Beethoven: The Intimate Side of a Lonely and Tormented Genius — Review by Concetta De Mauro
Beethoven: The Intimate Side of a Lonely and Tormented Genius
Article – Review by Concetta De Mauro, published in the online magazine “il Deutsch Italia” on 27 March 2020
“To Doctor Joseph Wilhelm von Schaden, Augsburg Bonn, 15 September 1787
(…) the closer I came to my native city, the more numerous were the letters from my father that reached me, all urging me to hasten the journey.
I found my mother still alive but in a desperate state. She was ill with consumption and died seven weeks ago.
Your having lent me three carlini in Augsburg was an act of extraordinary kindness and friendship on your part, but I must beg you to have a little more patience with me; the journey has cost me much, and here I cannot hope for any remuneration, not even the smallest. Fortune does not favour me here in Bonn.”
With these heartfelt words, the seventeen‑year‑old Ludwig van Beethoven, shaken by the loss of his beloved mother, wrote to a lawyer in Augsburg who had befriended him during the period in which the German composer stayed in that city, on his return journey from Vienna to Bonn, where he had been born in 1770. It is precisely this letter — the first personal letter from Beethoven known to us — that sets the tone for the anthology “Ludwig van Beethoven – Autobiografia di un genio”, published by the Prato‑based publisher Piano B edizioni and edited by Michele Porzio, musicologist and professor at the “Giuseppe Verdi” Conservatory in Turin.
The volume gathers personal letters, pages from the Conversation Books, and reflections by the German composer, selected and carefully annotated by Porzio in numerous notes that the reader will inevitably consult, as they prove to be a necessary lantern illuminating the path through Beethoven’s complicated human dimension — his weaknesses, his anxieties, his daily life. Beethoven is commonly described as a rough misanthrope, always in a bad mood, but from this work emerges the portrait of a profoundly contradictory man: generous and grateful to those who stood by him even only through correspondence, yet often prey to despair caused by the progressive loss of hearing and by his rather fragile health.
Except for the first letter, most of the anthology refers to the period in which Beethoven had already moved to Vienna (1792) to continue his studies under the guidance of the great composer Joseph Haydn, introduced to him by Count Waldstein — his first patron and the one who proved to be a fundamental calling card for making his talent known in the elite salons of a Vienna that, at the end of the 18th century, was the European centre of music and opera par excellence.
When Viennese publishers began to take interest in his compositions, Beethoven’s fame as a gifted pianist had already spread throughout Germany, and he was eager to secure as many commissions as possible, having to provide for the support of his entire family in Bonn, since his brutal and violent father — a musician and tenor — had been prematurely retired due to alcohol abuse.
In his correspondence with his publishers, but also with musicians and his teachers such as Cherubini and Salieri, Ludwig wrote with gentle and polite manners, at times ironic, but above all with great humility in the way he regarded himself.
To F.A. Hoffmeister, Leipzig (music publisher) Vienna, 22 April 1821
“My dearest and worthy brother, you are right to complain about me — indeed, you have every reason. (…) The only trace of genius that perhaps exists in me is that my things are not always found in the most perfect order. And therefore no one but myself is capable of understanding anything about them.”
Despite his tireless work, the German composer still managed to find the time to write to his publishers also to intercede on behalf of people dear to him, such as Bach’s daughter, Regine Susanna, who was living in poverty: “A good friend of mine has informed me of the amount that has been collected for the daughter of the immortal son of Harmony: I was astonished at the meagerness of what Germany has offered for a person whom I revere for her father’s merits. What would happen if I were to publish, by subscription, some work for the benefit of this person? Let me know soon how and best to organise the matter, before this Bach dries up.” (Bach in German means “brook”.)
While reading the correspondence, one encounters many names of nobles who were his friends and patrons, but among them all stands out that “Your Excellency!” addressed several times to the giant of German poetry, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, whom Beethoven revered like no one else. Porzio explains that the poet and the composer met more than once, but although Goethe held Beethoven’s talent and cultivated personality in high esteem, he never granted him permission to set Faust to music.
From the early 1800s onward, his hearing problems began to worsen, as the composer himself confided to his lifelong friend, the physician F.G. Wegeler: “My compositions bring me much, and I can say that I have more commissions than I am able to fulfil. Only an envious demon, my poor health, has thrown a wrench into the works. My hearing has become increasingly weak.”
The drama of deafness forced him, against his will and from as early as 1815, to give up public performances and social occasions; and when he was obliged to appear in person, he adopted such a detached attitude that it fuelled the false myth of his being a man intolerant of others. In truth, he was simply afraid that his deafness would become public knowledge and that he would no longer receive any commissions: “I must live like a proscribed man; if I am in company, I am overcome by the fear of running the risk that my condition be noticed.” A balm for these torments was his constant erudition, through readings of the Latin and Greek classics (he especially loved the Homeric writings), the works of Shakespeare, Schiller, and his beloved Kant and Goethe, many quotations of whom appear in the section of the anthology dedicated to “Beethoven’s thoughts”.
His restless and introverted nature led him never to commit himself stably, often entangling himself with women mostly inaccessible because already married — a perfect psychological alibi to hide his inability (or perhaps fear) of lasting relationships. His romantic passions were indeed always tormented, as one reads in a letter addressed to an unidentified “Immortal Beloved”: “Even in bed my thoughts rush to you — joyful at times, then again sad, waiting to know whether fate will grant our wish. To face life, I must live only with you or never see you again.”
He never had children of his own, but he managed to have himself appointed sole guardian of his nephew Karl, the son of his brother Caspar, who died in 1815, forbidding the boy any contact with his mother. In the transitional period between the heroic style and the third style, he succeeded in composing many masterpieces, such as the “Eroica” (1802, inspired by Napoleon as a revolutionary hero — a dedication Beethoven later erased when he learned that Napoleon had proclaimed himself emperor) and the Ninth Symphony (1824, whose score and text have been declared “Memory of the World” by UNESCO). Especially in the last decade of his life, his compositions became fewer, and with them his financial resources, making Ludwig increasingly a tormented soul. The fear of loneliness and the desire to feel loved poured into his relationship with his nephew, toward whom he felt an excessively possessive affection, so much so that Karl, oppressed by his uncle’s possessiveness, attempted suicide in the summer of 1826.
In his last letters, sent only a few days before his death, Ludwig described himself as in very poor health and forced to ask for loans in order to survive and continue working on a new symphony, the Tenth, never written down and lost forever.
“Like when the last note dies away, vibrating under a delicate hand striking the strings of the harp” (quoting from his own written thoughts), Beethoven died in Vienna on 26 March 1827.
Concetta De Mauro
The author
Concetta De Mauro