The last days of Beethoven
consult also our article devoted to the subject: In memoriam
[The final stretch of Beethoven’s earthly life is perhaps the one that has been most thoroughly explored by biographers and scholars — perhaps also because the quantity of information relating to this period is enormous. The “late Beethoven” is discussed in biographies, memoirs, newspaper articles, letters from friends, writers, artists, publishers, and music enthusiasts of the time. The material is vast, and the information does not always agree. Quite recently an Italian scholar, Artemio Focher, has retraced — one may say almost day by day — the last part of the Master’s earthly journey, attempting to reconstruct the events as precisely as possible, and has gathered his research in the book Ludwig van Beethoven. 26–29 marzo 1827 (LIM Editrice, Lucca, 2002).
Let us therefore consider, very briefly, this final period of Beethoven’s life. At the end of 1825 Beethoven took possession of his last earthly dwelling: an apartment at Glacis Alsergrund No. 200, on the second floor of the Schwarzspanierhaus [House of the Black Spaniards], so called because in the residence, to which a church was annexed, there had lived a community of Spanish monks whose habit was a long black tunic.
The house looked out onto the Glacis, the broad green esplanade outside the fortified walls of Vienna, beyond which stretched the city, dominated by the spire of St. Stephen’s.
In the large eight‑room apartment Beethoven lived until his death, which occurred on 26 March 1827. It was very close to the house of Stephan von Breuning, at the Rothes Haus, where Beethoven had once again sought the warmth and affection of a family. The house was unfortunately demolished for urban‑planning needs (or, as we would say today, for real‑estate speculation) in 1903, despite attempts to save it. We know it well — with its large and stately staircases, its spacious papered rooms, its massive doors, and its wide windows — because it was drawn and photographed many times, from the day after Beethoven’s death until its demolition.
This house became a destination of pilgrimage for musicians, writers, and even curious travellers who went to Vienna to pay homage to Beethoven. “One went to Vienna devoutly,” Focher wrote, “with a hope that was almost religious, of being able to enter his house, as though it were a temple, and of being able to converse with him.”]
In this house Beethoven lived a life that was almost normal in its work routine, and there he wrote the Quartets Op. 131 and 135, and oversaw the publication of some of his last works. Yet his state of health, although passable, was progressively declining. For reasons that are not entirely clear — perhaps connected with an attempt to improve his own condition, perhaps with the desire to allow his nephew Karl to recover a certain equilibrium away from prying eyes after the suicide attempt of August 1826 — Beethoven, unexpectedly, on 28 September 1826, left his home and moved to the country estate of his brother Johann, at Gneixendorf. Here the last members of the Beethoven family were reunited, except for the sister‑in‑law Johanna, widow of Carl.
Despite appearances, the stay at Gneixendorf was marked by misunderstandings and tensions. But above all Beethoven’s condition began to worsen. As Johann wrote, “at lunch he ate almost nothing except eggs, but then he exceeded in wine, so that he often suffered from diarrhoea; consequently his belly became more and more swollen,” and his feet swelled [Solomon]. Despite this, he worked on his last compositions with his usual rhythm of life. He spent most of the day wandering through the countryside, while at dawn and in the evening he worked. At Gneixendorf he completed the Quartet Op. 135 and wrote the new finale for Op. 130, his last composition — a page almost carefree in tone, giving no hint of the immediate future.
One of the last days of November or the first of December, probably because of a disagreement with his brother, Beethoven suddenly set off again with Karl for Vienna, in an open cart, wearing summer clothes. The weather was dreadful. He spent the night in an unheated inn and reached home with a high fever and an active pulmonary infection. As Schindler recalls, who at this time resumed his place at the Master’s side, it was difficult to find a doctor. In the end Dr. Andreas Ignaz Wawruch, considered one of the best in the city, came; the pulmonary infection was overcome, and Beethoven was able to stand again around the middle of December.
But the hepatic cirrhosis, of which unmistakable signs had appeared at Gneixendorf — the swelling of the abdomen and of the feet — manifested itself with the appearance of jaundice, pain, and diarrhoea. From December to 27 February 1827, four paracenteses were necessary, evacuating punctures of the fluid that accumulated in the abdomen. The Master was almost always confined to bed, rising only for brief periods; he stood for the last time on 8 March, on the occasion of the first visit of Hummel and Hiller.
