Online Encyclopedia
Search over 40,000 articles from the original, classic Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Edition.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Online EncyclopediaEncyclopedia Home :: BEC-BER
del.icio.us it!
|
See also:LUDWIG See also:VAN See also:BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
, See also:German musical composer, was baptized (probably, as was usual, the See also:day after See also:birth) on the 17th of See also:December 1770 at See also:Bonn
.
His See also:family is traceable to a See also:village near See also:Louvain, in See also:Belgium, in the 17th See also:century
.
In 165o a lineal ancestor of the composer settled in See also:Antwerp
.
See also:Beethoven's grandfather, See also:
Neefe succeeded to Van den Eeden's See also:post in 1781, he was soon able to allow the boy to See also:act as his See also:deputy
.
With his permission Beethoven published in 1783 his earliest extant See also:composition, a set of See also:variations on a See also:
By 1792 the archbishop-elector's See also:attention was thoroughly aroused to Beethoven's See also:power, and he provided for Beethoven's second visit to Vienna
.
The introductions he and Count Waldstein gave to Beethoven, the prefix " van " in Beethoven's name (which looked well though it was not really a title of See also:nobility), and above all the unequalled impressiveness of his playing and extemporization, quickly secured his footing with the exceptionally intelligent and musical See also:aristocracy of Vienna, who to the end of his life treated him with genuine See also:affection and respect, bearing with all the roughness of his See also:manners and temper, not as with the eccentricities of a See also:fashion-able See also:genius, but as with signs of the sufferings of a passionate and See also:noble nature
.
Beethoven's life, though outwardly uneventful, was one of the most pathetic of tragedies
.
His character has had the same See also:fascination for his biographers as it had for his friends, and there is probably hardly any See also:great man in See also:history of whom more is known and of whom so much of what is known is interesting
.
Yet it is all too much a See also:matter of detail and See also:anecdote to admit of See also:chronological summarizing here, and for the disentangling of its actual incidents we must refer the reader to See also:Sir See also:George See also: At such a time the undeniable clumsiness of Beethoven's efforts at See also:academic exercises would combine with his general tactlessness to confirm Haydn in the belief that the See also:sun had set for ever in the musical See also:world, and would incline him to view with disfavour those bold features of See also:style and See also:form which the whole of his own artistic development should naturally have predisposed him to welcome, It is at least significant that those early works of Beethoven in which Mozart's See also:influence is most evident, such as the Septet, aroused Haydn's open admiration, whereas he hardly approved of the compositions like the sonatas, op . 2 (dedicated to him), in which his own influence is stronger . Neither he nor Beethoven was skilful in expressing himself except in music, and it is impossible to tell what Haydn meant, or what Beethoven thought he meant, in advising him not to publish the last and finest of the three trios, op . 1 . But even if he did not mean that it was too daring for the public, it can hardly be expected that he never contrasted the meteoric career of Mozart, who after a miraculous boyhood had produced at the age of twenty-five some of the greatest music Haydn had ever seen, with the slow and painful development of his uncouth See also:pupil, who at the same age had hardly a dozen presentable works to his See also:credit . It is not clear that Haydn ever came to understand Beethoven, and many years passed before Beethoven realized the greatness of the See also:master whose teaching had so disappointed him . From the time Beethoven settled permanently in Vienna, which he was soon induced to do by the kindness of his aristocratic friends, the only noteworthy See also:external features of his career are the productions of his compositions . In spite of the usual hostile See also:criticism for obscurity, exaggeration and unpopularity, his reputation became world-wide and by degrees actually popular; nor did it ever decline, for as his later works became notorious for their extravagance and unintelligibility his earlier works became better understood . He was no man of business, but, in a thoroughly unpractical way, he was suspicious and exacting in See also:money matters, which in his later years frequently turned up in his conversation as a grievance, and at times, especially during the depreciation of the See also:Austrian currency between 18o8 and 1815, were a real anxiety to him . Nevertheless, with a little more skill his external prosperity would have been great . He was always a personage of importance, as is testified by more than one amusing anecdote, like those of his walks with See also:Goethe and his See also:half-ironical comments on the hats which flew off more for him than for Goethe; and in 1815 it seemed as if the 646 See also:summit of his fame was reached when his 7th See also:symphony was performed, together with a hastily-written See also:cantata, Der glorreiche Augenblick and the blazing piece of descriptive See also:fireworks entitled Wellingtons Sieg See also:oder See also:die Schlachl bei See also:Vittoria, once popular in England as the See also:Battle Symphony . The occasion for this performance was the See also:congress of Vienna; and the See also:government placed the two halls of the Redouten-Saal at his disposal for two nights, while he himself was allowed to invite all the sovereigns of See also:Europe . In, the same year he received the freedom of the See also:city, an See also:honour much valued by him . After that time his immediate popularity, as far as new works were