Beethoven Read online

  Published in 2012 by Elliott & Thompson Ltd

  27 John Street, London WC1N 2BX

  www.eandtbooks.com

  ISBN: 9781907642791

  EPUB ISBN: 9781908739889

  Text copyright © John Suchet The Author has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this Work.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed and bound in Italy by Printer Trento

  Designed by James Collins

  Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders for extracts used within this book. Where this has not been possible, the publisher will be happy to credit them in future editions.

  Front cover: The bust made from the life mask by Franz Klein is the most accurate representation we have of Beethoven’s features.

  For my children, grandchildren,

  and their children, safe in the knowledge

  that all will know Beethoven’s music

  CONTENTS

  Preface

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  The Spaniard

  In which a momentous life begins

  Chapter Two

  The Right Teacher

  This boy could become ‘a second Mozart’

  Chapter Three

  Meeting Mozart

  Watch out for that boy

  Chapter Four

  Word Spreads

  Young Beethoven as kitchen scullion

  Chapter Five

  Impressing The Viennese

  But Haydn feels the wrath of an angry young man

  Chapter Six

  My Poor Hearing Haunts Me

  But there is ‘a dear charming girl who loves me’

  Chapter Seven

  Only My Art Held Me Back

  In which Beethoven considers suicide

  Chapter Eight

  Egyptian Hieroglyphics

  Napoleon is no more than ‘a common tyrant’

  Chapter Nine

  O, Beloved J!

  Musical failure, but will Beethoven succeed in love?

  Chapter Ten

  A Deeply Immoral Woman

  Beethoven holds the most important concert of his life, and is offered a job

  Chapter Eleven

  Under Cannon Fire

  In which Beethoven once again tries his luck at love

  Chapter Twelve

  Immortal Beloved

  ‘My angel, my all, my very self’

  Chapter Thirteen

  An Utterly Untamed Personality

  Beethoven turns again to his ‘poor shipwrecked opera’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Into The Witness Box

  How the single letter ‘o’ ruined Beethoven’s life

  Chapter Fifteen

  A Musical Gift From London

  How Rossini found Beethoven ‘disorderly and dirty’

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘I Want To Be A Soldier’

  In which Beethoven gets drunk with friends

  Chapter Seventeen

  Two Pistols And Gunpowder

  An invitation to get away from it all

  Chapter Eighteen

  Frightening The Oxen

  ‘The greatest composer of the century, and you treated him like a servant!’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Terminally Ill

  ‘His face was damp, he spat blood’

  Chapter Twenty

  The Last Master

  ‘He was an artist, but a man as well’

  Postscript

  Index

  PREFACE

  This is an account of Beethoven’s life, in accordance with current scholarship and research. Given that new facts and information emerge constantly, there are some aspects of this book that will inevitably become outdated or even prove incorrect. This is true of all biographies of great figures. I have not let it deter me from setting down the life as we perceive it today.

  I make no great claim to having unearthed previously undiscovered facts about Beethoven’s life. Everything in this book has been published in source material or previous biographies. But I do believe that a substantial amount of the information I have included, particularly about his childhood, has not been published for many decades, in some cases for a century or more, and I am certain never in English.

  Beethoven’s childhood and teenage years, I believe, were the making of him as a man and musician. For that reason I have examined them closely, and some of his experiences I have recounted in forensic detail. His trip with the court orchestra up the Rhine, for instance, rarely merits a mention in biographies, or is accorded at most a line or two, yet it provided the youthful Beethoven with a bank of memories – and a physical artefact – that he treasured for life.

  Of Beethoven it is perhaps more true than of any other composer that if you know what is going on in his life you listen to his music through different ears. Beethoven’s life – its dramas, conflicts, loves and losses, his deafness coupled with continuous health problems, his epic struggle with his sister-in-law for custody of her son, his nephew – is there in his music. Without such knowledge his music is still extraordinary, and I believe many people who today love it do so without any deep understanding of his life. But to know what is happening to him at the time of a particular composition puts that work on a different level for the listener. Beethoven’s music is his autobiography.

  My approach to the life of this great artist, as in my previous publications on him, is that of enthusiast and lover of his music, rather than musicologist. Consequently this book is aimed primarily at like-minded people, though I hope the academics will give it their approval. It is, for instance, of more interest to me that Beethoven initially dedicated the ‘Eroica’ Symphony to Napoleon Bonaparte than that he chose to write it in E flat. At all times I have striven to set the music into the context of his life, to explain where he was living at the time of a particular composition, why he chose to write it, the reasons behind the dedication, the state of his health, his non-musical activities, rather than present an analysis of the movement structure, key signature, thematic links.

  In a nutshell I have tried to portray a difficult and complex character, struggling to continue his profession as musician despite increasing deafness, alienating friends with unprovoked outbursts of anger one moment, overwhelming them with excessive kindness and generosity the next, living in a city in almost constant turmoil because of war with France, rather than the godlike immortal portrayed in statues and paintings in heroic pose garlanded with laurel leaves.