With the level of medical science at the time, it is clear that all treatments were useless, or at best palliative of the pain. Beethoven, who understood his own decline, as usual bestowed upon Dr. Wawruch the epithet “donkey”; other physicians came, among them Dr. Malfatti, but without any result. In this context of progressive decline and of physical and moral suffering, he was cheered by very few things. He was absolutely no longer able to work, although he still sketched a few notes; he was happy reading the Lieder of Schubert, many still in manuscript, which Schindler had procured for him; he was gladdened by the attentive presence of Gerhard von Breuning, Stephan’s son, whom Beethoven called Ariel, and who, not yet fourteen, cared for him devotedly, trying to lift his spirits.
Apart from the constant and solicitous assistance of Schindler and of the housekeeper Sali (Rosalia), the frequent visits of Holz, and the daily visits of the von Breuning family, the house became the destination of a continuous pilgrimage of visitors — habitual friends who returned repeatedly, others who came from afar and, once the news of the Master’s grave condition had spread, wished to bring him their final greeting. The list is very long: the piano makers Streicher, father and son; the merchant J. N. Wolfmayer; the publishers Diabelli, Haslinger, Artaria; the musicians Schuppanzigh, Clement, and Linke; the friend von Gleichenstein; Count Moritz Lichnowsky (the one of the Sonata Op. 90!) and naturally Baron Pasqualati; the poet Christoph Kuffner; the court official and musician F. Piringer; the secretary of the Graz concert society, Johann Baptist Jenger; the singers Maria Schindler Egloff (sister of the famulus Anton), Louis Cramolini, and Nanette Schechtner; Sebastian Rau and the journalist Carl Josef Bernard; his brother Johann; the pianist Jan N. Dolezalek; and naturally the pupil Carl Czerny. Many others would have liked to visit him, but it seems that Beethoven often admitted only his closest friends.
From Weimar came Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Ferdinand Hiller, who visited the Master several times. His condition worsened from the first days of March; on the eighth he was still able to converse animatedly with Hummel and Hiller, but in the following days he lost vitality, lay constantly in bed, and spoke with difficulty. On one of those days he smiled at Wawruch, who was encouraging him, and said: “My work is finished; if a doctor could still be of help to me, his name shall be called Wonderful” (a quotation from Handel’s Messiah). On the 23rd he was helped by Stephan von Breuning to sign a codicil to his will. On 24 March he shook Carl Czerny’s hand in farewell and uttered his last words when a gift of Rhine wine — which he loved greatly — arrived: “Too bad, too bad, too late.” In the last days the poet Ignaz Castelli also came.
On 26 March, in the afternoon, the Master was already in a coma and his passing was expected, when the Austrian composer Anselm Hüttenbrenner (1794–1868) arrived from Graz. It seems that at the bedside of the dying man that afternoon were gathered Anton Schindler, Stephan von Breuning, a woman (identified by some as one of Beethoven’s two sisters‑in‑law, by others as the housekeeper Sali), and the painter Teltscher. But Teltscher was made to leave, while Schindler and von Breuning went out to look for a suitable burial place at the cemetery of Währing. At the moment of death, which occurred around a quarter to six on that 26 March, it appears that — despite other versions — only Hüttenbrenner and a woman, the housekeeper Sali, were present.]
[In a letter to Thayer, dated 20 August 1860, Hüttenbrenner wrote]:
“When I entered Beethoven’s room on 26 March 1827, it was about three in the afternoon. I found there Court Councillor von Breuning and his son, Frau van Beethoven, the wife of Johann van Beethoven, and my friend Joseph Teltscher, the portraitist. It seems to me that Professor Schindler was also present.” Teltscher began the sketch of the dying man’s face, but, Hüttenbrenner continues, at von Breuning’s request he left the room. Von Breuning and Schindler also went out in search of a suitable place for the burial. “Only Frau van Beethoven and I were present during Beethoven’s last moments. Beethoven lay there, gasping, from three until five, when a flash of lightning, accompanied by a violent clap of thunder, illuminated with blinding light the room of the dying man (there was snow in front of Beethoven’s house). At this extraordinary phenomenon of nature, which struck me deeply, Beethoven opened his eyes, raised his right hand, looked upward for several seconds, with his right fist clenched, and with a threatening air as if to say: ‘Hostile powers, I defy you. Depart from me. God is with me.’ It seemed as though, like a heroic commander, he wished to cry out to his troops who were giving way: ‘Forward! Have faith in me. Victory is certain!’ When the raised arm fell back upon the bed, his eyes closed halfway.
