Glimpses of Great Masters at Home

Beethoven

by Arthur S. Garbett

Beethoven suffered a threefold loneliness; he was unmarried; he was deaf; he was a genius. The first deprived him of the loving sympathy he so much needed; the second, of social intercourse and of the music that was the breath of his life; and the third set him apart from all mankind. Beethoven had many friends. They were kind to him and helped him in his troubles, provided him with financial assistance; and yet none was such a companion as Goethe might have been had their single meeting ripened into friendship. Beethoven felt the lack of a real companion keenly; he needed someone to play David to his Jonathan. "I have no real friend," he wrote to Bettina Brentano. "I must live alone. But I know that God is nearer to me than to many in my art, and I commune with Him fearlessly. I have ever acknowledged and understood him."

To speak of the "home life" of this lonely, homeless genius seems an anomaly. Save when he visited such friends as Count Licknowsky or Prince Lobkowitz, save for his brief glint of home life with the Breunings in Bonn, after his mother died, his whole life was spent in Vienna, in one dreary attic after another. Occasionally the monotony was broken by a visit to the country in search of health; but mostly he wandered from one lodging to another; and, form the many descriptions given by those who visited him, one gathers always the same impression of bare walls, scanty furniture, scattered papers, a piano or two and a few other musical instruments, clothes lying where they fell and a general atmosphere of indifference to material things.

Before deafnes interfered he was sociably included, and his genius as a pianist, and especially his gift of improvisation, made him welcome in princely houses, where otherwise his bluff speech and open rudeness might have denied him admittance. As silence closed about him, however, he locked his doors to all save his intimates, and even to them at times. Schindler, Ries, Moscheles, Carl Czerny, Lobkowitz, Rasoumowsky, and other persistent friends, however, kept in touch with him constantly, and were wise enough to regard his outbursts of passionate irritability as merely pathological symptoms, the consequence of a mighty spirit forced to take shelter in a frail, inadequate body. In return they were privileged to watch the unfolding of his ever growing genius.

Except for such visits his days passed monotonously enough. He rose at daybreak, wrote continuously - the sheet quantity of music that he wrote must have kept him continually at work using the pens provided for him by the simple but kindly Baron Baron Zmeskall, thereby saving his over-wrought nerves. Think of Beethoven throbbing with the inspiration of a mighty symphony, compelled to stop to cut a quill pen to his liking! Much of his leisure time was spent in long country walks, where his melodic ideas came to him and his compositions took shape in his mind. He hummed his melodies, and gesticulated as he walked, often hatless, and almost always regardless of sunshine and rain. He once pointed out to Schindler the tree under which he sate while composing the music of "The Mount of Olives and Fidelio". That was in the village of Hetzendorf.

Frugal by habit, his meals were simple. He drank a cup of coffee on rising, carefully counting out sixty beans as the proper quantity. for dinner he preferred something light - a bit of fish or macaroni and cheese. On Fridays he would sometimes invite friends to eat "Schill" with him - a haddock-like fish from the Danube. He occasionally drank wine, preferring a variety produced from the heights around Buda. A pipe and a glass of beer he enjoyed. But above all, he drank water copiously. He loved water, bathing in it frequently, and sometimes pouring whole jugfuls over his wrists as a tonic for inspiration, allowing the water to drain off onto the floor -- one reason, perhaps, why he had to change lodgings frequently! Wrangles with his landladies, and with his unspeakable brothers were frequent, and did not help to prolong his life.

In his youth he was something of a dandy, with a bizarre taste in clothes. Carl Czerny, when a boy, visited him, in the hope of taking lessons, and found him clad in coat and trousers of goat-skin, hairy side out. In later days he was careless of his appearance, preferring old clothes to new.

He was a fine teacher, but hated teaching, often ignoring the pupils he accepted. Carl Czerny, who received a few irregular lessons from him, says he insisted on scale playing, and used Emanuel Bach's instruction book. for young Gerhard von Breuning, in 1826, he recommended Clementi's studies. He taught a legato touch, making more frequent use of the thumb than was common at that time. His desire was to counteract the "staccato" touch of Mozart's day, which had been necessary for the harpsichord instruments but was not suited to that still rather novel instrument, the pianoforte. As a student  it was a different matter. Beethoven never quit studying. He studied the piano and violin in his youth, and throughout his life made a thorough investigation of all the instruments of the orchestra. He studied composition with Haydn; and, when Haydn proved lax, went to Schenk and Albrechtsberger and Salieri, making his own extremely individual application of all they taught him, sorely to their bewilderment. To his honor be it said he never confused extemporization with composition. Many musicians have testified to his ability in the former; yet he labored often for years over a single theme, writing and rewriting the melody, but working on many compositions simultaneously. Some fifty large mote-books, in which he jotted down his ideas, have been carefully preserved. On his death-bed he rejoiced at receiving a complete set of Handel's works. "Handel is the best and greatest composer of them all" he exclaimed. "I can still learn from him. Bring the books here". He also lamented that death should claim him when he was on the threshold of greater things. Students who think they will be successful because music "comes easy" to them are respectfully recommended to study the life of Beethoven. Music "came easy" to Beethoven, goodness knows, but he never left off working on that account.