  He might have been one of the greatest artists who ever lived, but he was a still a man who had to live among fellow mortals, eat and drink, buy clothes, pay his rent. That is the Beethoven of this book.

  PROLOGUE

  In the early afternoon of 29 March 1827 thousands of people flocked towards the Altes Schwarzspanierhaus, as word spread across Vienna that Beethoven had died. Their numbers grew, and soon they thronged the courtyard of the building to such an extent that the gates had to be closed. They crowded along the Alsergasse and spilled onto the green Glacis that sloped up to the Bastei, the city wall. Soon there was barely space between Beethoven’s residence and the Votivkirche, where the Funeral Mass was to be held.

  On the second floor of the Schwarzspanierhau
s, inside Beethoven’s apartment, a small group of men made final adjustments to the polished oak coffin and the corpse it contained. Beethoven’s head, adorned with a wreath of white roses, lay on a white silk pillow. It was a grotesque sight, belying the identity of Europe’s most revered composer. The temporal bones, along with the auditory nerves, had been removed at post-mortem for further investigation, leaving the joint of the lower jaw with no support. The famously leonine face, with strongly defined jawbone, was distorted almost beyond recognition.

  Into the folded hands a wax cross and a large lily were placed. Two more large lilies lay on either side of the body. Eight candles burned alongside the coffin. On the table at the foot of the coffin stood a crucifix, holy water for sprinkling, and ears of corn. At 3 p.m. the coffin was closed, and the group prepared to move it down the staircase and out into the courtyard.

  By this time the crowd had grown restless. Soldiers from the nearby barracks were drafted in to keep order. There was a fear that the horses could be frightened or, worse, that the coffin could be disturbed. The soldiers cleared the courtyard and the gates were again closed. As the coffin was brought out of the building, the crowd surged forward, but the gates, soldiers on the inner side, held firm. As nine priests offered blessings and the Italian court singers intoned a funeral song, a heavy pall was spread over the coffin and a large wreath laid on the embroidered cross.

  When everything was ready, the gates were opened, but the crowd surged forward again, overwhelming the soldiers. They pushed against the bier, dislodging the pallbearers and chief mourners. It took several minutes to restore order. Eight Kapellmeisters, four on each side, took hold of the pall with one hand, a candle wrapped in crepe in the other. On both sides of them stood around forty torchbearers. Behind the coffin were the chief mourners, close friends and family; in front of it musicians, civic dignitaries, and the clergy.

  The order was given, the four horses took the strain, and amid a clatter of chains and a cacophony of hooves, the procession moved off. Vienna, for so many centuries capital of the Holy Roman Empire, seat of the Holy Roman Emperor, had never seen scenes like it, nor had so many thousands of people ever thronged its streets.1

  It was an appropriate tribute to a man whose music had touched people in a way that no composer’s had before, who had changed the course of music, and whose compositions would speak to people down the generations and for all time. But it was also somewhat unfitting, given that Beethoven’s music was not unanimously applauded in his lifetime, that his circle of friends and supporters was really quite small, that no great effort had been made in his difficult and painful final years to make his living conditions more palatable, and that on the whole there was no great stir in Vienna when it became clear their most famous resident was terminally ill.

  In fact, the extraordinary homage he was accorded in death was simply the final inexplicable act in a lifetime of paradox and contradiction.

  1 The newssheet Der Sammler estimated the number at 10,000; Gerhard von Breuning in Aus dem Schwarzspanierhaus at 20,000.

  Chapter

  ONE

  The Spaniard

  IT WAS AN INAUSPICIOUS START. We cannot be certain of the day on which Beethoven was born, since his birth certificate has not survived, and in the baptismal register his mother is given the wrong first name, Helena rather than Magdalena (possibly because both names share the diminutive Lenchen). The date given in the register for the baptism of the Beethoven infant Ludovicus is 17 December 1770, and the place St Remigius’s Church in Bonn. It was customary for baptism to be carried out within twenty-four hours of birth; therefore it is likely that Beethoven was born on 16 December, with the lesser possibilities of the 15th in the late evening or 17th in the early hours. Given that there is a strong likelihood that the birth certificate was wilfully destroyed (as I will recount later), it is probable that we shall never know for sure the date of his birth.

  More auspiciously, there is a legend that Beethoven was born with a caul, that is with part of the amniotic sac covering the face. Traditionally this carries beneficial supernatural qualities, such as protecting the individual from drowning, giving healing powers or endowing clairvoyance. He himself lent weight to the legend (or possibly created it) by writing to a publisher that he was born ‘with an obbligato accompaniment’. The passage in the letter, which refers to his Septet, Op. 20, is clearly written in jest: ‘I cannot compose anything that is not obbligato, seeing that, as a matter of fact, I came into the world with an obbligato accompaniment.’ I have not found any other reference to it in any source.

