A separate chapter is deserved by his relationship with publishers, toward some of whom he showed enormous distrust, both with regard to the quality of the prints and to financial dealings (so much so that with some he broke off collaboration). He believed himself to be the victim of double‑dealing and to be continually cheated, although one must acknowledge that at that time authors’ rights were few and unrecognized, and many publishers took advantage of this. Yet he himself was often the master of double‑dealing with publishers, offering the same work to more than one of them simultaneously. Not to mention the affair concerning the guardianship of his nephew, which he—intolerant toward his brother’s wife, whom he had nicknamed “the Queen of the Night”—conducted with violence and without sparing any blow. Toward his nephew Karl he attempted to impose himself with an exasperated degree of control, driving him to rebellion, to flight, and to an attempted suicide (which was probably only a demonstrative gesture in search of freedom).

It is easier to attribute all these characteristics to the subject of Lyser’s sketches than to the inspired head painted in 1818–1819 by Ferdinand Schimon (court singer and painter, friend of Schubert, born in 1797 and died in 1852). Schimon captured something of Beethoven’s essentially solitary nature, streaked at once with severity and melancholy; as Barford writes, “a kind of inner spiritual independence rather than social isolation.” Lyser painted the Beethoven of country walks, who in rain, wind, or sunshine feels himself at home, or who gulps down wine in a tavern. The mere fact that we possess these two images—so extraordinarily different that it is difficult to think they represent the same person—means that the fundamental question remains unanswered: what, and whom, did Beethoven really resemble? It is well known that a letter [K.342] has come down to us, attributed to the Master and addressed to Bettina Brentano von Arnim, dated August 1812 (but probably written by Bettina herself), in which Beethoven writes that of the world “I care little, for I have a higher goal.” Even if the letter is Bettina’s invention, she had probably heard the Master make this statement.

The poet Johann Sporschil (1800–1863) published an article on Beethoven on 5 November 1823, from which several passages are quoted. Beethoven’s life, as he himself has said, is rather an inner life. The events of the external world scarcely touch him; he is wholly devoted to his art … which he considers a divine gift, not a means from which to derive glory and money. … He is incapable of dissembling … to the point of breaking off relations that contradict his elevated concept of honour. What he wills, he wills with force, but he wills nothing except what is right. He is a man who tolerates no injustice. He has a most tender affection for women, and the feelings he experiences for them are of virginal purity. [Evidently Sporschil knew him less well than his friends Wegeler and Ries, or else he was describing him at a much later age!] All his friends, sooner or later, have certainly had occasion to experience his kindness. He is rich in humour and expresses himself with biting sarcasm against those he considers unworthy of his esteem. From his physical appearance emanate strength and vigour. His head recalls the Bards of Ossian with their grey hair. And indeed the portraits found on the market render his appearance well. … It is extraordinary that, although deaf, when he sits at the fortepiano and abandons himself to his inspiration, he manages to express himself with the sweetest pianissimi. Sporschil [from Prod’homme][b]

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One day, recounted Karl van Beethoven, Ludwig’s nephew, we were at table. In those days my father [Caspar Anton Carl] was very ill [and indeed he would die in 1815, shortly after this episode]. Beethoven suddenly entered, shouting “Thief! Where are my scores!”, and began to quarrel with my father, the two being separated with difficulty by my mother. Once the scores were found, Beethoven calmed down and wished to ask my father’s forgiveness, but my father began cursing again. Beethoven rushed out in fury, pursued by my father calling him a “monster.” Shortly afterwards the two brothers met by chance in the street. Ludwig realized my father’s emaciated state, threw his arms around him, and began kissing him to the astonishment of the passers‑by … In our house such scenes worthy of a madhouse were not rare. Kerst [a]

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The English musician Edward Schulz, who had already met Beethoven in 1816, saw him again in 1823 and thus recounts his visit. On 28 September, early in the morning, in the company of two Viennese, one of whom was the publisher Haslinger, I went to Baden. With them it was easy for me to reach him. He looked at me fixedly at first, but then immediately shook my hand cordially, as with an old acquaintance, for he remembered perfectly my first visit. … I noticed with great sorrow a profound change in his appearance. I feared he would not understand a word of what we were saying, but I was mistaken, for he understood what we said to him when spoken very loudly and slowly … I must say that when he plays the fortepiano he pounds so hard that 20 or 30 (sic) strings are the price of it. On the other hand, nothing is more spiritual, more lively, more energetic than his conversation. … He told me that he had always informed himself by speaking with instrumentalists about the characteristics and range of the various instruments. We decided to go to breakfast in the Helenental … we took the path into the little valley. As we walked he would stop suddenly to show me the most beautiful spots or to underline the ugliness of the new buildings. While we were breakfasting he said, “Man does not rise much above the animals if his greatest pleasure is the table.” … I have found few people who speak so freely as he on any subject, politics included. The most interesting things were those he said during breakfast about Handel. I cannot describe with what expression, and I would dare say with what exaltation, he spoke of the Messiah. “Handel is the greatest composer who ever lived. I should like to take off my hat and kneel at his tomb.” We could not manage to bring the conversation to Mozart … but Czerny told me that Beethoven’s praises of Mozart were absolutely inexhaustible. … I then realized that he was hurt when people lavished compliments on his Trios and his Septet rather than on his latest works, which for the moment are so little understood in London. … He is a great admirer of the ancients—Homer, the Odyssey in particular, and Plutarch above all. … He has a high regard for the Anglo‑Saxon world, whose simplicity of manners he admires. … His portraits on sale in the music shops no longer resemble him; they must have been made at least 8–10 years ago. Schulz [from Prod’homme][b]

Beethoven’s personality was rough, energetic, impressionable, excessively reactive, uninhibited, and coarse. All these aspects were united in a physique that matched them. By instinct he was rustic, primitive, and untamed. Someone once observed that his handwriting was like an elemental force. But expressed through this personality there was a powerful mind, an extraordinary imagination, and a highly elevated and delicate sensibility. Barford [a]

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Beyond music, he learned only to read, write, count, and a little Latin by attending a public school. An admirer of his genius made of him a scholar, capable of understanding Latin, Italian, and French as well as his mother tongue. It was even claimed that Beethoven had studied Kant’s philosophy. The truth is that Beethoven never attended a gymnasium, that he understood only certain Latin expressions, and that he was able to speak French only with difficulty. When private lessons on Kant were held in Vienna, he never wished to take part, not even when I tried to persuade him. Wegeler [a] [Many have emphasized a sentence of Beethoven’s in the Conversation Books, No. 22, spring 1820: “The moral law within us; the starry sky above us. – Kant!!!”, adducing it as proof of his knowledge of certain principles of Kantian morality. But it seems that the sentence was occasionally copied from an article by an astronomer.]

You cannot imagine, dear Wegeler, what an indescribable—and I would say horrible—imprint the loss of hearing has left on Beethoven. You know his choleric character, and thus you can well picture to what it has driven him: withdrawal, distrust, often even toward his best friends, irresolution in many things! Except for certain occasions, when his original sensibility manifests itself authentically, relations with him are truly arduous. [From a letter of 29 June 1800, from Vienna, by Stephan von Breuning to Wegeler.] Wegeler [a]

With regard to his handwriting—indeed completely illegible—he often made fun of himself, adding by way of excuse: “Life is too short to paint letters and notes; and more beautiful notes would scarcely relieve me of need.” [The sentence is based on a play on words between Note = musical note and Not = need, necessity.] von Seyfried [a]

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Beethoven, great hater of bourgeois folk, obstinate bachelor, who indeed collected some refusals, but who at least once refused love himself; mindful of his sentimental misfortunes far more than of his successes; wild and somewhat absurd; who, in the end, never truly had a friend, because friendship also means servitude. Confalonieri [a]

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There is in Beethoven a kind of voluptuousness of suffering. Melancholy belongs to a soul so rich, so sincere, so closed within itself. “My existence,” Beethoven confided to the young poet Johann Sporschil, “is a constant meditation.” Herriot [a]

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Beethoven’s music, with each of its notes, is illuminated by a clear beneficent intent. Beyond what it constructs as an adventure of the imagination, the music of this solitary man derives its novelty from the flame of love that dictated it. Confalonieri [a]

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Beethoven in his later years was thus described by Schindler. Stocky in build, with strong bones and a robust muscular system. His head was unusually large, covered with long, dishevelled hair, almost entirely grey, which fell over his forehead and gave him a somewhat wild appearance—an impression even more pronounced when he wore a long beard … His forehead, however, was broad; his brown eyes were small … Yet they could suddenly appear large and prominent; extremely mobile, with pupils almost always turned upward, they seemed to flash; at other times his eyes were motionless, fixed straight ahead … His mouth was well shaped, the lips regular, the nose rather large. His complexion had a yellowish tinge, less evident in summer due to his long outdoor walks; during these periods his cheeks appeared rosy or brownish, darkened by the sun. Kerst [a]

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“The great heart of Beethoven,” wrote Wittgenstein. And indeed in Beethoven’s heart there is something impressive: the feeling of struggle, the struggle to believe in something. Siciliano [a]

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(In his early Viennese years) the soft seductions of Vienna enveloped and conquered him; but a terrible crisis made him withdraw into himself, a physical and moral crisis which, after smouldering for a long time, exploded in 1802. Deafness, which had threatened him since 1796 or 1797, settled in his ears: at first he fought, pretended, wished to deceive others and himself, feigned distraction, but in vain; the pitiless truth was there: he no longer heard. At the same time he fell in love with Giulietta Guicciardi, “a magical young girl”: he believed himself loved by her, despite the difference in their social conditions, and forgot his affliction. But soon the coquette slipped away, to marry that adventurer Gallenberg. Ill, infirm, betrayed, wounded in body and soul, Beethoven dreamed of dying. Plutarch dissuaded him. In obedience to him, Beethoven—when everything abandoned him—sought a new reason for living; he found it in his art. “My art, only it has held me back,” he writes in the Heiligenstadt Testament; “Ah, it seemed impossible to leave this world before I had created all those works which I felt the imperious need to compose.” Music would now take the place of everything: health, love, pleasure, distractions. This art would no longer resemble what it had been until then, a way of entertaining amateurs. Separated from the world by the wall—each day thicker—of his deafness, rejected by Giulietta, he would confide to his art his sorrows and his joys. Thus, at the end of 1802, he declared himself little satisfied with his earlier works and announced a new manner, whose first fruits are the Sonata Op. 31 No. 2 and the Eroica Symphony. From this moment, as he deepened and renewed his art, Beethoven discovered in it a kind of philosophy that became his religion and his morality. Art became the ideal world, the only one in which to find friends, and which he had to create himself: “Transport oneself into the heaven of art; … there is no purer joy than that which comes from there.” “Music is a higher revelation than wisdom and philosophy.” “There is nothing higher than to approach the divinity more than other men, and from there to shed the rays of this divinity upon the human race.” But the artist is compelled to an endless effort that will never equal the infinite, but will approach it indefinitely. In 1812 he would write: “The artist sees that art has no limits; he feels dimly how far he is from the goal, and while others may admire him, he laments not yet having arrived there, where a better genius shines for him only as a distant sun.” The artist, though he will never rest in the promised land that his imagination glimpses, may alleviate the torments that oppress him and reach joy “through suffering.” Chantavoine [a]

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“There are and will be thousands of princes—there is only one Beethoven,” he once shouted to Prince Lichnowsky, his protector and friend. He refused to acknowledge what a man is by accident of birth and by the importance of the social condition to which he belongs. Magnani

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In a letter to Wegeler of 29 June 1801 [K.52], Beethoven alludes to his deafness: “Only the envious Demon, my poor health, has thrown a bad stone upon my bench.” He had been struck in the sense that ought to have been more perfect in him than in others. Deafness cast him into despair, made him curse his own existence and the Creator. He felt abandoned. But it was from the depths of that very ruin, from the harsh trial inflicted upon him, that there sprang the impulse to defy fate, to affirm with desperate vigour his creative energy, to believe that fortune would not abandon him. Beethoven lived only for his work, to which he granted no pause except sleep. He writes again to Wegeler on 16 November 1801: “I want to seize fate by the throat; it shall certainly not bend or crush me completely.” And again: “Oh, it is so beautiful to live life a thousand times.” “Strength is the morality of men who excel above others, and it is also mine.” Magnani [a]

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To be free meant for him, as for Voltaire and for Kant, “to will what one must.” Magnani [a]

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He was decidedly not an homme d’esprit, if by this one means someone who says refined and intelligent things. Baron de Trémont [a]

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In this way I am not entirely separated from the world and from those who love me. I have my book here, here are the materials for writing, so that you may answer in writing to each of my questions. Beethoven, from the Conversation Books

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He had deepened every datum of his art with such consciousness that he could once say, with reference to Napoleon: “Well then, if I were as expert in war as I am in music, I myself would think of defeating this invincible man.” Confalonieri [a]

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Beethoven’s skill as an improviser was greatly admired. He succeeded in creating the most extraordinary effects from the most insignificant motifs and could continue to develop a theme indefinitely. Any theme—even a theme taken from a cello part turned upside down—could ignite his imagination and allow him to astonish his listeners [as he did on the famous evening at the Fries household. That evening Steibelt had attempted to surpass Beethoven in an improvisation contest with a “prepared” performance on a theme by Weigl, which Beethoven had used in his Trio performed shortly before. Beethoven took, at random, a series of notes from the cello part of a quintet by Steibelt and ridiculed him, humiliating and outclassing him in the improvisation contest]. Beethoven showed little sensitivity toward the feelings of others; when, as in this case, his reputation was called into question, he spared no one, and here he would have considered any kindness toward Steibelt hypocritical. Thus one understands how he had so many enemies. B. Cooper [a]

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When he was not yet afflicted by his ailments [and here von Seyfried alludes to his deafness], Beethoven often and willingly attended opera performances, especially at the Theater an der Wien, also because he could take advantage of the fact that by stepping out of his room he found himself in the stalls. [Beethoven lived in the theatre from late 1804 to autumn 1805.] He was particularly enchanted by the operas of Cherubini and Méhul … He would place himself behind the orchestra balustrade and, silent as an idol, remain there until the last note. This was the only sign that the opera aroused his interest. If, on the contrary, it did not please him, he would turn on his heel and leave already at the end of the first act. It was difficult, if not impossible, to read in his face signs of approval or disapproval; he always remained the same, apparently cold and equally reserved in his judgment of his fellow artists … von Seyfried

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Beethoven, as Seyfried accurately described him, was of “stocky build and medium height, massive in bone and of great vigour: an image of strength.” Wegeler

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In 1802 Count von Browne asked Beethoven for three marches. Beethoven composed one while giving a lesson to Ries (who could never explain how he managed it). Then, Ries recounts, Beethoven and I were performing one of the four‑hand marches Op. 45 at Count Browne’s house, when the young Count Palfy, in the passage leading to the side room, began speaking to a beautiful lady so loudly and so freely that Beethoven—after several unsuccessful attempts to restore silence—suddenly, in the middle of the performance, pushed my hand away from the piano, leapt to his feet, and exclaimed in a very loud voice: “For such swine I do not play.” All attempts to bring him back to the piano were in vain. Ries

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Beethoven cannot be called a philosopher; his meditations lack synthesis. But he loved ideas deeply and sought to clarify the relationship between himself and artistic creation. His favourite books included Kant’s Critiques, Schelling’s Philosophy of Ideas and Transcendent Idealism, the Imitation of Christ, and the works of poets who, beyond pure aesthetic intent, present problems of an absolute and eternal nature: Klopstock, Shakespeare, Goethe, Novalis. But Beethoven’s greatest interest was perhaps for the thought of classical antiquity and in particular for the Stoic movement. In his eyes, Stoicism belonged to that general conception of the ancient world understood as the seat of a superior humanity, as the measure of broader moral dimensions. This ensemble of Athenian doctrines harmonized with his categorical way of assuming moral truth, of identifying in our spirit a spark of God. Confalonieri

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[As many scholars have noted, Beethoven was not a philosopher and probably did not possess a true philosophical culture; but it seems that he always had a certain interest in the thought of the great European and Eastern thinkers. In his letter to Breitkopf & Härtel of 2 November 1809 [K.209] he wrote: “One more thing. There is perhaps no treatise too learned for me; even without the slightest pretension of acquiring true erudition from childhood, I have nevertheless striven to understand the thought of the best and most enlightened of every age. Shame on an artist who does not consider it his duty to reach at least this far.” Conscious of the limitations of the education acquired in his youth—since his schooling was limited to the lower classes—he tried to read widely; his attention and interest are demonstrated by the fact that he often underlined or copied the philosophical sayings that struck him most; many of these are found in his Tagebuch 1812–1818.

In a letter to Goethe [8 February 1823, K.1070] Beethoven had written: a [his] critique, which might be considered almost the truth, would be extremely welcome to me, for I love the latter [that is, truth] above all else.” As B. Cooper recalled, Beethoven often proclaimed himself a champion of truth, even if this love of truth was not always accompanied by equally straightforward behaviour—as, for example, when he promised the Missa Solemnis simultaneously to four different publishers.

To pursue virtue, to do good, to act nobly are moral principles that often surface in Beethoven’s writings. Many times, from childhood onward, he expressed the desire to help the needy and to live for others. The simplest and most congenial way for him to do this was to give benefit concerts or to grant free performance rights of his works to charitable institutions, such as the Ursulines of Graz.

