recently been used to take Therese to and from Vienna, and Johann was planning to make a trip very soon.

  It is likely that the brothers agreed on a date some time after the ‘next Monday’ referred to by Johann, which was 27 November, and after Johann’s return from Vienna, which would mean the carriage was available. But an unexpected and dramatic turn of events brought the departure right forward.

  On the night of Friday, 1 December, the two brothers had a blistering row. The subject, perhaps rather surprisingly, was Karl’s future inheritance. Beethoven demanded of his brother that he make a new Will, cutting out his wife and her illegitimate daughter, and leaving everything to Karl. Johann refused point blank, and the brothers argued long and vociferously into the night.

  Suddenly, in the early hours of the morning, Beethoven snapped. He had had enough. He said he and Karl would leave that instant, and he ordered Johann to get the carriage and a driver to take them back to Vienna.

  Johann immediately saw the folly of this. He tried to reason with his brother that it was the middle of the night, it was bitterly cold, Beethoven was in no fit state with his poor health to undertake the journey without properly preparing himself, and so on.

  Beethoven’s mind was made up. He was leaving with Karl and leaving now. It was Johann’s turn to snap. Two months of frustration and suppressed anger boiled up in him, and he exacted revenge by denying his brother the covered carriage. All he had, he said, was a rickety old open-top cart – impossible to make the two-day journey in.3

  If he thought that would bring Beethoven to his senses, he miscalculated. ‘Get it!’ was Beethoven’s riposte.

  Some time around three or four in the morning of Friday, 1 December, in the middle of a raw, damp, frosty, and bitterly cold night, Beethoven, dressed in entirely inadequate clothing, climbed into the open-top cart with his nephew Karl for the long journey back to Vienna.

  They stayed the following night in a tavern on the north bank of the Danube river. The building was old and dilapidated, and Beethoven was given a room with no stove to heat it, and no shutters for the windows.

  Towards midnight he broke out in a fever, accompanied by violent shaking, and a dry hacking cough that split his sides with pain. He was violently thirsty. He was given a glass of frozen water, which eased his thirst but increased the shivering.

  At first light he stumbled outside, weak, exhausted, and barely able to stand. Uncomplaining, he allowed himself to be lifted into the cart, and it set off for Vienna. One imagines the landlord was grateful to get his guest off the premises without having a death on his hands.

  Some time in the afternoon of Saturday, 2 December, Beethoven and his nephew arrived in Vienna. Beethoven could barely climb the stairs to his second-floor apartment in the Schwarzspanierhaus. He was still shivering from fever, had no strength, coughed at the smallest exertion, could scarcely walk on his swollen feet and ankles, and was in pain from his vastly distended stomach.

  That he was close to death was not in doubt. The priority was to get a doctor as quickly as possible to try to ease his suffering. Easier said than done.

  1 Johann’s house still exists, is privately owned, and the small self-contained apartment in which Beethoven stayed is perfectly preserved. All the furniture is either genuine, or of the period. The murals of the Rhine are as vibrant today as they were when Beethoven saw them. The stove in the bedroom, the current owner told me when I visited, is the actual stove Beethoven filled with wood.

  2 It would be nice to date the Rondo a capriccio, Op. 129, ‘The Rage over the Lost Penny’, to around this time. Although it was found, incomplete, after Beethoven’s death, the evidence suggests it dates from much earlier.

  3 Beethoven later described it to his doctor as a milk wagon (Milchwagen). It might well have been, or Beethoven might have been being deliberately pejorative.

  Chapter

  NINETEEN

  Terminally Ill

  THE APARTMENT THAT Beethoven moved into in the Schwarzspanierhaus almost a year before the trip to Gneixendorf was, by any standards, stylish, in modern parlance well appointed. Beethoven was notoriously uncaring about where he lived, and there is no evidence he appreciated how suitable this apartment was for his needs.

