Political and Social Ideas – The Idea of Freedom
[To understand Beethoven’s attitudes, statements, and convictions regarding politics and the society in which he lived, one must briefly recall the political and social situation in Europe at that time, and above all remember that Beethoven lived, for the first twenty‑two years of his life, in Bonn and then in Vienna until his death.
In 1700 Germany consisted of a conglomerate of small sovereignties governed by princes of ecclesiastical or secular extraction which, taken together, still formed the Holy Roman Empire, founded by Charlemagne in the eighth century and, from the 1400s onward, controlled by the House of Habsburg. The Archduchy of Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary were part of it. From 1438 the Emperor of Austria, who governed these regions, also received the title of Holy Roman Emperor. His principal function was to keep local powers in check in order to maintain a proper political balance.
Empress Maria Theresa ascended the Habsburg throne in 1740. With the War of the Austrian Succession, various European sovereigns attempted to contest her accession, but thanks to the loyalty of the Hungarians she was recognized as Empress with the Peace of Aachen in 1748. At the death of her husband, in 1765, her son Joseph II joined her as co‑regent, and from her death onward, from 1780, he reigned alone until 1790.
This period coincided with the development and diffusion of Enlightenment ideas, and Joseph II was a fervent supporter of rationalist Enlightenment. Joseph II imposed reforms that were even radical in matters of liberty and relations with the Church, abolishing ecclesiastical and feudal privileges, and sought to extend them to those parts of the Holy Roman Empire not dominated by the Habsburgs. He concerned himself particularly with welfare and with the centralization of power. His brothers Leopold and Maximilian Franz were at the head of the Italian and Rhenish regions. Under the guidance of Leopold, who would later become Emperor Leopold II, Milan experienced great development; and under Maximilian Franz, Archbishop‑Elector of Cologne, Bonn became a center of artistic life and Enlightenment thought. Joseph II’s reforms, however, ultimately foundered, although the legacy of the unification of the various parts of the empire remained.]
Emperor Leopold II, successor to Joseph II, was a skilled diplomat who sought to maintain a state of peace as far as possible. At his death, which occurred in 1792, he was succeeded by his brother under the name of Franz II. The Austrian Empire had not been excessively disturbed by the French Revolution, although libertarian ideas spread rapidly; but a few weeks after the death of Leopold II, France declared war on the “King of Hungary and Bohemia.” Thus began the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. With them began the disintegration of the Holy Roman Empire. Franz II, who was Holy Roman Emperor, found himself facing an extremely difficult situation which, with Napoleon’s victories culminating in the occupations of Vienna in 1805 and 1809, brought Austria territorial losses and the gravest political and financial difficulties.
In 1806 Franz abandoned the title of Holy Roman Emperor — the empire no longer existed — and, under the name of Franz I, assumed the title of Emperor of Austria. Matters then took a better turn thanks to the victory of the anti‑Napoleonic coalition, of which Franz I was one of the most energetic supporters, aided by Metternich. In 1814, with Napoleon’s defeat and the Congress of Vienna of 1814–1815, Austria resumed its role as the foremost continental power, regaining the territories it had lost. The foundation of a German Confederation, led by Franz I, in which the 300 German principalities were reduced to 39, did not for the moment lead to further political developments. After 1815 Franz I sought to re‑establish the rigid Habsburg style of government, but this required extremely harsh restrictive measures against those who seemed to threaten the established order.
Bonn in 1700 had for centuries been the seat of the Archbishop‑Elector of Cologne and the capital of the electorate. Under Elector Maximilian Friedrich, appointed in 1761, there was a great cultural flowering in theatre, music, and literature. The works of the great figures of the age — Rousseau, Klopstock, Herder, Schiller, Goethe, Montesquieu — and of ancient thinkers such as Plutarch were widely circulated. With the accession of Maximilian Franz as Elector in 1784, the Enlightenment ideas that had long circulated and shaped the intellectual life of the city became even more dominant. The Academy of Bonn was designated a University. Books, Enlightenment ideas, and political newspapers were widespread. Studies in philosophy, law, and jurisprudence flourished; reforms and relations between state and Church were discussed, laying the theoretical foundations for forward‑looking reforms.
There is no doubt, therefore, that Beethoven’s youth unfolded in a stimulating environment, and it is difficult to think that the ideas of liberty and humanity that filled the air did not profoundly influence his social and political conceptions. And certainly the atmosphere remained unchanged at least until 1794, the year of the French invasion.
When Beethoven arrived in Vienna in 1792, the ideas of the enlightened Joseph II had been at least partly repudiated by his successors, Leopold II and Franz II, who probably feared being swept away by the libertarian ideas propagated by the French Revolution. Under Franz II (who, as we have seen, later called himself Franz I of Austria) a repressive regime was established, in which both the commercial classes and the nobility naturally prospered, the latter continuing to live sumptuously amid balls and theatres, in a social context where customs were very relaxed and morality little regarded. It seems that in Vienna at the beginning of the 1800s there were dozens of brothels (and the population was certainly not above 120,000 souls).
One may say that the defeats that led to the occupation of Vienna in 1805 and 1809 were tolerated with indifference by the Viennese, although the financial and food restrictions greatly afflicted those who had to remain in the city, while the nobles, the rich, and the powerful had withdrawn to the countryside.
