Beethoven's Eroica: The Music & the Hero, Part 3

Another Heroic Monument

You can read the two earlier segments to this essay about Beethoven's 3rd Symphony here and here. This segment was originally entitled "The Hero Within the Music."

While Bonaparte – that is, First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte (born Buonaparte), not the Emperor Napoleon – was the impetus behind the Symphony in E-flat Major Beethoven began working on in 1802, I'm wondering if Haydn wasn't closer to the mark when he allegedly said, “He's placed himself at the center of his work. He gives us a glimpse into his soul. ...But it is quite, quite new – the artist as hero – quite new... Everything is different from today.” (– quoted as it was used in the BBC/Pro Arte film Eroica which was imbedded in the previous post.)

Haydn (from BBC's "Eroica")

The idea of the “artist as hero” is entirely antithetical to the “artist as craftsman” of the Classical Era of which Haydn is generally considered the ultimate example. Yet he had already begun pushing these boundaries, now that he had retired after nearly thirty years as a court composer for Prince Nicholas Esterházy and had few requirements to fulfill for his successor. He composed two immense oratorios – completing The Creation in 1798 and The Seasons in 1801 – and six monumental masses between 1796 and 1802, his last major works. And there is certainly something of the sublime far beyond the classical craftsman in these works.

Haydn teaching Beethoven

Beethoven arrived in Vienna in 1792, a year after the death of Mozart – whose own music, especially in things like his D Minor Piano Concerto and the opera Don Giovanni challenged 18th Century Classical proprieties with an abundance of Romantic emotions – and studied with Haydn until he left once more for London in 1794. Though their relationship was never friendly – in fact, Haydn treated the young composer with some disdain if not jealousy and didn't seem to take these lessons seriously (Beethoven refused to list Haydn as his teacher on his first publications because he felt Haydn had taught him too little; another composer, examining Beethoven's counterpoint notebook, found several errors that Haydn had not bothered to correct) – Haydn was, after all, the most celebrated living composer in Europe at the time. One could point out many similarities in their works – the opening of “Winter” in Haydn's Seasons and the introduction to Beethoven's 4th Symphony, both in the same key, for instance – but then the “common language” of 18th Century classicism was so “common,” it is difficult to say how much of this is influence or coincidence much less imitation.

But there was something so startlingly new in the Eroica for 1803, it's impossible not to ask “where did that come from!?”

Yet if we examine the symphony in terms of its overall structure, it turns out not to be that different from the models that inspired Beethoven's first two symphonies between 1800 and 1802: instead of a slow introduction, typical with Haydn, Beethoven uses two peremptory chords to get out attention (no chance to settle comfortably into “listening mode,” here), but after that, the overall concepts are not unfamiliar – just incredibly expanded, especially in the middle section's development which is the hallmark of Sonata Form (in the 18th Century, this might be so brief as to be no more than a digression, but in Beethoven, it becomes the dramatic focus of the struggle between leaving the tonic key and its eventual return.

This first movement – full of excruciating dissonances and nearly as long as any of Haydn's earlier symphonies entirely – is followed, as expected, by a slow movement, but again one of immensely expanded proportions and intense drama – a funeral march, no less.

Haydn's third movements are often earthy and more dance-like than the standard courtly minuet of his earlier works, but Beethoven's takes this peasant-like energy to a new and often frenetic level, a return to life after the slow movement tragedy.

Haydn's finales were often light-hearted, full of tricks or jokes, but also capable of hiding intellectual details, but none of them were ever as long or as commanding as the Eroica's finale: here, a set of variations on what seems to be a simplistic, almost inane idea later turns out to be the bass of a theme introduced almost as an afterthought, but simple or not, it is full of “learnèd counterpoint” and out-and-out fugues, the culmination of the intellectual.

And it was the tradition in the 18th Century approach to variations that the next to the last one would be in a slow tempo (a way to inform the audience the end is near) which is exactly what Beethoven does here except, again, it is greatly expanded, almost into a slow movement of its own. It becomes an emotional climax if not of the whole piece, then at least the second half of the symphony (nothing could be more emotional that that funeral march's final disintegration). And how to end it? With an uproarious “happy ending,” a triumphal dance that, to a proper 18th Century classicist, would be vulgar in the extreme, pounding away at the final resolution to the home tonic – repetitive but also drunk with joy!

The skeleton of the classical symphony is still there but the surface of it – its scope and dimensions and what activates it as a work of art – are almost unrecognizable, certainly on first hearing. Yet it is not so revolutionary as we tend to think, embedded in the past as it is.

So it is interesting to read someone writing about the “sublime” in music:

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“In music, only that can be sublime which exceeds the conceptual powers of the imagination: which appears too large and significant, too foreign and strange, for the imagination to grasp it easily...”

“The feeling of sublimity in music is aroused when the imagination is elevated to the plane of the limitless, the immeasurable, the unconquerable. This happens when such emotions are aroused as... prevent the integration of one's impressions into a coherent whole.”

– Christian Friedrich Michaelis, “Some Remarks on the Sublime in Music” (Leipzig, 1805) quoted in James Webster's essay, The Creation, Haydn's Late Vocal Music and the Musical Sublime in the Bard Music Festival Series, Haydn and His World (Princeton, 1997)
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It is interesting to read this because it very much describes the music we associate with the huge emotional – indeed, “sensual” – leap into 19th Century romanticism which, as any music student has been told, essentially began with Beethoven's Eroica in 1803. Outside of a close circle of friends of Prince Joseph Maximilian Lobkowitz, no one else heard this symphony until April, 1805, when it was first performed at Vienna's Theater an der Wien.

