What do you think?
Rate this book
Beethoven: Impressions by His Contemporaries
This compilation contains the most interesting, evocative, and amusing sections of letters, diaries, memoirs, etc., describing Beethoven's accomplishments as well as his strange personality. Traits and characteristics of the great composer are described by his contemporaries, including musical giants Rossini, Weber, and Liszt, and poets Goethe and Grillparzer, as well as other acquaintances. 16 portraits of Beethoven are included.
231 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1967
23 people are currently reading
86 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 5, 2022
I don’t remember having enjoyed a book so much in quite a long time.
Also, a clear sign I should be reading more on music.
Thank you Ludwig.
——————
J. W. Tomaschek:
The singular and original seemed to be his chief aim in composition, as is confirmed by the answer which he made to a lady who asked him if he often attended Mozart’s operas. “I do not know them,” he replied, “and do not care to hear the music of others lest I forfeit some of my originality.”
-
I. von Seyfried:
Strangely enough, listening to wretched, execrable music appeared to cause him the utmost joy, which he at times proclaimed with roars of laughter. All who were better acquainted with him knew that in the art of laughter he also was a virtuoso of the first rank; it was a pity, however, that even those nearest him seldom learned the why and wherefore of an explosion of the kind, since as a rule he laughed at his own secret thoughts and imaginings without condescending to explain them.
But when, especially in the Scherzos of his symphonies, sudden, unexpected changes of tempo threw all into confusion, he would laugh tremendously, assure the men he had looked for nothing else, that he had been waiting for it to happen, and would take almost childish pleasure in the thought that he had been successful in unhorsing such routined orchestral knights.
Beethoven never was seen in the street without a little note-book in which he jotted down his ideas of the moment.
Books and music were strewn about in every corner; here the fragments of a cold snack, there bottles, still sealed or half-emptied; on his standing desk was the hurried sketch of a new quartet; elsewhere were the débris of his breakfast; here on the piano, in the shape of scribbled-over pages, lay the material for a magnificent symphony, still slumbering as an embryo; there drooped a corrected proof waiting for release. The floor was covered with business and personal letters; between the windows stood a respectable loaf of Strachino, beside it the still notable ruins of a genuine Verona salami—and despite all this higgledy-piggledy our Master, quite contrary to the actual facts, had the habit of calling attention to his accuracy and love of order with Ciceronian eloquence on all occasions. Only when something he wanted had to be hunted for hours, days and even weeks, and all endeavors to find it remained fruitless, would he strike a new note as he looked about for a victim to blame: “Yes, yes,” he would wail pitifully, “it is my misfortune! Nothing is left in the place where I put it; everything is moved about; everything is done to play me a trick. O these humans, these humans!”
Even in the presence of his intimate friends Beethoven seldom permitted himself to judge any of his artistic colleagues.
“Mozart’s greatest work remains ‘The Magic Flute’; for therein he for the first time reveals himself as a German master. ‘Don Juan’ still is fashioned altogether in the Italian style and, besides, art, which is sacred, should never be degraded to serve as a pretext for so scandalous a subject. “Handel is the unattained master of all masters. Go to him and learn how to produce great effects with scant deploy of means.”
Beethoven, in the truest sense of the word, was a real German, body and soul. Entirely at home in the Latin, French and Italian languages, he used by preference and whenever at all possible his native tongue. Had he been able to have his own way in the matter, all his works would have appeared in print with German title-pages. 46He even tried to delete the exotic word “pianoforte,” and chose in its stead the expressive term Hammerklavier (“ hammerpiano”) as a suitable and appropriate substitute. As a relief from strenuous work, aside from poetry, for which he had a spiritual affinity, he turned to the study of universal history. Among German poets Goethe was and remained his favorite.
-
F. Ries:
something which also happened on the day the oratorio was to be given. I found him in bed, writing on single sheets of paper, and when I asked what they were, he answered: “Trombones.” At the performance the trombones blew from these manuscript parts.