Things changed with Napoleon’s defeat and with the Congress of Vienna. Austria, to which the victory over the French was due in large part, could raise its head again, regain possession of the lost regions, and guide the new partition of Europe. One may say that, thanks to the Congress, Vienna had returned to being the pleasure‑loving city of former times. The Congress saw the influx of thousands of people, nobles and potentates, who were swept up in a whirl of entertainments in a surreal atmosphere: concerts, balls, banquets, night‑time festivities with fireworks followed one another for months. Beethoven too was swept up in this vortex, and expressed his satisfaction at having been fêted by queens and empresses.
In several of his works Beethoven expressed his moral, social, and political ideas, even though he never stated anywhere what these ideas actually were. The text of the Choral Finale of the Ninth Symphony, derived from Schiller, celebrates the mystical, religious, and fraternal impulse of humanity. Beethoven envisioned a future state that would realize Elysium in the fraternity of humankind. The future state of which Beethoven becomes the herald will rest upon the classical synthesis, upon the reconciliation within man of the conflict between nature and spirit, between instinct and duty. And this emerges clearly from an examination of the text he set to music, from the cuts he made to Schiller’s stanzas, from the importance he assigns to certain phrases and verses by repeating them insistently. Once the Schillerian (and Kantian) synthesis between duty and instinct has been achieved, there will remain on earth only a peaceful and fraternal humanity, whose days will pass in joy — a gift with which the Eternal Father will reward His creatures who have at last discovered the true meaning of existence.
Another work of Beethoven, Fidelio, had already shown this humanity that is morally and politically free, fraternal, and imbued with religious spirit — the same humanity that sings joy in the finale of the Ninth Symphony. The choruses of the prisoners, at the end of the first act and in the finale of the second, express the longing for freedom and the overflowing joy of freedom regained. The desire to liberate her husband that animates Leonore is a passion that goes beyond the person of Florestan and becomes a desire for the liberation of all who are unjustly oppressed.
Political freedom is the goal that Egmont pursues through his heroism. For Beethoven this aspiration to freedom became the essential content of the drama, as is shown by the importance he gives to the final Victory Symphony, which he used to conclude the Overture.
In the Fantasia for Piano, Orchestra, and Chorus Op. 80, the Beethovenian ideal of noble humanity is also clearly expressed. The six‑stanza poem that Beethoven set to music is attributed to Kuffner according to Czerny, to Treitschke according to Nottebohm; but it has also been said that the ideas it expresses were suggested to the poet by Beethoven himself (see Th. Frimmel, Beethoven‑Handbuch, Leipzig 1926, 2 vols.). In any case, like the stanzas of the Ode to Joy in the Ninth Symphony, the poem of the Op. 80 Fantasia evokes a superior humanity that lives in clarity, harmony, and love. The final stanza, repeated several times, says: “Receive then joyfully, you fair souls, the gifts of the beautiful art. When strength and love unite, the grace of God rewards mankind.” The insistence with which Beethoven repeats these words shows the importance he attributed to them. Even if the Romantic conception of the role of art is not entirely absent from the verses sung by the chorus (“when a spirit rises on a wing‑beat, he hears unceasingly a choir of spirits”), the piece points rather to Schiller. The role of art and beauty, which raise the “fair souls” to a superior height and make them worthy of divine favor, corresponds to the role assigned to them by Schiller in certain of his poetic and philosophical works.
Some of Beethoven’s Lieder also sing the aspiration to freedom.
It is in all these works that Beethoven expressed his ideas of social morality; it is difficult to see in him, as some have wished, a republican or a revolutionary. Certainly Beethoven was influenced by the ideas of the revolutionary movement, which had found some echo in the Electorate of Cologne where he grew up. In his correspondence there is only one allusion to a momentary sympathy for the French Revolution. Almost certainly in 1797–1798 Beethoven was in contact with French representatives and with the Ambassador in Vienna, Bernadotte, who is said to have suggested that he celebrate Napoleon with a musical work. Nevertheless, one cannot say that Beethoven was an admirer of the French Revolution. Schindler has told us that the ideal republic Beethoven would have wished to see realized was that of Plato.
The Conversation Books contain only one allusion to Beethoven’s republicanism, when in 1823 Councillor Peters, replying to Beethoven, writes: “You are a revolutionary and a carbonaro.”
The political doctrine dear to Beethoven was that of enlightened and liberal despotism; his positive ideal was Joseph II, the good monarch. The words of the Cantatas for the Death of Joseph II and for the Coronation of Leopold II express a feeling of joy for the liberal spirit of enlightened despotism, to which corresponds a spontaneous and passionate music.
The cantata Der glorreiche Augenblick Op. 136 (The Glorious Moment), of 1814, expresses similar ideas. And the works composed in 1812 for the inauguration of the Theatre of Pest, on poems by Kotzebue — the cantatas König Stephen Op. 117 (King Stephen) and Die Ruinen von Athen Op. 113 (The Ruins of Athens) — express the same concepts.
In all these occasional pieces — mediocre official poems little suited to inspire a musician — the music underscores the ideas of fraternity and loyalty to a paternal prince by means of the simplest procedure: the repetition of words.