I held my right hand beneath his head, my left upon his chest. He gave no further breath, no further heartbeat. The spirit of the great master of sound had left this world of deception to reach that of truth. I closed the dead man’s eyes, kissed them, kissed his forehead, his mouth, and his hands. Frau van Beethoven cut a lock of hair and handed it to me as a sacred remembrance of Beethoven’s last hours. Deeply moved, I ran to announce his death to Tobias Haslinger, and after a few hours I returned home to Styria.” — Thayer
The story of Beethoven who seems to “shake his fist at the heavens” in a final gesture of defiance has been dismissed as a Romantic fiction by most Beethoven biographers. Yet this is an acute clinical observation: those who die of hepatic failure often respond in an exaggerated manner to sudden stimuli such as a bright light. This is due to the accumulation of toxic substances normally eliminated by the liver. A gesture like Beethoven’s may have been a reflex phenomenon — such as those observed in cerebral irritation — and certainly not a conscious act.
[Today we know that even patients in irreversible coma, prepared for organ donation for transplantation, may exhibit motor reactions which, in their most striking form, consist of a flexion of the torso forward, as though the comatose patient were sitting up. This phenomenon is called the “Lazarus sign.”] — O’Shea
I spoke with Beethoven only once in my life. It was on the 15th or 16th of December 1826. I had been for two years a tenor at the Court Theatre, and I was engaged to the excellent singer Nanette Schechtner. … My mother, who had known him, urged me to go and visit him. I spoke to Schindler, then director at the Josephstadt Theatre, and begged him to remind Beethoven of little Louis, the son of Frau Cramolini. A few days later Schindler told me that Beethoven was willing to receive us. He apologized that he would have to receive us while lying in bed.
When we entered, the poor man was in bed, gravely ill with dropsy. He looked at me with his shining, wide‑open eyes, and smiling, extended his left hand to me: “So this is little Louis, and now engaged?” And turning his head toward Nanny he said: “A fine couple, and from what I have heard, two good artists. And how is your dear mother?” He gave us paper and pencil, and we continued the conversation in writing, since when he spoke he was at times scarcely intelligible. He then asked us to sing something. Schindler sat at one of the two pianos in the middle of the room, and we placed ourselves in front of him. I wrote to Beethoven that I would sing his Adelaide, thanks to which I had become well known in the world of singing. Beethoven kindly approved. But as I was about to begin, my throat closed from anguish. I begged Schindler to wait a moment until it passed. Beethoven asked what was happening, why I was not singing, and after Schindler had explained the reason to him in writing, he burst out laughing and said: “Sing then, my dear Louis — I hear nothing; I only want to see you sing!” I took courage and sang with enthusiasm the song of songs, the divine Adelaide. At the end Beethoven beckoned me to come closer to the bed and shook my hand in a friendly manner. “From your way of breathing I saw that you sing as one should, and from your expression I understood that you feel what you sing. You have given me great pleasure.” I was so happy at the great man’s comment that I wiped away a tear. As I tried to kiss his hand, he withdrew it and said: “Do that with your dear mother and greet her from me; it has given me great joy that she still remembers me and that she sent you to me.”
Then Nanny sang the great aria of Leonore from Fidelio, and with such enthusiasm that Beethoven several times beat time while watching her, devouring her with his eyes. “You are truly an artist, and you have a voice that recalls that of Milder, who, however, did not have your depth of feeling, which is clearly visible in your face. A pity that I …” Without doubt he meant “that I cannot hear.” He broke off and added: “Thank you, Fräulein, for these moments; I wish that you may be happy together.” Nanny, deeply moved, laid her hand upon his chest. Beethoven said: “I feel truly exhausted.”