As B. Cooper perceptively observed, he put great energy and attention not only into everything he did but also into these charitable activities. This attitude, Cooper says, is found in his music, which—compared to that of all his contemporaries—is cultivated, difficult, noble, of elevated style. Even in music his life was a continual search for something ever better, ever higher, approaching perfection; each composition certainly cost him enormous effort, as demonstrated by the endless preparatory sketches, elaborations, and final modifications even of just a few notes. At times small changes were communicated to the publisher even after the manuscripts had been sent for printing. For him music was a noble art that elevated the spirit: “… only art and science raise man to the divinity.” [Letter to Emilie M., 17 July 1812, K.338].

From these ideas derived his concept of nobility. In a letter of 1823 [K.1122] he wrote to Schindler: “As far as being noble is concerned, I believe I have sufficiently demonstrated to you that I am so by principle, and you should have observed that even with regard to my principles I have never gone against them. Sapienti sat.” In this he followed a current of thought that was asserting itself in France and Germany through Rousseau and Kotzebue, according to which aristocracy could not be hereditary but had to be based on merit and not on birth. Nobility for Beethoven was something one earned through one’s own work and could not be transmitted by hereditary right. Philosophers, poets, thinkers, artists, enlightened politicians constituted a class of superior beings to which he naturally belonged. He could form friendships only with beings belonging to this class [even if one discovers that at times, for reasons of convenience, he associated with individuals who could offer him little on the spiritual plane]. This concept, which accompanied him throughout his life, he had expressed in a letter to Ferdinand Ries of 24 July 1804 [A.94]: “At the foundation of friendship the greatest affinity of souls and hearts is necessary.” “Authentic friendship can be founded only on the relationship of similar natures,” he reiterated in his Tagebuch in 1817.]

For Beethoven, freedom is the noblest and most instinctive of human impulses. One day, seeing a soldier pass by in the street, he said: “There goes a slave who has sold himself for three Kreutzer a day.” But invective and forgiveness, condemnation and mercy take on a solemn accent in his mouth: “even in his fall humanity is sacred to me.” His is a true democracy, far more important than his repulsion toward caste formalities or the hundred episodes of impatience—based on faith in a primordial force that calls us to the good. He says: “I recognize only one superiority in man: the capacity to be honest. Wherever there is an honest man, there I place my hearth.” Confalonieri

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Strong in his consciousness as an artist, when he was told that one of his quartets had not pleased the public, he replied: “I alone am judge of what I do and of what seems to me worthy and just.” The composer who “writes for money” seemed to him unworthy of belonging to the community of art; and he himself, if driven by need to interrupt a work for another of easier sale, considered himself guilty of betrayal. Confalonieri

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In August 1825, during an afternoon walk in the company of my parents, I had the good fortune to meet Beethoven. We saw a man advancing toward us with resolute step, walking alone; he was of robust appearance, of medium height, energetic in bearing as in his movements; he wore clothes scarcely bourgeois, devoid of elegance, and yet from his figure emanated something exceptional. He spoke without ever pausing, inquiring about our health, how we lived, asking for news. von Breuning

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The qualities of Beethoven’s character were the greatest generosity of soul and delicacy of feeling, united with a temperament easily irascible, with distrust, with detachment from the external world, often accompanied by a sarcastic taste. His greatness of soul appears from his letters, which attest to what a noble spirit he possessed. His distrust arose from his deafness; to the outbursts of anger into which he easily exploded, he remedied each time in the most affectionate way, with the prompt acknowledgment—and even exaggeration—of the fault he might have committed toward someone. von Breuning

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His detachment from the external world sometimes manifested itself in extraordinary oddities. For example, when in summer during his walks he felt too much heat, he did not hesitate to rid himself almost completely of his clothes and carry them hung on a stick over his shoulders. He was very absent‑minded. In Vienna he placed the proceeds from the performance of the Battle of Vittoria Op. 91 in an envelope, which he carelessly slipped under his coat, losing it. The envelope was returned to him by a passer‑by, and he took it back with a few words of thanks, giving no importance to the matter. The manuscript of the Missa Solemnis in D major was lost—with Beethoven’s consternation—during a move to the countryside, but was found by chance in the kitchen: the cook had used it to wrap butter and other things. It happened that, during a conversation, while he was speaking animatedly and walking up and down the room, he would spit on the mirror instead of out the window. One day at noon he entered the restaurant “Schwan” to eat. To call the waiter, who was late, he struck the table a couple of times, and while waiting, took out his music notebook and began to compose. When the waiter arrived to take the order, he did not notice him. The waiter went away. Beethoven continued writing and after a while struck the table again and asked for the bill. von Breuning

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His oddities and distractions became well known in the places he frequented most, and thus he was allowed to get away with anything, even if he did not pay when leaving. Ries

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[The story is told somewhat differently by Th. von Frimmel in his Ludwig van Beethoven, Berlin 1912, in which he cites a written account by Dr. Anton Weiser, director of the hospital of Troppau. Beethoven took part in the dinner in honour of the French guests, at which Dr. Weiser was also present, though he left before the end for professional reasons. Weiser later received the account of the events directly from Beethoven. At the moment of playing, Beethoven, shut in a room, could not be found and refused to do what he described as servile work. A very violent quarrel ensued, in which there was the risk of coming to blows. Beethoven, having seized a chair, was about to bring it down on the head of Prince Lichnowsky, who had had the door of the room in which Beethoven had locked himself forced open; the two were separated by Count Oppersdorf, who placed himself between them. Beethoven immediately had his luggage prepared and ran on foot—despite a violent storm—as far as Troppau to ask Dr. Weiser for lodging for the night. It was because of that rain that the manuscript of the Sonata Op. 57, which Beethoven had with him, was damaged. It was on this occasion that, before leaving for Vienna, Beethoven said or wrote to the prince the famous sentence or letter [E.258]: “What you are, Prince, you are by accident and by birth. What I am, I am through myself. There are and will be thousands of princes; there is only one Beethoven.” This time Beethoven’s anger did not subside, as it was said usually to do, in a few minutes. Once in Vienna he smashed to pieces a bust of the prince that he kept in his home. Although the relationship with the prince was later mended, the atmosphere between them was never again what it had been. After that, Lichnowsky still visited Beethoven in his room, but at times Beethoven refused to see him, and the prince, without protest, went away. An exaggerated tradition wishes to trace to the cold endured during that march from the castle to Troppau the worsening of Beethoven’s deafness. (From Kerst, Frimmel, Röckel).]

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Beethoven had grown up in extreme financial hardship and always under tutelage, even if only that of friends. He did not know the value of money, with which he behaved in a manner anything but prudent. As for the money he received for his works (“the fee avec ou sans honneur,” as he wrote in a letter to Ries), it was more often his brother Caspar who negotiated the amount. For the rest, I subscribe without hesitation to Seyfried’s assertion that “Ambition(!), avarice(!), and dissipation were all foreign to Beethoven. Equally unknown to him, however, was the true value of money, which he regarded only as a means of acquiring what was absolutely indispensable to him. Only in his last years did traces of an anxious frugality appear in him, which nevertheless did not diminish his innate inclination to do good.” Wegeler

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In 1860 Grillparzer, the poet and friend of Beethoven, said to von Breuning: “Beethoven joked often and willingly, in a manner that contrasted with the habits of social life. His moods sometimes degenerated into disagreeable attitudes, and yet, even in those circumstances, there was in him something touching and solemn, so that it was impossible not to continue to esteem him and to fall under his spell. In intimacy Beethoven showed his true character, giving his friends continual proofs of his affection.” von Breuning

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[Description given by Frau von Bernhard, a lady who as a child had come to Vienna to study the piano.] When Beethoven came to our house he would usually peer in through the door to make sure that no disagreeable person was present. He was short in stature and not very striking, with an extremely ugly face, reddish and pockmarked. His hair was very dark, almost dishevelled, falling over his face. His clothes were very ordinary … He spoke much in dialect and expressed himself rather coarsely; he did not seem a very well‑mannered person, indeed he appeared rude in manner and behaviour. He was very proud; I saw the mother of Princess Lichnowsky, Countess Thun, kneel before him—he was sunk into a sofa—and beg him to play something. But Beethoven refused … I was often invited by the Lichnowskys to play with them … Beethoven was almost always present when music was made. I still remember that Haydn and Salieri were always impeccable in their dress, a little old‑fashioned, with wig, shoes and silk stockings. Beethoven was usually dressed in an almost slovenly manner, according to the less formal fashion beyond the Rhine. Kerst

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[Baron Carl Friedrich Kübeck von Kübau, Austrian government official, wrote in his diary:] My aunt, who lives at the Bürgerspital, often visited the Müller family, who live on the floor above hers. The father [an actor] has a reputation as a great artist, but he gives me the impression of always acting a comedy. Of the two sons, one is also an actor, but very mediocre, the other entirely without qualities. There are also two daughters, one beautiful and married, the other with a nose a little too large but very amusing. They often make music. They have a new instrument, a fortepiano, built by Mr. Walther … One day I found there the hero of music, Ludwig van Beethoven. A small man, with unkempt, disordered hair without powder; his face ruined by smallpox, small lively eyes, and limbs in constant movement. He sat at the fortepiano and for half an hour played the instrument with extraordinary mastery. Nina, the amusing daughter, introduced me to the great Master as a young artist newly arrived from the provinces. Beethoven looked at me with pity and said: “We shall see whether this boy has musical talent. Come to me tomorrow.” On 5 April [1796] I went. He made me play various pieces for over an hour. At the end he said: “My dear fellow, you do not possess a particular disposition for music. Do not waste too much time on it, although you are not without a certain skill and a certain facility.” And at that point Beethoven entrusted me with giving supplementary lessons to one of his pupils, whom he taught but not sufficiently to make her progress, so that I might have her practise every day and learn the execution of the pieces that he would then teach her to interpret! … Whoever sees Beethoven for the first time and knows nothing of him might judge him a quarrelsome eccentric, a malicious drunkard who rejoices in the misfortunes of others and is insensitive to music. Whoever sees him surrounded by his fame and glory discovers at once the musical talent in every feature of a very ugly face. … What a surprise it was for me to meet Beethoven again on 10 February [1801], who, coming toward me with his running step, expressed his joy at seeing me again. We spoke of many things … and of his favourite subject, politics … Kübeck von Kübau

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J. F. Rochlitz, who visited Beethoven in Vienna in 1822, left us this vivid description of the Master, surrounded by a group of admirers and friends at a restaurant table: I met the young Franz Schubert in the street, who, speaking to me of Beethoven, told me that if I wished to see him serene and cheerful I should go with him to the restaurant where the Master ate. He took me there. Almost all the seats were occupied; Beethoven was seated surrounded by his friends, whom I did not know. He seemed truly happy: he returned my greeting, but I intentionally did not go to him. I found a place where I could sit and from which I could see him, and since he spoke rather loudly I could also hear almost everything he said. It was not properly a conversation that he was holding, but an almost continuous monologue. He spoke almost always alone, uninterruptedly, and jumping from one subject to another. His neighbours spoke little and limited themselves to laughing or nodding approval. He spoke, in his own way, of philosophy and politics. He spoke of England and the English, as he imagined them, that is, of incomparable greatness. Then he told some stories about the French at the time of the two sieges of Vienna; he was against them. He said all this with the greatest tranquillity and without any reserve, all seasoned with witty remarks or most original or naïve judgments. He gave me the impression of a man of rich, lively spirit, with a fervent imagination never at rest. Beethoven’s conversation and behaviour formed, in their entirety, a whirl of eccentricities, at times truly extraordinary. Despite all this, his person revealed amiability, light‑heartedness, and a truly childlike trust. Rochlitz, Letter to G. C. Härtel, 9 July 1822 [from Prod’homme]

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[In the Bonn years, Frau von Breuning had arranged that the very young Beethoven should give lessons at the house of the Duke of Westphalia, who lived directly opposite the von Breuning residence. Sometimes] Beethoven, instead of going to give the lesson, would suddenly turn back under the eyes of the lady, and then the good mother of the family would say, with a shrug, “Today he has one of his fits again.” Wegeler

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In the biographical notes of the musician Ignaz Ritter von Seyfried one encounters the following passage: “Beethoven did not marry, nor—something rather singular—did he ever have any sentimental relationship.” The truth, as my brother‑in‑law Stephan von Breuning, Ferdinand Ries, Bernhard Romberg, and I knew it, is instead the following: it never happened that Beethoven was not in love; usually, indeed, his involvement was very deep. In Vienna Beethoven, at least in the period in which I also lived there, always had some love affair, and at times made conquests that would have seemed difficult, if not impossible, to more than one Adonis. Wegeler

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Beethoven was of extraordinarily good heart, but at the same time easily angered, and little was needed to make him suspicious. Any stranger could easily cast his most trusted friends in a bad light, since he gave credence too quickly. In such cases he made no reproach to the unfortunate person, but immediately manifested the greatest aversion and the most decided contempt, until by chance a clarification was reached. In such a case Beethoven strove to repair the injustice committed with the same rapidity and effectiveness. Typical of this is the following episode. Beethoven was to go as Kapellmeister to the court of the King of Westphalia. This prompted Archduke Rudolph and Princes Lobkowitz and Kinsky to promise him a life pension on condition that he remain within the borders of the Empire. I was not aware of the second offer when Kapellmeister Reichardt came to me saying that Beethoven would certainly not accept the post at Kassel, offering it to me as Beethoven’s only pupil. I went at once to Beethoven to verify the truth of this information and ask his advice. For three weeks I was not admitted, and even my letters remained unanswered. I then met him at a ball, approached him and reminded him of my requests. He replied sharply: “And so you believe you can take a post that was offered to me?” Once the facts were clarified, Beethoven said to me: “I did not know things stood thus; I had been told that you were trying to take that post behind my back.” Ries

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[Description of Beethoven’s appearance by Carl Friedrich Hirsch, who as a child took piano lessons from him.] Of robust build, with a reddish complexion, sign of health. The eyebrows were thick and the forehead rather low (as the available portraits seem to confirm, though others claim he had a high forehead). The nose was large and broad, especially the nostrils, though well shaped. His dark hair, very thick and unkempt, was already turning grey and fell forward over his face. From time to time he used spectacles to read, but not always. According to Hirsch, among the portraits of Beethoven, a small medallion with the head turned to the right, executed by a Viennese master around 1820, Joseph Daniel Böhm (1794–1865), was very similar, as was the portrait by Schimon [executed around 1818–1819]. In most of the others the forehead was too high. Hirsch also liked other portraits, for example the head on the medal by Brehmer. The faint wrinkles on the forehead, descending on both sides toward the root of the nose, were, according to Hirsch, very realistic. Outside the house Beethoven could be seen wearing a dark green or brown frock coat and grey or black trousers. At home he wore a flowered dressing gown. In his room reigned the greatest confusion: scores, writings, books, partly on the desk, partly on the floor. Neue Zeitschrift für Musik

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[Here is the description that Weber gave to Rellstab of his last visit to Beethoven:] We had been to see him several times, but had not always been able to speak with him. He was in poor spirits, unsociable, in a bad mood. But finally we managed to find the right moment. We entered; he was sitting at his work table; he rose with a manner not exactly friendly. He had known me well for several years, so we immediately began to converse familiarly. Suddenly he came close to me, placed his hands on my shoulders, shook me vigorously and warmly, and exclaimed: “You have become quite a fine fellow!”, and kissed me with friendship and affection. [And on this point Rellstab comments:] This story, heard from Weber long before the publication of Schindler’s book, leads me to doubt how the relationship between Weber and Beethoven is described there. Yet one cannot exclude that Schindler’s information is also correct, for this would accord with Beethoven’s variable mood. Rellstab

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Etiquette was always foreign to Beethoven, also because he never wished to concern himself with it. Thus, when Beethoven began to frequent the circle of people around Archduke Rudolph, his behaviour often created embarrassing situations. Attempts were made to force him to learn certain rules, but he made no progress. One fine day, after having been, as he said, “again catechized by a butler,” he went in a fit of anger to the Archduke and declared that although he held the highest respect for his person, strict observance of those rules was not for him. The Archduke laughed and ordered that Beethoven be allowed to go his own way. Ries

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Beethoven took great pleasure in looking at women, especially if they were beautiful and young, and it often happened, when passing by a particularly pretty girl, that he would turn, stare intensely, and smile, or, if he discovered that I was observing him, grin. Beethoven never visited me more frequently than when I lived in the house of a tailor who had three beautiful daughters. Ries

Beethoven was rather clumsy and awkward; his ungainly movements were devoid of any elegance. It was rare for him to take something in his hand without dropping it or breaking it. Thus it often happened that he overturned his inkwell. Near him nothing was safe, especially if of value: everything was soiled or destroyed by him. One cannot understand how he managed to shave, not counting the frequent cuts that appeared on his cheeks. Ries

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Beethoven was never able to learn to dance in time. Ries

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During the bombardment of Vienna by the French in 1809, Beethoven was very frightened. He spent most of the time in the cellar of his brother’s house, holding his head covered with cushions so as not to hear the thunder of the cannons. Ries

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Beethoven sometimes behaved in an extremely impulsive manner. Once, while we were at the Schwan restaurant for the midday meal, the waiter brought him the wrong dish. He had scarcely uttered two words of comment, to which the waiter replied not very moderately, when Beethoven seized the dish (a roast with abundant sauce) and threw it over his head. Ries