To this admiration for the enlightened absolutism of Joseph II, and also for the English constitution because of its liberalism, Beethoven remained faithful until the end of his life. — Boyer
The Conversation Books of the last years contain many references to Beethoven’s political conversations with his friends. They reproach the Austrian state for its petty and meddlesome authoritarianism, the excesses of censorship, the restrictions imposed on citizens in religious matters, the overwhelming power of the police, which had created a truly unbearable regime of espionage. They evoke with sympathy memories of the past age and the good Emperor Joseph II.
If one seeks to summarize the curve of Beethoven’s political ideals, one finds: at the beginning, in the Bonn period, the Aufklärung (Enlightenment); at the beginning of the Viennese period and at the time of his relations with Bernadotte, a period of revolutionary enthusiasm; subsequently, a return to the ideas of his youth concerning Joseph II and enlightened despotism. Alongside this admiration stands that for the English constitution, because of its liberalism.
Nothing indicates that Beethoven or his friends held republican opinions.
One certainly cannot see the expression of revolutionary political ideas in the scenes Beethoven was capable of making toward nobles whom he felt were not treating him as he wished. These were not subversive political ideas but expressions of the sense Beethoven had of his own worth as an artist.
We may therefore place Beethoven among the supporters of liberalism and cosmopolitanism as anticipated by certain thinkers at the end of the eighteenth century.
There is thus in Beethoven’s political‑social ideas no romantic element: Romanticism was in fact sharply opposed to the liberal and cosmopolitan tendencies of the late eighteenth century. — Boyer
[Beethoven lived in Bonn until 1792, at the age of twenty‑two; his first contacts with public life and with the structure of the state therefore occurred in the Rhenish town during those years in which the fundamental lines of character and personality are drawn. Bonn formed part of the Electorate of Cologne, one of the first territories in which the literature and thought of the Aufklärung, the German Enlightenment, spread and made their influence felt. That current of thought led to the progressive weakening and then the dissolution of many of the anachronistic political, social, and religious structures that at the time still dominated, thanks above all to privileges inherited from the feudal era.
In Bonn, the Elector Maximilian Friedrich had an “enlightened” minister, Belderbusch, with whom ecclesiastical reforms were initiated; an academy was founded; and not only industrial activities but also cultural ones were strengthened. When, at his death in 1784, the principality passed to the Habsburg Archduke Maximilian Franz, the ground was fertile for an ever wider diffusion of Enlightenment ideas. This diffusion was further encouraged by the fact that in those very years the Elector’s elder brother, Joseph II, ascended the Habsburg throne. This Austrian emperor, a follower of Voltaire, Frederick the Great, and the Encyclopedists, was indeed an enlightened sovereign, an example of a “good prince,” of great social conscience, who in the decade of his reign, 1780–1790, sought to mitigate the contrast between the upper social classes and the plebeian masses through the emancipation of the serfs. He also put a brake on feudal and ecclesiastical privileges by confiscating Church lands; he initiated tax and judicial reforms; he promoted the spread of education; and he laid the foundations of the first welfare state in Europe. As is easily understood, this program brought him into conflict with the high ecclesiastical hierarchies and much of the nobility.
Under the new Elector Maximilian Franz, Enlightenment ideas became the guiding principles of the electorate’s policy, so that Bonn experienced great cultural openings. The Academy of Bonn was elevated to the rank of University. Courses were held in Kantian philosophy, Greek literature, law, medicine, and gynecology. To give an idea of the atmosphere that prevailed there, it suffices to recall the lectures of Eulogius Schneider, who inflamed the students’ spirits by praising the French Revolution; the sermons of the Carmelite friar Dereser, who propagated ideas for an ecclesiastical reform such as to make him comparable to Luther; and the free circulation of the works not only of ancient thinkers but also of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu, and of the German poets Klopstock, Herder, Schiller, and Goethe.
In 1776 a Masonic lodge had been founded there. When Freemasonry was suppressed in the Austrian Empire in 1781, the Order of the Illuminati was founded in its place — secret and anticlerical — whose banner was the Enlightenment idea of “progress through reason.” This too was suppressed, and so the Illuminati of Bonn founded another association, the Lese‑Gesellschaft (Reading Society). Among its members were Neefe, Nikolaus Simrock, Franz Ries, Eichoff, and Count Waldstein. It was, as is well known, with them that Beethoven formed close ties, and it was from them that he received the commission to compose the Cantata on the Death of Joseph II, WoO 87.]
Beethoven grew up in this atmosphere, welcomed into families of high social standing such as the Breunings and the Wegelers, where he was regarded as one of the household; he came into contact with, and was appreciated by, the cultural world of Bonn. We have no information suggesting that his behaviour during the Bonn years differed from that of any other young court musician — an obedient servant of the Elector, to whom he owed his position in the musical chapel and thus an improvement in the family’s precarious financial situation, shaken by his father’s alcoholism.