  The building that housed it was impressive. Abutting a church, it looked across open ground, affording light and fresh air for the monks whose bedrooms were on the top floor. Once converted into apartments, it was one of Vienna’s more desirable residences, outside the city wall and across the Glacis, away from the noise and dust of the inner city. Beethoven’s apartment on the second floor took up much of the middle section of the building, five windows – two in the bedroom – ensuring good views, as well as daylight.1

  The apartment was reached by a wide marble staircase. Immediately to the left a low wide door opened onto a spacious entrance hall.2 Beethoven used the hall as a dining room. The portrait of his grandfather, the Kapellmeister, which his father had pawned and which he asked Wegeler to forward to him in Vienna, hung on a wall of this room.

  From the hall, with all doors open, it was possible to see through all three of the front rooms. The first was the music room, with piles of disordered manuscripts and published music, which Stephan von Breuning named the ‘junk room’. The next, the largest room in the apartment, with two windows facing out to the Glacis, contained two pianos – one given to Beethoven by the Viennese piano builder Conrad Graf,3 the other the Broadwood shipped from London4 – standing curve to curve with keyboards pointing in opposite directions. In the far right corner stood Beethoven’s bed, next to it a small table with a bell for summoning his housekeeper, and a folded conversation book for friends to write their questions. The third room was the composition room, containing Beethoven’s desk. The desk was angled so that, while working at it with all connecting doors open, Beethoven could see if any visitor came into the flat.

  One other benefit, the Schwarzspanierhaus was directly across the road from the Rothes Haus, where his old friend Stephan von Breuning lived with his family. Under different circumstances, Beethoven could have looked forward to many years of relative comfort in this apartment, as he continued to compose.

  THE REALITY was different. Supporting his gravely ill uncle on that chill Saturday afternoon, Karl staggered through the music room, mindless of precious compositions being trampled underfoot, no doubt clumsily negotiating the pianos, until with relief he allowed Beethoven to collapse onto the bed. We can imagine him trying to arrange the pillows under Beethoven’s head, swinging his legs onto the bed and removing his boots.

  Being late on a Saturday in the depths of winter, Karl did not immediately send for medical help, and was no doubt gratified to find that the following morning Beethoven had regained some strength. He continued to improve – it is possible his housekeeper Rosalie, known as Sali, came to cook for him – and after a few days it was Beethoven himself who decided on action.

  He told Karl he wanted to pen some letters, but lacking the strength he would dictate them for Karl to write. The first was a short one-paragraph letter to his young friend and helper Karl ‘Wooden’ Holz. He explained that he had been taken ill and had confined himself to bed, and he asked Holz to call on him.


  At that point he motioned for Karl to pass him the pen and paper, and underneath the letter he scribbled a four-bar canon on the words: ‘Wir irren allesamt, nur alle irren anderst.’ (‘We all err, but each one errs differently.’)

  They were the last musical notes he was to write.

  The next letter was altogether different, very long and personal, to his old friends Franz and Eleonore Wegeler. They had written to him almost a year before, Wegeler addressing him as ‘My dear old Louis!’; Eleonore beginning her letter more formally with ‘For so long a time dear Beethoven!’

  It is strange that Beethoven should choose this moment, a year later, to respond – or maybe it is not so strange. Both Wegeler and his wife separately implored Beethoven to make a return trip to Bonn and the Rhineland. He does not refer to this in his reply, but his words suggest little sign of a realisation that time for him was short:

  If I let my Muse sleep, it is so that she may reawaken with renewed strength. I hope still to bring some great works into the world and then as an old child end my earthly course amongst kindly people ... The beginning has now been made and soon you will get another letter, and the more often you write to me, the more pleasure you will give me ...

  Holz came quickly in response to the letter, and on Beethoven’s instructions set about trying to find a doctor. It was now that Beethoven’s cavalier attitude to his doctors over the years came back to haunt him.

  The first doctor to be contacted was Dr Braunhofer, he of ‘no coffee or alcohol’. He said he could not come, because he lived too far away and the journey at that time of year would be too arduous. It is more than likely that his past knowledge of Beethoven’s health was enough to tell him that the illness was terminal, and he did not want to be in charge of the composer at his death.

  The next doctor approached was Dr Staudenheim, summarily sacked by Beethoven some years before. He said he would come, but did not do so. A third doctor was himself sick and unable to attend.