Before leaving, we wrote our thanks with the wish for a complete recovery. To which Beethoven, smiling, said: “Then I shall write an opera for the two of you.” We left on tiptoe so as not to disturb him. Nanny broke the silence saying: “We have seen this divine man for the last time.” I took her hand, and we wept bitterly. [The memoirs of Cramolini have been accused of imprecision; indeed, some believe that this visit took place about two months later than the date given.] — Cramolini (after Prod’homme)
In the afternoon [of 29 March] at three o’clock the funeral took place. If during his illness Beethoven had seemed almost forgotten by the Viennese, the news of his death shook them powerfully from their indifference. Already a couple of hours before the appointed time, an enormous crowd had gathered before the Schwarzspanierhaus, and from every direction people continued to arrive in waves, participants or merely curious. About twenty thousand people were now massed in the space between the house and, roughly, the point on the Glacis where the Votivkirche now stands. All the most eminent artistic personalities were present. The singers of the excellent Italian Opera, newly established in Vienna under Barbaja’s direction, had declared their wish to sing during the funeral rite beside the coffin.
The crush and the surging of that mass of people increased as never before. When the coffin was carried down the stairs and placed in the courtyard, the influx of people was so great that my father had the gate barred. When, after the sung ceremony, the coffin was lifted and the gate reopened, the crowd rushed into the courtyard to accompany the coffin with such impetuosity that Johann, my father, Schindler, and I — the most deeply affected by the loss — could not remain immediately behind the coffin, but managed to join the procession only far back. Eight conductors — Eibler, Hummel, Seyfried, Kreutzer, Weigl, Gyrowetz, Würfel, and Gänsbacher — held the ends of the pall. The coffin was covered with wreaths. There were no decorations of honour. A great number of musicians surrounded the coffin, carrying candles [among them Franz Schubert, Carl Czerny, and Schuppanzigh]. The procession, formed of thousands of people, seemed endless; the whole of Vienna appeared to have poured into the streets.
When the cortege turned the corner of the Rothes Haus to proceed toward the parish church in the Alserstrasse, Beethoven’s funeral march from the Piano Sonata Op. 26 resounded. On the steps of the church the crush increased. After the solemn blessing, the procession moved toward the cemetery of Währing. Heinrich Anschütz recited the funeral oration [written by Grillparzer] beside the coffin at the entrance to the cemetery. Truly, there was no lack of tears, neither there nor at the grave, when the mighty Titan was lowered into the narrow pit and friends and admirers cast upon his mortal remains the first handfuls of earth. — von Breuning
[It was Ignaz von Seyfried who adapted the words of the Miserere to the first of the Three Equali for four trombones, WoO 30, for the occasion of the Master’s funeral. During the funeral all three were performed: the second in its original version, and the third transformed into an Amplius. The Three Equali had been composed by Beethoven in 1812, during a brief summer stay in Linz, at the request of the Kapellmeister of Linz, Franz Xaver Göggl; their first performance took place on 2 November 1812, the commemoration of the dead. By Equale is meant a composition for a group of instruments of the same family, equal among themselves. This type of composition, especially for trumpets or trombones, usually solemn and ceremonial in character, was used in solemn ceremonies such as processions and funerals.]
Ferdinand Hiller visited Beethoven four times — on 8, 13, 20, and 23 March 1827 — together with his teacher Hummel. He left the following account: “On 8 March we entered Beethoven’s room and were not a little astonished to find the Master at the window, almost with a happy air. … Emaciated by illness, when he stood up he seemed to me tall in stature. He was unshaven; his long grey hair fell disordered upon his temples. His expression was kind and radiant. … Hummel introduced me, and Beethoven made me sit beside him. … He followed with eager eyes the hand that wrote, and understood at a glance rather than by reading. … I regret not having written down everything he said to me, but a fifteen‑year‑old boy who was there helped me to gather the main points. … After the usual words about the weather, the journey, and the stay in Vienna, Beethoven showed extraordinary interest in Goethe’s health, and we were able to give him excellent news. … Beethoven complained of his health and of many things that displeased him in Vienna … “the present anti‑artistic taste” and “the dilettantism that here corrupts everything.” He spared not even the government at its highest levels. “Write a collection of songs and dedicate it to the Empress,” he said to Hummel with a bitter laugh. … Beethoven spoke of his family problems, which also concerned his nephew, in a melancholy and passionate tone. He inquired about my studies, encouraging me: “One must always continue to cultivate art,” he said. And since I spoke to him of the exclusive interest then prevailing in Vienna for Italian opera, he uttered these memorable words: “They say vox populi vox Dei, but I have never believed it.””