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Grillparzer recounted the sad conditions of the Master during the last years of his life, especially his psychological state with its mood swings, his suspiciousness which prevented him from distinguishing clearly between what had really happened and what had merely been imagined. And yet, he wrote, despite all his eccentricities, his strange behaviour which often became almost offensive, there was in him something so moving and noble, difficult to express, that anyone could do nothing but esteem him and feel drawn to him. Grillparzer

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Beethoven scarcely knew the value of money. Suspicious by nature, he often believed himself cheated even when there was no reason. Quickly seized by anger, without mincing words, he called whoever stood before him a “swindler.” Ries

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Katharina Fröhlich, one of the sisters who were childhood friends of Schubert, recalled that Beethoven had lived in summer in their house in Döbling and that, when he was in an irritable mood, no one dared approach him. Often, she said, I was then a child, I was sent to him with the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, his favourite reading. He usually received me kindly and sometimes sat at the piano and improvised for me. Once he assumed such a wild expression that, seized by fear, I wanted to run away. He signalled me to stay, ordering me imperiously with his finger to sit down again, and then played with greater moderation. von Breuning

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Beethoven was extraordinarily careless in his dress. When he walked alone in the street, sunk in his thoughts, he muttered to himself and gesticulated, waving his arms; people who met him turned to look, and street boys made comments about him and shouted after him. His habitual bearing was with body and head leaning forward. He always wore a felt hat, then in fashion, shabby and misshapen. He wore it high to leave his forehead free, and on both sides appeared the grey, dishevelled, frizzy, bristling locks; the hat, thus pushed back, struck with its rear brim against the collar of the coat, which was worn from the continual rubbing with the upturned brim. The coat pockets were always bulging. Besides the handkerchief, which often hung out on one side, he kept in them a thick quarto notebook for musical sketches and an octavo conversation book for communicating with the people he met. von Breuning

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I saw Beethoven for the first time in my childhood, perhaps in 1804 or 1805, during a musical evening at the house of my uncle, J. Sonnenleithner (who had a music shop in Vienna). Beethoven was thin, had black hair, and dressed with great elegance. One or two years later, in summer, I was staying with my parents in the suburb of Heiligenstadt. Beethoven lived in an apartment connected to ours by a small landing; he had become more robust and went about dressed in a very negligent manner, wearing dirty clothes, and often darted past us muttering to himself. Grillparzer

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I was about ten years old [we are therefore around 1801], when Krumpholz took me to Beethoven. With my father we went from Leopoldstadt, where we still live [at the time I am writing, in 1842], to the city centre, to the Tiefen Graben. We climbed to the fifth or sixth floor. A servant, of very dirty appearance, let us in and announced us to Beethoven. A very untidy room, in which sheets of paper and clothes were scattered everywhere on the floor, a few trunks, bare walls, only one chair except for the rickety one in front of the Walter fortepiano; in this room were six or eight people, among them the Wranitzky brothers, Süssmeyer, Schuppanzigh, and one of Beethoven’s brothers. Beethoven wore a jacket of a long‑haired grey cloth and trousers of the same kind, which immediately made me think of the image of Robinson Crusoe that I was reading in those days. His pitch‑black hair, cut à la Titus, spread in disordered locks around his head. His beard, of several days’ growth, made the lower part of his already dark‑complexioned face appear even darker. He had in his ears cotton soaked with a yellowish liquid. Czerny [from Prod’homme]

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I asked him why he did not write another opera, although I had learned from my father that the reason lay in the difficulties he had encountered with Fidelio and in the scant recognition and meagre earnings that this work had brought him. He replied: “I would have liked to write another opera, but I have found no suitable libretto. I need a story that stimulates me, a moral, edifying text. I could never have set to music libretti like those of Mozart. I have never succeeded in putting myself in the proper frame of mind for libertine texts.” von Breuning

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Once, after a piano performance, irritated by Goethe’s mute emotion, he said to Bettina Brentano: “Music must kindle fire in the human soul.” And Goethe, who had heard him on 21 July 1812, noted in his diary: “he played exquisitely.” Riezler

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Beethoven’s nature had an ethical orientation of the rarest intensity. This is shown by certain sentences he underlined in the books he read and reread many times, such as these, from Observations on the Works of God by Sturm (1507–1589): “For this alone I pray to you, my God: do not cease working to improve me.” “In the field that has been assigned to me I wish to distribute among my brothers the benefits I have received from God; I wish to give help to all those who need it.” Riezler

“If you find him in an unfavourable moment,” one of his friends told me, “you might as well be the Kaiser, he will not let himself be seen. Preparations are useless. Being entirely sincere and frank are the best recommendations for him. And do not let yourself be discouraged by a brusque reception. Go a second time, and he will reward you doubly even for the first.” Thus one morning, with a pounding heart, I decided to present myself at the fourth floor of No. 767 in the Grugerstrasse, where Beethoven was then living. [Rellstab writes Grugerstrasse, probably for Krugerstrasse, No. 767; but No. 767 Krugerstrasse did not exist. According to more recent research, Beethoven in the winter of 1824–1825, and until 25 April 1825, lived in the Johannesgasse No. 969. Then in April–May 1825 he lived in Krugerstrasse 1009 (today No. 13 of the same street), where, according to what von Breuning reported having heard him say in August 1825, “he had been living only for a short time.” This does not agree well with another assertion by von Breuning that “Beethoven in the winter 1824–1825 settled in Krugerstrasse No. 1009.” If we are to believe Rellstab, even accepting the dates with some elasticity, it seems strange that Beethoven should have moved to Krugerstrasse at the end of March 1825, just after a very serious illness, and especially that the name on the bell—supposedly freshly written—should have been, as Rellstab punctiliously describes, half erased. It would not be surprising if Rellstab, more than fifteen years later, had misread 767 for 969 in his notes and mistaken the street name. As Zattoni observes, it is likely that Rellstab went to Beethoven in Johannesgasse 969 and made the error of writing Krugerstrasse, the street where he had gone at the beginning of his Viennese stay to visit Czerny, who lived at No. 1006.]

After climbing a considerable number of stone steps, I found on the left a bell with a half‑erased name [a strange thing if Beethoven had been living there only a few days!], in which I believed I could read Beethoven. I rang. Footsteps were heard. The door was opened. My pulse was racing. … I was announced; I gave my letter of introduction from Zelter and waited in the antechamber. I could still describe it: half empty and in disorder. On the floor a quantity of empty bottles. On a modest table some plates and two glasses, one half full. … The door of the adjoining room opened and I was invited to enter.

As I entered, my gaze immediately met him. He was sitting indolently on an unmade bed leaning against the back wall of the room, on which it seemed he had been resting until that moment. He held Zelter’s letter in one hand while extending the other toward me in a friendly manner, with a look of great kindness and at the same time of great sorrow … He said: “I am not very well; I have been very ill. You will find it difficult to converse with me because I struggle to hear.” Beethoven invited me to sit and took a seat on a chair in front of the bed, drawing it close to a table covered with manuscript music … I cast another quick glance around the room. It was as large as the antechamber, with two windows under which stood a piano. There was nothing that in any way suggested comfort, ease, or luxury. A writing desk, some chairs and tables, and white walls with old, dusty wallpaper. … I sat beside this sick and melancholy martyr. His hair, almost entirely grey, rose thick and disordered on his head—not smooth, not curly, not firm, but a mixture of all these things … His face was much smaller than I had imagined from the portraits, which emphasized an impetuous, genial wildness. Nothing expressed that roughness, that tempestuous unbridledness that would have suited him to bring his features into accord with his works. His skin was brownish, but not the healthy, strong colour of a hunter’s complexion—rather a yellowish, sickly tone. The nose sharp, thin; the mouth benevolent; the eye small, pale grey, and yet expressive. On his face I read melancholy, sorrow, kindness … Rellstab

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Beethoven had not attended higher schools and did not like to write. His handwriting was disorderly and, as someone said, resembled that of a cook. In his letters the phrasing is usually rather poor, concise, and quickly directed to the heart of the matter. The style is generally clumsy. Errors in sentence construction and grammar are very frequent. In others, however, he seems to command the language perfectly. The letters are nonetheless a window onto Beethoven’s character. Often written impulsively after an unpleasant event, they show us the Master’s irascible side; others are the mirror of his goodness of heart, the balance of his judgment, and his spirituality. A typical example is the famous letter [K.338] to a little girl, a ten‑year‑old pianist, Emilia M., thanking her for having sent him an embroidered wallet, concluding: “If I should ever come to A[mburg], I shall come to you and your family; I know no other prerogative of man than that of being counted among the best of creatures. Where I find this, there is my home.”

Beethoven always had a wide circle of friends, and in his last years visits from outside became increasingly frequent; people went to Vienna on pilgrimage to see Beethoven, and only rarely do we hear of a visitor being badly received. Many experienced his kindness, which was not mere formality but came from a heart full of love for others. The harp‑maker Stumpf, a German living in London, wrote: “When they opened the door, a shiver ran through me, as if I were about to approach a supernatural being. Beethoven’s face, which brightened only at intervals, was like the sun when it emerges from a mountain of dark clouds and pierces them. Everything he learned from us delighted him.” Riezler

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[In the autumn of 1826, about four months before his death, during his stay with his brother Johann in Gneixendorf, Beethoven was in deplorable condition. Ill, deeply depressed, detached from worldly things, withdrawn into himself, very taciturn, unkempt, he often remained apart, sitting in silence, so much so that some who did not know him, arriving to visit his brother, took him for a servant or an idiot. Despite this pitiable state, he still wandered through the fields as he once had, where he again found inspiration for some extraordinary works. In those months he completed the last of the string quartets, Op. 135, and wrote the new finale for the Quartet Op. 130—a page marked by the most serene optimism, a sublime detachment from the painful reality of the world.]

Countess Anna Louisa Barbara (called Babette), daughter of Count Karl von Keglevics of Busin, of Croatian‑Hungarian origin, married Prince Innocenzo d’Erba‑Odescalchi and unfortunately died very young. A nephew of the countess wrote that Beethoven composed for her, still a girl, the Sonata Op. 7 in E‑flat major, and that the Master, who lived in the house opposite, would go to give her lessons in dressing gown, slippers, and nightcap. It has also been said that the Master was in love with her. [There is no proof of this emotional attachment. What is certain is that] besides the Sonata Op. 7, the Variations for piano on “La stessa, la stessissima” by Salieri WoO 73, the Piano Concerto Op. 15, and the Variations Op. 34 were dedicated to her. Thayer

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The great thorn in Beethoven’s life is deafness, whose first symptoms appeared in 1795. Forced to abandon his career as a pianist, in 1802 he accepted the infirmity as definitive, on the threshold of despair, the echo of which remains in the Heiligenstadt Testament (6 October 1802). Deafness became complete in 1818. Pestelli

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At first glance Beethoven’s character has many traits of Sturm und Drang: abysses of depression, emotional intemperance, eccentricity, mood swings. Many constants of his generation are found in him: the attraction‑repulsion toward Napoleon Bonaparte (as in Kleist, Grillparzer, Hegel); the craving for legal equality with the aristocracy; the intellectual love for England, homeland of democracy; the passion for the classical world; the faith in the improvement of humanity. Pestelli [a]

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Few other musicians speak so much of reading as Beethoven: Kant, Rousseau, Plutarch, Schiller’s Don Carlos, Goethe’s Faust, Tacitus, the tragedies of Euripides, Wieland, Ossian and Homer, Shakespeare. From that culture Beethoven draws the foundations of the place to assign to music—at the summit of human activities. For Beethoven the beautiful and the good radiate their reflections upon man through art. Beethoven grants unconditional credit to the claim of music to participate as protagonist in the education of mankind. Pestelli [a]

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To Breitkopf he requests (1809) all the scores in stock by Haydn, Mozart, Johann Sebastian Bach, C. P. E. Bach, reminding them that “my greatest pleasure consists in playing, at the home of some true friend of music, works that I have never seen or only rarely.” Pestelli [a]

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He was hostile to Don Giovanni for its immoral content, unworthy, in his opinion, of Mozart’s genius. Pestelli [a]

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Beethoven was a particularly irritable person, and consequently it took little to upset him. Yet if one did not react and let his first outburst subside, he, then well‑disposed and conciliatory, listened to remonstrances. The result was that his apologies far exceeded his offences. For example, I preserve a short message of his in which he writes: “What a detestable image of myself I have shown you! Alas, I recognize it, I do not deserve your friendship. It was not intentional malice, premeditated, that made me act in that way toward you; it was my unforgivable rashness. It shall never happen again. It is I who come to you, throwing myself into your arms. Your friend, who is bitterly repentant. Beethoven.” Wegeler [a]

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“He had a beautiful smile,” says Moscheles, “and in conversation an air often amiable and encouraging. In compensation, his laughter was unpleasant, violent, a grimace, though of short duration.” His habitual expression was melancholy, “of an incurable sadness,” and Rellstab (1825) said he needed all his strength to keep himself from weeping at the sight of his “sweet eyes and their profound sorrow.” Rolland [a]

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In 1788 Beethoven enrolled at the University of Bonn to attend a course in German literature taught by the famous Eulogius Schneider, a man full of forward‑looking ideas who, when the news of the fall of the Bastille arrived, read from the lectern a poem praising liberty, which aroused the enthusiasm of the students. The following year he published a collection of revolutionary poems; among the subscribers to the book is “Beethoven, Hofmusikus.” Rolland

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Wegeler said he had never known Beethoven except as in love to the point of paroxysm. But it seems that his loves were always of extreme purity. Beethoven had something puritanical in his soul: for licentious thoughts he felt true disgust; on the sanctity of love he held entirely uncompromising ideas. Schindler assures that Beethoven passed through life with virginal modesty, never having had to reproach himself for a weakness. Such a man was made to be a victim of love. In 1801 the object of his passion was Giulietta Guicciardi, to whom he dedicated the Sonata Op. 27 No. 2 in C‑sharp minor. At that time he wrote to Wegeler: “I live in a somewhat sweeter way. This change has been wrought by the charm of a dear girl; she loves me; I love her.” But Giulietta married Count Gallenberg in 1803 and years later tried to exploit Beethoven’s former love, and he helped her husband! Beethoven in 1821 said to Schindler: “He was my enemy; therefore it was necessary that I do him all the good possible.” But he rejected Giulietta when she came to Vienna seeking him. Rolland

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“He loved republican principles,” says Schindler. “He was a partisan of unlimited freedom and national independence. He wanted everyone to participate in the government of the state. He hoped that Bonaparte would grant universal suffrage, thus laying the foundations of human happiness.” The Eroica Symphony was written for and about Bonaparte. The first manuscript still bears the title “Buonaparte.” But when he learned of Napoleon’s coronation, Beethoven, seized with fury, cried: “So he is nothing but an ordinary man,” tore off the dedication, and wrote this title: “Sinfonia eroica composta per festeggiare il sovvenire di un grand’Uomo” (sic, in Italian). Schindler recounts that Beethoven later ceased in his contempt for Napoleon and saw in him only a wretch worthy of compassion, an Icarus fallen from the sky. When he learned of the catastrophe of Saint Helena in 1821, he said: “It is seventeen years since I wrote the music suited to this sad event.” It is probable that the Eroica Symphony was, in Beethoven’s mind, a kind of portrait of Bonaparte as he imagined him and would have wished him to be: the genius of the Revolution. It is interesting to note that in the finale of the Eroica one of the principal themes is taken from the score he had composed in honour of the revolutionary hero par excellence, the god of Liberty, Prometheus (1801). Rolland

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Dearest good friend! Kings and princes may indeed appoint professors, pin titles on shoulders, and create privy councillors, but they cannot create great men, spirits who rise above the rabble of the world. … Thus when two such as Goethe and I meet, then the great lords should realize what greatness resides in us. Yesterday, returning home, we encountered the entire imperial family; we saw them coming from afar, and Goethe detached himself from my arm to step aside; I could say what I wished but could not move him a step forward. I pulled my hat down on my head, buttoned my overcoat, and with folded arms pushed myself into the thickest part of the crowd. Princes and courtiers made way; Archduke Rudolph removed his hat, and the Empress greeted me first. — The rulers know me — To my great amusement I saw the procession file past Goethe—he stood aside, hat off, deeply bowing. Afterward I gave him a good scolding, gave him no quarter, and reproached him for all his sins. Beethoven [Of this letter from Beethoven to Bettina Brentano, dated Teplitz, August 1812, published by Brentano in her book Ilius Pamphilius und die Ambrosia (Berlin 1857) and by Kastner as No. 342, no autograph is known. It is probably an invention of Bettina, perhaps based on recollections of conversations she had with Beethoven. But it may also have been invented outright. It has been established that in Teplitz in August 1812 neither the “entire imperial family,” nor Archduke Rudolph, nor Beethoven himself were present.]

