[1] J. Russell (1822). Charles Czerny who, when a child, saw him in 1801 with a beard of several days' growth, hair bristling, wearing a waistcoat and trousers of goats' wool, thought he had met Robinson Crusoe.

[2] The painter Kloeber's remark, when he painted his portrait about 1818.

[3] Dr. W. C. Müller observed particularly "his fine eloquent eyes sometimes so kind and tender, at other times so wild, threatening and awe inspiring" (1820).

[4] Kloeber said "Ossian's." All these details are taken from notes of Beethoven's friends, or from travellers who saw him, such as Czerny, Moscheles, Kloeber, Daniel Amadeus Atterbohm, W. C. Müller, J. Russel, Julius Benedict, Rochlitz, etc.

[5] His grandfather, Ludwig, the most remarkable man of the family and whom Beethoven most resembled, was born at Antwerp, and only settled at Bonn in his twentieth year when he became choir master to the Prince Elector. We must not forget this fact to understand properly the passionate independence of Beethoven's nature and so many other traits which are not really German in his character.

[6] Letter to Dr. Schade at Augsburg, 15th September, 1787.

[7] Later on, in 1816, he said: "He is a poor man who does not know how to die! I myself knew, when I was but fifteen."

[8] We quote from several of these letters in a later part of the book, pages 65, et seq.

[9] To Wegeler, 29th June, 1801.

[10] He had already made a short stay there, in the spring of 1787. On that occasion he met Mozart who, however, took little notice of him. Haydn, whose acquaintance he made at Bonn in December, 1790, gave him some lessons. Beethoven also had for masters, Albrechtsberger and Salieri. The first-named taught him Counterpoint and Fugue, the second trained him in vocal writing.

[11] It can hardly be called his début, for his first Concert in Vienna had taken place on 30th March, 1795.

[12] To Wegeler, 29th June, 1801 (Nohl 14). "None of my friends shall want whilst I have anything," he wrote to Ries about 1801.

[13] In his Will and Testament of 1802, Beethoven says that his deafness first appeared six years before—very likely in 1796. Let us notice in passing that in the catalogue of his works, Opus one alone (Three Trios) was written before 1796. Opus 2, the first three Piano Sonatas appeared in March, 1796. It may, therefore, be said that the whole of Beethoven's work is that of a deaf man.

See the article on Beethoven's deafness by Dr. Klotz Forest in the "Medical Chronicle" of 15th May, 1905. The writer of the article believes that the complaint had its origin in a general hereditary affliction (perhaps in the phthisis of his mother). The deafness increased without ever becoming total. Beethoven heard low sounds better than high ones. In his last years it is said that he used a wooden rod, one end of which was placed in the piano sound-box, the other between his teeth. He used this means of hearing when he composed.

(On the same question see C. G. Cunn: Wiener medizinische Wochenschrift, February-March, 1892; Nagel: Die Musik (15th March, 1902); Theodor von Frimmel: Der Merker, July, 1912).

There are preserved in the Beethoven museum at Bonn the acoustical instruments made for Beethoven, about 1814, by the mechanician Maelzel.

[14] I have translated these extracts from M. Rolland's text. Mr. Shedlock's translation from the original German may be seen on pages 65 et seq.—B.C.H.

[15] To Wegeler, 16 November, 1801.

[16] She was not afraid either of boasting of her old love for Beethoven in preference to that for her husband. Beethoven helped Gallenberg. "He was my enemy; that is the very reason why I should do all possible for him," he told Schindler on one of his conversation note-books in 1821. But he scorned to take advantage of the position. "Having arrived in Vienna," he wrote in French, "she sought me out and came weeping to me, but I rejected her."

[17] 6th October, 1802 (see page 57).

[18] "Bring up your children to be virtuous. That alone can make them happy; money will not. I speak from experience. It is that which sustained me in my misery. Virtue and Art alone have saved me from taking my own life." And in another letter, 2nd May, 1810, to Wegeler: "If I had not read somewhere that a man ought not to take his own life so long as he can still do a kind action, I should long ago have ended my existence, and doubtless by my own hand."