Once, while out walking with him, I mentioned two perfect fifths, which stand out by their beauty of sound in one of his earlier violin quartets, in C minor. Beethoven did not know of them and insisted it was wrong to call them fifths. Since he was in the habit of always carrying music-paper about him, I asked for some and set down the passage in all four parts. Then when he saw I was right he said: “Well, and who has forbidden them?” Since I did not know how I was to take his question, 50he repeated it several times until, much astonished, I replied: “It is one of the fundamental rules.” Again he repeated his question, whereupon I said: “Marburg, Kirnberger, Fuchs, etc., etc., all the theoreticians!” “And so I allow them!” was his answer.
When Steibelt, the famous piano virtuoso, came from Paris to Vienna, in all the glory of his fame, several of Beethoven’s friends were afraid the latter’s reputation would be injured by the newcomer. Steibelt did not visit Beethoven; they met for the first time in the home of Count Fries, where Beethoven gave his new Trio in B-flat major, Op. 11, for piano, clarinet and violoncello, its initial performance. It does not give the pianist much of an opportunity. Steibelt listened to it with a certain condescension, paid Beethoven a few compliments, and felt assured of his own victory. He played a quintet he had composed, and improvised; and his tremulandos, at that time an absolute novelty, made a great impression. Beethoven could not be induced to play again. Eight days later there was another concert at Count Fries’ home. Steibelt again played a quintet with much success and besides (as was quite evident), had practiced a brilliant fantasy for which he had chosen the identical theme developed in the 52variations of Beethoven’s trio. This roused the indignation of Beethoven and his admirers; he had to seat himself at the piano to improvise, which he did in his usual, I might say unmannerly fashion, flinging himself down at the instrument as though half-pushed. As he moved toward it he took up the violoncello part of Steibelt’s quintet, purposely put it on the piano-rack upside-down, and drummed out a theme from its first measures with his fingers. Then, now that he had been definitely insulted and enraged, Beethoven improvised in such a way that Steibelt left the room before he had concluded, refused ever to meet him again, and even made it a condition that Beethoven was not to be invited where his own company was desired.
Etiquette and all that etiquette implies was something Beethoven never knew and never wanted to know. As a result, his behavior when he first began to frequent the palace of the Archduke Rudolph often caused the greatest embarrassment to the latter’s entourage. An attempt was made to coerce Beethoven into the deference he was supposed to observe. This, however, Beethoven found unendurable. He promised betterment, it is true, but—that was the end of it. One day, finally, when he was again, as he termed it, being “sermonized on court manners,” he very angrily pushed his way up to the Archduke, and said quite frankly that though he had the greatest possible reverence for his person, a strict observance of all the regulations to which his attention was called every day was beyond him. The Archduke laughed good-humoredly over the occurrence, and commanded that in the future Beethoven be allowed to go his way unhindered; he must be taken as he was.
In his manner Beethoven was very awkward and helpless; and his clumsy movements lacked all grace. He seldom picked up anything with his hand without dropping or breaking it. Thus, on several occasions, he upset his ink-well into the piano which stood beside his writing-desk. No furniture was safe from him; least of all a valuable piece; all was over-turned, dirtied and destroyed. How he ever managed to shave himself is hard to understand, even making all allowance for the many cuts on his cheeks. And he never learned to dance in time to the music.
-
J. A. Röckel:
“Fidelio,” was once more, for commercial reasons, presented on the play-bills under its old title of “Leonore,”. We spared no possible effort to make the opera triumph.
I heard a violent altercation which the financier was carrying on with the enraged composer in the adjoining room. Beethoven was suspicious, and thought that his percentage of the net proceeds was greater than the amount which the Court Banker had paid him. The latter remarked that Beethoven was the first composer with whom the management, in view of his extraordinary merits, had been willing to share profits, and explained the paucity of the box-office returns by the fact that the boxes and front row seats all had been taken, but that the seats in which the thickly crowded mass of the people would have yielded a return as when Mozart’s operas were given, were empty. And he emphasized that hitherto Beethoven’s music had been accepted only by the more cultured classes, while Mozart with his operas invariably had roused enthusiasm in the multitude, the people as a whole. Beethoven hurried up and down the room in agitation, shouting loudly: “I do not write for the multitude—I write for the cultured!” “But the cultured alone do not fill our theatre,” replied the Baron with the greatest calmness, “we need the multitude to bring in money, and since in your music 67you have refused to make any concessions to it, you yourself are to blame for your diminished percentage of return. If we had given Mozart the same interest in the receipts of his operas he would have grown rich.” This disadvantageous comparison with his famous predecessor seemed to wound Beethoven’s tenderest susceptibilities. Without replying to it with a single word, he leaped up and shouted in the greatest rage: “Give me back my score!” The Baron hesitated and stared as though struck by lightning at the enraged composer’s glowing face, while the latter, in an accent of the most strenuous passion repeated: “I want my score—my score, at once!” The Baron pulled the bell-rope; a servant entered. “Bring the score of yesterday’s opera for this gentleman,” said the Baron with an air; and the servant hastened to return with it. “I am sorry,” the aristocrat continued, “But I believe that on calmer reflection—.” Yet Beethoven no longer heard what he was saying. He had torn the gigantic volume of the score from the servant’s hand and, without even seeing me in his eagerness, ran through the anteroom and down the stairs. […] I excused myself and hastened to follow the angry Master to his Tusculum. All was in vain.