On 13 March Hummel accompanied me for the second time to Beethoven. We found him much worse. He was in bed, but still spoke animatedly. … He lamented not having married. And laughing, he said to Hummel: “You are indeed a happy man: you have a woman who cares for you, who loves you — but I, poor wretch!” And drawing a long sigh, he begged Hummel to bring his wife to him, since she had not yet decided to see again a man whom she had known in the full strength of his powers. He had recently been given a picture of Haydn’s birthplace; he kept it near his bed and showed it to us. “It gives me a childlike pleasure — the cradle of so great a man …”
When we returned to him on 20 March he was extremely weak and spoke in a faint voice, in broken phrases. He told us how much he had been gladdened by the arrival of the 100 pounds from London, and, after we had taken our leave, added: “I shall soon make the leap …” … Praising the English, he was thinking of undertaking a journey to London. “I shall write for them a great overture and a great symphony.” Madame Hummel had come with us, and he wished to return her visit. … His eyes were still lively, but he found it difficult to focus on things.
When we returned on 23 March his condition was desperate. Pitifully exhausted, he lay there, sighing faintly. Not a word; sweat beaded his forehead. … Frau Hummel took her fine batiste handkerchief and wiped his face several times. I shall never forget the look of gratitude that his dull gaze cast upon her.
On 26 March, while we were with friends, we were surprised between five and six o’clock by a violent storm — thunder, lightning, and a furious whirling of snow. A few hours later we learned that at a quarter to six Beethoven had died. — Hiller (after Prod’homme)
Immediately after the procession to the cemetery, the following portentous event occurred. Franz Schubert, Benedict Randhartinger (1802–1893, composer, conductor, and tenor, who had studied together with Schubert under Salieri), and Franz Lachner (1803–1890, composer, conductor, and organist, a friend of both Beethoven and Schubert) went to the “Mehlgrube,” the restaurant on the Neuer Markt. Wine was ordered, and Schubert raised his glass exclaiming: “To the memory of our immortal Beethoven!” And when the glasses were empty, he filled his own again and said: “Well then, now I drink to the one among us who will be the first to follow our Beethoven!” And with prophetic inspiration he expressed that presentiment of death for himself: he in fact died on 19 November 1828. — von Breuning
[And here is an anecdote reported in the Viennese newspaper Blätter für Musik, Theater und Kunst in 1856:] On 27 March 1827, the day on which Beethoven’s funeral was held in Vienna, a stranger who happened to be passing by, astonished at the large deployment of soldiers — something arranged [apparently at the request of Stephan von Breuning] to maintain order because of the enormous influx of people — asked a fruit seller: “What does all this crowd and all these soldiers mean?” The woman, who at first stared at him in amazement, then replied with a mocking laugh: “It must surely be the first time you are in Vienna, otherwise you would know well that these are the funerals of the first of the musicians!” [This remark is found in many books but translated differently. It ends with the words der General der Musiker: the commonly adopted translation is “the general of the musicians,” whereas in the Viennese dialect of the time it means precisely “the foremost of the musicians.”] — Focher
From Franz Grillparzer’s funeral oration
In gathering here at the tomb of this man who has left us, we are, so to speak, the representatives of an entire nation, of the united German people, mourning the loss of one of its most celebrated sons, of what remained of the declining splendour of our native art, of the spiritual flowering of the fatherland. In truth, the hero of German song [Goethe] still lives — and may he live long! — but the last great Master, the splendid spokesman of the art of sound, he who inherited and expanded the immortal fame of Händel and Bach, of Mozart and Haydn, has ended his existence, and we, weeping, stand here beside the broken strings of the instrument that now is silent.