concerned, be-came less eminent, as that of his more easy-going contemporaries began to increase . Yet there was, not only in the emotional power of his earlier works, but also in the known cause of his increasing inability to appear in public, something that awakened the best popular sensibilities; and when his two greatest and most difficult works, the gth symphony and parts of the Missa Solemnis, were produced at a memorable See also:concert in 1824, the See also:storm of See also:applause was overwhelming, and the composer, who was on the See also:platform in See also:order to give the time to the conductor, had to be turned See also:round by one of the singers in order to see it . Signs of deafness had given him See also:grave anxiety as early as 1798 . For a long time he successfully concealed it from all but his most intimate friends, while he consulted physicians and quacks with eagerness; but neither quackery nor the best skill of his time availed him, and it has been pointed out that the See also:root of the evil lay deeper than could have been supposed during his lifetime . Although his constitution was magnificently strong and his See also:health was preserved by his passion for outdoor life, a post-mortem examination revealed a very complicated See also:state of disorder, evidently dating almost from childhood (if not inherited) and aggravated by lack of care and good See also:food . The touching document addressed to his See also:brothers in 1802, and known as his " will," should be read in its entirety, as given by Thayer (iv . 4) . No verbal See also:quotation short of the whole will do See also:justice to the overpowering outburst which runs almost in one long unpunctuated See also:sentence through the whole tragedy of Beethoven's life, as he knew it then and foresaw it . He reproaches men for their injustice in thinking and calling him pugnacious, stubborn and misanthropical when they do not know that for six years he has suffered from an incurable See also:condition, aggravated by incompetent doctors . He dwells upon his delight in human society, from which he has had so early to isolate himself, but the thought of which now fills him with dread as it makes him realize his loss, not only in music but in all finer interchange of ideas, and terrifies him lest the cause of his distress should appear . He declares that, when those near him had heard a See also:flute or a singing shepherd while he heard nothing, he was only prevented from taking his life by the thought of his See also:art, but it seemed impossible for him to leave the world until he had brought out all that he felt to be in his power .
He See also:requests that after his See also:death his See also:present See also:doctor, if surviving, shall be asked to describe his illness and to append it to this document in order that at least then the world may be as far as possible reconciled with him
.
He leaves his brothers his See also:property, such as it is, and in terms not less touching, if more conventional than the See also:rest of the document, he declares that his experience shows that only virtue has preserved his life and his courage through all his misery
.
And, indeed, his art and his courage See also:rose far above any level attainable by those artists who are slaves to the " See also:personal See also:note," for his chief occupation at the time of this document was his 2nd symphony, the most brilliant and triumphant piece that had ever been written up to that time
.
On a smaller scale, in which mastery was the more easily attainable as experiment was more readily tested, Beethoven was sooner able to strike a tragic note, and hence the See also:process of growth in his style is more readily traceable in the pianoforte works than in the larger compositions which naturally represent a See also:series of crowning results
.
Only in his last See also:period does the pianoforte cease to be Beethoven's normal means of expression
.
Accordingly, if iri the discussion of Beethoven's works, with which we See also:close thisarticle, we dwell rather more on the pianoforte sonatas than on his greater works, it is not only because they are more easily referred to by the general reader, but because they are actually a See also: This nephew was the cause of most of his anxiety and distress in the last twelve years of his life . His brother, Kaspar Karl, had often given him trouble; for example, by obtaining and See also:publishing some of Beethoven's early indiscretions, such as the trio-variations, op . 44, the sonatas, op . 49, and other trifles, of which the See also:late See also:opus number is thus explained . In 1815, after Beethoven had quarrelled with his See also:oldest friend, Stephan Breuning, for warning him against trusting his brother in money matters, Kaspar died, leaving a widow of whom Beethoven strongly disapproved, and a son, nine years old, for the See also:guardian-See also:ship of whom Beethoven fought the widow through all the See also:law courts . The boy turned out utterly unworthy of his See also:uncle's persistent devotion, and gave him every cause for anxiety . He failed in all his See also:examinations, including an attempt to learn some See also:trade in the See also:polytechnic school, whereupon he See also:fell into the hands of the See also:police for attempting See also:suicide, and, after being expelled from Vienna, joined the See also:army . Beethoven's utterly See also:simple nature could neither educate nor understand a human being who was not possessed by the wish to do his best . His nature was passionately affectionate, and he had suffered all his life from the want of a natural outlet for it . He had often been deeply in love and made no See also:secret of it; but See also:Robert See also:Browning had not a more intense dislike of " the artistic temperament " in morals, and though Beethoven's attachments were almost all hopelessly above him in See also:rank, there is not one that was not See also:honourable and respected by society as showing the truthfulness