-
L. Spohr:
He spoke of music but very seldom. When he did, his opinions were very sternly expressed, and so decided as would admit of no contradiction whatever.
the 96dilapidated condition of his pecuniary circumstances. He was a bad housekeeper, and had besides the misfortune to be plundered by those about him. He was thus frequently in want of common necessaries. In the early part of our acquaintance, I once asked, after he had absented himself for several days from the dining-rooms: “You were not ill, I hope?”—“ My boot was, and as I have only one pair, I had house-arrest,” was his reply.
Although I had heard much of his leading, yet it surprised me in a high degree. Beethoven had accustomed himself to give the signs of expression to his orchestra by all manner of extraordinary motions 97of his body. So often as a sforzando occurred, he tore his arms, which he had previously crossed upon his breast, with great vehemence asunder. At a piano, he bent himself down, bent the lower the softer he wished to have it. Then when a crescendo came, he raised himself again by degrees, and upon the commencement of the forte, sprang bolt upright. To increase the forte yet more, he would sometimes, also, join in with a shout to the orchestra, without being aware of it.
Beethoven was playing a new Pianoforte-Concerto of his, but forgot at the first tutti that he was a solo-player, and springing up, began to direct in his usual way. At the first sforzando he threw out his arms so wide asunder that he knocked both the lights off the piano upon the ground. The audience laughed, and Beethoven was so incensed at this disturbance that he made the orchestra cease playing, and begin anew. Seyfried, fearing that a repetition of the accident would occur at the same passage, bade two boys of the chorus place themselves on either side of Beethoven, and hold the lights in their hands. One of the boys innocently approached nearer, and was reading also in the notes of the piano-part. When therefore the fatal sforzando came, he received from Beethoven’s outthrown right hand so smart a blow on the mouth, that the poor boy let fall the light from terror. The public were unable to restrain their laughter and broke out into a regular bacchanalian roar. Beethoven got into such a rage, that at the first chords of the solo, half a dozen strings broke.
-
J. W. Tomaschek:
I tell you [Moscheles] will not amount to anything. Formerly I was too forward in expressing my opinions and made enemies for myself—now I judge no one because I do not wish to injure anyone, and, besides, I think to myself: if it be something real, then it will maintain itself in spite of all enmity and envy; but if it be not solid, it will tumble down of its own accord, no matter how they try to prop it up.
-
Rochlitz:
“You will hear nothing of me here.” “It is summer now,” I wrote. “No, nor in winter either!” he cried. “What should you hear? ‘Fidelio’? They cannot give it, nor do they want to listen to it. The symphonies? They have no time for them.[ 7] My concertos? Everyone grinds out only the stuff he himself has made. The solo pieces? They went out of fashion here long ago, and here fashion is everything. At the most Shuppanzigh occasionally digs up a quartet, etc.”