  Beethoven was the eldest, but not the firstborn, and to say that his arrival brought unbridled joy to his parents, or even to say that he was born into a normal and loving family, would be a considerable overstatement. For a start, both sides opposed the marriage of his parents, Johann van Beethoven and Maria Magdalena Leym née Keverich. It seems the reason was the same for both families: that both were thought to be marrying beneath themselves.

  To take the Beethoven family first. Ludwig van Beethoven the elder, the future composer’s grandfather, had established himself as the most senior, and therefore the most respected, musician in Bonn. He had left his home town of Malines in Flanders (today Mechelen in Belgium) at the age of twenty-one and settled in Bonn, where he was given a position as bass soloist and singer in the court choir. At the age of forty-nine he was appointed Kapellmeister, which put him in charge of music at court – in the chapel, concert hall, theatre, and court ballroom. This earned him a substantial salary and enormous prestige. In addition he ran a wholesale wine business on the side. It was probably not on any grand scale, but his income from the court, together with proceeds from the sale of wine, allowed him to rent two apartments, as well as cellars for storage. He was also wealthy enough to lend money to a number of people.

  Ludwig’s son Johann gained a position as tenor in the court choir. This brought him in a modest salary, which he supplemented by giving clavier and singing lessons to sons and daughters of well-off English and French families attached to the embassies, as well as to members of the nobility.

  Father and son lived together in a large and well-furnished apartment at Rheingasse 934 (where, later, Ludwig van Beethoven was to spend many childhood years). In a later memoir, the child of the owner of the house, who remembered the Beethoven family living there, described the Kapellmeister’s apartment as being

  beautiful and proper and well arranged, with valuables, all six rooms provided with beautiful furniture, many paintings and cupboards, a cupboard of silver service, a cupboard with fine gilded porcelain and glass, an assortment of the most beautiful linen which could be drawn through a ring, and everything from the smallest article sparkled like silver.

  But there was a cloud hanging over the Beethoven family. The Kapellmeister’s wife, Maria Josepha Poll, became an alcoholic and had to be moved out of the family apartment to be cared for in a special home. It is not known when this action was taken, but it was almost certainly before Johann’s marriage, because at the wedding Ludwig senior was reported to have tears streaming from his eyes, and when asked about it he replied that he was thinking about his own wedding and marriage. It is known that Maria Josepha stayed in seclusion until her death in 1775.

  There is no evidence that any member of the Beethoven family ever visited Maria Josepha in the home, and although Ludwig van Beethoven was nearly five when his grandmother died, he is not reported to have spoken about her a single time in his life, nor did he ever refer to her in correspondence. This is all the more remarkable since the elder Ludwig predeceased his wife by nearly two years and yet Beethoven spoke about his beloved grandfather and wrote about him time after time, and treasured his portrait (which stayed with him almost all his adult life and was in his apartment when he died).

  Of course he took pride in his grandfather’s accomplishments as a musician, and presumably felt shame at his grandmother’s descent into alcoholism, but it seems as if he era
sed his grandmother’s existence from his mind. This is more than likely due to the fact that he watched his own father descend into alcoholism, thus making the whole question of alcohol something that was not for discussion. But that did not stop Beethoven himself in later years consuming enormous quantities, as will become clear as the story progresses, to the extent that it brought about the cirrhosis of the liver that was the probable cause of his death.

  Clearly the Beethoven family had a liking for alcohol – Beethoven’s grandmother and father were both alcoholics, and he himself was probably a victim of it. It is tempting to suggest that ready quantities of wine in the household from the elder Ludwig’s business sideline meant it was easily accessible for the family, and certainly early biographers attribute the family tendency to this. It is indeed likely that there was a generous supply of wine on the table, although the Kapellmeister kept his wine in storage in rented cellars, and there are no reports that he himself ever over-imbibed.

  But alcohol and its effects aside, the Beethoven family was highly respected, thanks to the accomplishments of Ludwig senior, and lived in a certain amount of comfort. So when Johann announced to his father, as a fait accompli, that he intended marrying Maria Magdalena Leym, of Ehrenbreitstein, the Kapellmeister was appalled. He made enquiries and established not only that she was a widow, but had been a housemaid. The Fischers at Rheingasse 934 heard him explode to his son, ‘I never believed or expected that you would so degrade yourself!’

  In fact his misgivings were largely misplaced. Maria Magdalena’s family included a number of wealthy merchants, as well as court councillors and senators. Her late father, Heinrich Keverich, had been chief overseer of the kitchen at the palace of the Elector of Trier at Ehrenbreitstein. True, he was ‘in service’, but it was a senior position, and he was in the employ of the most powerful and prestigious local dignitary, the Prince-Elector.1 Furthermore, there is no evidence that Maria Magdalena was ever a housemaid.