and self-See also:control of a great man . Beethoven's orthodoxy in such matters has provoked the See also:smiles of See also:Philistines, especially when it showed itself in his objections to Mozart's See also:Don Giovanni, and his grounds for selecting the subject of Fidelio for his own opera . The last thing that Philistines will ever understand is that genius is far too See also:independent of See also:convention to abuse it; and Beethoven's life, with all its mistakes, its grotesqueness and its pathos, is as far beyond the shafts of See also:Philistine wit as his art . At the beginning of 1827 Beethoven had projects for a loth symphony, music to Goethe's See also:Faust, and (under the stimulus of his newly acquired collection of See also:Handel's works) any amount of choral music, compared to which all his previous compositions would have seemed but a prelude . But he was in bad health; his brother Johann, with whom he had been staying, had not allowed him a See also:fire in his bedroom, and had sent him back to Vienna in an open See also:chaise in vile See also:weather; and the chill which resulted ended in a fatal illness . Within a See also:week of his death Beethoven was still full of his projects . Three days before the end he added a See also:codicil to his will, and saw See also:Schubert, whose music had aroused his keen See also:interest, but was not able to speak to him, though he afterwards spoke of the Philharmonic Society and the See also:English, almost his last words being " See also:God bless them." On the 26th of March 1827, during a fierce thunderstorm, he died . Beethoven's Music.—The See also:division of Beethoven's work into three styles has become proverbial, and is based on obvious facts . The styles, however, are not rigidly separated, either in them-selves or in See also:chronology . Nor can the popular description of Beethoven's first manner as " Mozartesque " be accepted as doing justice to a style which differs more radically from Mozart's than Mozart's differs from Haydn's . The style of Beethoven's third period is no longer regarded as showing an obscurity traceable to his deafness," but we have, perhaps, only recently outgrown the belief that his later treatment of form is revolutionary . The See also:peculiar interest and difficulty in tracing Beethoven's artistic development is that the changes in the materials and range of his art were as great as those in the form, so that he appears in the See also:light of a See also:pioneer, while the art with which he started was nevertheless already a perfectly mature and highly organized thing . And he is perhaps unique among artists in this, that his power of constructing perfect works of art never deserted him while he revolutionized his means of expression . No doubt this is in a measure true of all the greatest artists, but it is seldom obvious . In mature art vital See also:differences in works of similar form are generally more likely to be overlooked than to force themselves on the critic's attention . And when they become so great as to make a new See also:epoch it is generally at the cost of a period of experiment too heterogeneous and insecure for works of art to attain great permanent value . But in Beethoven's See also:case, as we have said, the process of development is so smooth that it is impossible to See also:separate the periods clearly, although the ground covered is, as regards emotional range, at least as great as that between See also:Bach and Mozart . No artist has ever left more authoritative documentary See also:evidence as to the steps of his development than Beethoven . In boyhood he seems to have acquired the See also:habit of noting down all his musical ideas exactly as they first struck him . It is easy to see why in later years he referred to this as a " bad habit," for it must often take longer to jot down a crude See also:idea than to reject it; and by the time the habit was formed Beethoven's See also:powers of self-criticism were unparalleled, and he must often have felt hampered by the habit of See also:writing down what he knew to be too crude to be even an aid to memory . Such first intuitions, if not written down, would no doubt be forgotten; but the poetic See also:mood, the Stimmung, they attempt to indicate, would remain until a better expression was forthcoming . Beethoven had acquired the habit of recording them, and thereby he has, perhaps, misled some critics into over-emphasizing the contrast between his " tentative " self-See also:critical methods and the quasi-extempore outpourings of Mozart . This contrast is probably not very See also:radical; indeed, we may doubt whether in every thoughtful mind any apparently sudden See also:inspiration is not pre-ceded by some anticipatory mood in which the idea was sought and its first faint indications tested and rejected so instantaneously as to leave no impression on the memory . The number and triviality of Beethoven's preliminary sketches should not, then, be taken as evidence of a timid or vacillating spirit . But if we regard his sketches as his See also:diary their significance becomes inestimable . They See also:cover every period of Beethoven's career, and represent every See also:stage of nearly all his important works, as well as of innumerable trifles, including ideas that did not survive to be worked out . And the type of self-criticism is the same from beginning to end . There is no tendency in the See also:middle or last period, any more than in the first, to " sub-See also:ordinate form to expression," nor do the sketches of the first period show any lack of attention to elements that seem more characteristic of the third . The difference between Beethoven's three styles appears first in its full proportions when we realize this See also:complete continuity of his method and art . We have ventured to See also:cast doubts upon the Mozartesque character of his earlystyle, because that is chiefly a question of See also:perspective- While he was handling a range of ideas