-
F. Liszt:
I first played a short piece by Ries. When I had finished Beethoven asked me whether I could play a Bach fugue. I chose the C-minor Fugue from the Well-Tempered Clavichord. “And could you also transpose the Fugue at once into another key?” Beethoven asked me. Fortunately I was able to do so. After my closing chord I glanced up. The great Master’s darkly glowing gaze lay piercingly upon me. Yet suddenly a gentle smile passed over his gloomy features, and Beethoven came quite close to me, stooped down, put his hand on my head, and stroked my hair several times. “A devil of a fellow,” he whispered,
-
A. Schindler:
The unconditional demand that Beethoven once more, as in the year preceding, have shutters put on the windows was made. A few days later he moved in. Yet why the insistence on the shutters? Beethoven, during his former stay in the house, had occasionally planted himself by the window-shutters, and had set down on them in lead-pencil yard-long calculations and musical ideas, so that these thin lindenwood boards formed a sort of diary. During the summer of 1822, a family from North Germany lived opposite him. They had observed him while thus occupied and after his departure had bought one of these window-shutters. Once he had learned the value of a window-shutter thus decorated, the [tenant] had no difficulty in disposing of all four. When later the Master learned of this trade from the Baden apothecary, he burst into Homeric laughter.
Coffee seems to have been the nourishment with which he could least dispense and in his procedure with regard to its preparation he was as careful as the Orientals are known to be. Sixty beans to a cup was the allotment and the beans often were counted out exactly, especially when guests were present.
Beethoven rose at daybreak, no matter what the season, and went at once to his work-table. There he worked until two or three o’clock, when he took his midday meal. In the interim he usually ran out into the open two or three times, where he also “worked 169while walking.” Such excursions seldom exceeded a full hour’s time, and resembled the swarming out of the bee to gather honey. They never varied with the seasons and neither cold nor heat were noticed. The afternoons were dedicated to regular promenades;
Beethoven always spent his winter evenings at home, and devoted them to serious reading. It was but seldom that one saw him busy with music-paper in the evening, since writing music was too taxing for his eyes. In former years this may not have been the case; yet it is quite certain that at no time did he employ the evening hours for composition (creation). At ten o’clock at the latest he went to bed.
He was forgetful in both directions. Unless one were accustomed to it, one could not help noting with surprise how the Master’s last-written creations passed entirely out of his mind, with all their details, and that this was not alone the case with works in score, but also held good for piano solos. When he was busy with a new composition, his whole being was visibly preoccupied by it and by nothing else, and whatever he had just completed already lay so far behind in his consciousness
-
L. Rellstab:
It was the Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 127, which they played. And just as the players had been obliged to study, moil and toil until they had clambered up its precipitous heights, so did the listeners find that it was not to be taken too lightly—and with this presumption in mind, it had at once been settled in advance that the work should be played twice in succession.
-
G. von Breuning:
When he was in company, he spoke very loudly and with great animation and, since whoever accompanied him was obliged to write down his answers in the conversation note-book, the promenade was interrupted by frequent stops, something which in itself attracted attention and was made more conspicuous by the replies he made in pantomime. Hence the majority of those whom he met turned around to look when he had passed, and the street boys even poked fun at him and called after him. For this reason nephew Karl disdained to go out with Beethoven and once told him plainly that he was ashamed to accompany him in the street because he looked such a fool, a remark anent which Beethoven expressed himself to us in a deeply hurt and wounded manner.
Only once, when we were sitting at table, one of my sisters uttered a high, piercing shriek; and to know that he still had been able to hear it made Beethoven so happy that he laughed clearly and gleefully, his dazzlingly white and unbroken rows of teeth fully visible.
Characteristic, too, was the liveliness with which he discussed circumstances that interested him, and at such times it might even chance that walking up and down the room with my father, he would spit into the mirror instead of out of the window, without knowing it.
I turned the pages and read one of the conversation note-books which was still lying ready for use on the little table next the bed, to find out who had lately visited him, and what had been said. And there, among other things, I found in one place: “Your quartet which Schuppanzigh performed yesterday did not appeal to me.” When he awoke a short time after I held the sentence up to him and asked him what he had to say to it: “Some day it will suit them,” was his laconic reply. He at once added with legitimate self-confidence some brief remarks to the effect that he wrote as seemed well to him, and did not allow himself to be led astray by contemporary opinion: “I know that I am an artist!”
-
A. Schindler:
Emaciated by his evil malady he seemed to me, as he rose, to be tall in stature. He was unshaven, his heavy, partly gray hair hung in disorder over his temples, the expression of his features grew very mild and gentle when he caught sight of Hummel, and he seemed to be extraordinarily glad to see him.
