Beethoven, the Man and the Artist Part 6

(To Wegeler, who had expressed wonder at Beethoven's rapid primavista playing, when it was impossible to see each individual note.)

76. "The poet writes his monologue or dialogue in a certain, continuous rhythm, but the elocutionist in order to insure an understanding of the sense of the lines, must make pauses and interruptions at places where the poet was not permitted to indicate it by punctuation. The same manner of declamation can be applied to music, and admits of modification only according to the number of performers."

(Reported by Schindler, Beethoven's faithful factotum.)

77. "With respect to his playing with you, when he has acquired the proper mode of fingering and plays in time and plays the notes with tolerable correctness, only then direct his attention to the matter of interpretation; and when he has gotten this far do not stop him for little mistakes, but point them out at the end of the piece. Although I have myself given very little instruction I have always followed this method which quickly makes musicians, and that, after all, is one of the first objects of art."

(To Czerny, who was teaching music to Beethoven's nephew Karl.)

78. "Always place the hands at the key-board so that the fingers can not be raised higher than is necessary; only in this way is it possible to produce a singing tone."

(Reported by Schindler as Beethoven's view on pianoforte instruction.

He hated a staccato style of playing and dubbed it "finger dancing" and "throwing the hands in the air.")

[PG Editor's Note: #79 was skipped in the 1905 edition--error?]

ON HIS OWN WORKS

80. "I haven't a single friend; I must live alone. But well I know that G.o.d is nearer to me than to the others of my art; I a.s.sociate with Him without fear, I have always recognized and understood Him, and I have no fear for my music,--it can meet no evil fate. Those who understand it must become free from all the miseries that the others drag with them."

(To Bettina von Arnim. [Bettina's letter to Goethe, May 28, 1810.])

81. "The variations will prove a little difficult to play, particularly the trills in the coda; but let that not frighten you. It is so disposed that you need play only the trills, omitting the other notes because they are also in the violin part. I would never have written a thing of this kind had I not often noticed here and there in Vienna a man who after I had improvised of an evening would write down some of my peculiarities and make boast of them next day. Foreseeing that these things would soon appear in print I made up my mind to antic.i.p.ate them. Another purpose which I had was to embarra.s.s the local pianoforte masters. Many of them are my mortal enemies, and I wanted to have my revenge in this way, for I knew in advance that the variations would be put before them, and that they would make exhibitions of themselves."

(Vienna, November 2, 1793, to Eleonore von Breuning, in dedicating to her the variations in F major, "Se vuol ballare." [The pianist whom Beethoven accuses of stealing his thunder was Abbe Gelinek.])

82. "The time in which I wrote my sonatas (the first ones of the second period) was more poetical than the present (1823); such hints were therefore unnecessary. Every one at that time felt in the Largo of the third sonata in D (op. 10) the pictured soulstate of a melancholy being, with all the nuances of light and shade which occur in a delineation of melancholy and its phases, without requiring a key in the shape of a superscription; and everybody then saw in the two sonatas (op. 14) the picture of a contest between two principles, or a dialogue between two persons, because it was so obvious."

(In answer to Schindler's question why he had not indicated the poetical conceits underlying his sonatas by superscriptions or t.i.tles.)

83. "This sonata has a clean face (literally: 'has washed itself'), my dear brother!"

(January, 1801, to Hofmeister, publisher in Leipzig to whom he offers the sonata, op. 22, for 20 ducats.)

84. "They are incessantly talking about the C-sharp minor sonata (op.

27, No. 2); on my word I have written better ones. The F-sharp major sonata (op. 78) is a different thing!"

(A remark to Czerny.)

[The C-sharp minor sonata is that popularly known as the "Moonlight Sonata," a t.i.tle which is wholly without warrant. Its origin is due to Rellstab, who, in describing the first movement, drew a picture of a small boat in the moonlight on Lake Lucerne. In Vienna a tradition that Beethoven had composed it in an arbor gave rise to the t.i.tle "Arbor sonata." t.i.tles of this character work much mischief in the amateur mind by giving rise to fantastic conceptions of the contents of the music. H.

E. K.]

85. "The thing which my brother can have from me is 1, a Septett per il Violino, Viola, Violoncello, Contraba.s.so, Clarinetto, Cornto, f.a.gotto, tutti obligati; for I can not write anything that is not obligato, having come into the world with obligato accompaniment."

(December 15, 1800, to Hofmeister, publisher, in Leipzig.)

86. "I am but little satisfied with my works thus far; from today I shall adopt a new course."

(Reported by Carl Czerny in his autobiography in 1842. Concerning the time at which the remark was made, Czerny says: "It was said about 1803, when B. had composed op. 28 (the pianoforte sonata in D) to his friend Krumpholz (a violinist). Shortly afterward there appeared the sonatas (now op. 31) in which a partial fulfillment of his resolution may be observed.")

87. "Read Shakespeare's 'Tempest.'"

(An answer to Schindler's question as to what poetical conceit underlay the sonatas in F minor. Beethoven used playfully to call the little son of Breuning, the friend of his youth, A&Z, because he employed him often as a messenger.)

["Schindler relates that when once he asked Beethoven to tell him what the F minor and D minor (op. 31, No. 2) meant, he received for an answer only the enigmatical remark: 'Read Shakespeare's "Tempest."' Many a student and commentator has since read the 'Tempest' in the hope of finding a clew to the emotional contents which Beethoven believed to be in the two works, so singularly a.s.sociated, only to find himself baffled. It is a fancy, which rests, perhaps, too much on outward things, but still one full of suggestion, that had Beethoven said: 'Hear my C minor symphony,' he would have given a better starting-point to the imagination of those who are seeking to know what the F minor sonata means. Most obviously it means music, but it means music that is an expression of one of those psychological struggles which Beethoven felt called upon more and more to delineate as he was more and more shut out from the companions.h.i.+p of the external world. Such struggles are in the truest sense of the word tempests. The motive, which, according to the story, Beethoven himself said, indicates, in the symphony, the rappings of Fate at the door of human existence, is common to two works which are also related in their spiritual contents. Singularly enough, too, in both cases the struggle which is begun in the first movement and continued in the third, is interrupted by a period of calm, rea.s.suring, soul-fortifying aspiration, which, in the symphony as well as in the sonata, takes the form of a theme with variations."--"How to Listen to Music," page 29. H. E. K.]

88. "Sinfonia Pastorella. He who has ever had a notion of country life can imagine for himself without many superscriptions what the composer is after. Even without a description the whole, which is more sentiment than tone painting, will be recognized."

(A note among the sketches for the "Pastoral" symphony preserved in the Royal Library at Berlin.)

[There are other notes of similar import among the sketches referred to which can profitably be introduced here:

"The hearer should be allowed to discover the situations;"

"Sinfonia caracteristica, or a recollection of country life;"

"Pastoral Symphony: No picture, but something in which the emotions are expressed which are aroused in men by the pleasure of the country (or) in which some feelings of country life are set forth."