Beethoven was a great free voice—perhaps the only one at that time—of German thought. Dr. Müller, in 1827, said that “Beethoven always expressed himself freely, about the government, the police, the nobility, even in public.” In his Conversation Books (1819) one reads these sentences: “European politics has now taken such a course that nothing can be done without money and banks.” “The nobility that governs us has learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” “In fifty years republics will be formed everywhere.” Beethoven attacked the vices of government, reproaching among other things the organization of justice—arbitrary and servile; police vexations; the baroque and inert bureaucracy that stifled every individual initiative; the privileges of a degenerate aristocracy, tenacious in holding the highest offices of the state. He showered the Austrian government with every possible insult. His political sympathies after 1815 were for England. The police knew this but tolerated his criticisms and satires as the harmless dreams of a visionary. Rolland

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Beethoven reaffirms, with the force of song, the dignity of man according to the spirit, setting to music Goethe’s motto: “Der edle Mensch sei hilfreich und gut” (Let the noble man be helpful and good) [It is an album leaf, 11 bars on a text by Goethe, WoO 151, published by A. Schmidt on 23 November 1843]; with this one may rise to what constitutes the true dignity of man, his nobility, his true freedom. For Beethoven it is not merely incessant activity that saves man, but rather obedience to the moral law, to the categorical imperative, to his “es muss sein” (it must be). Beethoven represses and stifles his sensual impulses in order to act according to the higher demands of his rational nature, to reaffirm his inner freedom. When Giulietta Guicciardi finally offered herself to him in tears, he rejected her with disdain, and confided to Schindler: “If I had wished to squander my vital energy in that way, what would have remained for what is noble, what is better?” And it is admirable how these opposing forces of inclination and duty, of sensibility and reason, found their supreme reconciliation in Beethoven’s Sonata Form—the compositional scheme that fully corresponded to the spiritual content he intended to express, in which the tension between instinct and reason, between “head and heart,” is overcome. Magnani [a]

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Beethoven received a physical and spiritual exuberance that made him long to live life a thousand times (“O es ist so schön, das Leben tausendmal leben!” — “oh! it is so beautiful to live life a thousand times,” he writes to Wegeler on 16 November 1801 [A.54]). Having reached almost the end of his path, already sensing the presence of death lying in wait, Beethoven took pleasure in calling himself “an old young man,” so great was the creative fervour that animated him. He had already composed the Ninth and felt “as though I had written only a few notes.” An insistent imperative that drove him, to the very end, to an almost superhuman creative effort (which, incidentally, gave us the last piano sonatas and the last quartets). Magnani [a]

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Among his favourite dishes was a bread soup, a kind of porridge, which delighted him every Thursday. Along with it, ten fresh eggs had to be brought to him on a plate; before they were poured into the soup, he examined them carefully against the light, then opened them with his own hands and smelled them to determine their freshness. If it happened that one of them had a slight smell of straw, then the spectacle began. A thunderous voice summoned the housekeeper to judgment; she, well aware that the bell had tolled, took refuge behind the door, listening only halfway to the furious reprimands, ready for a prudent retreat when, as tradition demanded, the cannon fire began and the incriminated eggs, like bombs launched from a well‑loaded battery, whistled past her shoulders … von Seyfried

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[Solomon has emphasized that, psychologically, one cannot fail to notice the conflictual side of Beethoven’s character already in his adolescent years. In the Bonn years Frau von Breuning had had ample opportunity to observe his obstinate and passionate nature, his occasional stubbornness and irrationality, his tendency toward misanthropy and isolation. At times Beethoven shunned social relations even when, for example in the case of piano lessons he refused to give, he might have profited from them. Helene von Breuning’s phrase, “He has one of his fits again,” summed up with implacable precision his emotional instability.]

A wholly illiberal trait of Beethoven’s character was his resort to the police not only in cases of complaints against servants, but also to obtain satisfaction from members of his family. To enforce his wishes, Beethoven did not hesitate to make use of his position as protégé of Archduke Rudolph and of public figures. The instinctive recourse to force in every critical situation was typical of Beethoven’s extremely emotional nature, which he never learned to control. These immediate emotional reactions also explain Beethoven’s generous participation in everything noble that presented itself to his imagination. An example is his initial enthusiasm for Napoleon, who seemed to Beethoven a hero drawn from the stories of Plutarch. M. Cooper

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Beethoven had a clear awareness of his own genius, which he regarded as a gift from heaven, and of the summit of art reached by his compositions. But the glory he had won was, in his words, “only an outward glitter”; at times he felt he was working “mehr für den Tod als für die Unsterblichkeit” (more for death than for immortality). And yet he did not lose faith in the superior nature of art. “Have you already heard there [in Courland] of my great works?” he writes to Amenda on 12 April 1815 [K.494], and hastens to add: “I say great — but in comparison with the works of the Most High everything is small.” And again: “If I consider myself in relation to the universe, what am I, and what is he who is regarded as the greatest of men?” Magnani

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[In the years 1816–1820 Beethoven, already ill, was absorbed, tormented, and emotionally disturbed by the legal action brought against Johanna, widow of his brother Carl Caspar, for the guardianship of his nephew Karl. In the end Beethoven obtained exclusive custody of the boy. After four and a half years of legal battles, on 29 March 1820, the affair concluded with a definitive sentence that totally excluded the mother Johanna. The trial consumed all of Beethoven’s remaining energies and much of his time. The laborious writing of letters and memorials, the time lost in meetings and consultations with lawyers and friends, certainly left little space for the Master to devote himself to composition. This would explain the limited number of works produced in these years.

But to demonstrate that in Beethoven there could be a relative independence between physical and moral state and his creative output, behold the almost sudden blossoming of the Sonata Op. 106 “Hammerklavier,” one of the most extraordinary compositions in all of Beethoven’s output. Begun toward the end of 1817, the first two movements were completed in April 1818, when Beethoven obtained, in the first instance, custody of his nephew, whom he would take with him to Mödling the following month. But the other two movements were written during that terrible period for the Master in which Johanna appealed the court’s decision, a period in which relations with the nephew became increasingly difficult and tense, culminating in Karl’s flight back to his mother.

We have unequivocal testimonies of Beethoven’s emotional tension during this period. Beethoven was very agitated and, as M. Cooper wrote, “tasted both joy and remorse” for the legal victory, worried about public judgment of his behaviour toward his sister‑in‑law, whom he had accused of being a prostitute — something that was not true. As M. Cooper has emphasized, in this period the worst sides of Beethoven’s character surfaced: arrogance, vindictiveness, lack of scruple, loss of self‑control, total contempt for all opinions different from his own. These traits manifested themselves in him with such rawness and violence as at times to make one doubt his mental health.

How troubled Beethoven was by his behaviour in the case is clear from some notes in his Tagebuch. At No. 159 he writes: “It would have been impossible without offending the feelings of the widow, but it should not have happened. You, almighty God, who see into my heart, know that I have not considered my own well‑being in favour of my dear Karl; bless my work, bless the widow …” And at No. 160: “God, God my refuge, my rock, my all. You see into the innermost part of my heart and know how much it pains me to make someone suffer because of the good things I do for my Karl!!! O unique, eternal, ineffable One, hear me, the most unhappy of all mortals.” And of the same tenor is the sentence reported by Fanny Giannattasio del Rio in her diary: “What will people say, they will take me for a tyrant” (in her father Cajetan’s institute the nephew Karl was received as a pupil during this period). Words that give us the image of a Beethoven utterly incapable of lying even to himself, unable to mask in any way his own behaviour.]

Girod de Vienney, Baron de Trémont (1779–1854), councillor of state under Napoleon, thus recalls Beethoven.

In 1809 Beethoven lived on the ramparts, and since Napoleon had ordered them to be demolished, mines were being detonated beneath his house. I arrived at his home, indicated to me by his neighbours. I rang three times and was about to leave when a very dirty man, in a very bad humour, opened the door and asked what I wanted. “Have I the honour of speaking to Mr. Beethoven?” — “Yes, sir, but I warn you,” he said to me in German, “I understand French very poorly.” “I understand German no better,” I replied, “I bring you a letter from Paris from Mr. Reicha.” He looked at me, took the letter, and let me in. His apartment consisted, I believe, of only two rooms: the first with a closed alcove where the bed was, small and dark, so that he performed his toilette in the second. Imagine the utmost disorder and filth. Patches of water on the floor; an old grand piano on which dust competed with torn manuscript music sheets. Beneath it — I do not exaggerate — an unemptied chamber pot. Beside it a small table accustomed to having ink spilled on it; many pens encrusted with ink. The chairs were covered with plates bearing the remains of the previous evening’s meal and with clothes. [We understood each other poorly] and I thought he would dismiss me. Instead, he asked me many questions about my position, my lodging, and after about three‑quarters of an hour invited me to return to see him again. Beethoven’s improvisations produced in me the strongest musical emotions I have ever felt. I can assure you that if you have not heard him improvise, you have no idea of his talent. [If he was not in the mood to play] we spoke of philosophy, religion, politics, and above all of Shakespeare, his idol, and always in a language that would have made listeners die of laughter, had there been any.

Beethoven was not a man of wit. He was too taciturn for his conversation to be lively. He expressed his thoughts in short remarks, but they were lofty and generous. His conversation, if not attractive, was at least original and curious.

He was greatly interested in the greatness of Napoleon and often spoke to me about him. Despite his antipathy, I saw that he admired the fact that, from such humble origins, he had risen so high. This accorded well with his democratic ideas. One day he said to me: “If I were to come to Paris, would I be obliged to pay homage to your emperor?” I assured him no, unless he were asked. “And do you think they would ask me?” “Certainly, if Napoleon knew who you are; but you surely know from Cherubini that he does not understand much about music.” This question made me think that, despite his opinions, he would have been flattered to be honoured by Napoleon. Baron de Trémont [from Prod’homme]

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In 1817, upon his return to Vienna after the summer in Baden, Hirsch describes a “Beethoven with a healthy, ruddy complexion, thick eyebrows and a low forehead; a very large and broad nose, especially at the well‑shaped nostrils; thick, dense, upright hair, already somewhat grey; rough and heavy hands, short fingers, swollen veins on the backs of the hands, and nails cut short.” His clothing was usually neglected, and Fanny Giannattasio recalls a torn coat; others remember dangling handkerchiefs and misshapen hats. Yet it seems that in public he always wore impeccable linen (though at home he was not so scrupulous). And he had a mania for washing. It seems he would rise from his work table to plunge his head into basins of cold water, often singing at the top of his voice and flooding the floor, remaining with his head wet and the floor as it was.

His manners were very rough (it seems he spat into a handkerchief which he then examined, or onto the floor), and his table manners left people astonished. But despite all his brusque and coarse ways, those who saw him in the last years of his life agree that a sense of goodness emanated from him. M. Cooper

The writer Anton Wilhelm von Zuccamaglio (1803–1869), who visited Beethoven in Baden in 1824, maintained that the various portraits of Beethoven he had seen did not accurately convey what he was like, particularly regarding the breadth of his forehead and the sparkle of his eyes — sharp and penetrating — which had not been captured at all. The Master’s hair was already considerably whitened and framed his face in a not unpleasant confusion … Over his whole face hovered an expression of good‑naturedness, and courtesy was evident in all his gestures. Kerst

Concerning the summer of 1819, during which Beethoven, while staying in Mödling, was working on the Credo of the Mass in D major Op. 123, Schindler wrote that he had never seen the Master in such a state of mental excitement and detachment from worldly things.

At the end of August 1819, Schindler went to visit him; he arrived in Mödling at four in the afternoon with a friend, the musician Johann Horzalka. As soon as they entered, he writes, they were told that the two maids had left that morning, and that after midnight there had been an uproar that had disturbed all the other tenants of the house, because the two women, after waiting for him a long time, had gone to bed, and Beethoven had found the food inedible. Behind the closed door of one of the two parlours they heard the Master working on the fugue of the Credo — singing, shouting, stamping his feet. After listening for a long time to this almost terrifying performance, they were about to leave when the door opened, and Beethoven appeared before them with a countenance so distorted as to inspire fear. He seemed to have just emerged from a struggle for life … His first words were confused, as though finding them there listening had caused him an unpleasant surprise. Then he began to speak of the day’s events and said, with notable self‑control: “A fine business this — everyone has run away and I have eaten nothing since yesterday at noon.” I tried to calm him and helped him with his toilette while my friend ran to fetch something to eat. While eating he complained to us of the miserable state of his lodging … Schindler

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H. Anschütz (1785–1865), the actor and tragedian who read Grillparzer’s funeral oration at Beethoven’s funeral, describes in his recollections an encounter with Beethoven.

In the summer of 1822 I had gone to Döbling. The fine weather encouraged me to take pleasant walks. One day near Heiligenstadt … wandering among groves and clusters of trees, my attention was caught by an unexpected sight. On a sloping meadow, among the trees and a stream, I saw a man seated, his clothes in great disorder, his head — of a wild, thoughtful, intelligent beauty — resting on his left hand, his gaze fixed on a music booklet, while his right hand traced mysterious signs in the air and, when it stopped, drummed with his fingers. I was about to turn back when our eyes met; I greeted him and he returned the greeting with a nod. I approached, apologizing for disturbing him. “The road belongs to everyone,” he replied. And I then: “May I know what you are writing?” “Oh, a stupid thing, an orchestral piece to chase away flies and ants.” The conversation stopped. He resumed looking at his music, drumming and writing, completely oblivious of me. I withdrew in silence; he was so absorbed that he did not notice. Anschütz [from Prod’homme] [a]

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[One rather striking example of how Beethoven, at least during a certain period of his life, handled his affairs — of his attempts to extract the maximum profit from his works, playing not only a double but even a triple game with publishers — is offered, in 1822, by his attempts to sell the great Mass in D major.

At the end of 1822 Beethoven had offered the Missa Solemnis to four publishers simultaneously, almost making sport of them. On 19 May 1822 Beethoven had assured his agent that Simrock (to whom he had already promised it in 1820) would receive the score at the end of June. But meanwhile, in a letter to Schlesinger of 9 April [A.1074], after speaking of other works, he wrote: “As for the Mass, I have already agreed to cede to you the work itself, together with the piano reduction, for an honorarium of 650 Reichsthaler in Prussian currency.” He then offered, together with it, two other songs for 45 gulden which, “added to the 650 Reichsthaler, would make a round sum that would be even more agreeable to me. As soon as the order of payment arrives here, I shall immediately send you the Mass …” And on 1 May 1822 [K.1017] he wrote to him: “As for the Mass, I beg you to put everything in order at once, because other publishers desire it….”

But then, at the beginning of June, Beethoven replied to a letter from Peters offering him the Mass [K.1019]. He told him that he had recently met Steiner, who had urged him to make a contract with him by which he would have to cede all his present and future works, but that he had refused. He continued: “The greatest work I have written so far is a great Mass with choruses, four obbligato voices, and large orchestra. Several have applied for it. They have offered me 100 heavy louis d’or,” and he then complained of the bad faith of his Viennese publisher Steiner, who, as one reads in a first draft of the letter, was described as “a vulgar businessman.” He then offered Peters other works for a total sum of 1000 gulden. Moreover, in a subsequent letter of 26 June [K.1025], Beethoven offered Peters the Mass with the piano reduction for 1000 convention‑currency florins, complained of Schlesinger, and assured Peters that “Schlesinger will in no case ever again have anything from me, for he too has played me a Jewish trick; he is not among those who would have obtained the Mass.” And he again offered the Mass, telling Peters that as soon as it was finished he would inform him so that he could send the honorarium to a Vienna bank, upon which the score of the Mass would be sent immediately.

But shortly afterwards, on 22 August of the same 1822, he wrote to the Viennese publishers Artaria [K.1031], offering them the Mass as well, saying that he could not cede it for less than the 1000 gulden offered him by others. “My circumstances do not permit me to accept from you a lower honorarium. All I can do is give you the preference.”

All this led to quarrels with publishers — sometimes temporary, as with Schlesinger, sometimes definitive. It is interesting to note with what ease Beethoven accused others of “Jewish tricks,” while for his own way of dealing with publishers he himself might well have been accused of being a formidable double‑dealer. Beethoven in this period appears literally obsessed with money, with the spectre of poverty — whatever the reason, which could certainly be objective (for example, the expenses for his nephew), but which in the end appears entirely subjective and psychological. In this regard Schindler recalled that indeed in the years 1815–1822 the works produced were relatively few and the income far from covering all his expenses. Schindler reproached Beethoven for not having sold some of his bank shares (those he would later leave to his nephew, and which at that time had, as we would say today, a high market value) and for having incurred debts with his publishers Steiner and Peters. Peters, in the end, although he had given an advance of 300 or 360 florins in the summer of 1822 for works to be received, never published anything of Beethoven’s. Schindler then commented on these episodes, noting that concern for these financial problems assumed ever greater proportions until it became a true obsession for an artist who until then had always created freely; arithmetic, he wrote, so took possession of the Master that commercial speculation stole space from artistic reflection.]

A third meeting between Rochlitz and Beethoven took place in Baden in 1822. Here is the account.