not, in a See also:modern view, glaringly different from Mozart's, he had no See also:reason to use a glaringly different See also:language . His contemporaries, however, found it more difficult to see the resemblance; and, though their criticism was often violently hostile, they saw with See also:prejudice a daring originality which we may as well learn to appreciate with study . Beethoven himself in later years partly affected and partly felt a lack of sympathy with his own early style . But he had other things to do than to criticize it . Modern prejudice has not his excuse, and the neglect of Beethoven's early works is no less than the neglect of the key to the understanding of his later . It is also the neglect of a mass of mature art that already places Beethoven on the same See also:plane as Mozart, and contains perhaps the only traces in all his work of a real struggle between the forces of progress and those of construction . We will therefore give See also:special attention to this subject here . The truth is that there are several styles in Beethoven's first period, in the centre of which, " proving all things," is the true and mature Beethoven, however wider may be the See also:scope of his later maturity . And he did not, as is often alleged, fail to show early promise . The pianoforte quartets he wrote at the age of fifteen are, no doubt, clumsy and childish in See also:execution to a degree that contrasts remarkably with the works of Mozart's, Mendelssohn's or Schubert's boyhood; yet they contain material actually used in the sonatas, op . 2, No . 1, and op . 2, No . 3 . And the passage in op . 2, No . 3, is that immediately after the first subject, where, as Beethoven then states it, it embodies one of his most epoch-making discoveries, namely, the art of organizing a long series of apparently free modulations by means of a systematic progression in the See also:bass . In the childish quartet the principle is only dimly felt, but it is nevertheless there as a subconscious source of inspiration; and it afterwards gives inevitable dramatic truth to such passages as the See also:climax of the development in the See also:sonata, op . 57 (commonly called Appassionata), and throughout the See also:chaos of the mysterious introduction to the C See also:major See also:string-quartet, op . 59, No . 3, prepares us for the world of loveliness that arises from it . Although with Beethoven the See also:desire to See also:express new thoughts was thus invariably both stimulated and satisfied by the See also:discovery of the necessary new means of expression, he felt deeply the danger of spoiling great ideas by inadequate execution; and his first work in a new form or See also:medium is, even if as late as the Mass in C, op . 
89, almost always unambitious . His teachers had found him sceptical of authority, and never convinced of the See also:practical convenience of a See also:rule until he had too successfully courted disaster . But he appreciated the experience, though he may have found it expensive, and traces of crudeness in such early works as he did not disown are as rare as plagiarisms . The first three pianoforte sonatas, op . 2, show the different elements in Beethoven's early style as clearly as possible . Sir See also:Hubert See also:Parry has aptly compared the opening of the sonata, op . 2, No . 1, with that of the See also:finale of Mozart's G See also:minor symphony, to show how much closer Beethoven's texture is . The slow See also:movement well illustrates the rare cases in which Beethoven imitates Mozart to the detriment of his own proper richness of See also:tone and thought, while the finale in its central See also:episode brings a misapplied and somewhat diffuse structure in Mozart's style into See also:direct conflict with themes as " Beethovenish " in their terseness as in their sombre passion . The second sonata is flawless in execution, and entirely beyond the range of Haydn and Mozart in See also:harmonic and dramatic thought, except in the finale . And it is just in the See also:adoption of the luxurious Mozartesque See also:rondo form as the See also:crown of this work that Beethoven shows his true See also:independence . He adopts the form, not because it is Mozart's, but because it is right and because he can master it . The opening of the second subject in the first movement is a wonderful application of the harmonic principle already mentioned in connexion with the early piano quartets . In all music nothing equally dramatic can be found before the D minor sonata, op . 31, No . 2, which is rightly regarded as marking the beginning of Beethoven's second period . The slow movement, like those of op . 7 and a few other early works, shows a thrilling solemnity that immediately proves the identity of the pupil of Haydn with the creator of the 9th symphony . The little See also:scherzo no less clearly foreshadows the new era in music by the fact that in so small and light a movement a modulation from A to G See also:sharp minor can occur too naturally to excite surprise . If` the later work of Beethoven were unknown there would be very little evidence that this sonata was by a young man, except, perhaps, in the remarkable abruptness of style in the first movement, an abruptness which is characteristic, not of immaturity, but of art in which problems are successfully solved for the first time . This abruptness is, however, in a few of Beethoven's early works carried appreciably too far . In the sonata in C minor, op. ro, No . 1, for example, the more vigorous parts of the first movement lose in breadth from it, while the finale is almost stunted . But Beethoven was not content to express his individuality only in an abrupt epigrammatic style . From the outset breadth was also his aim, and while he occasionally attempted to attain a greater breadth than his resources would properly allow (as in the first movement of the sonata, op . 2, No . 3, and that of the See also:violoncello sonata, op . 5, No . 1, in both of which cases a |