[19] To Wegeler.

[20] Hornemann's miniature, of 1802, represents Beethoven dressed in the fashion of the day with side whiskers, long hair, the tragic air of one of Byron's heroes, but with the firm Napoleonic look which never gives way.

[21] It is a fact that the Eroica Symphony was written for and around Bonaparte, and the first MS. still bears the title, "Bonaparte." Afterwards Beethoven learnt of the Coronation of Napoleon. Breaking out into a fury, he cried: "He is only an ordinary man"; and in his indignation he tore off the dedication and wrote the avenging and touching title: Sinfonia Eroica composta per festeggiare il souvenire di un grand Uomo. (Heroic Symphony composed to celebrate the memory of a great man). Schindler relates that later on his scorn for Napoleon became more subdued; he saw in him rather the unfortunate victim of circumstances worthy of pity, an Icarus flung down from Heaven. When he heard of the St. Helena catastrophe in 1821, he remarked: "I composed the music suitable for this sad event some seventeen years ago." It pleased him to recognise in the Funeral March of his Symphony a presentiment of the conqueror's tragic end. There was then probably in the Eroica Symphony and especially in the first movement, a kind of portrait of Bonaparte in Beethoven's mind, doubtless very different from the real man, and rather what he imagined him to be or would have liked him to be—the genius of the Revolution. Beethoven, in the Finale of the Eroica Symphony, used again one of the chief phrases of the work he had already written on the revolutionary hero par excellence, the god of liberty, Prometheus, 1801.

[22] Robert de Keudell, German Ambassador in Rome: Bismarck and his family, 1901. Robert de Keudell played this Sonata to Bismarck on an indifferent piano on 30th October, 1870, at Versailles. Bismarck remarked regarding the latter part of the work: "The sighs and struggles of a whole life are in this music." He preferred Beethoven to all other composers, and more than once affirmed "Beethoven's music more than any other soothes my nerves."

[23] Beethoven's house was situated near those fortifications of Vienna which Napoleon had blown up after the taking of the city. "What an awful life, with ruins all around me," wrote Beethoven to the publishers, Breitkopf & Härtel, on 26th June, 1809, "nothing but drums, trumpets, and misery of every kind." A portrait of Beethoven at this time has been left to us by a Frenchman who saw him in Vienna in 1809, Baron Trémont, of the Council of State. It gives a picturesque description of the disorder in Beethoven's room. They talked together of philosophy, religion, politics, and "especially of Shakespeare." Beethoven was very much inclined to follow Trémont to Paris, where he knew they had already performed his Symphonies at the Conservatoire, and there he had many enthusiastic admirers. (See Mercure Musical, 1 May, 1906, Une visite à Beethoven, by Baron Trémont, published by J. Chantavoine).

[24] Or to be more exact, Theresa Brunsvik. Beethoven had met the Brunsviks at Vienna between 1796 and 1799. Giulietta Guicciardi was the cousin of Theresa. Beethoven seems also to have been attracted at one period by one of Theresa's sisters, Josephine, who first married Count Deym, and later on, the Baron Stackelberg. Some very striking details on the Brunsvik family are found in an article by M. André de Hevesy. Beethoven et l'Immortelle Bien-aimée (Revue de Paris, March 1 and 15, 1910). For this study M. de Hevesy has made use of the MS. Memoires and the papers of Theresa, which were preserved at Martonvasar in Hungary. They all show an affectionate intimacy between Beethoven and the Brunsviks, and raise again the question of his love for Theresa. But the arguments are not convincing, and I leave them to be discussed at some future time.

[25] Marian Tanger: Beethovens unsterbliche Geliebte (Beethoven's undying Love), Bonn, 1890.