Once he arrived in Vienna, Beethoven must have realised fully that the formalities, privileges, and injustices inherited from the eighteenth century were still deeply rooted in the aristocracy and in the social organisation, with the attendant pomp and servility. After the abolition, under Emperor Franz II, of many of Joseph II’s reforms, the restoration of a police‑state regime, and the flourishing of hostility toward the libertarian ideas born of the French Revolution, matters — at least psychologically — must have become even worse for him. His invectives against the government, arbitrary and servile justice, police harassment, the bureaucracy that stifled every individual initiative, the privileges of a degenerate aristocracy, his rebellions and refusals, are thus at least partly explained. He showered the Emperor, Vienna, and the Viennese with every possible insult. Yet one is tempted to ask whether this reaction was triggered solely by ideal motives, or also by the fact that, after the wars and the French occupations, the Austrian bankruptcy and the ensuing devaluation devastated not only the fortunes of his aristocratic patrons but also his own income, which depended largely on them. Nor should one forget that in his early Viennese years he was certainly happy with the protection and assistance of the aristocracy, and that in the legal battle for the guardianship of his nephew he willingly accepted the judgment of the court of nobles, where he could count on the support of his aristocratic backers.
The early experiences in Bonn, under an “enlightened” political regime, would serve him throughout his life as an effective antidote against the extremist doctrines of the French revolutionaries. — M. Cooper
If Beethoven remained to the end a man of the eighteenth century, both in his emotional reactions and in his opinions, it is because his views and character had already been formed when he became aware of the social and political evils of the ancien régime. — M. Cooper
As M. Cooper has written, “Beethoven had nothing to object to kings, until he believed himself defrauded of his savings by Francis I and learned that the monarch distrusted any kind of genius and wanted as subjects only useful men.” To be objective, his attitude toward monarchs was almost always one of deference, especially when they flattered him. Proof of this is found in his behaviour and comments during the Congress of Vienna, and in what occurred with Louis XVIII, King of France, who agreed to be a subscriber — together with other monarchs and princes — to the Missa Solemnis. On that occasion he also presented the composer with a gold medal. Beethoven felt greatly honoured and immediately wrote to J. K. Bernard, editor‑in‑chief of the Wiener Zeitung, asking him to publish the news: “Schindler will show you the gift from the King of France. You will see that, both for my honour and for that of the King, it is worth making public. It is evident that His Majesty did not merely wish to get rid of me, since he paid for his copy. I find in this a generous King and a man of delicate sentiments.” [K.1150, April 1823]
Beethoven always displayed great contempt for the Viennese, although he frequented only the higher strata of the population. In 1794, after the first Austrian defeats against the French, he wrote: “It is very hot here; and the Viennese fear they will no longer be able to have ice‑cream; the winter was so mild that ice is scarce. Several important people have been arrested; it was said that a revolution might break out. But I believe that the Austrians, as long as they have dark beer and sausages, will not revolt.” (Letter to N. Simrock, 2 August 1794, K.11). He considered the Viennese “unworthy of being looked down upon by the Emperor”, defining them with an irreverent pun as “Österreicher = Eselreicher” (Austrians = “Empire of asses”).
His relations with people of lower social rank almost make one doubt whether, deep in his soul, sentiments of love for humanity or respect for human dignity truly resided. The treatment he reserved for those employed in domestic tasks evokes an atmosphere verging on feudal in the relations between master and servant. According to him, all servants were infamous and wicked scoundrels, champions of “impudence, malice, and vulgarity” (K.827), and ought to be treated like beasts, for they understood no reasoning. We have ample proof of this in his letters. It suffices to read those addressed to his friend Nannette Streicher in January 1818 to grasp the atmosphere of suspicion and contempt for human dignity that the Master harboured toward his maids. In one letter of January 1818, thanking her for continuing to assist him in household matters, he expresses his suspicion that the women in the house were stealing, writing: “You can easily see in the kitchen book whether I have eaten at home alone or with others, or nothing at all. I do not consider N. entirely honest,” and continued, “moreover she is a terrible beast; I now see clearly that certain people must be educated not with affection but with fear.” (K.826).
He often showered the servants with insults and wrote of them: “As for the servants, there is but one opinion about their immorality, to which alone all the remaining misfortunes here are due.” (Letter to Nannette Streicher, January 1818, K.827). At times he even hurled objects and eggs at them, and struck them. “Moreover I have good reason to believe that N[any] or the other continues to spy at your house… Yesterday morning the diabolical tricks began again. I cut it short and hurled my heavy bed‑chair at B[aberl], after which I felt calm the whole day… As for N.’s honesty, it does not seem to me very pronounced.” (Letter K.826, January 1818). And what are we to think of the fact that the Master — who so vehemently railed against Metternich’s police‑state (mocked repeatedly in the Conversation Books) — urged his friend Streicher to instruct the newly hired kitchen girl so that she would side with him rather than with the housekeeper?
Beethoven, conscious as he was of his own superiority, repeatedly declared himself an aristocrat by virtue of his work as an artist, which raised him above all — including the aristocrats by birth — and therefore not belonging to the plebeian mass. “I do not belong, through my activity [as an artist], to this plebeian mass… The bourgeois — and I have happened to be one of them — is destined to remain excluded from the higher classes of society.” (Conversation Books, January–February 1820, VI–VII)
Another example of Beethoven’s impatience with social rules, and of his obedience to them for reasons one might call expedient, is provided by his behaviour toward his pupil, Archduke Rudolph. Rudolph was the younger brother of the Emperor and nephew of the Prince‑Elector of Bonn, Maximilian Friedrich. He became Beethoven’s pupil in composition. Let us not forget that Rudolph was one of the three signatories of the 1809 annuity contract in Beethoven’s favour, and that on many occasions he intervened to assist him. Beethoven had undertaken to give him composition lessons whenever he was in Vienna. During the roughly twenty years of this relationship, lessons were often cancelled due to alleged (and real) ailments of the Master or other concerns and engagements. The letters sometimes reveal a thinly veiled irritation at the time taken away from composition; and on the other hand Beethoven never wished to submit to the rules of court etiquette (and the Archduke absolved him for this!), proudly declaring: “I have never been a courtier, I am not one now, and I shall never succeed in being one.” Yet, when one reads the letters, one is struck by how they overflow with phrases such as: “My state of health is all the more painful to me in that I am unable to show Your Imperial Highness all my zeal and desire to serve you” [E.1107]; “… as soon as Your I.H. is again in town, I place myself immediately at Your I.H.’s disposal” [K.781]; “I am unfortunately obliged to live very far away, but this will not prevent me from rejoicing as soon as possible in being able to present my services to you.” [K.799]. And on 1 January 1819, thanking the Archduke for sending him the manuscript of his “40 Variations on the theme O Hoffnung” (a theme given to him by Beethoven), he writes: “I do not dare express, either by voice or in writing, my thanks for this astonishing favour with which I have been honoured, for I stand far too low to reciprocate it, however ardently I may wish and desire to do so.” [K.881] — and one is tempted to say: Ludwig, hypocritical flatterer, and on the subject of variations, no less! This language approaches that of the obsequious servants of the eighteenth century, and one is led to wonder where the rebellious and independent artist has gone.
His participation in life also included political passion: for him, freedom had to be conquered, and he followed with fervour those events that seemed to him directed toward promoting and realising it. He gave free rein to hostile sentiments toward a reactionary and police‑dominated government: he was, as Schindler reports, in constant revolt against the higher authorities, the laws, and the ordinances. “Czerny has told me,” Bernard reports to Beethoven, “that Abbot Gelinek has spoken ill of you: he said that you are a second Sand (the student who on 23 March 1819 had killed Kotzebue in Mannheim), that you speak against the Emperor, against the Archduke, against the Ministers, that you will end on the gallows.” — Magnani
For Beethoven, music assumes a social function. It is the expression of new spiritual values destined to act upon human realities. — Magnani
Throughout his life Beethoven would be firmly guided by a conscious faith in the principles of political freedom, by the pursuit of personal perfection and moral conduct. His devotion to art and beauty, and his acceptance of the key concepts of the Enlightenment (virtue, reason, liberty, progress, universal brotherhood) were constant. — Solomon
He detested tyranny, but he never truly experienced it, because in Bonn he had not encountered it, and in Vienna his noble patrons protected him. — M. Cooper
Until the end of his life Beethoven continued to draw inspiration from the eighteenth‑century ideals of human dignity, tolerance, and humanity. He had not the slightest notion of true democracy and was never an egalitarian. His ideal was what he knew (or imagined) of the English constitution. — M. Cooper
[Despite certain of his statements, which bear the flavour of reactions against those who occasionally tried to impose their will upon him — one need only recall his refusals to play to entertain guests in the houses of his patrons —] Beethoven had little to object to aristocrats as such, being inclined to count himself among them by virtue of his artistic talent; his attitude changed when nobles claimed their privileges on the basis of birth or when they humiliated him. In all this he was a man of the Enlightenment rather than of the French Revolution; an admirer of benevolent despotism, such as that of Joseph II, rather than a republican; an enemy of feudal privileges and an advocate of careers open to talent. — M. Cooper
The utopian currents of the eighteenth century were centred on the idea of the “good prince,” an enlightened hero capable of resolving the problems inherent in the relationship between masters and servants. [And the “good prince” who held power had to know how to use it wisely.] … Confidence in the idea of an aristocratic redeemer would remain, until the end, a key element of Beethoven’s creed. The figure of a saving prince enters Beethoven’s music with the cantata composed in 1790 for the funeral celebrations of Joseph II, the enlightened Aufklärer emperor [and with the figure of Don Fernando in Fidelio]. [The Cantata] had been commissioned by the Lese‑Gesellschaft, founded in Bonn in 1787 by members of the Order of the Illuminati. Later, Beethoven’s veneration for ideal enlightened rulers — whether kings, princes, or first consuls — would be countered by a process of disillusionment toward them. — Solomon
Beethoven had been inflamed with enthusiasm for Napoleon, believing he saw in him the man who could bring universal freedom and happiness to the world. — Schindler
[Beethoven maintained an ambivalent attitude even toward certain political events. Some have wished to see him as a sympathiser of the ideas brought by the French Revolution, a champion of liberty, equality, and fraternity. And certain of his statements, even musical ones, may arouse such suspicions. But in reality Beethoven was a staunch supporter of liberty, not at all of equality and fraternity. The desire, sung in the Ninth, to unite the world in a single embrace, bringing together distant peoples, was to be realised above all through art. But he never ceased to demonstrate his contempt for the lower classes, in deeds (as seen in his relations with servants) or in words: “The bourgeois — and I have happened to be one of them — is destined to remain excluded from the higher classes of society” [Conversation Books, February 1820, Q.vii 48a‑b]. At bottom he was a classist: one belonged to the higher class not by birth but by nobility of soul or by merit in one’s works, including artistic ones — and thus he belonged to it. Although interested in politics, as one gathers from the Conversation Books, he never expressed his political opinions except in occasional remarks in private conversation. It is difficult to understand what his ideas truly were. Certainly, in his political creed the pre‑eminent place was always held by the “good prince” of Enlightenment extraction. It is difficult to know how much he understood of English democratic liberties, and whether his admiration for the English was truly based on real knowledge. He was certainly an opponent of every form of tyranny. He always spoke loudly, even when railing against the rigid Habsburg censorship, despite warnings to be cautious: “Quiet! The walls have ears!” his nephew Karl once wrote to him. And, on the other hand, two of his greatest masterpieces, Fidelio and Egmont, are hymns to freedom. The best proof of this was certainly the explosion of anger when he learned, in 1804, that Napoleon had proclaimed himself emperor, when — as Ries, who was present, tells us — he exclaimed: “He is like all the others… he will trample on every human right… and become a tyrant.” But here too Beethoven’s ambivalence emerges. After the events of 1804 and his indignation at the subsequent wars, he became Francophobic. Yet he remained an admirer of Napoleon. Proof of this is the fact that in 1809, the year that saw the bombardment and second entry of the French into Vienna, Beethoven received Baron de Trémont amicably, despite his being a member of the Napoleonic Council of State. With the Baron he spoke of Napoleon’s greatness, whom he admired for having risen so high by his own forces. And in his book Solomon reports the astonishing discovery of a note in Beethoven’s hand, dated 8 October 1810: “The Mass in C major Op. 86 might perhaps be dedicated to Napoleon!” Further confirmation of this never‑extinguished admiration is found in notes prepared by Czerny for Otto Jahn (studied by Bottegal). Czerny recounts: “In 1824, in Baden, I went to a café with Beethoven. We found many newspapers there. In one of them I read the announcement of Walter Scott’s ‘Life of Napoleon’ and showed it to Beethoven. ‘Napoleon,’ he exclaimed, ‘some time ago I could not stand him; now I think quite differently.’” And it is also said that, upon hearing the news of Napoleon’s death on 5 May 1821, Beethoven remarked: “I have already composed the music suitable for this catastrophe.”]
[One question that is difficult to answer concerns Beethoven’s patriotic feelings toward his adopted homeland, Habsburg Austria. There is no doubt that he often expressed himself — especially after 1815 — against the government, the repressive measures instituted, against Vienna and the Viennese. But it is equally true that he had admired the enlightened emperor Joseph II, and that his patriotic sentiment led him to compose nationalistic songs. These are anti‑French in inspiration, such as the Farewell Song to the Citizens of Vienna WoO 121 and the War Song of the Austrians WoO 122, dating from 1796–1797. Years later, in 1813–1814, came celebratory works marking Napoleon’s defeat: Wellington’s Victory, or the Battle of Vittoria Op. 91, and The Glorious Moment Op. 136.]
Beethoven’s position in relation to his time is completely different from that of his predecessors, who depended — at times treated almost like employees — like Bach and Haydn, on the authorities who paid them, or like Mozart who, apart from sporadic rebellions, never escaped the condition of the “poor musician” living on the grace of the rich. In the same city and the same society, no one dared give orders to Beethoven. When he accepted commissions, he executed them as and when it pleased him, not the commissioner. He was the first who, except for rare exceptions, decided on his own what he wished to write, and to live (with difficulty) on his earnings in the free market. — Riezler
In a few years (1792–1795) Beethoven established himself as an independent artist, a free impresario of himself, in accordance with the new social role of the musician. He had been a young organist in the service of the Elector of Cologne, who had allowed himself to be persuaded to grant him leave to spend some time in Vienna, when, in 1794, the troops of republican France overthrew the Electorate of Cologne together with the attached musical chapel of Bonn. Having lost his post, Beethoven set about providing for himself through work distributed among the principal Viennese publishers. Around 1810 Beethoven was regarded as the foremost musician in Europe. Yet in Beethoven’s career a dominant place still belonged to the institution of patronage: his economic independence was supported by Prince Carl von Lichnowsky, Counts Zmeskall, Gleichenstein, and Rasumovsky, Archduke Rudolph, brother of Emperor Leopold II, and Princes Franz Joseph Lobkowitz and Ferdinand Kinsky. The last three, at the beginning of 1809, guaranteed the composer an annual income of 4,000 florins on the sole condition that he remain in Vienna and write whatever music he pleased. In music, such a form of recognition had no precedent. The old Kapellmeister had been a servant of greater or lesser rank; he had a series of agreed‑upon duties: to compose or direct every kind of music required by the public and private life of the chapel; to maintain discipline among the musical personnel; to purchase instruments; to supervise the musical library. The ownership of his works did not belong to the author, but to the lord. — Pestelli
The prophetic idea of the founding of the kingdom of God on earth among men of good will, already envisaged by Kant, Beethoven had solemnly celebrated in the Finale of the Ninth Symphony, where the kingdom of human fraternity is exalted — the victory of man over what oppresses him physically and morally, his victory over political tyranny and over the tyranny of the passions, his freedom. — Magnani
[Another episode that highlights certain inclinations of Beethoven — inclinations that today we would call socialist — has been well illustrated by Solomon in his essay “Beethoven’s Magazin der Kunst” [Su Beethoven. Musica. Mito. Psicoanalisi. Utopia, Einaudi, Turin 1998, pp. 225–239]. Let us give a brief summary of it. In 1801 (letter of 15 January [K.43]) Beethoven proposed to Hoffmeister, for the benefit of artists, a form of life almost akin to a socialist community: “There ought to exist in the world a market of art (Magazin der Kunst) where the artist should bring his works and take what he needs. But as things now stand one must be half a businessman.”]
The ideal of a social system founded upon the community of goods has ancient roots, going back even to the time of Sparta. But it was Thomas More who first described, in 1516, a utopian distributive system in which all citizens brought the fruits of their labour to a common storehouse, from which the heads of families drew, without payment, what was necessary for their household needs.
The probable source of Beethoven’s idea was the Code de la nature (Paris 1775), written by Abbé Morelly but attributed to Diderot, one of whose laws reads: “Every citizen shall contribute, for his part, to the public good according to his strength, talent, and age.” The French critic and social moralist Gabriel Bonnot de Mably (1709–1785) included a hypothesis similar to that of Morelly in his De la Législation, ou Principes des lois (Amsterdam 1776): “I see everywhere public storehouses containing the wealth of the republic; the magistrates distribute to each family what is necessary for living.”
Naturally, the projects of Morelly and Mably were taken up again during the French Revolution, when François Noël (Gracchus) Babeuf (1760–1797) ardently advocated them in his speeches and writings: “All will work for a common storehouse, and every citizen will receive his share of the collective product of society.” Babeuf elaborated this doctrine, publishing it in his Manifeste des Plébéiens in November 1795. This communitarian doctrine inflamed minds. From it was born the Conspiration pour l’Égalité, and Babeuf led the armed insurrection against the Directory. Arrested with his followers in 1796, tried from 20 February 1797 before the High Court of Justice, declared guilty on 24 May 1797 despite a three‑day self‑defence speech, he was condemned to death.
These are the principal antecedents of the idea contained in Beethoven’s letter to Hoffmeister. We do not know whether they were known to Beethoven. It is certain, however, that these works — beginning with More’s Utopia — appeared in many editions between 1704 and 1798. Like many natives of the Rhenish region, Beethoven knew French fairly well. It is not impossible that in his last years in Bonn he became acquainted with such ideas at the Lesegesellschaft and at the university, where, let us not forget, the revolutionary Eulogius Schneider lectured.
More difficult, says Solomon, is the possibility that he might have encountered them in Vienna, where such writings — advocating the abolition of private property — would hardly have escaped Viennese censorship, although censorship could do little against the flow of ideas transmitted orally by travellers coming from Paris and the Rhineland.
It seems difficult, Solomon says, to doubt that the conception of the Magazin der Kunst did not descend from the utopian ideas of Morelly, Mably, and Babeuf: Beethoven, who as we know aspired to obtain a position that would give him financial security, was probably fascinated by the possibility of finding in such an organisation the solution to his financial problems.
[Proof that Beethoven’s infatuation with the Revolution and with Napoleon was progressively waning came in 1802, when Hoffmeister proposed to Beethoven, at the request of a certain Countess Kielmansegge, that he compose a “programmatic” sonata on the French Revolution. The musician’s reply, dated 8 April 1802 [K.59], written with his usual rough frankness, shows how disillusioned he had become with Napoleon because of the Concordat with the Vatican of July 1801 which, like a slap in the face to free‑thinkers, re‑established Catholic worship in France: “The devil take you all, my good sirs — to propose that I compose such a sonata? At the time of revolutionary fever such a thing might have been possible, but now that everything seeks to run again in the old tracks, that Bonaparte has concluded the Concordat with the Pope — such a sonata? If it were still a Mass pro Sancta Maria for three voices [in Latin and Italian in the text] or a Vespers and so on, then I would at once take the brush in hand and with half‑pound notes write a Credo in unum — but good God, such a sonata in these Christian times that are beginning again — oh oh — leave me out — for nothing will come of it.” If ever we wanted another example of Beethoven’s ambivalence, we need only remember that the first surviving sketches for the Eroica date from the summer of 1802.
Another episode deserves to be recalled in this connection. As is well known, from May to November 1809 Vienna was once again occupied by the French. During that period Napoleon married Maria Luisa of Habsburg. Beethoven did not take part in the festivities for which the best Viennese musicians composed works and performed. Beethoven’s fame at that time was already such that, had he wished, he could easily have found a way to present his works at court. Concerning this period, it is curious to note that on 8 September, the day after Napoleon’s departure from Vienna, Beethoven conducted the Eroica in a benefit concert for the relief fund for impoverished artists. Solomon has wondered whether the date was chosen by Beethoven out of pure sarcasm. This seems to me unlikely, since the dates of concerts were even then fixed well in advance.]
In the last decade of the eighteenth century, Habsburg persecution of dissenters, as well as repressive censorship, encouraged many Viennese radicals to cultivate discretion and even conformity. Prudence is the evident imperative in Beethoven’s letter to Simrock of 2 August 1794 [A.12], in which he informed him of the arrest of “various important persons” and warned him: “Do not dare raise your voice here or the police will arrest you.” For him, as for many young idealists of the time, the impulse toward rebellion was diverted from politics to art. Beethoven spent these years pursuing the single aim of transforming music in ways no less revolutionary — and perhaps more enduring — than those by which political radicals had been able to transform society. That Beethoven’s radicalism was not anchored to any specific and ephemeral political programme may have been its strength.
Beethoven’s attraction to France and to Bonaparte, however ambiguous and contradictory, suggests that the young composer too aspired to test himself in the arena of history: it was only in the years of maturity that he came to rejoice that the realm suited to him was “the realm of the mind,” or, as he expressed it on another occasion, that his “kingdom” was “in the air.” — Solomon
Beethoven never abandoned his fundamental trust in the values of the Enlightenment: altruistic love, reason, and humanitarian ideals. — Solomon
Beethoven cannot be called a philosopher, for his meditations lacked any systematic coherence and any crowning synthesis. But it is beyond doubt that he loved ideas deeply. His livres de chevet included the Kantian Critiques, Schelling’s Philosophy of Nature and Transcendental Idealism, the Imitation of Christ, and the works of certain poets who, beyond purely aesthetic intent, addressed problems of an absolute and eternal nature — Klopstock, Shakespeare, Goethe, Novalis. But Beethoven’s greatest interest was perhaps directed toward the thought of classical antiquity, and in particular toward the Stoic movement. In the eyes of the great master, Stoicism belonged to that general conception of the ancient world — understood as the seat of a superior humanity and as the measure of broader moral dimensions — which the French Revolution was reviving from earlier epochs. Beyond this, the ensemble of doctrines born under the portico of the Athenian Academy corresponded to a personal aspect of him: first, his way of embracing moral truth; then that animistic conception of the Universe, that placing of God as the fire that animates it, that identifying in our spirit a spark of the same flame. — Confalonieri
[In 1801 (letter of 15 January [E.54]) Beethoven proposed to Hoffmeister a form of practical socialism that was to be extended to all artists: “There ought to exist in the world a market of art (Magazin der Kunst) where the artist should bring only his works and take the money he needs. But as things now stand, an artist is forced to be also, in a certain sense, a businessman.” In this way all artists would be freed from the need to have protectors and patrons and from struggling in the marketplace to obtain the highest return for their works. In a text intended for inclusion in an edition of his works, Beethoven maintained and sought “to demonstrate that the human mind cannot be sold like coffee beans or like a piece of cheese,” because “the human mind in itself is not a commodity for sale.”
But what were the reasons why Beethoven — who, despite his complaints, enjoyed a high commercial value that brought him, on the whole, considerable income — wished the artist to be freed from purely commercial constraints? As Solomon writes, and I summarise here some of his ideas, underlying this was Beethoven’s adherence to the ideals of fraternity and of political, artistic, religious, and intellectual freedom. Ideals to which he remained faithful throughout his life: from the time he set to music in Bonn Wer ist ein freier Mann, WoO 117 (“Who is a free man”), to the time he wrote Schiller’s words “To love freedom above all else” in a friend’s album, up to his declaration to Archduke Rudolph in 1819: “Freedom, progress — these are the main aims in art as in our entire universe.”
Beethoven, Solomon writes, did not arrive by chance at the prisoners’ choruses of Fidelio, nor at the culminating monologue of Egmont and its instrumental apotheosis. Ideas of brotherhood recur frequently in Beethoven’s work: from the Joseph Cantata to the Fantasia Op. 80 to the choral An die Freude in the Ninth Symphony.
Beethoven, however, was never an egalitarian in the sense intended by the ideals of the French Revolution. He considered servants “inferior people,” a “bestial rabble,” Solomon recalls. He deemed the ordinary “citizen” unworthy of his company, preferring the companionship and social condition of “higher men.” One may say that Beethoven’s egalitarianism did not extend much beyond his “brothers in Apollo,” his dearest friends — whom, as his letters show, he sometimes scolded without reason — or those few nobles he considered worthy. He even regarded as merely useful “instruments” men such as Zmeskall and Schuppanzigh, to whom he owed much, and of whom he said they could never truly be part of his life [letter K.50, E.67].
Another proof of this attitude is no. 45 of the Tagebuch: “Do not let people outwardly notice the contempt they deserve, for one cannot know whether one may need them.” At the time when, carried by the emotional wave of the French Revolution, Babeuf was coining the fundamental slogans of his doctrine of equality — “The aim of the revolution is to destroy inequality and to restore the common good” — Beethoven was writing to his friend Zmeskall: “Strength is the morality of men who distinguish themselves from others, and it is also mine.” [letter K.24].
And Solomon concludes that it is difficult to distinguish the ideological motivations from the personal ones underlying Beethoven’s proposal of the Magazin der Kunst. Perhaps at its base lay Beethoven’s profound personal interest in creating conditions that would allow him, in the fullest possible way, to satisfy his altruistic impulses — in his own music.] — from Solomon