Also, a clear sign I should be reading more on music.
Thank you Ludwig.
——————
J. W. Tomaschek:
The singular and original seemed to be his chief aim in composition, as is confirmed by the answer which he made to a lady who asked him if he often attended Mozart’s operas. “I do not know them,” he replied, “and do not care to hear the music of others lest I forfeit some of my originality.”
-
I. von Seyfried:
Strangely enough, listening to wretched, execrable music appeared to cause him the utmost joy, which he at times proclaimed with roars of laughter. All who were better acquainted with him knew that in the art of laughter he also was a virtuoso of the first rank; it was a pity, however, that even those nearest him seldom learned the why and wherefore of an explosion of the kind, since as a rule he laughed at his own secret thoughts and imaginings without condescending to explain them.
But when, especially in the Scherzos of his symphonies, sudden, unexpected changes of tempo threw all into confusion, he would laugh tremendously, assure the men he had looked for nothing else, that he had been waiting for it to happen, and would take almost childish pleasure in the thought that he had been successful in unhorsing such routined orchestral knights.
Beethoven never was seen in the street without a little note-book in which he jotted down his ideas of the moment.
Books and music were strewn about in every corner; here the fragments of a cold snack, there bottles, still sealed or half-emptied; on his standing desk was the hurried sketch of a new quartet; elsewhere were the débris of his breakfast; here on the piano, in the shape of scribbled-over pages, lay the material for a magnificent symphony, still slumbering as an embryo; there drooped a corrected proof waiting for release. The floor was covered with business and personal letters; between the windows stood a respectable loaf of Strachino, beside it the still notable ruins of a genuine Verona salami—and despite all this higgledy-piggledy our Master, quite contrary to the actual facts, had the habit of calling attention to his accuracy and love of order with Ciceronian eloquence on all occasions. Only when something he wanted had to be hunted for hours, days and even weeks, and all endeavors to find it remained fruitless, would he strike a new note as he looked about for a victim to blame: “Yes, yes,” he would wail pitifully, “it is my misfortune! Nothing is left in the place where I put it; everything is moved about; everything is done to play me a trick. O these humans, these humans!”
Even in the presence of his intimate friends Beethoven seldom permitted himself to judge any of his artistic colleagues.
“Mozart’s greatest work remains ‘The Magic Flute’; for therein he for the first time reveals himself as a German master. ‘Don Juan’ still is fashioned altogether in the Italian style and, besides, art, which is sacred, should never be degraded to serve as a pretext for so scandalous a subject. “Handel is the unattained master of all masters. Go to him and learn how to produce great effects with scant deploy of means.”
Beethoven, in the truest sense of the word, was a real German, body and soul. Entirely at home in the Latin, French and Italian languages, he used by preference and whenever at all possible his native tongue. Had he been able to have his own way in the matter, all his works would have appeared in print with German title-pages. 46He even tried to delete the exotic word “pianoforte,” and chose in its stead the expressive term Hammerklavier (“ hammerpiano”) as a suitable and appropriate substitute. As a relief from strenuous work, aside from poetry, for which he had a spiritual affinity, he turned to the study of universal history. Among German poets Goethe was and remained his favorite.
-
F. Ries:
something which also happened on the day the oratorio was to be given. I found him in bed, writing on single sheets of paper, and when I asked what they were, he answered: “Trombones.” At the performance the trombones blew from these manuscript parts.
Once, while out walking with him, I mentioned two perfect fifths, which stand out by their beauty of sound in one of his earlier violin quartets, in C minor. Beethoven did not know of them and insisted it was wrong to call them fifths. Since he was in the habit of always carrying music-paper about him, I asked for some and set down the passage in all four parts. Then when he saw I was right he said: “Well, and who has forbidden them?” Since I did not know how I was to take his question, 50he repeated it several times until, much astonished, I replied: “It is one of the fundamental rules.” Again he repeated his question, whereupon I said: “Marburg, Kirnberger, Fuchs, etc., etc., all the theoreticians!” “And so I allow them!” was his answer.