[26] Wilst du dein Herz mir schenken (Aria di Govannini), Edition Peters, 2071. This beautiful air appears in the album which Bach wrote for his wife, Anna Magdalena.

[27] Nohl: Life of Beethoven.

[28] Beethoven was really short-sighted. Ignaz von Seyfried says that this was caused by smallpox, and that he was obliged to wear spectacles when quite young. This short-sightedness would probably exaggerate the wild expression of his eyes. His letters between 1823-4 contain frequent complaints on the subject of his eyes which were often painful. See the articles by Christian Kalischer on this subject, Beethovens Augens und Augenleiden (Die Musik, 15th March—1st April, 1902).

[29] The music for Goethe's play Egmont was commenced in 1809. Beethoven had also wished to write the music to William Tell, but Gyrovetz was chosen before him.

[30] Conversation with Schindler.

[31] But written (so it seems) from Korompa at the Brunswick's house.

[32] This portrait can still be seen in Beethoven's house at Bonn. It is reproduced in Frimmel's Life of Beethoven, page 29, and in the "Musical Times," 15th December, 1892.

[33] To Gleichenstein.

[34] "The heart is the mainspring of all that is great" (to Giannatasio del Rio).

[35] "Goethe's poems give me great happiness," he wrote to Bettina Brentano on 19th February, 1811. And also "Goethe and Schiller are my favourite poets, together with Ossian and Homer, whom, unfortunately, I can only read in translations." To Breitkopf & Härtel, 8th August, 1809, Nohl, New Letters, LIII.

It is remarkable that Beethoven's taste in literature was so sound in view of his neglected education. In addition to Goethe, who he said was "grand, majestic, always in D major" (and more than Goethe) he loved three men, Homer, Plutarch and Shakespeare. Of Homer's works he preferred the Odyssey to the Iliad; he was continually reading Shakespeare (from a German translation) and we know with what tragic grandeur he has set Coriolanus and the Tempest in music. He read Plutarch continually, as did all who were in favour of the revolution. Brutus was his hero, as was also the case with Michael Angelo; he had a small statue of him in his bedroom. He loved Plato, and dreamed of establishing his republic in the whole world. "Socrates and Jesus have been my models," he wrote once on his note-books (Conversations during 1819 and 1820).

[36] To Bettina von Arnim. The authenticity of Beethoven's letters to Bettina, doubted by Schindler, Marx and Deiters, has been supported by Moritz Carriere, Nohl and Kalischer. Bettina has perhaps embellished them a little, but the foundation remains reliable.

[37] "Beethoven," said Goethe to Zelter, "is, unfortunately, possessed of a wild and uncouth disposition; doubtless, he is not wrong in finding the world detestable, but that is not the way to make it pleasant for himself or for others. We must excuse and pity him for he is deaf." After that he did nothing against Beethoven nor did he do anything for him, but he ignored him completely. At the bottom, however, he admired Beethoven's music and feared it also. He was afraid it would cause him to lose that mental calm which he had gained through so much trouble. A letter of young Felix Mendelssohn, who passed through Weimar in 1830, gives us a very interesting glimpse into the depths of that storm-tossed passionate soul, controlled as it was by a masterly and powerful intellect.... "At first," writes Mendelssohn, "he did not want to hear Beethoven's name mentioned, but after a time he was persuaded to listen to the First Movement of the Symphony in C minor, which moved him deeply. He would not show anything outwardly, but merely remarked to me, 'that does not touch me, it only surprises me.' After a time he said 'It is really grand, it is maddening, you would think the house was crumbling to pieces.' Afterwards, at dinner, he sat pensive and absorbed until he began to question me about Beethoven's music. I saw quite clearly that a deep impression had been made on him...." (For information on the relations between Goethe and Beethoven, see various articles by Frimmel).

[38] Letter from Goethe to Zelter, 2nd September, 1812.... Zelter to Goethe, 14th September, 1812: "Auch ich bewundere ihn mit Schrecken" ("I, too, regard him with mingled admiration and dread"). Zelter writes to Goethe in 1819, "They say he is mad."

