LUDWIG BEETHOVEN, Brain Proprietor.
Moscheles submitted to him the MSS. of the pianoforte arrangement of Fidclio, on which was inscribed "With God's Help." Beethoven returned it with the addition, "0 man, help thyself.'' It must not be inferred from this that he was not religious. He was a Roman Catholic; and that he was deeply religious is vouched for by his lifelong friend. Pastor Amenda. These facts are mentioned thus early in this biography because they show why Bee thoven was able for years to bear up under an infliction which would have crushed a less self reliant and devout nature. The deafness which crept over him, and which to a composer must have seemed even more terrible than blindness to a layman, did not come to imbitter merely the closing years of a happy life. Beethoven was stone-deaf before middle age, and had been for several years conscious of the affliction in store for him. In a letter to Amenda, in 1800, he begs him to keep his deafness 'a profound secret,' so he must have been fully under its cloud when lie was only about thirty.
Beethoven was famous as a pianist. lie made his (lAut in Vienna in 1795, with his C major eoncerto, and created a great impression; he also played at a benefit concert for lozart's widow and children. He was, moreover, be ginning to make a great stir as a composer. Omitting his juvenile works, which were not remarkable—lleethoven was not precocious as a composer; his genius unfolded itself slowly —he had completed, among other works, besides the trios already mentioned, the first :met of pianoforte sonatas, the Sonata Puthetigne, the six quartets dedicated to Prince von Lobkowitz, and, most important of all. his First Symphony. Of the ballet music to Promethens, which also belongs to this period and had a successful run at the Burg Theatre, it is told that when Haydn praised it Beethoven remarked. "But, lieber 'Papa,' it is far from being a Creation." Haydn was much put out by the remark. "Yes, indeed," was his reply. "And I doubt if its composer ever will produce one." At that time, of course, Haydn was by far the more famous.
The pathetic story is told that Beethoven first realized he was completely deaf when, during a walk in the country with his pupil Ries, the latter pointed to a shepherd who was playing 1-lhe "Sehalmei." Beethoven could not hear a note. "What humiliation," he wrote in his so-called Miff (a letter to his brothers, dated October 6. 1802), "when some one near me bears the notes of a far-off flute or a shepherd's pipe and I do not!" However, his resolution rose superior to his misfortune. "I will grapple with fate; it
shall never drag me down." Henceforth Bee thoven's life was a practical application of the letter and spirit of this resolution. It was a life of unremitting industry. Beethoven (lid not 'shake music out of his sleeves' (as did Schubert, for example) ; everything lie composed was care fully thought out and intellectually tested, as his musical sketch-books show, so that the great number of his works is proof of intense applica tion as well as of genius.
Considering the pathetic character of his affliction, his productiveness in the years imme diately following it gives evidence of unsur passed fortitude. Among the works produced during time five years succeeding, his letter to Amenda are the pianoforte sonata with the familiar funeral march, the so-called Mow:lig/it Sonata (not thus named by Beethoven) ; the Second Symphony: the Krent:er Sonata, for piano and violin; the Eroica Sympb-ony (3d), the Waidstein and Appassionata sonatas, and in 1805 his opera, Fideiio (revised in 1806 and 1814).
The Moonlight Sonata is dedicated to Countess Giulietta Cuiecia•di, "who loves me, and whom 1 love. Unluckily, she is not in my rank of life." This romantic attachment and the chaste beauty of the first movement have caused the names 'Moonlight' to cling to the composition. Bee thoven's love affairs were by no means few. They include Eleonora von Breuning. who made woolen comforters for him, but married an other; Countess Therese von Braunschweig Cult sterbliehe (icliebte'), whom, as a pupil, in 1794, he had rapped over the knuckles, and who be came engaged to him in 1806, the angagemnent being broken after four years; Bettina Brentano; and i\larie I,. Pachler-Kosehak, whom "alone 1 wished to possess, never shall call mine." Countess Erd6dy, whom he calls is 'confes sor,' and whom he addressed as 'Dear, dear, dear, dear, dear Countess,' erected a memorial temple to him in her park. The aristocratic women who were his friends make a, large list, and no composer's dedications contain so many names familiar in the 'high life' of his day. As he was unprepossessing in appearance and not infrequently 'a little blunt. not to say uncouth' (Spohr, A utobioyrephy), it must. have been by sheer force of his genius that he held sway in the houses of wealth and nobility.