“This time he had a neat appearance, even elegant. Which did not prevent him — and that day it was very hot — from going for a walk in the Helenental, taking a narrow path along which everyone passes, even the emperor and the court, nudging one another. Beethoven took off his fine black coat, hung it on a stick, and went about with the stick over his shoulder in his shirt sleeves. And there he remained from about ten in the morning until six in the evening. During all that time he was cheerful and very amusing, saying whatever came into his head. ‘Today I am completely unbuttoned,’ thus he described himself. His words and gestures were one extravagance after another, and some truly those of a jester. From all this there radiated upon all who approached him the sympathy, the light‑heartedness, and the trust typical of a child. Even his furious philippics — such as those, for example, against the Viennese of our day, which I have mentioned earlier — were nothing but explosions of fancy and momentary excitement. They manifested themselves with great noise but without any trace of arrogance, bitterness, or rancour, but with lightness and good humour. It often happened — and far too often — that he was ready to give his last taler precisely to the person who had gravely offended him or against whom he had just finished inveighing, if that person was in need.” Rochlitz [from Prod’homme]

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During his visit to Vienna in September 1824, Johann Andreas Stumpff (1769–1846), harp‑maker, born in Thuringia but settled in London, had the opportunity to meet Beethoven several times, who at that time was in Baden. Evidently taken with one another, they exchanged invitations to breakfast. His account, very long, is rich in interesting details: from the appearance of a serene Beethoven to the description of the mute language based on movements of the head, eyes, fingers, and of course the lips, with which Haslinger made himself understood by him. From his “everyday clothes, not a fine flowered dressing gown,” to the way Beethoven’s face lit up. He was of medium height, with powerful bone structure, Stumpff writes, with broad shoulders surmounted by a round head with a bristling, dishevelled mane of hair. Beethoven cursed everything and everyone in Vienna, while he had the highest respect for London and for the English, whom he considered highly cultivated: “England,” Beethoven said, “has a high level of culture. In London everyone knows something, and knows it well; whereas the typical Viennese speaks only of eating and drinking, and does nothing but sing and strum utterly banal or homemade music.” During a breakfast in which fish was eaten, Beethoven praised the fish served in London [where he had never been!] and cursed Viennese cooking and wines, which were, in his words, “poisoned.” As for Viennese musical tastes, Beethoven found them deteriorated: “There is no longer any sense of the good and the beautiful — in short, of true music. Yes! Yes! That is how it is, O Viennese. Rossini and company — these are your heroes. They want nothing more from me; they have no time for symphonies and no longer want Fidelio. Rossini, Rossini suits you perfectly.” And, Stumpff comments, he continued in this tone, which betrayed neither rancour nor jealousy. At a certain point, after many toasts that ended with great praise for Handel and Mozart (and another jab at Rossini: “True music will have little place in this Rossinian age”), Beethoven, completely relaxed, said: “Today I am truly myself, and it is thus that I should be — entirely at ease.” Stumpff [from Prod’homme]

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[Beethoven, as his writings show, was always anguished — particularly in the last years of his life — by financial worries, from which he could easily have been free had it not been for certain traits of his character: indecision, impatience, and distrust. He was certainly incapable of managing his affairs consistently, perhaps also because of an excessive desire always to extract the maximum profit from every opportunity (let us recall only how he tried to raise prices by offering the Missa Solemnis to several publishers simultaneously, boasting of the offers of the others), but above all because of his distrust of entrusting matters to anyone else. As we know from his letters, on certain occasions when he seemed determined to follow the advice of others, his impatience and distrust frustrated the plans laid out. The letters are full of invectives against bad advisers, dishonest scoundrels, stupid incompetents, “Jewish tricks.” M. Cooper cites in this regard a letter of March 1825 in which two publishers, J. A. Streicher of Vienna and C. F. Peters of Leipzig, wrote to each other: “What can I say about Beethoven’s conduct toward you, and how can I attempt to excuse him? I can do so only by communicating to you the opinion he has of himself and which he expressed in my house: Everything I do outside of music is done badly and is foolish.”

According to M. Cooper, during a certain period the double‑dealing with publishers could be explained in part by the obsession with saving for his nephew, but certainly a role was also played by the reckless management of his domestic life, which at times led him to pay even for three lodgings simultaneously.]

The Swiss composer Schneyder von Wartensee (1786–1868) met Beethoven in Vienna in 1811 and on 17 December wrote to the Zurich publisher Nägeli: “Beethoven received me very courteously, and I visited him several times. He is a very singular man. Grand thoughts, which can be expressed only with notes, agitate him; expressing them in words is not easy for him. His education was certainly neglected, and except for his art he is not brilliant; but he is a loyal man, without falseness, who says frankly what he thinks. In his youth and even later he had to overcome many obstacles, which made him distrustful and melancholy. He complains of Vienna and dreams of leaving it. ‘From the emperor to the last shoeshine boy, the Viennese are worth nothing.’” Schneyder von Wartensee [from Prod’homme]

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Deafness forced him to devote himself almost entirely to composing and to renounce any project of making his fortune as a concert pianist, which plunged him into a deep depression and made him avoid company for a certain time. Forced to recognize himself excluded from a part of human experience, he had to come to terms with an unusual and particularly solitary way of life. This strengthened in him the conviction that some of the rules of normal social behaviour did not apply to him. He considered himself an artist and, as such, at least equal to anyone in a privileged position by birth or wealth. He vigorously refused to play the courtier and to show the deference and obedience expected of musicians in aristocratic circles. For example, he was often reluctant to perform at the piano if his hosts unexpectedly asked him; sometimes he refused outright, sometimes he left the gathering in anger. Even Archduke Rudolph, who as the emperor’s brother was surrounded by court protocol, gave in, ordering that the rules of etiquette not be applied to Beethoven.  

[As Solomon has noted, there is a highly significant fact that allows us to penetrate a fold of Beethoven’s personality: the fact that he allowed the rumour to circulate in Vienna that he was of noble origin. For more than a quarter of a century he did absolutely nothing to try to deny it, until, in December 1818, before a court reserved for nobles, during the trial for the guardianship of his nephew Karl, after an unfortunate remark of his, he was forced to acknowledge that he had no way of proving that the van Beethoven family was noble. And the case was transferred to an ordinary court. I believe it can be affirmed that Beethoven was certainly not the one who spread the rumour. Nothing is more likely than that the story arose from a mistaken interpretation of the “van” in his surname, which in the Netherlands was not a mark of nobility, or more simply from the fact that “van” was misread or transformed by copyists into “von” during the preparation of some concert poster and passed from there into reviews.

Beethoven certainly did nothing to deny the rumour, probably because he understood that he would derive only advantages from it. But we must be far from imagining that Beethoven idealized in any way the world of the aristocrats he frequented, or that he wished to be part of it; indeed, the opposite is true. As Solomon writes, Beethoven clearly idealized not the nobles of flesh and blood, but the concept of nobility. Proof of this is his often discourteous and disdainful behaviour toward his noble patrons, culminating in his refusal to submit to etiquette and to be obsequious toward them; his way of criticizing — even publicly and loudly — the government, the court, and the emperor.

This particular aspect of Beethoven’s personality stands out even more when one considers that he did not feel himself part of the common world either; he did not feel himself a bourgeois. On the contrary, toward the bourgeois he even ostentatiously displayed the disdain of an aristocrat toward the poor of humble birth. The transfer of the guardianship case of his nephew Karl from the court of nobles to an ordinary court wounded him deeply. Yet one suspects that this may also have derived from the fact that in the court of nobles he knew perfectly well that he could count on the recommendations of his protectors!

There is no doubt that, in Beethoven’s ideal world, one was aristocratic by nobility of thought and action, not by inheritance. This cannot be doubted; one need only read some of his writings. In 1820, after the aforementioned mishap at the court of nobles, Beethoven noted in a Conversation Book: “The bourgeois should be excluded from the society of individuals superior to him, and yet here I am, fallen among them.” In a letter of 1823 [E.1680], concerning the fact that the pianist Franz Schoberlechner had addressed a letter to “The noble gentleman Mr. Ludwig van Beethofen,” he wrote to Schindler [K.1122]: “As far as being noble is concerned, I believe I have sufficiently demonstrated to you that I am so by principle, and you should have observed that even with regard to my principles I have never gone against them. Sapienti sat.”]

His daily routine was very regular. He rose early, made his coffee by grinding an exact number of beans, then worked at composition until two or three in the afternoon, when he dined. During his morning work he took two or three walks outdoors, during which he continued sketching on sheets of music paper. Kerman and Tyson [a]

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Toward the end of the eighteenth century, the son of a singer in the chapel of the Elector of Bonn — a man moreover endowed with few human qualities and given to drink — could hardly expect anything better than a rudimentary education. As M. Cooper acutely observes, in Beethoven’s case another circumstance contributed to making it even more summary: because of his exceptional musical talent, perceived by his father, who hoped to exploit it commercially and who naturally cultivated it at the expense of schooling, little Ludwig was, as those close to him in his early years tell us, forced into an obsessive and almost brutal study of the art of the harpsichord.

We know for certain that it was thanks to his association with the von Breuning family that Beethoven saw open before him a world of higher education, and that, despite “his raptuses,” as Frau von Breuning called certain of his attitudes of repulsion and withdrawal, he — intuitive as he was — tried to adapt himself to it. Already as a boy in Bonn he had begun to read Schiller, and the first project of setting the Ode to Joy to music dates from those years.

Certainly, after moving to Vienna, the frequentation of a fairly elevated cultural environment awakened in him the desire to broaden his culture, and it was then that he also devoted himself to reading. His desire for cultural elevation — supported surely by the awareness of his own gifts — is clearly shown by what he wrote, in anticipation of peaceful summer reading, on 8 August 1809 to his publishers Breitkopf & Härtel [K.206]: “Perhaps you could send me an edition of the complete works of Goethe and Schiller … These two poets are my favourites, as are Ossian and Homer, although the latter, unfortunately, I can read only in translation. … N.B. Please let me have them soon, for I hope to spend the rest of the summer in some pleasant little spot in the countryside.” And it should be noted that when he wrote this, Beethoven had already reached some of the summits of his art. On another occasion he wrote: “There is no treatise that can be too learned for me; even without the pretension to true erudition. From childhood I have striven to grasp the meaning of what the best and wisest of every age aimed at in their works. It would be shameful for any artist not to consider it his duty to reach at least this point.”

As M. Cooper has written: “The rhetoric and pathos of Schiller, the often naïve opposition in his dramas between vice and virtue, and a certain roughness, a certain plebeian vigour in his manner of writing all find punctual, clear correspondences in Beethoven’s music of the first and second periods.”

Beethoven’s understanding of Kant was of a popularized kind. He had no preparation or aptitude for discussing Kantian ideas. Like most of his contemporaries, Beethoven understood Kant in a simplified form, reduced to pure formulas: his was the Kant of the “categorical imperative,” who wrote: “Act in such a way that the maxim of your actions may be adopted as a principle of universal legislation”; the Kant who affirmed: “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me,” an observation we find in the Conversation Book of February 1820 in this form: “The moral law within us, and the starry sky above us — Kant!!!” Solomon

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[We know that Goethe and Beethoven met at Teplitz in July 1812. No understanding arose from this encounter; indeed, after Teplitz the gulf separating them grew even deeper. Today we know that the story of their differing behaviour before the court at Teplitz was almost certainly invented by that imaginative mystifier Bettina Brentano. But an entire world separated them. Goethe was a grand gentleman of a cultivated family and exquisite education, of solid economic position and refined tastes, a frequenter of elegant society and, moreover, one who dominated the cultural world of his time. Beethoven, on the other hand, was of humble origins, with an education which, outside music, we may without hesitation call rudimentary; little‑mannered, if not downright ill‑mannered; instinctive in his emotional reactions and clumsy in his ways; always in search of money for survival. Goethe never openly showed that he enjoyed Beethoven’s music, and although he recognized his greatness as an artist, he deplored the roughness of the man. In a famous letter he had written: “His talent filled me with astonishment. Unfortunately he has a personality that is utterly disordered. He is not wrong in finding the world detestable. But he is greatly to be pitied and excused, since he is losing his hearing — something that perhaps harms less the musical part of his nature than the social one.”

Although Goethe, on the occasion of dedications of works and letters from Beethoven, behaved toward him in a manner that it is perhaps an understatement to call haughty, Ludwig’s admiration for Goethe was always great. When in 1822 Rochlitz told Beethoven that he lived in Weimar, the city of Goethe, the Master, his expression becoming radiant, exclaimed: “Then you know the great Goethe?”, and striking his chest, “I know him too. I met him in Karlsbad (sic) a long time ago. I was not yet so deaf, but already hard of hearing. What patience and what influence the great man had on me.” “How happy he made me then! I would have let myself be killed for him … At that time I was fire and flame, and I composed the music for Egmont.” “After the summer of Karlsbad (sic) I read Goethe every day — when I read. He has killed Klopstock for me. Does that surprise you? … Why did I read Klopstock? I carried him with me for years, everywhere … I did not always understand him … He always rises so high … always majestic! E‑flat major, does it not? It elevates the spirit … When I could not understand him I tried to guess what he meant … If only he had not wanted to die continually! … But Goethe is alive and makes us all live with him. That is why he can be set to music …” Let us not forget that, toward the end of his life, Beethoven hoped to set Faust to music, “that which is highest for me and for art.”]

[Grillparzer criticized the freedom of language that circulated among Beethoven’s friends, “who feared neither vulgarity, nor cynicism, nor insults.” And indeed there are indications, even if occasional, that seem to suggest that outside official occasions and formal writings, the language of Beethoven and certain of his friends was at least on some occasions — as M. Cooper writes — from an ethical point of view more suited to the morality of his sister‑in‑law Johanna, the wife of his brother Carl van Beethoven, with her two illegitimate children, than to the puritan standards to which Ludwig adhered. In the Conversation Books of 1820 we find jokes concerning Frau Janitschek. On one occasion it is the husband, a certain Mr. Janitschek, who complains in writing: “Mr. v. Peters (a habitual visitor at Beethoven’s house, tutor in the Lobkowitz household) seems to be taking an interest in my wife, and his behaviour could become dangerous for me.” And in another notebook: “She says that I cannot sleep with her — the bed is too small.” And further on: “Fool. Peters says that his cloak was torn from him by Janitschek’s wife, as Joseph’s was torn by Potiphar’s wife. And it seems that you (Beethoven) too have slept with Janitschek’s wife.” One must, however, acknowledge that despite what Grillparzer wrote and M. Cooper’s opinion, jokes of this kind are rare: were the surviving notebooks purged by Schindler? And what might have been in all those that Schindler destroyed?]

[Beethoven was certainly not what one calls a witty man, or at least it seems that only with intimate friends was he witty, lively, and even talkative. Rochlitz even wrote that when he was in the mood he was a cascade of witticisms. Czerny said that in youth, apart from moments of melancholy, Beethoven was a man quite ready with a joke, cheerful and mischievous. He often burst suddenly into a loud laugh. This sometimes happened at the end of a piano performance with which he had moved the audience, and then the laughter probably had a liberating purpose, accompanied as it was by mocking words directed at the listeners. But at other times, as Seyfried writes, “it was difficult to understand the reason for certain explosions of hilarity, because he generally laughed following his own fantasies and secret thoughts.” But Beethoven certainly had his own sense of humour, entirely particular, which often, however, flowed into sarcasm. Typical examples are the puns and jokes on the names of friends with which his correspondence is full. Wordplay and jokes which, if often betraying good‑nature and affection, at other times reveal irritation and sharp irony.

Let us consider some examples. Karl Holz (1798–1858), in the last years of Beethoven’s life, from May 1824, replaced the famulus Schindler, becoming for over a year his devoted assistant. Beethoven’s affection for Holz is evident from the many puns with which the notes and letters to him are filled, always very affectionate and betraying a certain good humour in the old Master. In German “Holz” means wood: and in the notes to Holz this “wood” becomes now a “piece of mahogany,” now a “splinter,” now the “wood of Christ,” “Lignum Crucis,” or a “personified wood … whereas wood is a neuter noun,” or an “excellent wood.” The very devoted Nicolaus Zmeskall was called “Little Count of Music,” but also “Count Lunch,” “Count Dinner,” and “Count Greed.” And a letter to Joseph Linke, the famous cellist, began “Dear Left and Right,” a joke based on the fact that in German “Linke” means left. The famous singer Friedrich Baumann was once addressed as “friend, great philosopher and comedian.” In the dense correspondence with Nanette Streicher née Stein, who was an affectionate friend and adviser of Beethoven for many years, the usual puns abound: “the entire domestic management (Haushaltung) has not yet a proper bearing (Haltung), and resembles precisely an Allegro of Confusion”; “what a stroke (Streich) from Frau von Streicher!”; “As for Frau von Stein (of stone), I beg you not to let Mr. von Steiner become stone.”

In a letter to Hoffmeister [15 December 1800, K.42] he wrote jokingly: “… your brother might have from me: 1) a Septet for violin, viola, violoncello, double‑bass, clarinet, horn, bassoon; all obbligato. (Indeed I cannot write anything non‑obbligato, for I came into the world already with an obbligato accompaniment).” And here, according to some, Beethoven probably alluded to having been born still in the amniotic sac, but perhaps he might have been alluding to his duties toward his brothers.

Another form in which Beethoven’s humour expressed itself was that of humorous canons. He composed several in the second half of his life. These too were often based on wordplay. A fine example is the one sent from Baden on 3 September 1825 to Friedrich Kuhlau (1786–1832), musician, after an excessive drinking bout the previous day: “Kuhl nicht lau” (cool, not lukewarm) = Kuhlau. And another who received musical tributes was Tobias Haslinger, the friend and publisher, whose name was used to compose the text of affectionately playful phrases set to music even in the dark days of Gneixendorf in the autumn of 1826.]