When Steibelt, the famous piano virtuoso, came from Paris to Vienna, in all the glory of his fame, several of Beethoven’s friends were afraid the latter’s reputation would be injured by the newcomer. Steibelt did not visit Beethoven; they met for the first time in the home of Count Fries, where Beethoven gave his new Trio in B-flat major, Op. 11, for piano, clarinet and violoncello, its initial performance. It does not give the pianist much of an opportunity. Steibelt listened to it with a certain condescension, paid Beethoven a few compliments, and felt assured of his own victory. He played a quintet he had composed, and improvised; and his tremulandos, at that time an absolute novelty, made a great impression. Beethoven could not be induced to play again. Eight days later there was another concert at Count Fries’ home. Steibelt again played a quintet with much success and besides (as was quite evident), had practiced a brilliant fantasy for which he had chosen the identical theme developed in the 52variations of Beethoven’s trio. This roused the indignation of Beethoven and his admirers; he had to seat himself at the piano to improvise, which he did in his usual, I might say unmannerly fashion, flinging himself down at the instrument as though half-pushed. As he moved toward it he took up the violoncello part of Steibelt’s quintet, purposely put it on the piano-rack upside-down, and drummed out a theme from its first measures with his fingers. Then, now that he had been definitely insulted and enraged, Beethoven improvised in such a way that Steibelt left the room before he had concluded, refused ever to meet him again, and even made it a condition that Beethoven was not to be invited where his own company was desired.
Etiquette and all that etiquette implies was something Beethoven never knew and never wanted to know. As a result, his behavior when he first began to frequent the palace of the Archduke Rudolph often caused the greatest embarrassment to the latter’s entourage. An attempt was made to coerce Beethoven into the deference he was supposed to observe. This, however, Beethoven found unendurable. He promised betterment, it is true, but—that was the end of it. One day, finally, when he was again, as he termed it, being “sermonized on court manners,” he very angrily pushed his way up to the Archduke, and said quite frankly that though he had the greatest possible reverence for his person, a strict observance of all the regulations to which his attention was called every day was beyond him. The Archduke laughed good-humoredly over the occurrence, and commanded that in the future Beethoven be allowed to go his way unhindered; he must be taken as he was.
In his manner Beethoven was very awkward and helpless; and his clumsy movements lacked all grace. He seldom picked up anything with his hand without dropping or breaking it. Thus, on several occasions, he upset his ink-well into the piano which stood beside his writing-desk. No furniture was safe from him; least of all a valuable piece; all was over-turned, dirtied and destroyed. How he ever managed to shave himself is hard to understand, even making all allowance for the many cuts on his cheeks. And he never learned to dance in time to the music.
-
J. A. Röckel:
“Fidelio,” was once more, for commercial reasons, presented on the play-bills under its old title of “Leonore,”. We spared no possible effort to make the opera triumph.
I heard a violent altercation which the financier was carrying on with the enraged composer in the adjoining room. Beethoven was suspicious, and thought that his percentage of the net proceeds was greater than the amount which the Court Banker had paid him. The latter remarked that Beethoven was the first composer with whom the management, in view of his extraordinary merits, had been willing to share profits, and explained the paucity of the box-office returns by the fact that the boxes and front row seats all had been taken, but that the seats in which the thickly crowded mass of the people would have yielded a return as when Mozart’s operas were given, were empty. And he emphasized that hitherto Beethoven’s music had been accepted only by the more cultured classes, while Mozart with his operas invariably had roused enthusiasm in the multitude, the people as a whole. Beethoven hurried up and down the room in agitation, shouting loudly: “I do not write for the multitude—I write for the cultured!” “But the cultured alone do not fill our theatre,” replied the Baron with the greatest calmness, “we need the multitude to bring in money, and since in your music 67you have refused to make any concessions to it, you yourself are to blame for your diminished percentage of return. If we had given Mozart the same interest in the receipts of his operas he would have grown rich.” This disadvantageous comparison with his famous predecessor seemed to wound Beethoven’s tenderest susceptibilities. Without replying to it with a single word, he leaped up and shouted in the greatest rage: “Give me back my score!” The Baron hesitated and stared as though struck by lightning at the enraged composer’s glowing face, while the latter, in an accent of the most strenuous passion repeated: “I want my score—my score, at once!” The Baron pulled the bell-rope; a servant entered. “Bring the score of yesterday’s opera for this gentleman,” said the Baron with an air; and the servant hastened to return with it. “I am sorry,” the aristocrat continued, “But I believe that on calmer reflection—.” Yet Beethoven no longer heard what he was saying. He had torn the gigantic volume of the score from the servant’s hand and, without even seeing me in his eagerness, ran through the anteroom and down the stairs. […] I excused myself and hastened to follow the angry Master to his Tusculum. All was in vain.