[39] At any rate, this was a subject which Beethoven had in his mind; for we find it in his notes, especially those for the proposed Tenth Symphony.

[40] There was a very tender intimacy between Amalie Sebald and him about this time, and it is possible that this may have supplied the inspiration.

[41] Differing from him in this, Schubert had written in 1807 a pièce d'occasion, in honour of Napoleon the Great, and conducted the performance himself before the Emperor.

[42] "I say nothing of our monarchs and their kingdoms," he wrote to Kauka during the Congress. "To my mind, the empire of the spirit is the dearest of all. It is the first of all kingdoms, temporal and spiritual."

[43] Vienna, is that not to say everything? All trace of German Protestantism eradicated, even the national accent lost, Italianised.... German spirit, German habits and ways explained from textbooks of Italian and Spanish origin.... The country of debased history, falsified science, falsified religion.... A frivolous scepticism calculated to undermine all love of truth, honour, and independence! (Wagner, Beethoven, 1870).

Grillparzer has written that it was a misfortune to be born an Austrian. The great German composers of the end of the 19th Century who have lived in Vienna, have suffered cruelly from the spirit of this town, delivered up to the Pharisaical cult of Brahms. The life of Bruckner was one long martyrdom. Hugo Wolf, who battled furiously before giving in, has uttered implacable judgments on Vienna.

[44] King Jerome had offered Beethoven an annuity of six hundred ducats of gold and 150 silver ducats for travelling expenses, for playing to him occasionally and for managing his chamber-music concerts, which were not long or very frequent. Beethoven was eager to go.

[45] Rossini's Tancredi sufficed to shake the whole German musical edifice. Bauernfold (quoted by Ehrhard) notes in his Journal this criticism which circulated in the Viennese salons in 1816: "Mozart and Beethoven are old pedants; the stupidity of the preceding period amused them: it is only since Rossini that one has really known melody. Fidelio is quite devoid of music; one cannot understand why people take the trouble to weary themselves with it." Beethoven gave his last concert as pianist in 1814.

[46] The same year Beethoven lost his brother Karl. "He clung to life so, that I would willingly have given mine," he wrote to Antonia Brentano.

[47] Except for his intimate friendship with Countess Maria von Erdödy, a constant sufferer like himself, afflicted with an incurable malady. She lost her only son suddenly in 1816. Beethoven dedicated to her in 1809 his two Trios Op. 70; and in 1815-17, his two great Sonatas for Violoncello Op. 102.

[48] Besides his deafness, his health grew worse from day to day. During October, 1816, he was very ill. In the summer of 1817 his doctor said he had a chest complaint. During the winter, 1817-18, he was tormented with his so-called phthisis. Then he had acute rheumatism in 1820-21, jaundice in 1821, and several maladies in 1823.

[49] A change of style in his music, beginning with the Sonata Op: 101, dates from this time.

[50] Beethoven's conversation-books form more than 11,000 manuscript pages, and can be found bound to-day in the Imperial Library at Berlin.

[51] Schindler, who had been intimate with Beethoven since 1819, had known him slightly since 1814; but Beethoven had found it very difficult to be friendly; he treated him at first with disdainful haughtiness.

[52] See the admirable notes of Wagner on Beethoven's deafness (Beethoven, 1870).

[53] He loved animals and pitied them. The mother of the historian, von Frimmel, says that for a long while she had an involuntary dislike for Beethoven, because when she was a little girl he drove away with his handkerchief all the butterflies that she wanted to catch.

[54] He was always uncomfortable in his lodgings. In thirty-five years in Vienna, he changed his rooms thirty times.

[55] Beethoven had written personally to Cherubini, who was "of all his contemporaries the one whom he most esteemed." Cherubini did not reply.