[An English traveller, Sir John Russell, met Beethoven around 1820.] Although he was not yet old, he wrote, he was lost to social life because of his deafness, which had made him entirely unsociable. His neglected state gave him a wild appearance. The features of his face were powerful and marked; his eyes full of energy …; his hair, which had not seen comb or scissors for years, overshadowed with its disordered thicket his broad forehead, like the serpents on the head of the Gorgon. … Amiability and affability were not exactly his characteristics, except when he found himself in a circle of friends. … At that time he frequented a tavern where he spent his evenings, seated in a corner, entirely removed from the surrounding environment. He drank wine and beer, ate cheese and smoked herrings. One evening someone sat next to him, someone he did not like. He looked at him with a furious expression, spat on the floor as if he had seen a reptile, then, rolling his eyes between his newspaper and the intruder, spat again, his hair bristling, more wild and savage than ever; finally, after spitting once more while looking at the man, he exclaimed, “Who is this scoundrel?” and left. … He always carries with him a little notebook with which one converses with him in writing; but he also notes in it the musical ideas that come to him — notes absolutely incomprehensible to others and from which only he can draw his marvellous harmonies. Russell [from Prod’homme]

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[Solomon has sharply drawn attention to a conflictual aspect of Beethoven’s personality: on the one hand, the Master’s desire — especially in his early Viennese years — to enjoy the advantages of friendship with the nobility, and on the other, his aspiration, as a free man, to emancipate himself from their control. Shortly after his arrival in Vienna, Beethoven was welcomed by the Lichnowskys into their home in the Alsergasse 45, and he remained with them for a long time: Wegeler writes from the end of 1794 to mid‑1796. As Czerny recounts, the Lichnowskys treated Beethoven as a member of the family, as a brother and a friend, and induced the entire aristocracy to protect him. In a letter to Wegeler [K.52], dated 29 June (1801?), Beethoven wrote: “Since last year Lichnowsky — who, incredible as it may seem to you, was and has remained my most affectionate friend (there were small disagreements between us as well) … has assigned me a sum of 600 florins from which I may always draw until I have found a suitable position.” In gratitude Beethoven dedicated to Lichnowsky several of his early works. The Lichnowsky couple regarded Beethoven as a son; but here, says Solomon, the emotional conflict toward them emerges, as certain episodes demonstrate. “The prince,” Wegeler reports, “who possessed a very high, metallic voice, once instructed his servant to serve Beethoven first, in case he and the Master should call at the same time. Beethoven, the very day he realized this arrangement, hired a servant of his own.” On another occasion, when Beethoven was learning to ride, the prince offered him his horses: Beethoven immediately bought a horse for himself.

Wegeler then writes: “I recall that the hour of dinner was fixed by the prince at four in the afternoon. Well then — said Beethoven — must I every day return home at half‑past three, put on something more suitable, shave, etc.? No, I do not care for that at all. And so he often went to eat in a tavern.” Yet receiving certain gifts — things he could not have afforded with his own finances — gratified him immensely. It is enough to recall with what care, amid his disorder, he preserved a quartet of rare Italian string instruments (today in the Beethovenhaus in Bonn) that had been given to him by Lichnowsky.]

[Another particular trait of Beethoven’s personality was that he rejected the idea of being accepted by others solely for his musical talent and not for his personal qualities. This is perhaps the reason for his marked aversion to performing at the piano on social occasions. Wegeler writes that whenever he was asked to play, all his good humour vanished completely. Gloomy and irritated, he came more than once to me, continues Wegeler (we are in 1794–1796, when Wegeler was studying medicine in Vienna), complaining that he had been forced to play even though his blood was boiling within him. Among other things, he insisted on playing in rooms from which he could be heard without being seen. In the Fischoff manuscript it is recounted that once, when a listener tried to enter the room, Beethoven immediately stopped playing, took his hat, and ran away, resisting all entreaties. One of the most unfortunate incidents occurred at the Lichnowskys’. Frau von Bernard described the incredible scene of the elderly Countess Thun [Maria Cristiane von Thun‑Hohenstein, wife of Lichnowsky] kneeling before him as he sat in an armchair, begging him to play something, and Beethoven stubbornly refusing to do so.]

[The relationship between Haydn and Beethoven, as indeed with his other teachers, was tinged with misunderstandings. As is well known, Beethoven took lessons from Haydn for many months during 1793, but he believed that Haydn did not concern himself with his progress. At a certain point in 1793 he secretly began taking lessons from another teacher, Johann Schenk. As Ries recounts, Haydn asked Beethoven to write on the title page of his first work “pupil of Haydn,” thus acknowledging him before the world as his master, but the young man indignantly refused to do so, and declared years later that he had never learned anything from Haydn. Another episode, which certainly did not contribute to making their relationship idyllic, and of which traces remain in some letters, is the following. Beethoven asked his master for a loan, lamenting the insufficiency of the allowance he received from Bonn, saying that it amounted to 100 ducats per year. Moreover, somewhat indelicately, he made sport of Haydn by giving him some compositions and passing them off as the fruit of his work in Vienna. Let us not forget that the Elector continued to pay Beethoven as court organist precisely so that he could support himself in Vienna while studying with Haydn.

In November 1793 Beethoven, so as not to lose his favour, wrote to Elector Maximilian Franz a letter [E.12] in which he said he had devoted all his energies to composition “so that I may in future send to Your Serene Highness some work better than those sent to you by Haydn.” The fact is that at the same time Haydn, moved by the pupil’s lamented financial difficulties, had written to the Elector [letter E.13], sending him the aforementioned compositions that Beethoven had sold him as new, deceiving him, saying: “… I take the liberty of sending to Your Serene Highness some musical pieces … by my dear pupil Beethoven … eloquent proof of his diligence and application to his studies. … I also take the liberty of saying a few words about his financial situation. Last year he was assigned 100 ducats …” then adding that Ludwig owed him 500 florins and asking that 1000 florins be assigned to him. The Elector’s reply came like a boomerang upon the two [E.14]. “I have received the music of the young Beethoven. Since, however, all this music, with the sole exception of the fugue, has already been composed and performed here in Bonn before his journey to Vienna, it cannot constitute proof of progress made in that city. As for the allowance … for his support in Vienna, it amounts … to 500 florins in addition to the salary of 400 florins. Thus he receives 900 florins per year. I therefore cannot understand how his financial situation could have deteriorated so greatly …” Seeing how things unfolded, one is inclined to think that Haydn was a good man but a far less shrewd head, in musical matters, than is often said, and that he evidently had not much concerned himself with teaching and verifying Ludwig’s progress. He had not realized that those compositions had been written before Beethoven’s departure from Bonn. Nor had he noticed that Ludwig’s assignments were being corrected first by someone else. Which does not alter the fact that from this episode Beethoven’s frankness emerges somewhat tarnished.]

 [Beethoven always behaved toward his teachers as only a genius could behave. His studies were never entirely systematic, were often interrupted, and in the long run one has almost the impression that Beethoven harboured toward them — however much he admired their musical learning — a certain resentment, a resentment which, as Ries writes, “had probably remained in Beethoven since remote times.” As though Beethoven felt a subtle hostility toward musicians whom he certainly esteemed, but whom, deep in his heart, he considered inferior to himself and incapable of judging him. As Ries recounts, Beethoven took badly, and with astonishment, Haydn’s judgment of his Op. 1 Trios, because Haydn advised the young man not to publish the third — the very one Beethoven regarded as the best of all. Ries, who — let us not forget — lived close to Beethoven for a long time, and therefore certainly had occasion to receive his confidences, wrote that this remark of Haydn’s produced in Beethoven an unpleasant impression and made him believe that Haydn was envious, jealous, and ill‑disposed toward him.

Another example is his relationship with Antonio Salieri (1750–1825), the celebrated opera composer who dominated the Viennese theatrical scene, to whom Beethoven turned in order to refine his abilities in vocal composition. In 1799 Beethoven dedicated to Salieri the three Violin Sonatas Op. 12; but as for Salieri’s criticisms of Fidelio, Beethoven refused to make the suggested changes, and judged the advice not as the fruit of friendship but of hostility, calling Salieri, in January 1809, one of his detractors. The relationship with Albrechtsberger also seems to have been marked by a subtle tension. Between 1796 and 1797 Albrechtsberger wrote Beethoven extremely friendly letters [E.24, 29, 31], which showed affection and esteem for the young man. But the last of these tells us of Ludwig’s usual impatience, for he demanded back the score of his Trios which Albrechtsberger had asked to perform publicly. And there are those who later recounted that Albrechtsberger called one of the Op. 18 quartets “a piece of rubbish,” and told a young musician that Beethoven, in his opinion, had learned nothing and would never write anything decent. Beethoven, for his part, called Albrechtsberger a pedant, a rigid maker of musical skeletons. Ries wrote that all three — but especially Albrechtsberger and Salieri — were unanimous in judging Beethoven: they held him in great esteem, but affirmed that he had always been so stubborn and independent that he had had to learn through hard personal experience many things he had always refused to study.]

When Clementi arrived in Vienna, Beethoven was seized by the desire to go to him immediately, but his brother put into his head that it was Clementi who ought to make the first visit. Clementi, although older, would probably have taken this step had certain rumours not circulated. Thus it happened that Clementi stayed in Vienna for a long time, but knew Beethoven only by sight. At the Schwan we often lunched at the same table — Clementi with his pupil Klengel, and Beethoven with me. Each knew who the others were, but no one exchanged a word or even a greeting. The two pupils had to imitate their masters, under penalty of losing their lessons. I at least would have suffered that consequence, since Beethoven knew no half‑measures. Ries

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[All who met him recall that Beethoven lacked grace entirely. Clumsy and awkward, he was decidedly a maladroit type; he sometimes managed to knock over ornaments, regularly breaking them. As his youthful friends recalled, he never learned to dance. Fraulein von Kissow, later Frau Bernhard, told Ludwig Nohl in 1864 that around 1800 she often saw Beethoven at the Russian embassy in Vienna: “His behaviour lacked all refinement; he was a coarse young man, incapable of good manners.” Frau Bernhard remembered that one evening, at the Lichnowskys’, Haydn and Salieri sat on a canapé, carefully dressed in the old style, with wigs, shoes, and silk stockings, while Beethoven’s clothing — he let his hair grow as it would — was almost slovenly.

Many reported his detached and reserved behaviour which, in appearance, seemed haughty, and which even turned into rudeness when he refused to submit to certain rules of etiquette or to requests to play. Once he furiously left an aristocratic dinner because the place assigned to him did not seem worthy of him. With such behaviour he earned the nickname “bear,” which seems to have been bestowed on him by Cherubini.]

Seyfried summarizes Beethoven’s moral profile thus: “He was distinguished by rectitude of principle, great morality, correctness of feeling, and a pure natural religiosity. These virtues governed his life, and he demanded them of others.” Solomon

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[Beethoven’s relations, at times even with friends, were undermined by suspicion, and this side of his character assumed, as the years passed, threatening and unexpected aspects. In his nature, trust in others was, in principle, a predominant characteristic, since, as Wilhelm Rust observed, Beethoven was rather childlike and above all very sincere. A good example of this trust is what Ries recounts: when Himmel once maliciously wrote to him from Berlin that a lamp for the blind had been invented, Beethoven, without hesitation, spread the news among his friends.

Many examples of distrust are found in his biography. Röckel’s account, reported by Thayer, is a fine example of Beethoven’s suspiciousness. In April 1806, after the third performance of Fidelio at the Theater an der Wien, the singer Röckel went to Baron von Braun to collect his earnings. While waiting in the antechamber, he heard a violent dispute in the adjoining room: Beethoven, beside himself, was shouting because he believed he had been defrauded by the cashiers of part of the proceeds. The baron pointed out that he was the first composer to whom the theatre had granted a share in the profits, and that the theatre had not been full (something the singers on stage had also noticed), especially in the popular sections, which were always packed for Mozart’s operas. Therefore the receipts had been modest. At this point Röckel heard Beethoven shouting as he paced the room: “I do not write for the rabble, I write for the educated.” “But that alone is not enough to fill the theatre,” replied the baron calmly. “Even Mozart did not disdain writing for the gallery.” Whereupon Beethoven exclaimed: “I do not want the opera performed any more! Give me back my score, immediately!” and snatched the large volume from the hands of a servant who had been sent to fetch it, crossed the antechamber, and rushed down the stairs….]

[Even if Beethoven sometimes claimed the contrary, declaring himself simply a servant of art, he was always — with his work characterized by a continual striving for perfection — in search of personal affirmation. As Thayer notes, Beethoven was not at all indifferent to honours, as he sometimes declared and as certain of his writings suggest. He felt immensely gratified by manifestations of success: medals, honours, fame, applause, and — in a certain period of his life — one is tempted to say, above all by money. Nor was he indifferent to criticism. In a letter of 22 April 1801 [K.47], he wrote to Breitkopf & Härtel openly declaring that he expected his works to be reviewed more favourably in their musical journal, the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung. Although expressed politely, the request does not conceal a marked resentment and an awareness of his superiority: “Recommend to the reviewers greater caution and prudence, especially toward the works of younger authors. … As for me, I am far from approaching such perfection as to be immune from blame, and yet at the beginning the cries of their critics against me were so humiliating that, beginning to compare myself with others … I remained quite calm and thought that they understood nothing; all the more calm could I remain if I considered how men who mean little among the best are here exalted and almost disappear.” But on another occasion the protest was far more violent.]

Beethoven was dominated by a constant sense of “mission,” of “vocation,” and deeply convinced of the significance of his work and his art. Everything else was subordinate to the fulfilment of that mission. But whereas at the beginning of 1793 he wrote that his precepts were “to do good wherever possible, to love freedom above all else, never to deny the truth, not even before the throne,” in 1798 an elitist element made its way into his thought; in that year he wrote to Zmeskall: “The devil take you. I refuse to hear anything about your moral principles. Power is the moral principle of those who excel above others, and it is mine as well.” Solomon

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[After an initial, probable infatuation with the apparently libertarian ideas it carried with it, Beethoven did not manifest sympathies for the French Revolution. Although someone, it seems, once called him a “revolutionary,” even the supposed friendship with the French ambassador, General Bernadotte — who was in Vienna for a period of two months in 1798 — has never been demonstrated. In 1794 [2 August, K.11] he wrote to Simrock, who was a member of the Order of the Illuminati of Bonn: “It is very hot here, and the Viennese fear that soon they will no longer be able to have ice cream: because the winter was so mild, ice is scarce. Here they have put many important people under arrest; it is said that a revolution was about to break out. But I believe that an Austrian, as long as he can have his dark beer and his sausages, will not revolt.”]

Beethoven’s entire life was characterized by a tension between obedience and rebellion. During [his early Viennese years] we find no expression of discontent toward the imperial court or the repressive regime of the Habsburg emperor Francis I. His outbursts of anger against his adopted city would begin to appear in the following decade. In these early years the desire for “belonging” predominated. In 1796 he set to music a patriotic anti‑Napoleonic text by Friedelburg; the following year he set another war song, Ein grosses, deutsches Volk wir sind (“We are a great German people”). In 1800 he dedicated the Septet Op. 20 to Empress Maria Theresa, and on 5 April 1803 he concluded one of his triumphant concerts with a series of improvisations on “Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser.” Solomon

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Dr. Wilhelm Christian Müller, pedagogue, music lover, and founder in Bremen of the Familienkonzert, met Beethoven in Vienna on 26 October 1820. He left the following account: “The Viennese judge his originality and eccentricity unfavourably and consider him mad. All agree that he is a genius, but in reality very few truly know him. Those who know his good sense and his spotless heart have for him the most sincere friendship. It is certain that he knows neither the world, nor the court, nor politics, nor dissimulation. He lives in the world of his art, in the empyrean of sounds, like a monarch. No one knew where he lived. In summer he had been in Mödling: when we looked for him there, the housekeeper told us that he had gone out early in the morning for a walk, but that I could return in the evening or in three days. A few days later, having learned that he had returned to Vienna, we ran to him. He apologized for his flight, spoke of the absurdity of the world, of the bad taste in music, and in a corrosive manner of politics. … He has lost his hearing … and can no longer hear the effect of his compositions, nor the sounds of nature that so often inspired him. … He showed us the piano given to him by the Philharmonic Society of London, which pleased him greatly. The English people, he said, are an honourable people who know not only how to appreciate art but also how to reward it, who grant the freedom to speak and write even against the King and the most powerful ministers; neither censors nor policemen prevent it. … Chaos reigned in his apartment. … He said that he accepted neither invitations nor help from his friends in order to remain always independent. Freedom is the greatest of all goods.

His expressions are original, always filled with satirical humour; they appear singular to us because they depart from the daily routine of the world. … In his appearance everything is powerful, rough, like the bony structure of his face with its high and broad forehead, its short square nose, with his tousled hair gathered in thick locks. But his mouth is graceful, his eyes beautiful and expressive, and their expression changes rapidly — now gracious, now wildly amiable, now threatening, now terrible. How appropriate his words on the world, politics, morality, and aesthetics!

Beethoven is one for whom his art alone suffices. The rest of life seems to him a desert devoid of joys …” Müller [from Prod’homme]

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[In the years 1800–1802 Beethoven brought forth works which, as virtually all scholars of his oeuvre have written, testify to the fullest mastery of the mature classical style and at the same time show how he was passing into a radically new style. One need only think of the First Symphony Op. 21 and the Second Op. 36, the Septet Op. 20, the Third Piano Concerto Op. 37, and the Piano Sonatas Op. 22, Op. 26, Op. 27 Nos. 1 and 2, Op. 28, and Op. 31. Not to mention The Creatures of Prometheus Op. 29, the Violin Sonatas Op. 23, Op. 24, and Op. 30, the Variations Op. 34 and Op. 35. And yet, despite these successes, Beethoven spent the years 1800–1802 in periods of great anguish because of the onset of deafness. And toward the spring of 1802 new clouds gathered around him. Deafness was always the principal cause of Beethoven’s malaise and psychological distress.

