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 The
mighty founder of the modern school of orchestral music came
of a Belgian family settled for two generations in Germany. His
grandfather and father were both musicians at Cologne. Ludwig
van Beethoven was born at Bonn, December 1770. He passed a youth
of poverty and hardship; showed early signs of musical genius;
and at the age of 15 received an appointment as court organist-assistant.
A brother of the Emperor Joseph sent the youth to Vienna, where,
at the age of 17, he had a few lessons from Mozart. Returning,
he was at the age of 22 taken under the protection of Count Waldstein
and again sent to Vienna. There he lived and worked thirty-five
years, and there he died in 1827, aged 57. What is called his
Opus 1 appeared in Vienna, 1795. A few years afterwards
his deafness began, the result of an obscure disease which embittered
the composer's life and cut him off from mankind and the enjoyment
of his own art. The period of his chief masterpieces is 1800-1814,
during which were produced Fidelio, his only opera, and
the principal symphonies, except the great Choral Symphony
which is later. Franz Hueffer writes: "Beethoven's compositions,
138 in number, comprise all forms of vocal and instrumental music,
from the sonata to the symphony, from the simple song to the
opera and oratorio. In each of these forms he displays the depth
of his feeling, the power of his genius; in some of them he reached
a greatness never approached by his predecessors or followers."
This great musician was the first to develop an element in
instrumental music which had been but foreshadowed by his predecessors--that
which may be called the personal or subjective. Phrases of incongruous
character, sudden and unaccountable transition of expression,
he knew how to weld into a symmetrical whole that, while it mirrors
the workings of a strang and wayward fancy, always bears the
stamp of mastership. Numerous as are Beethoven's works, the phases
of these tone-pictures are as varied, for no two resemble each
other. Among the host who have followed his introspective method,
there are some illustrious names, but for creative power and
grandeur that of Beethoven remains unique and unapproached.
His childhood and youth were a continued scene of toil; he
began music in his fourth year under his father, a musician of
irregular habits, and began to compose and play in public when
11 years old. About this period he was trusted to play the organ
as deputy, and to accompany the opera rehearsals; meanwhile he
was studying, besides clavier, viola, and organ, Latin, French,
and Italian. In the last of three trios, his published Opus
1, his individuality is already clearly perceptible; and
the growth of his mind and mastery of resources may be traced
almost from work to work, especially in his symphonies, in his
expansion of musical form, his instrumentation and his peculiar
power of conveying those surgings of feeling and consciousness
that are the undercurrents of human life, and which the other
arts can only delineate when they have passed into action.
We are told that he never cared for childish games or companions,
yet in later years he showed a peculiar sense of drollery, and
his ardent and lifelong friendships are a conspicuous feature
in his character. As an executant we are told that he was a marvellous
extemporist, a faculty in singular contrast with the slow and
gradual growth of his musical thought. That his mind remained
unbalanced was probably owing to his irregular and partial training;
generous and impulsive to the verge of aberration, he was also
suspicious and resentful; capable of a complete surrender of
self for those he loved, he was ready to renounce his friend
for any trifling cause. The torment of growing deafness darkened
Beethoven's life for many years before his sense of hearing was
extinguished, and from this time a great change came over his
musical thought. A mysticism, as though he would express what
cannot be uttered, acuteness of sound that distresses the hearer,
diffuseness, jarring, harshness in harmony and part-writing often
take the place, in his tormented spirit, of the beauty and symmetry
of former days. But if his latest works bear traces of his mental
isolation and the suffering it entailed, they also are full of
those noble features that have made the name of Beethoven synonymous
with what is most grand and beautiful in musical art.
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| This biography is
reprinted from The New Calendar of Great Men. Ed. Frederic
Harrison. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920. |
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