-
L. Spohr:
He spoke of music but very seldom. When he did, his opinions were very sternly expressed, and so decided as would admit of no contradiction whatever.
the 96dilapidated condition of his pecuniary circumstances. He was a bad housekeeper, and had besides the misfortune to be plundered by those about him. He was thus frequently in want of common necessaries. In the early part of our acquaintance, I once asked, after he had absented himself for several days from the dining-rooms: “You were not ill, I hope?”—“ My boot was, and as I have only one pair, I had house-arrest,” was his reply.
Although I had heard much of his leading, yet it surprised me in a high degree. Beethoven had accustomed himself to give the signs of expression to his orchestra by all manner of extraordinary motions 97of his body. So often as a sforzando occurred, he tore his arms, which he had previously crossed upon his breast, with great vehemence asunder. At a piano, he bent himself down, bent the lower the softer he wished to have it. Then when a crescendo came, he raised himself again by degrees, and upon the commencement of the forte, sprang bolt upright. To increase the forte yet more, he would sometimes, also, join in with a shout to the orchestra, without being aware of it.
Beethoven was playing a new Pianoforte-Concerto of his, but forgot at the first tutti that he was a solo-player, and springing up, began to direct in his usual way. At the first sforzando he threw out his arms so wide asunder that he knocked both the lights off the piano upon the ground. The audience laughed, and Beethoven was so incensed at this disturbance that he made the orchestra cease playing, and begin anew. Seyfried, fearing that a repetition of the accident would occur at the same passage, bade two boys of the chorus place themselves on either side of Beethoven, and hold the lights in their hands. One of the boys innocently approached nearer, and was reading also in the notes of the piano-part. When therefore the fatal sforzando came, he received from Beethoven’s outthrown right hand so smart a blow on the mouth, that the poor boy let fall the light from terror. The public were unable to restrain their laughter and broke out into a regular bacchanalian roar. Beethoven got into such a rage, that at the first chords of the solo, half a dozen strings broke.
-
J. W. Tomaschek:
I tell you [Moscheles] will not amount to anything. Formerly I was too forward in expressing my opinions and made enemies for myself—now I judge no one because I do not wish to injure anyone, and, besides, I think to myself: if it be something real, then it will maintain itself in spite of all enmity and envy; but if it be not solid, it will tumble down of its own accord, no matter how they try to prop it up.
-
Rochlitz:
“You will hear nothing of me here.” “It is summer now,” I wrote. “No, nor in winter either!” he cried. “What should you hear? ‘Fidelio’? They cannot give it, nor do they want to listen to it. The symphonies? They have no time for them.[ 7] My concertos? Everyone grinds out only the stuff he himself has made. The solo pieces? They went out of fashion here long ago, and here fashion is everything. At the most Shuppanzigh occasionally digs up a quartet, etc.”
-
F. Liszt:
I first played a short piece by Ries. When I had finished Beethoven asked me whether I could play a Bach fugue. I chose the C-minor Fugue from the Well-Tempered Clavichord. “And could you also transpose the Fugue at once into another key?” Beethoven asked me. Fortunately I was able to do so. After my closing chord I glanced up. The great Master’s darkly glowing gaze lay piercingly upon me. Yet suddenly a gentle smile passed over his gloomy features, and Beethoven came quite close to me, stooped down, put his hand on my head, and stroked my hair several times. “A devil of a fellow,” he whispered,
-
A. Schindler:
The unconditional demand that Beethoven once more, as in the year preceding, have shutters put on the windows was made. A few days later he moved in. Yet why the insistence on the shutters? Beethoven, during his former stay in the house, had occasionally planted himself by the window-shutters, and had set down on them in lead-pencil yard-long calculations and musical ideas, so that these thin lindenwood boards formed a sort of diary. During the summer of 1822, a family from North Germany lived opposite him. They had observed him while thus occupied and after his departure had bought one of these window-shutters. Once he had learned the value of a window-shutter thus decorated, the [tenant] had no difficulty in disposing of all four. When later the Master learned of this trade from the Baden apothecary, he burst into Homeric laughter.