The account of Ferdinand Ries, who in 1802 was taking lessons from him in Heiligenstadt, captures unequivocally the effect of the now evident deafness on his state of mind: “During a walk Beethoven gave me the first alarming sign of the decline of his hearing, which had already been communicated to me by Stephan von Breuning. I drew his attention to a shepherd who, on an elder‑wood flute, was playing in the woods in a very pleasant manner. For a good half‑hour Beethoven was unable to hear anything, and although I assured him that I too no longer heard anything (which was not true), he became extremely silent and gloomy. When it happened that he showed good humour, he was most of the time so to the point of excess. Yet this occurred only rarely.” This frequent plunging from the manic to the melancholic certainly reflected, as Solomon supposes, the depth of the pain he was enduring. Moreover, for some years he had been subject to severe anxiety attacks that verged on panic.

In the Heiligenstadt Testament he sought to explain his sufferings and his anguish which, in the solitude into which they had cast him, had given rise to suicidal thoughts. He believed he had identified the sole “secret cause” of his torments in deafness — and offered the Testament, Solomon thinks, as a piece of self‑justification so that, made public only after his death, “the world might be reconciled with him” and understand why he was judged “spiteful, stubborn, or misanthropic.”

But such an explanation appears too simplistic. Mood swings, a tendency to isolation and withdrawal — these folds of Beethoven’s character were part of his personality, existed long before the onset of deafness, and had already surfaced in his youthful years in Bonn. Frau von Breuning knew well his obstinacy and mood swings, his “raptuses,” as she called them, and for some time protectors, teachers, and rival pianists had experienced the violence of his aggressiveness. “The Testament, in a certain sense,” writes Solomon, “is the literary prototype of the Eroica Symphony — the portrait of an artist‑hero, struck by deafness, isolated from humanity, who represses his suicidal impulses, struggles against fate, hoping to find ‘at least one day of joy.’ It is a daydream of heroism, death, and rebirth, a reaffirmation of Beethoven’s fidelity to virtue and to the categorical imperative.”]

In 1804 Stephan von Breuning wrote to Wegeler: “You cannot imagine, dear Wegeler, what an indescribable — I would say terrifying — imprint the diminution of hearing has left on Beethoven. You know his irascible character, and can therefore imagine to what the idea of feeling struck by misfortune has led him: he has withdrawn greatly into himself, and often distrusts even his best friends, and is insecure in many things! Except for certain exceptional moments in which his sensitive character reappears, relations with him are truly arduous.” Wegeler

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Beethoven’s diminishing auditory contact with the external world inevitably led him to a sense of painful isolation and encouraged tendencies, already latent in him, toward misanthropy and suspicion. But in a certain sense deafness had a positive effect on his creativity, perhaps allowing him to concentrate entirely on composition within a world of ever‑increasing acoustic isolation. In this world of the deaf, Beethoven could experience new forms of inner life, free from the intrusive sounds of the external environment, free — like a dreamer — to follow his own desires. The void was filled with his music. “Live only in your art!”, he wrote in a note of 1816. [And in a letter to Amenda, K.50, 1 July 1801: “When I play and compose, my ailment troubles me least; I feel it most in my relations [with others].”] Solomon

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Beethoven’s popularity in 1814 induced Artaria to publish a portrait of him. The pencil drawing had been made by Latronne. Blasius Höfel, a young man of twenty‑two, was commissioned to execute the engraving. Latronne’s drawing was not very good, but Höfel wished instead to produce a very faithful likeness. Höfel had often seen Beethoven at Artaria’s, and when he was sufficiently advanced in his work he asked Beethoven to sit for one or two sessions. Beethoven agreed, and at the first sitting remained fairly still for about five minutes. But at a certain point he leapt up and ran to the piano, where he began to improvise. Höfel, annoyed, did not know what to do, but Beethoven’s servant reassured him, telling him to sit near him, beside the piano, and work as he pleased, for the Master had certainly forgotten him and did not remember that anyone was in the room. Höfel worked as long as he wished and in the end left without Beethoven noticing anything. The result was an excellent work — perhaps the best engraving of Beethoven. Thayer

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This was his last public performance. Already at that time his deafness was such that, in order to make oneself understood by him, it was necessary to shout directly into his ears. Around 1817, as Czerny recounts, his deafness had progressed to the point of preventing him from hearing music at all. Beethoven attempted to remedy his infirmity by using ear‑trumpets beginning in 1816, and by means of a special resonating apparatus placed upon his piano. It then became necessary to write during ordinary conversations in order to make oneself understood: the first of the Conversation Books that have come down to us dates from February 1818.

In the last eight to ten years of his life the deafness became increasingly marked. Although totally deaf in the right ear, he still had the possibility of perceiving some sound. Some of his visitors report that around 1822–1823 it was still possible to make him understand something by shouting loudly into his left ear. But then the deafness became complete. In 1822 he attempted in vain to conduct a revival of Fidelio, and at the première of the Ninth Symphony, on 7 May 1824, he did not even hear the shouts of acclamation from the audience, so that Carolina Unger turned him around so that he might see what was happening in the hall.

As Stephan von Breuning, then a boy, recounts, once in 1825 he went to the Master’s home, where Beethoven was seated at his work table; not being convinced of his deafness, he began pounding on the piano nearby, louder and faster. But the Master, imperturbable, continued his work. And von Breuning recounts that his father shouted when speaking to the Master, but that Beethoven understood him more by gestures than by sounds. Despite this, Holz — who was at the Master’s side in the last period of his life — reported that “Beethoven was able to conduct the rehearsals of his last quartets,” though it is far more probable, as someone has said, that he did so by following the movement of the bows.

[Recollections of Sir Julius Benedict on Beethoven, 1823] Beethoven often passed through the shop of Steiner and Haslinger in the Paternostergässchen. On the morning when I first saw Beethoven, Blahetka, the father of the pianist, drew my attention to a stout, stocky gentleman, with a very red face, small penetrating eyes beneath thick eyebrows, wearing a long frock‑coat that reached almost to his ankles, and who at that moment, around noon, was entering the shop. Blahetka asked me: “Whom do you think that is?” I immediately exclaimed: “It must be Beethoven!” Indeed, despite the redness of his face and his wholly neglected appearance, in his small, piercing eyes there was an expression that probably no painter could reproduce. Thayer

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[Cipriani Potter (1792–1871), pianist and composer, left an account of his meetings with Beethoven] Beethoven asked Potter to show him one of his scores, and Potter handed him an overture. Beethoven glanced through it with such rapidity that Potter thought he had merely cast an eye over it out of politeness, without actually reading anything; he was greatly surprised when Beethoven pointed out several errors. During walks in the countryside around Vienna, Beethoven often stopped, looked around, and expressed the joy that contact with nature gave him.

Once Potter asked him his opinion of one of the most fashionable pianists in Vienna at the time, Moscheles. “Do not speak to me again of scale‑players!” On another occasion he declared that the pianist he liked best was Cramer.

Once, in Mödling, Potter entered Beethoven’s antechamber and heard him improvising in the adjoining room; he was astonished and moved by this marvellous way of playing, which produced unheard‑of harmonies (or disharmonies, owing to his deafness), and delicate, rapid passages. After a while Beethoven opened the door and looked out; seeing Potter there, he appeared irritated and said: “I do not like anyone to listen to me.”

Politics also had its place in their conversation. From the very first day spent together, Beethoven overwhelmed the Austrian government with every possible epithet. He was dominated by the idea of travelling to England. It was his desire to see the House of Commons. “You in England — you have your heads on your shoulders.”

Potter reports that Beethoven spoke Italian more easily than French. He thought Beethoven had retained a fondness for this language thanks to his relations with Salieri and other Italian artists. Their conversation took place mostly in that language. Potter managed to make himself understood by speaking into his own hand, held slightly cupped like a small ear‑trumpet and placed against Beethoven’s ear. Thayer

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[In October 1808 there arrived, from King Jérôme Bonaparte, an invitation to Beethoven to move to Kassel, in Westphalia, as Kapellmeister, with a salary of 600 ducats. We do not possess an exact account of how matters unfolded. But shortly afterwards, thanks to the generosity and enthusiasm for music of three young members of the high nobility — Princes Lobkowitz and Kinsky, and Archduke Rudolph of Austria — Beethoven was granted an annuity of 4000 florins. In a contract, the full text of which is reproduced by Thayer, the aristocrats wrote, among other things:

“Since it has been demonstrated that only one who is as free as possible from worries can devote himself to a single activity and create great and elevated works that ennoble art, the undersigned have decided to place Herr Ludwig van Beethoven in a position in which the necessities of life will not cause him difficulty nor stifle his mighty genius.” “In consideration of the fact that Beethoven undertakes to establish his residence in Vienna or in another city of His Imperial Majesty’s Austrian dominions, and to leave his residence only for the time required by his artistic activity …” “In return, the undersigned undertake to pay this annual salary until Herr van Beethoven receives an appointment that yields him the equivalent of said sum.”

How spontaneously the “undersigned” decided this, or how, and by whom, they were induced to do so, is a matter of conjecture. But it is certain that Beethoven, well advised, played his cards skilfully on this occasion, exploiting the threat of moving elsewhere. Already in 1807, in a letter [E.202] addressed to the “Honourable Royal Imperial Directorate of the Court Theatres,” in which he declared himself willing to accept an “appointment, under suitable conditions,” at the court theatres, establishing his residence there permanently, Beethoven brandished the spectre of his departure from Vienna: “The undersigned, having always taken as the guiding thread of his career not mere profit … but rather the interest of art … has often had to sacrifice to the Muse his profit and his interests.” And here comes the not‑so‑veiled threat: “Nevertheless, works born of such dedication have earned him in distant lands a fame that has secured for him, in various important cities, the most favourable reception commensurate with his talents …”

And then, after declaring that “before carrying out the intention of abandoning a residence dear to him” [that is, Vienna], he could not refuse “to manifest in due form his willingness for such an appointment,” the great negotiator — who, let us not forget, would later offer the same work simultaneously to multiple publishers — listed his conditions.

At the time of the threatened departure for Kassel, there was certainly great activity in noble households and court circles among Beethoven’s supporters. Probably an extremely important role was played by his fascinating friend Countess Maria Erdödy, with whom Beethoven was then living, at Krügerstrasse 1074. Traces of this remain in the Master’s letters. First of all, upon receiving the offer from Kassel, Beethoven hastened — on the advice of his friend Ignaz von Gleichenstein — to inquire what his salary would be. As soon as he received the answer, he hurried, in December 1808, to communicate it to him [letter K.164], and he hastened to spread the false news of his departure, including the amount of the salary, writing about it to Breitkopf & Härtel [7 January 1809, K.175].

And here arises the suspicion that the entire plan was orchestrated by the subtle mind of the fifteen‑year‑old bride who, at twenty, left her husband and who, though sickly and lame, kept in the splendid Vienna a house frequented by artists and powerful men (and probably two lovers at once — the secretary Franz Xaver Brauchle and Master van Beethoven): Countess Erdödy. Indeed, it is the Countess, as the letter K.177 of January 1809 tells us without circumlocution, who “thinks that [you, Ignaz von Gleichenstein] should sketch with her a plan, on the basis of which she may conduct the negotiations in case she should be consulted, as she believes she certainly will be. If you have time this afternoon, the Princess would be pleased to see you.”

And then other letters concerning the contract, a lawyer, and the recommendation that “the document refer entirely and exclusively to the exercise of my art,” specifying clearly that in Westphalia he would not have to “do anything other than conduct the King’s concerts, which are short and not too frequent” [K.180], so that it was “clear that [in Kassel] I shall be able to devote myself completely to the principal aim of my art, to write great works …”

But these were far more than generic recommendations. Thayer has also reproduced a text — presumably drafted by Gleichenstein, though the original has been lost — in which are listed the conditions, so to speak, dictated by Beethoven and his friends for the drafting of the contract that was finally signed on 26 February 1809. The contract left Beethoven free to devote himself to composition; it did not require him to compose a certain number of works, nor to render any kind of service as a musician.

With this Beethoven had achieved — or rather believed he had achieved, since the payment of the annuity was not always regular and its value was drastically reduced by the Finanz‑Patent after the Napoleonic wars — what he aspired to: the greatest freedom and the greatest independence in an age in which musicians were still dependent on a semi‑feudal world, in which protection and personal ties with the powerful and the aristocracy still played a role, even if one no longer descended to the servile position that had been Mozart’s.]

[Dr. Karl von Bursy, physician, met Beethoven in 1816. He was a friend of Amenda.] Contrary to what had happened with Jean Paul, the image of Beethoven entirely confirmed the idea I had formed of him. Small, rather robust, with bristling hair, much of it already grey, a reddish face, eyes of fire, deep and animated by an extraordinary vitality. He complained that his best friends, among them Amenda, were far away, and that he was alone in detestable Vienna. He asked me to speak loudly because of his difficulty in hearing, for which he intended to go to Baden in the summer. He had not been well for some time and had composed nothing new. I asked him about the subject of the libretto of the opera Bacchus, by Berge, which Amenda had sent him. I shouted into his ear that for this he would need time and comfort. “No,” he replied, “I do not work without interruption. I always work on several things at once, now on this, now on that.” He often misunderstood me, and in order to understand me he had to apply the utmost attention.

He told me many things about Vienna and his life here. He was boiling with bile. He was angry with everything and everyone, dissatisfied with everything, and cursed Austria and in particular Vienna. He spoke rapidly and very animatedly. From time to time he struck the table violently with his fist, making the whole room resound. With me he was not reserved and quickly told me about his personal affairs and his family. This is precisely the signum diagnosticum of hypochondria. He complained about the present for many reasons. Art is no longer so far above vulgarity, it is no longer so esteemed, and above all it is no longer so appreciated as far as remuneration is concerned. And then came the laments about the harshness of the times from a financial point of view. Is it credible that even a Beethoven had reasons to complain about this?

To my question why he then remained in Vienna, when everywhere foreign sovereigns would have given him a place near the throne, he replied: “There are ties that bind me to Vienna, but there are here many petty and dirty things. From top to bottom the whole world is miserable. One can no longer trust anyone. If something is not written in black and white, no one respects it anymore. People expect one to work and pay like misers, and never what was agreed upon.”

Beethoven attaches great importance to money, and I must admit that this makes him more human, bringing him much closer to all of us. von Bursy [from Prod’homme]

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… Beethoven received me with a satisfied smile and told me, while he was dressing, that he had worked hard to extract from his illegible score my part, so that I might have it at once and entirely correct. … The other singers also received their parts in the new version. We were all astonished at Beethoven’s working power, for having succeeded in re‑elaborating his work in so short a time. Röckel [from Prod’homme]

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[A very serious psychological problem for Beethoven, as Solomon has well emphasized, arose from the fact that he used every means in the legal battle for the guardianship of Karl. Probably the fact of having separated Karl from his mother (his sister‑in‑law Johanna, widow of his brother Carl) aroused in Beethoven a sense of guilt that was a constant source of disturbance and pain. This psychological attitude appears in a sentence that Fanny Giannattasio, in her diary, reports as spoken by the master: “What will people ever say! They will take me for a tyrant!” And in his notes of 1817 Beethoven cited these words of Schiller: “This one thing alone I understand and feel deeply: life is not the greatest of blessings, but guilt is the greatest of evils.” According to Solomon, it was the anguish caused by his obsessive behaviour toward Johanna that induced Beethoven to write, at the beginning of 1818, in the Tagebuch (nos. 159–160), these lines: “I have done my part, O Lord! Perhaps it might have been possible without giving offence to the widow, but it was not so. Only Thou, Almighty God, canst see into my heart. Thou knowest that I have sacrificed the best for love of my dear Karl: bless my work, bless the widow. Why can I not obey all that my heart suggests to me and help the widow? Thou seest into my heart and knowest how much it pains me to be obliged to make another suffer because of my sorrows for my precious Karl!”]

[August Karl Friedrich von Klöber, painter, 1793–1864, received from a brother‑in‑law, Baron von Skrbensky, the commission to make for him a portrait of Beethoven in 1818. Here is his account.]

It was difficult to make Beethoven’s acquaintance, and especially difficult to persuade him to sit. A friend of Beethoven, the cellist Dont, … suggested that I wait for the summer, the season in which Beethoven usually moved to Mödling, and there he would be in good spirits and easy to approach. Beethoven was notified by letter and informed that I wished to portray him. He had agreed, but on the condition that he should not have to sit too long.

I went to him early in the morning. An elderly housekeeper let me know that he would come shortly, that he was still having breakfast, but that there were books by Goethe and Herder with which to distract myself. At last Beethoven arrived and said: “You want to portray me, but I am very little patient.” He was already so deaf that when I wished to say something, I either had to write it, or he had to put on his ear‑trumpet, unless his famulus (a relative of about twelve years) was present to shout the words into his ear.

Beethoven sat down, and the young boy began to do his exercises at the piano, a gift from England, furnished with a large metal dome. The instrument was about four or five paces behind him, and Beethoven, despite his deafness, corrected his mistakes, making him repeat the passages.