[56] "I never avenge myself," he wrote besides to Madame Streicher. "When I am obliged to act against others, I only do what is necessary to defend myself or to prevent them from doing one harm."

[57] A letter which has been found in Berlin to M. Kalischer, shews with what deep feeling Beethoven wished to make his nephew "a citizen useful to the state" (February 1st, 1819).

[58] Schindler, who saw him then, says that he suddenly became an old man of seventy, utterly crushed and broken of will. He would have died had Carl died. He died soon afterwards.

[59] The dilettantism of our time has not failed to seek to reinstate this scoundrel. This is not surprising.

[60] Letter from Fischenich to Charlotte Schiller (January, 1793). Schiller's Ode was written in 1785. The actual theme appeared in 1808 in the Fantasy for piano, orchestra and Choir, Op. 80, and in 1810 in the Song on Goethe's words: Kleine Blumen, Kleine Blaetter. I have seen in a notebook of 1812 belonging to Dr. Erich Prieger at Bonn, between the sketches of the Seventh Symphony and a plan for an Overture to Macbeth, an attempt to adopt some words of Schiller to the theme which he used later on in the Overture Op. 115 (Namensfeier). Several instrumental motives of the Ninth Symphony appeared before 1815. Thus the definite theme of Joy was put down in notes in 1822; also all the other airs of the Symphony, except the Trio, which came a little after, then the andante moderato, and later the adagio, which appeared last of all. For references to Schiller's poem and the false interpretation which is given now-a-days by substituting for the word Joy the word Liberty, see an article by Charles Andler in Pages Libres (July 8, 1905).

[61] Berlin Library.

[62] Just as if there were words below.

[63] The Mass in D, Op: 123.

[64] Harassed by domestic quarrels, misery, cares of all kinds, Beethoven only wrote during the five years from 1816 to 1821, three pieces for the piano (Op: 101, 102, and 106). His enemies said he was exhausted. He began to work again in 1821.

[65] February, 1824. Signed Prince C. Lichnowski, Count Maurice Lichnovsky, Count Maurice de Fries, Count M. de Dietrichstein, Count F. de Palfy, Count Czernin, Ignace Edler de Mosel, Charles Czerny, Abbé Stadler, A. Diabelli, Artari & Co., Steiner & Co., A. Streicher, Zmeskall, Kiesewetter, etc.

[66] "My moral character is publicly recognised," Beethoven proudly said to the Vienna Municipality, on February 1st, 1819, to vindicate his right to the guardianship of his nephew. Even distinguished writers like Weisenbach have considered him worthy of the dedication of their works.

[67] In August, 1824, he was haunted with the fear of sudden death "like my grandfather to whom I bear so much resemblance," he wrote on August 16th, 1824, to Dr. Bach.

[68] The Ninth Symphony was given for the first time in Germany at Frankfurt on April 1st, 1825; in London on March 25th, 1825; in Paris at the Conservatoire on March 27th, 1831. Mendelssohn, then aged seventeen, gave a performance of it on the piano at the Jaegerhalle in Berlin on November 14th, 1826. Wagner, a student at Leipzig, re-copied it entirely by hand; and in a letter, dated October 6th, 1830, to the publisher, Schott, offered him a reduction of the Symphony for pianoforte duet. One can say that the Ninth Symphony decided Wagner's career.

[69] "Apollo and his Muses would not wish to deliver me up to death yet, for I still owe them so much. Before I go to the Champs-Elysées I must leave behind me what the spirit inspires and tells me to finish. It seems to me that I have scarcely written anything." (To the brothers Schott, Sept. 17th, 1829.)

[70] Beethoven wrote to Moscheles on March 18th, 1827: "The complete sketch of a Symphony is in my desk with a new overture." This sketch has never been found. One only reads in his notes:

"Adagio cantique." Religious song for a symphony in the old modes (Herr Gott dich loben wir.—Alleluja), may be in an independent style, may be as introduction to a fugue. This Symphony might be characterised by the entrance of voices, perhaps in the finale, perhaps in the adagio. The violins in the orchestra, etc., increased ten times for the last movements. The voices to enter one by one; or to repeat the adagio somehow in the last movements. For words for the adagio, a Greek myth or an ecclesiastical canticle, in the allegro, Bacchus' Feast (1818). As has been seen the choral conclusion was intended to be reserved for a Tenth Symphony and not for the Ninth Symphony.

Later he said that he wished to accomplish in his Tenth Symphony "the reconciliation of the modern world with the ancient, which Goethe had attempted in his Second Faust."

[71] The subject is the legend of a horseman who is loved and captured by a fairy, and who suffers from nostalgia and lack of liberty. There are analogies between this poem and that of Tannhäuser. Beethoven worked at it between 1823 and 1826. (See A. Ehrhard Franz Grillparzer, 1900).

[72] Since 1808 Beethoven had made plans for writing the music to Faust. (The first part of Faust appeared under the title of Tragedy in the autumn of 1807). It was then his dearest plan.

[73] "The South of France! It is there, there!" (from a notebook in the Berlin Library). "To go away from here. Only on this sole condition will you be able to rise again to the high level of your art.... A Symphony, then to go away, away, away. The summer to work during a voyage.... Then to travel in Italy and Sicily with some other artist."

[74] In 1819 he was followed by the police for having said aloud "That, after all, Christ was only a crucified Jew." He was then writing the Mass in D. That work alone is enough to show the freedom of his religious inspirations. (For the religious opinions of Beethoven, see Theodor von Frimmel; Beethoven, 3rd Edition, Verlag Harmonie; and Beethovenia, edited Georg Müller, Vol. II, Blöchinger). No less free in politics, Beethoven boldly attacked the vices of the government. He attacked amongst other things, the administration of justice, hindered by the slowness of its process, the stupid police regulations, the rude and lazy clerks in office, who killed all individual initiative and paralysed all action: the unfair privileges of a degenerate aristocracy, the high taxation, etc. His political sympathies seemed to be with England at that time.

[75] The suicide of his nephew.

[76] See an article by Dr. Klotz Forest on the last illness and death of Beethoven in the Chronique Médicale of April 1st and 15th, 1906. There is also exact information in the conversation books where the doctor's questions are written down, and in the article of the doctor himself (Dr. Wawruch) in the Vienna Times, in 1842.

[77] The recollections of the singer, Ludwig Cramolini, which have been published, relate a touching visit to Beethoven during his last illness. He found Beethoven possessed of a calm serenity, a touching kindness. (See the Frankfurter Zeitung, of September 29th, 1907).

[78] The operations took place on December 20th, January 8th, February 2nd, and February 27th.

[79] The young musician, Anselm Huttenbrenner. "God be praised," said Breuning. "Let us thank Him for having put an end to this long and pitiful martyrdom."

All Beethoven's MSS. books and furniture were sold by auction for 1,575 florins. The catalogue contained 252 lots of manuscripts and musical books which did not exceed the sum of 982 florins 37 kreutzer. The conversation-books and the Tagebucher were sold for 1 florin 20 kreutzer. Amongst his books Beethoven possessed: Kant's Natural Science and Astronomy; Bode's Knowledge of the Heavens; Thomas à Kempis The Imitation of Christ. The Censor confiscated Seum's Walks round Syracuse, Kotzebue's Over the Adel, and Fessler's Views on Religion and Theology.

[80] "I am always happy when I have to master some difficulty" (Letter to the Immortal Loved One). "I should like to live a thousand lives.... I am not suited for a quiet life." (To Wegeler, November 16th, 1801).

[81] "Beethoven talked to me on the science of nature and helped me with this study as with music. It was not the laws of nature but its elementary powers that attracted him." (Schindler).

[82] "Oh, how good life is; but mine is for ever embittered." (Letter to Wegeler, May 2nd, 1810).