The instrument that now is silent! Let me speak of him thus. For he was an artist, and what he was, he was solely by virtue of his art. The thorns of life had wounded him deeply, but as the shipwrecked man clings to the shore, so he sought refuge in your arms, O sublime sister of the Good and the True, comforter of sorrow, Art that descends from on high. Firmly he held to you, and even when the door through which you entered him and spoke to him was closed, when he became blind to your features, in his deaf ear he continued to bear your image in his heart, and even on his deathbed he held it in his breast.
He was an artist — and who can stand as his equal? Adelaide and Leonore, the celebration of the heroes of victory [a reference to Wellington’s Victory], the devout song of sacrifice of the Mass [an allusion to the Missa solemnis], and you impetuous offspring of the three‑ and four‑part voices! Impetuous symphony, “Freude schöner Götterfunken,” and you, swan song! Muse of song and of the sound of strings! You all surround his tomb and crown him with laurel!
He was an artist — but also a man, a man in every sense, in the highest sense. Because he isolated himself from the world, they called him hostile; because he fled common sensations, they called him without feeling. Ah! He who knows himself hard does not flee, but stands firm and is not shaken. It is precisely the tenderest shoots that most easily bend and break. If he fled the world, it was because in the depths of his soul, open to love, he found no support to withstand it. If he withdrew from men, it was because they did not wish to rise to him, and he could not descend to them. It was only because he found no one who was his equal. But until death he kept for all a human heart, paternal toward his own people, wholly devoted to humankind.
Thus he was, thus he died, thus he shall live for ages upon ages. But you, you who have followed this ceremony thus far, master your sorrow. For not discouragement, but a feeling of elevation comes to us from standing beside the coffin of the man of whom it is permitted to say, as of no other: he produced great things, and no stain was in him. Depart from this place sorrowful, but steadfast. Take with you — a flower from his grave — the memory of him and of his work. And if you should at times be overwhelmed, as by an approaching storm, by the power of his creations, then recall this day, recall the memory of him who produced such exalted things and in whom there was no stain. — von Breuning
The burial at Währing and later exhumations
[At the cemetery of Währing, which at the time of the burial lay in open countryside, a small monument was later erected on the mound, “made of ordinary stones. It depicts a pyramid, at whose summit hangs a very crude lyre, and beneath only his name in gilded letters.” As Focher recalls, there were those, like Maria von Pratobevera, a friend of Schubert, who wrote that “the idea of placing only his name there, to render him absolutely immortal,” pleased her greatly, but that “the stones and workmanship were unworthy.” Beethoven, as Focher notes, rested in the cemetery of Währing for a little more than 36 years.
On 13 October 1863 his mortal remains were exhumed. After being subjected to measurements and photographs, they were recomposed, on 23 October, in a zinc coffin to preserve them from decay. His remains were again interred at Währing. The ceremony took place in the presence of a large public, among whom was Ludwig van Beethoven (1839–1890), the Master’s great‑nephew, son of his nephew Karl.
The cemetery of Währing was later closed. On 21 June 1888, 61 years after the Master’s death, there was a new exhumation, followed by a definitive burial in the Zentralfriedhof of Vienna, in the section of “honor graves,” on which occasion the remains of Schubert — who had been buried in the same cemetery, a short distance from Beethoven — were also transferred. For Beethoven a funerary monument identical to that of Währing was erected.
Today at Währing the cemetery grounds have been reduced to a modest public garden, surrounded by houses, the Schubert‑Park. Only the ancient tombs of the two Masters remain, leaning against the perimeter wall. Though empty and ignored by the few children who play around them, accompanied by their grandparents, all probably forgetful of the heap of history that has passed, they still recall here for eternity the glory of the two Masters.
The most astonishing thing is to discover that at the Zentralfriedhof, in the area dedicated to musicians, beside Schubert, Brahms, Lehár, the Strausses, and many other composers, the Streichers also rest. Frau Nanette lies only a few metres from Beethoven’s tomb, almost facing him (in a monument recently restored, since some of her descendants have been buried there), as though she wished to continue the affectionate protection she had given him in life. (Vienna, 29 October 2002).]