Beethoven always had a serious air, his eyes extremely lively and dreamy, his expression dark and depressed, directed for the most part upward, as I tried to render him in the portrait. He kept his lips closed, but the features around the mouth were not hard. He spoke willingly of the vain arrogance and absurd taste of the Viennese aristocracy, of whom he had nothing good to say, because they did not treat him as was his due and did not understand him sufficiently.

After about three‑quarters of an hour he began to show signs of impatience. I knew from Dont’s advice that it was time to stop, and I simply asked permission to return the next day. Beethoven agreed willingly.

During my walks in Mödling I met Beethoven several times, and it was curious to see him, with his music paper and a pencil in hand, often stopping as if listening, looking up and down, and then writing notes on the paper. Dont had told me that, if I encountered him in such situations, I should pretend not to notice, because this would otherwise embarrass or disturb him. Once, while I was walking in the woods, I saw him ahead of me; leaving the path that separated us, he climbed up a small hill with his wide‑brimmed grey felt hat under his arm; having reached the top, he lay down under a pine tree and looked at the sky for a long time.

Every morning he sat for me for about an hour. When Beethoven saw the portrait he said that he liked very much the arrangement of the hair: the other painters, he said, had always represented him with smooth and orderly hair, as if he were going to take service at court. But he was not like that.

Beethoven’s dwelling in Mödling was very simple, as in general was his character. His clothing consisted of a light‑blue coat with yellow buttons, a white waistcoat, and a neckcloth, as was then customary, but everything was very untidy. His complexion was healthy and robust, the skin slightly pitted by smallpox; the hair had steel‑blue reflections [sic], but was already turning from black to grey. His grey‑blue eyes were extremely lively. When his hair was stirred tumultuously, he truly had something Ossianic or demonic about him. In familiar conversation, however, he assumed a kindly and gentle air, especially when the subject of the conversation pleased him. Every state of mind was immediately reflected on his face.

He also told me that when he went to the opera he placed himself high up because in that way he heard the ensembles better [though others have reported that he placed himself immediately next to the orchestra]. von Klöber [from Prod’homme]

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[The friends and those who had known him since the days of Bonn were well aware that Beethoven was a decidedly eccentric type. This reputation then spread, as the years passed, also in Vienna and beyond Vienna. Certain of his behaviours make the reason quite clear. Beethoven, seated at the tables of taverns with friends, would insult the aristocracy — among whom he nevertheless counted solid protectors — and inveigh against the court and Emperor Franz, whom, as the young Peter Joseph Simrock related, he called a scoundrel who deserved to be hanged, attributing to him all the misfortunes of Austria and in particular the devaluation of the Austrian currency, which had struck him severely. His growing obsession with money was well known to those around him. And he spoke of these matters even with occasional visitors (as also reported by Dr. von Bursy and Cipriani Potter). His suspiciousness was also well known, even toward friends, and it developed almost into delusional persecutory ideas. Public knowledge, too, were his continual disputes with publishers, his fits of irritation toward friends and patrons, and his offensive attitudes toward those who did not share his opinions (see the quarrel over the guardianship of his nephew Karl). At a certain point, because of his manner of dressing and walking in the street, he was pointed at by people and mocked by boys. His eccentricity and emotional instability persisted until his death. As Grillparzer told Thayer, Beethoven was a sort of intolerant man who, when irritated, turned into a wild animal. Thus the opinion spread among the Viennese that he was something more than an eccentric artist — that he was a true madman; and the rumour became public knowledge. And it is perhaps for this reason, and also because he was Beethoven, that his opinions against the court and the emperor were tolerated even by the police. It may seem logical that it was his rivals, if not outright enemies, who spread this reputation: Zelter took care to communicate to Goethe, in a letter of 16 August 1819, some of Beethoven’s oddities. But even friends began to suspect him. For example, in 1816 Charlotte Brunsvik wrote to her sister Therese that she had heard it said that Beethoven had gone mad. Beethoven probably did not fully realise the eccentricity of his behaviour, but he was certainly aware of his reputation. Dr. Wilhelm Christian Müller, a pedagogue very fond of music, a great admirer of Beethoven, who had founded in Bremen a Familienkonzert, whose daughter was an excellent pianist, published his memoirs in the form of letters to friends. In one of these, dated 26 October 1820, he recounts that Beethoven had invited him to visit, recommending him not to let himself be influenced by the judgments of the Viennese who considered him a madman.]

[The rumours circulating about Beethoven in his last years — namely, that he was insane — could only have been fuelled by his appearance and his eccentric behaviour on the most varied occasions. And this description by Schindler explains the reason:] “His head, which was unusually large, was covered with long, bristling hair which, always in disorder, gave him a certain wild air. In taverns and restaurants he was accustomed to haggle with the waiters over the price of every roll. In the street his broad gestures, his loud speaking, and his resounding laughter made Karl ashamed when he found himself walking with him, and people indeed took him for a madman. The street boys laughed behind that stocky and muscular figure, with his low, misshapen top hat, who walked through the streets of Vienna wrapped in a long dark overcoat that reached almost to his ankles, wearing double spectacles or a monocle, and often stopping to scribble incomprehensible notes in his notebook, humming or muttering in an off‑key voice.” Schindler

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[Among Beethoven’s pleasures was that of drinking wine, both while eating and in gatherings with friends in some tavern or together with some visitor. He greatly loved fragrant wines, so much so that in the last weeks of his life he repeatedly asked the publisher Schott of Mainz to send him some Rhine wine. By irony of fate, the bottles arrived two days before his death, on 24 March 1827, and to them refer the last words he uttered: “Pity, pity, too late…”. Thayer painstakingly attempted to calculate how much Beethoven spent on the purchase of wine on the basis of data obtainable from some of his notes relating to household expenses. Certainly Beethoven would drink even a bottle of wine per meal, but he was never seen drunk. However, Holz told Otto Jahn that in his last years Beethoven drank copiously at table and could tolerate a great quantity of wine, but that in company he sometimes became a little tipsy. And as far as we know, Holz too loved to drink, and with him Beethoven perhaps drank even too much!]

[Solomon, whose training also includes a curriculum in psychology, sought to shed light on certain aspects of Beethoven’s personality also in what one would today call a psychodynamic key. For this analysis he begins from certain observations which to me seem relatively banal, as they express behaviour that is, in the end, normal in the social life of an eccentric genius such as Beethoven. Beethoven, Solomon recalls, had a circle of devoted friends, some even servile, but certainly useful and ready to help him in the daily necessities of his disorderly life, and who tolerated his almost continual reproaches. One need only think of Amenda, of Gleichenstein, and of poor Holz. A group of friends, among whom one cannot exclude some motive of interest, was constituted by the protagonists of the Viennese musical‑publishing world; among them were Anton Diabelli, Sigmund Anton Steiner, and Tobias Haslinger. Beethoven was a frequent visitor to Steiner’s music shop where, according to a custom of the time, musicians and writers gathered to speak with him, and where admirers went in the hope of making his personal acquaintance. Franz Schubert often went there to admire him at least from afar. Another group met with Beethoven in his favourite taverns and restaurants to drink and to discuss the most varied subjects — from music to politics, from local gossip to the latest news. Of these gatherings we have vivid accounts from visitors who had gone to Vienna expressly to see the great master up close. One of the liveliest is that of Rochlitz, who described Beethoven’s vivacity, his richness of spirit, his sometimes boisterous cheerfulness, and his gaiety in these gatherings among friends. But another aspect of his character was emphasized by many: the easy tendency to change mood, with sudden fits of anger followed by withdrawal into himself, surliness, and a tendency to isolation. Perhaps, Solomon wrote, this oscillation of behaviour between the melancholic and the manic reflected the depth of the pain he was enduring in the years in which he became aware of the impending deafness — a motive sufficient to induce him to think of ending his life, as we discover by reading the Heiligenstadt Testament. The Testament was written when for several years he had already discovered with terror the weakening of his hearing, and while he was subject to crises of depression and anxiety, as the famous letters to Wegeler and to Amenda testify. “The Heiligenstadt Testament,” writes Solomon, “is the most extraordinary confession in Beethoven’s biography … in which he sought to explain his sufferings and his anguish,” which had led him to solitude and to suicidal thoughts. The Testament, in which Beethoven asks men to understand his suffering and his behaviour, caused by the withdrawal into himself to which he was forced by deafness, has, however, been defined by Solomon as an essay in self‑justification, not always sincere, copied out in fair copy almost with complacency. There is no doubt that certain folds of Beethoven’s character, which he seeks to justify through deafness, existed and had appeared evident since his youthful years, long before the onset of the illness: a tendency to withdraw into himself, to isolation, to react inadequately to daily difficulties (one need only recall the “raptus” of Frau von Breuning); behaviours bordering on aggressiveness toward patrons, teachers, and rivals were everyday occurrences for Beethoven. But perhaps, if we consider what his life had been, how much he relied on his innate gifts, which he felt threatened by deafness, it is best to be simple and to consider the Testament for what it probably is: the outpouring of an anguished man, who had every reason to be so, written when the psychological subtleties of today — necessary corollaries of human suffering — had not yet been invented.]

Beethoven was music teacher to Giulietta Guicciardi (whom he loved and sought to marry). When the composer made her play pieces at the piano he behaved in an extremely severe manner, and especially if the pupil failed to find the right expression, he would very easily fall into anger, throw the scores to the ground, tear them up, and trample on them. From Guicciardi he did not accept monetary payment, although his financial circumstances were anything but flourishing, but only linen, on the pretext that Giulietta had embroidered it by hand. Beethoven also gave lessons to Countess Odescalchi and to Baroness Ertmann. The master did not willingly perform his own compositions but preferred to improvise; at the slightest noise or the slightest inattention of those listening, he would stop and leave. Count Brunsvik, who was an amateur cellist, adored him, as did his sisters Therese and Countess Deym. Jahn [from Thayer]

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Beethoven still stands greatly before us, not only as a musical genius but as a challenge for the further growth of humanity, a symbol of man’s eternal refusal of the negative way of thinking toward life, and of the petty attachment to the small ambitions of limited selfishness. The forces of his personality, which overflowed in coarse excesses and offensive behaviours, were a reflection of those forces transformed at the higher level of his being — the level of his better self, his individuality — into music. Barford

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Beethoven is the first modern Western musician who was conscious of not representing, with his music, a defined social class or a recognizable apparatus of power; the first who had neither a class nor a political apparatus as even a distant point of reference. His love for humanity is foreign to every revolutionary claim and to every sociological aspiration, but the abstraction present in the word “humanity” assumes particular connotations. The Millionen who, in the Schiller ode concluding the Ninth Symphony, join in a universal embrace, arouse in us an irresistible visual suggestion: we see them as masses of the dispossessed and persecuted by the injustice of history. Principe [a]

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The Feeling for Nature

The feeling for nature was always extraordinarily vivid in Beethoven. In every period of his life innumerable anecdotes show him eager to find himself in the countryside. Every summer he left Vienna and settled in the surrounding areas—Heiligenstadt, Nussdorf, Mödling, Baden. And of him is reported the remark, whose authenticity cannot be verified but which does not seem implausible: “I love a tree more than a man.” A letter to Teresa Malfatti (from 1810 [K.245]) confirms Beethoven’s feelings in the presence of nature: he experiences a childlike joy in wandering through forests among trees and rocks, which give back the echo that man desires. The letter to the “Immortal Beloved” attributes to nature a calming effect. In the last sentence of the Heiligenstadt Testament Beethoven expresses the desire to rediscover peace and joy in the bosom of nature.

In a note written by Beethoven on a loose sheet in 1815, he expresses a love for nature carried to the point of exaltation and a plan to settle in the countryside (“It is as if every tree on earth were speaking to me: Holy! Holy! Sweet tranquillity of the forest!”), a plan repeated again in later years. In nature he seeks calm, joy, strength, the strength of resignation, relief from the torment of increasing deafness, moral peace, contact with God.

And the Pastoral Symphony is the expression of the feelings provoked by the contemplation of nature. The feeling for nature is expressed again in a certain number of Beethoven’s Lieder. In Adelaide Op. 46, all the voices of living nature repeat the name of the beloved; melodic and rhythmic figures underline the expression of the words (evocation of waves reflecting the light, golden clouds, the evening breeze, the nightingale, the evening). The fourth of the Six Gellert Lieder Op. 48, Die Ehre Gottes aus der Natur (The Praise of God from Nature), affirms, with a kind of chorale, that the universe glorifies the Eternal. Goethe’s May Song, Op. 52, expresses the expansion of loving feeling in the springtime nature. In the cycle An die ferne Geliebte (To the Distant Beloved) Op. 98, each Lied corresponds to the evocation of a certain nature—indifferent, cheerful, or melancholy. Melodies, rhythms, and tonalities are carefully diversified, even characteristically so, as for example in No. 3, in which the course of the clouds and of the brook charged with greeting the beloved is described.

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And then again Der Wachtelschlag (The Call of the Quail) WoO 129, Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel (Evening Song under the Starry Sky) WoO 150. In these Lieder nature is not sung for its own sake, but it always serves as pretext or accompaniment to the expression of feelings. Boyer

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In the countryside he more easily found tranquillity, isolation, and contact with nature, which he adored in an almost religious manner. “It seems to me almost as if every tree around me were saying: Holy! Holy! Who can ever fully express the ecstasy in the woods?” In a letter of 1810 he writes of desiring to stay in the countryside with “childlike excitement”: “How happy I shall be wandering among bushes and woods, under the trees, on the grass and among the rocks. No one can love the countryside as I love it: for indeed woods, trees, and rocks produce that echo which man wishes to hear.” He had noted in his diary that “calm and freedom are the most precious goods.” Solomon

[Although a lover of life’s pleasures, Beethoven possessed a great strength of will which, apart from certain turbulent periods of his existence—such as that of the legal battle for the guardianship of his nephew—enabled him to devote all his energies to work, releasing all his creative force. He had organized his working day so as to devote many hours to composition. Many times, faced with situations that could disturb or distract him from his work, he fled to the countryside to live solely for his art. Nowhere did his creative imagination have such fervent exaltation as in the rural nature. It was during walks, among the trees, before the clouds or the waters of a brook, that musical ideas would appear to him. Cipriani Potter and Edward Schulz recounted that during their walks Beethoven never tired of admiring and extolling the beauties of nature, but that at times he would stop, withdraw into himself, humming between his teeth. Nature was in a certain sense his nourishment; it seemed that he lived in it. As Riezler recalled, ideas often came to him before the primordial element of water; he began to compose during his morning ablutions, and singing and grumbling he poured basins of water over himself, which ended by flooding the floors: and this was one of the causes of continual disagreements with landlords and other tenants.]

Charles Neate, who knew him in 1815, says he had never seen anyone in love with flowers, clouds, and nature with such intensity: it seemed that he lived in them. “No one on earth can love the countryside as I do,” Beethoven writes; “I love a tree more than a man.” Every day, in Vienna, he walked around the city walls; while in the countryside, from dawn to dusk, he walked alone, without a hat, under sun or rain. “Almighty! In the woods I feel happy; I am happy in the woods, where every tree speaks of Thee; God, what splendour! In these forests, on the hills, there is calm, the calm to serve Thee.” Rolland [a]

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[Many friends and visitors of the master have emphasized in their accounts the love Beethoven felt for the things of nature and in particular for the countryside around Vienna, where he went whenever possible. Immersed in the sounds of nature—the rustling of trees, the murmur of brooks—in the colours and light of the countryside, musical ideas were born in him, upon which he began and carried out, in his mind, a large part of the compositional work. Some of his writings, usually brief notes, also show how much he associated experiences of serenity and union with nature with a personal religious vision and a belief in God that transcended dogmas. “Almighty in the forest! I am blessed, happy, in the forest. In the forest, every tree speaks through Thee. O God! what splendour! In a wooded land like this, on the heights there is peace to serve Him” (a phrase scribbled on a sheet of music paper once in the possession of Joseph Joachim — September 1812?). And at another moment (July 1814): “It is as if every tree in the countryside said: ‘Holy! Holy!’. Ecstasy in the forest! Who can ever express all this?”]

In the last days of summer [1811] I met Beethoven at Teplitz, and found in the man, who is wrongly taken for a wild and unsociable person, an artist of golden heart, a sublime spirit, and a generous friendship. What he had obstinately refused to princes he granted to us generously: to play the piano. I soon became intimate with him, and his noble character and the incessant effluence of a divine breath which I believed I received when near him attracted me so strongly toward him as to overcome the discomfort of conversation with him, due to his deafness. Had I not known, from indisputable testimonies, that Beethoven is the greatest, deepest, and richest of German composers, the sight of him would have told me so without any doubt, even to me who am unskilled in musical matters. He lives only for his art; there is no earthly passion that distracts him from practising it; he is incredibly industrious and fertile.

In his walks in the countryside he seeks wide spaces; in solitary paths among mountains and woods, reconciled in contemplating the great book of nature, he thinks in music and rejoices in his heart. If I speak to you thus it is not so that you may compare him to other musicians, but so that you may consider him a being apart. Ah, could I tell you how this man appeared beautiful, touching, collected, and serious, as if a God were kissing him, while he played for us at the piano celestial variations. [Letter of Varnhagen von Ense, from Prague, 23 December 1811 to Ludwig Uhland.] Prod’homme [b]

“My unfortunate hearing does not torment me here. Truly it is as if every tree in the countryside spoke to me: Holy! Holy! Enchantment in the woods! To rent a house from a peasant. Sweet tranquillity of the woods!” Beethoven, note written on a loose sheet in 1815.