Coffee seems to have been the nourishment with which he could least dispense and in his procedure with regard to its preparation he was as careful as the Orientals are known to be. Sixty beans to a cup was the allotment and the beans often were counted out exactly, especially when guests were present.
Beethoven rose at daybreak, no matter what the season, and went at once to his work-table. There he worked until two or three o’clock, when he took his midday meal. In the interim he usually ran out into the open two or three times, where he also “worked 169while walking.” Such excursions seldom exceeded a full hour’s time, and resembled the swarming out of the bee to gather honey. They never varied with the seasons and neither cold nor heat were noticed. The afternoons were dedicated to regular promenades;
Beethoven always spent his winter evenings at home, and devoted them to serious reading. It was but seldom that one saw him busy with music-paper in the evening, since writing music was too taxing for his eyes. In former years this may not have been the case; yet it is quite certain that at no time did he employ the evening hours for composition (creation). At ten o’clock at the latest he went to bed.
He was forgetful in both directions. Unless one were accustomed to it, one could not help noting with surprise how the Master’s last-written creations passed entirely out of his mind, with all their details, and that this was not alone the case with works in score, but also held good for piano solos. When he was busy with a new composition, his whole being was visibly preoccupied by it and by nothing else, and whatever he had just completed already lay so far behind in his consciousness
-
L. Rellstab:
It was the Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 127, which they played. And just as the players had been obliged to study, moil and toil until they had clambered up its precipitous heights, so did the listeners find that it was not to be taken too lightly—and with this presumption in mind, it had at once been settled in advance that the work should be played twice in succession.
-
G. von Breuning:
When he was in company, he spoke very loudly and with great animation and, since whoever accompanied him was obliged to write down his answers in the conversation note-book, the promenade was interrupted by frequent stops, something which in itself attracted attention and was made more conspicuous by the replies he made in pantomime. Hence the majority of those whom he met turned around to look when he had passed, and the street boys even poked fun at him and called after him. For this reason nephew Karl disdained to go out with Beethoven and once told him plainly that he was ashamed to accompany him in the street because he looked such a fool, a remark anent which Beethoven expressed himself to us in a deeply hurt and wounded manner.
Only once, when we were sitting at table, one of my sisters uttered a high, piercing shriek; and to know that he still had been able to hear it made Beethoven so happy that he laughed clearly and gleefully, his dazzlingly white and unbroken rows of teeth fully visible.
Characteristic, too, was the liveliness with which he discussed circumstances that interested him, and at such times it might even chance that walking up and down the room with my father, he would spit into the mirror instead of out of the window, without knowing it.
I turned the pages and read one of the conversation note-books which was still lying ready for use on the little table next the bed, to find out who had lately visited him, and what had been said. And there, among other things, I found in one place: “Your quartet which Schuppanzigh performed yesterday did not appeal to me.” When he awoke a short time after I held the sentence up to him and asked him what he had to say to it: “Some day it will suit them,” was his laconic reply. He at once added with legitimate self-confidence some brief remarks to the effect that he wrote as seemed well to him, and did not allow himself to be led astray by contemporary opinion: “I know that I am an artist!”
-
A. Schindler:
Emaciated by his evil malady he seemed to me, as he rose, to be tall in stature. He was unshaven, his heavy, partly gray hair hung in disorder over his temples, the expression of his features grew very mild and gentle when he caught sight of Hummel, and he seemed to be extraordinarily glad to see him.
July 19, 2020
An excellent anthology - the notes at the start of each anecdote give useful context regarding bias etc. This is a book where one reads between the lines for the most part in constructing one’s own biography and the evidence is chosen well from a variety of perspectives to give a rounded picture of LVB.
September 5, 2009
Thank you Beth for giving this book to me. It really brought me close to the man behind the music. I was very impressed by the literacy level of the many people who wrote accounts of their encounters with the great man. People today do not write nearly as well as people did in the Viennese music world of the early 19th century. It's very refreshing to hear the articulate voices of the past. I'm afraid that we are now living in a language-impoverished age.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews