Beethoven’s Judgments on Other Musicians
Around the middle of February 1827 (Beethoven was by then gravely ill and no longer rose from his bed), the harp virtuoso Stumpff had the complete works of Handel sent to him as a gift, which Beethoven had long wished to possess. When I entered his room he pointed out to me, with eyes sparkling with happiness, the volumes lying on one of the two pianos. “Look,” he said, “they were given to me today. I had desired them for such a long time, for Handel is the greatest of composers, and from him I can still learn.” And in the afternoon, when I returned, he again began to speak of Handel’s greatness, the most classical and the most profound of composers. von Breuning
At every moment I have counted myself among the greatest admirers of Mozart, and I shall remain so until my last breath. Beethoven’s letter to Abbé M. Stadler, 6 February 1826 [K.1378]
The composers of the past are doubly useful to us; in them [there is] a true artistic value (among them, however, only the German Handel and Sebastian Bach possessed genius). Beethoven’s letter to Archduke Rudolph, 29 July 1819 [K.900]
[Beethoven rarely expressed judgments on other composers or comments on their works, with the exception of the words of admiration—reported by many, and at times written in his letters—which he occasionally bestowed upon Mozart, Bach, Handel, and Cherubini. As one reads in Thayer, in 1823 Weber was in Vienna for the performance of Euryanthe, accompanied by one of his pupils, Sir Julius Benedict. In his recollections, written for Thayer, Benedict remembered that at that time Beethoven lived in Baden but came to Vienna once a week. One morning, Benedict recounts, Blahetka pointed out Beethoven to him: a robust man, of short stature, with a reddish face, whose small, penetrating eyes beneath thick eyebrows struck him by their expression—Benedict says—of sublimity and melancholy at the same time, an expression that no painter could have rendered. Benedict did not meet Beethoven that morning, but later went to visit him together with Steiner, who introduced him as a pupil of Weber. The morning after the première of Euryanthe, while the shop of Steiner and Haslinger was full of musicians and men of letters, Beethoven arrived and asked how the performance had gone; and upon hearing that it had been a triumph, he said, “I am glad of it, I am glad of it.”]
Among pianists, only one was praised by him as an excellent performer: Cramer (Johann Baptist, 1771–1858, born in Mannheim), an eminent pianist and pedagogue. He wrote an incredible quantity of compositions for piano, today no longer performed; but his famous Studies have remained a milestone of pianistic technique and pedagogy, still used for piano study today. Of all the others he had no high opinion. Ries
That you wish to publish the works of Sebastian Bach is something that warms my heart, which beats wholly for the sublime and exalted art of him who was the true father of harmony. Beethoven’s letter to F. A. Hoffmeister, January 1801 [K.43]
When Weber in Vienna had completed his opera Euryanthe, Count Moritz Lichnowsky brought the score to Beethoven to submit it to him. After leafing through it, Beethoven said: “Herr Weber has taken too much trouble with it.” On another occasion, after hearing an overture by Weber, he said: “Hm! Barely stitched together.” [A play on words based on the fact that Weber in German means “weaver”.] Czerny
Mozart’s younger son, Franz Xaver Wolfgang, known as Wolfgang Amadeus junior (1791–1844), was a virtuoso pianist of respectable ability, a teacher, and a composer. According to Beethoven, he was “very vain.” Gruber
Beethoven manifested throughout his life a profound respect for Mozart, finding in particular fine words for The Magic Flute and for the Requiem. Gruber
… I consider your works superior to all other works for the stage … I remain enchanted every time I hear a new work of yours, and I take more interest in it than in my own: in short, I honour and love you. … Among my contemporaries you will always remain the one whom I esteem the most. If you wish to give me the greatest pleasure, it would be that you write me a few lines, which would greatly raise my spirits. Art unites all, especially true artists; and perhaps you will deign [in French] to number me among them. Beethoven’s letter to L. Cherubini, 15 March 1823 [K.1086] The letter was written to ask Cherubini to support the petition addressed to the King of France to contribute to the subscription for the Missa Solemnis.
Czerny recalled that once Beethoven showed him the score of Mozart’s fifth quartet, the one in A minor, and said: “This indeed is a work of art!” Thayer
Of Himmel (Friedrich Himmel, 1765–1814, German pianist and composer, who had a great career as a concert artist throughout Europe; he became director of the Court Chapel in Berlin in 1795; author of many Singspiele), Beethoven said that he possessed a truly agreeable talent, and that his playing was elegant and pleasant, nothing more. One day, when they were together, Himmel was seized by the desire to hear Beethoven improvise, which he did. Beethoven then insisted that Himmel do likewise. He had been playing for some time when Beethoven exclaimed: “And when does he begin to take it seriously?” Himmel, who believed he had played admirably up to that moment, sprang to his feet, and between the two there was an exchange of discourteous remarks. Beethoven later said to me: “I thought Himmel had merely been prelude‑playing.” Ries
It appears that Haydn wished Beethoven to write “pupil of Haydn” on the score of the Trios Op. 1 for violin, violoncello, and piano, but that Beethoven refused. “He gave me lessons,” he declared, “but I learned nothing from him.” [Which does not prevent him from having later dedicated to Haydn the three Sonatas Op. 2.] Herriot
Illuminated, Most Benign Prince! Since I am told that You, my Prince, have inquired about the Mass which You commissioned me to compose for You [in C major, Op. 86], I take the liberty of announcing to You, Illustrious Prince, that [You shall receive it] at the latest by the 20th of August … I must further add that the Mass will be delivered to You with great trepidation, for You, Illustrious Prince, are accustomed to having performed for You the inimitable masterpieces of the great Haydn [but in the manuscript one reads “Haiden”, sic], executed expressly for You. Illustrious, Most Benign Prince! – With the highest esteem of Your most devoted and most humble Ludwig van Beethoven Beethoven’s letter to Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, Baden, 26 July 1807 [K.140]
Concerning the Seventh Symphony, Carl Maria von Weber declared that by then the author was ripe for the madhouse. In 1821, after the performance in Berlin of Der Freischütz, Beethoven had the score sent to him and studied it thoroughly. With his friends he said: “That delicate little fellow (for Weber limped and died in 1826 at only forty years of age), I would never have expected so much from him! Now Weber must write operas, nothing but operas, one after another, and without chiselling them too much!” But, according to the English musician Edward Schultz, it seems that on another occasion, when he was questioned about Der Freischütz, Beethoven replied: “I believe it is a certain Weber who wrote it.” Herriot
Beethoven later revised his judgment of Der Freischütz, and Weber, for his part, remained enthusiastic about Fidelio, which he presented in 1823 in Dresden. In an encounter in 1823, when Weber came to Vienna to conduct the première of Euryanthe, it seems that Beethoven said to him: “What the devil of a man are you! A good man!” And Weber recounted: “That rough and unsociable man truly paid court to me; he served me at table as though I had been his lady.” M. Cooper
[Heinrich August Marschner, 1795–1861, composer of instrumental and operatic music, achieved his greatest successes as a theatrical composer. He was a typical representative of the Romantic operatic tradition derived from Weber. His works, based on chivalric or supernatural subjects (the Romantic grotesque), and in particular the one considered his masterpiece, Der Vampyr (1828), enjoyed enormous popularity and remained in the German repertory throughout the nineteenth century. In 1817, when he was only twenty‑one, he moved to Vienna, where he met Beethoven, to whom he did not fail to submit his music for judgment. The young man was greatly disappointed. It appears that Beethoven was not impressed, and that, despite his courtesy, the judgment was very cold. But, as M. Cooper writes, one should not be surprised if one considers Beethoven’s first reaction to the Romantic extravagances of Weber’s Freischütz, and the fact that Marschner, who collaborated with Weber, was indeed the heir of Weber’s Romantic operatic style.]
During the month of February 1827 I [Schindler] brought to poor Beethoven, to raise his spirits, a collection of Schubert’s Lieder, few of which had been published until then. Among them were Der Taucher, Die Bürgschaft, Die junge Nonne, Elysium, and the Ossianic Songs. His opinion of these songs was expressed in the words: “There is truly a divine spark in Schubert.” [It has been said that a few days before his death, when Hüttenbrenner and Schubert came to visit, Beethoven ordered that Schubert be admitted first. But this report is a Romantic invention. We know for certain that Franz and Ludwig never met.] Schindler
[As he said to Freudenberg, Beethoven acknowledged in Rossini talent and melodic ability, even though he maintained that his music suited well the frivolous and sensual spirit of the age, while recognizing that he had such facility in composing that he could write an opera in as many weeks as it took a German composer years to write one. In other conversations his judgment of Rossini is said to have been more caustic. But toward the end of his life [Freudenberg met him in July 1825] he could afford to be generous, for he knew with certainty—and said so without circumlocution on another occasion—that he could not be robbed of the place that belonged to him in the history of music.]
[The visit to Beethoven of the eleven‑year‑old Franz Liszt with his father, in 1823, has been described, as Prod’homme says, by persons to whom Liszt himself supposedly recounted it, and thus it has passed into history. It is said that after Liszt had played a small piece by Ries, Beethoven asked him whether he could play a fugue by Bach; and that after he had played it, he was asked to transpose it into another key. Beethoven, after this feat, is said to have smiled and allowed the boy to play one of his own pieces (the first movement of the Concerto in C minor). Whereupon Beethoven embraced him and kissed him on the forehead. How much truth there is in this story—probably a product of the imagination—we do not know. From certain notes in the Conversation Books it appears that Schindler tried to persuade Beethoven to attend the boy’s concert on 13 April 1823, and it is said that it was at the end of this concert that Beethoven embraced him. But it seems that Beethoven did not attend, and that his nephew went in his place.]
The organist Karl Gottlieb Freudenberg, who was the principal organist of Breslau, met Beethoven in July 1825 and left a vivid recollection of him. Soon after, a vigorous, medium‑sized figure appeared, with a friendly gesture and a benevolent gaze … We conversed freely for about an hour. And the subject of our conversation was naturally music and its young adepts. I thought that Rossini, then so much in vogue, would be derided by Beethoven. Instead, he acknowledged that Rossini had much talent as a composer of melodies, even though his music was, like the spirit of the time, frivolous and sensual. Spontini had much that was good; he always hit theatrical effects with great precision … Spohr, in his view, had too many dissonances, and his chromatic melody detracted from the pleasure his music otherwise gave. He greatly honoured Sebastian Bach: “Not Bach [brook in German], but ocean he should have been called, for his infinite and inexhaustible mass of harmonic combinations. He was the ideal of every organist.” I too, he said, played the organ in my youth, but my nerves could not bear the power of that gigantic instrument. I consider an organist, master of his instrument, among the greatest of virtuosi. He then observed that true church music ought to be performed only by voices, and for this reason he preferred Palestrina to all other composers of church music. He further considered it folly to attempt to imitate him, unless one possessed both his genius and his religious faith. Freudenberg (after Prod’homme)
Once Beethoven was asked: “What is Rossini?” His reply was: “A good stage designer.” Von Seyfried
Beethoven rarely allowed himself to utter judgments on musicians. Yet here is what he thought—these are his own words—of some among them. Cherubini is, among all living opera composers, the one most worthy of esteem. I am entirely in agreement also with his conception of the Requiem, and if I should ever write one myself, I should have to take it into consideration. C. M. von Weber began to study too late; art can never develop naturally, and his only aspiration was to pass for a genius [?]. The Magic Flute remains Mozart’s greatest opera; only here did he show himself as a German master. Don Giovanni still has an entirely Italian cast, and moreover the holy art ought not to allow itself to be degraded to the madness of so scandalous a subject. Handel is the unequalled master of all masters. Go and learn how to achieve such grand results with such limited means. von Seyfried
[Beethoven manifested on more than one occasion a boundless admiration for Mozart, while at the same time sensing the futility of pursuing a perfection that had already been attained.] Attending, at the Augarten, a performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C minor, K. 491, Beethoven exclaimed, turning to his colleague Cramer, himself a pianist and composer: “Cramer, Cramer, we shall never be able to do anything like that!” As the theme was repeated and elaborated, Beethoven, pacing back and forth and marking the time, displayed in every possible way his joy and enthusiasm. Thayer
Beethoven held Mozart and Handel in the highest esteem, then Sebastian Bach. If ever I found him with music in his hands or on his table, it was certainly compositions by these two heroes. Haydn rarely escaped without some shrewd thrust. Ries
Czerny told Jahn: “Once Beethoven saw at my house the score of six quartets by Mozart. He opened the fifth, in A major, and said: ‘This is a masterpiece! It is the one in which Mozart said to the world: Here is what I would have done for you, had the times been right!’” Thayer
In 1820 or 1821, during an afternoon reception at which Beethoven was present, the conversation turned to Mozart, and Beethoven was asked which of Mozart’s operas he esteemed the most. The Magic Flute, Beethoven replied, lifting his eyes to heaven and exclaiming: “O Mozart!” Thayer
Beethoven had the habit of walking in the countryside, and at times Cipriani Potter walked with him. One day in 1817 Potter asked Beethoven who, excluding himself, was the greatest living composer. Beethoven seemed embarrassed for a moment and then replied: “Cherubini.” And Potter continued: “And among those of the past?” Beethoven answered that he had always considered Mozart the greatest, but that since becoming acquainted with Handel he placed him in the first rank. On another day, when Potter asked his opinion of one of the most fashionable pianists of the moment (Moscheles), he replied: “Do not speak to me again of mere mechanics of the piano!” Whereas, on another occasion, he declared that Cramer was the pianist who had given him the greatest pleasure. Thayer
In Kreissle’s biography of Schubert, it is said that Huttenbrenner learned that Schubert’s Variations for four hands, published by Cappi and Diabelli on 19 April 1822 and dedicated by Schubert to Beethoven, had greatly pleased him, and that the Master often played them with his nephew Karl. Thayer
Beethoven, among all composers, held Mozart and Handel in the highest esteem, followed by J. S. Bach. If ever I found him with music in his hands [said Ries], it was certainly compositions by one of these masters. Rellstab recounted that Beethoven, during a visit in which an opera libretto was discussed, expressed himself as follows: “The genre matters little to me, if I am attracted by the subject. But I must be able to approach it with passion and depth of feeling. I should not be capable of composing operas such as Don Juan and Figaro. I feel aversion for such subjects.” Beethoven’s highest aspiration is the elevation toward the transcendent; Mozart is at his most sublime when he penetrates the full, sensuous life of nature, when he delves into the follies and passions of the human heart. The Marquise von Abrantès [wrote in her memoirs]: “The reason why he condemned Don Giovanni was sheer buffoonery. He claimed that Mozart ought not to prostitute—these are his words—his talent on such a scandalous subject.” Wegeler [But Alfred Kalischer, one of the most eminent Beethoven scholars of the early 1900s, notes on this point: “I have examined several volumes of the Memoiren of the Marquise von Abrantès without finding these words or any reference to Beethoven. Wegeler must have possessed a very special edition.” From the Introduction and Notes to Beethoven. Appunti biografici dal vivo, by A. Focher.]
We spoke of Weber, and Beethoven praised him in a truly extraordinary manner. I therefore became convinced that the negative judgments he was said to have expressed about Weber had been put into his mouth by others. Griesinger (after Seyfried)
[Ludwig Rellstab, when he visited Beethoven in Vienna in April 1825, secretly hoped to be able to write an opera libretto for the great composer. And he succeeded in speaking of this with Beethoven, who told him that he would accept a libretto from him, although in his view it was exceedingly difficult to find a good poetic composition. And concerning the genre that would be agreeable to him, he said: “The genre matters little to me, if the subject attracts me. Yet I must be able to work on it with passion and feeling. I could not compose operas such as Figaro or Don Giovanni. I feel a real repugnance toward them,” adding then: “I could never have chosen certain subjects; they are too frivolous for me.” And Rellstab says he was astonished that until then no critic had clearly brought to light this aspect of Beethoven’s poetics.]
I cannot describe with what expression, and I would even say with what exaltation, he spoke of The Messiah. “Handel is the greatest composer who has ever lived. I should like to take off my hat and kneel at his tomb.” We were not able to bring the conversation around to Mozart … but Czerny told me that Beethoven’s praises of Mozart were absolutely inexhaustible. Schulz (after Prod’homme)
Beethoven often and willingly attended opera performances, especially at the Theater an der Wien. … He was particularly enchanted by the operas of Cherubini and Méhul. von Seyfried
In September 1824, in a conversation with the harp‑maker Johann Andreas Stumpff, Beethoven said: “There is no longer any sense of what is good and beautiful—in short, of true music. Yes! Yes! It is so, O Viennese. Rossini and his companions—these are your heroes. They want nothing more from me; they have no more time for symphonies, and they want Fidelio no longer. Rossini, Rossini suits you perfectly.” And after many toasts that ended with great praise for Handel and Mozart (and another remark against Rossini): “True music will have little place in this Rossinian age.” Stumpff