And yet Michaelis published his “Remarks” in Leipzig in 1805: had he been in Vienna and heard Beethoven's startling new music? It's almost as if he were describing the Eroica's impact on its listeners:

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“Firstly, by uniformity so great that it almost excludes variety: by the constant repetition of the same note or chord... by long, majestic, weighty, or solemn notes, and hence by very slow movement; by long pauses holding up the progress of the melodic line, or which impede the shaping of a melody, thus underlining the lack of variety. Secondly, by too much diversity, as when innumerable impressions succeed one another too rapidly and the mind is too abruptly hurled into the thundering torrent of sounds, or when (as in many polyphonic compositions involving many voices) the themes are developed together in so complex a manner that the imagination cannot easily and calmly integrate the diverse ideas into a coherent whole without strain. Thus in music, the sublime can only be that which seems too vast and significant, too strange and wonderful, to be easily assimilated by it.”

– Michaelis, ibid
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The first idea certainly seems to pertain to Beethoven's epic Funeral March – even to that mysterious, unexpected D# interrupting the 1st Movement's opening cello melody, though not a “long pause,” which holds up the progress of the melodic line and expands it in such a way, there is this harmonic hiccup before the phrase cadences where it's expected to.

And the second idea – too much diversity – is another element of Beethoven's development sections, one thing after another thrown at you – melodic fragments, harmonic implications, striking dissonances and rhythmic irregularities – before you're back on any kind of solid (expected) ground.

Yet Michaelis is no doubt responding to elements of Haydn's oratorios – especially The Creation which already begins pushing beyond mere craftsmanship: the opening depiction of chaos was, to an 18th Century listener, sheer chaos, harmonically; the appearance of Light a stroke of brilliance that, though obvious to us (especially tame compared to today's special effects we witness daily in television, movies and video games) was thrilling to first-time listeners.

But it's all about expectations and how they're met: how did Beethoven get from being the Student beginning his studies with Haydn at 21 to the Master who wrote the Eroica at 32?

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Cherubini & Muse (by Ingres)

It is tempting to write about the influences on Beethoven' style we don't usually think about, especially composers of his time whom we no longer know. There was a whole school of French artists active in post-Revolutionary Paris who painted, sculpted and composed on an epic scale, composers like Cherubini, an Italian transplant who became the leading French composer and dominated the musical style of his generation. Beethoven's sole opera, Fidelio, premiered in 1805, is based on a French "rescue" drama and heavily inspired by Cherubini.

But the musical style of Gossec, Gretry and Mehul was known to Beethoven whether or not he was aware of the paintings of David and Ingres. But this would take another sizable post of more interest to scholars than listeners, so let's leave that for now. It is, however, an area little written and less talked about in the Beethoven literature.

After producing six string quartets by 1800, his first symphony and a series of piano sonatas – including the very Romantic “Pathetique” in 1798 and the so-called “Moonlight” in 1801 (which could easily have been called the “Tempest” after its stormy finale) and the very next sonata, the placid “Pastoral” – Beethoven said to a friend, “I am only a little satisfied with my previous works. From today on I will take a new path.”

The next works he composed were the 2nd Symphony, the three violin sonatas of Op. 30 (dedicated to Tsar Alexander I), the “Eroica” Variations for solo piano which made use of a successful dance tune from his ballet, The Creatures of Prometheus of the previous year (a view of Creation from the perspective of classical Greek mythology, by the way), and the three piano sonatas that includes the very unusual one actually known as the “Tempest” (from a chance remark he made about Shakespeare's play when asked what its opening movement meant without ever really explaining how it applies). And then he started working out some new ideas for another symphony.

But something else happened in Beethoven's life that year.

A far from heroic-looking Beethoven walking in the woods near Heiligenstadt

He had begun experiencing symptoms that indicated something was wrong with his hearing and the idea of a concert pianist, indeed a composer, going deaf came at a time just as Beethoven's reputation was growing, that his new pieces were bringing in a good income. He was nearly 30 – what did it mean if he would soon go deaf and all this would come to a sudden halt?

In October, 1802, in the midst of the last movement of the 2nd Symphony, Beethoven wrote a heart-rending letter to his two brothers, intended to be opened after his death, which is known as “The Heiligenstadt Testament.” In places, it reads like a suicide note.

He had been troubled by the first symptoms around 1796, enough to worry about it. In a letter to a friend back home in 1801, he wrote “I will seize fate by the throat; it shall certainly not bend and crush me completely.”

When he wrote his 5th Symphony – which he started sketching probably while he was working on the Eroica and had completed the opening movements before he'd begun the 4th Symphony – he used that famous motive he described to his student Ferdinand Ries as “fate knocking at the door.” This gives rise to the idea the symphony is clearly about Man overcoming Fate and celebrating a great victory in the finale. It doesn't matter if that Man is actually the man Beethoven because the music itself transcends whatever inspired it, but certainly his own experiences dealing with what Fate has dealt him – in this case, his deafness – might have given him the dramatic inspiration whether he's writing an autobiographical piece or not.

Another fanciful image of Beethoven

And just as the Hero of the Eroica Symphony probably isn't a musical portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte – after all, how do you make sense of a hero who has a funeral in the second movement when the hero it is supposed to be dedicated to is very much alive? – is it any more possible the struggle in this music is the first stage of Beethoven coming to terms with his own deafness, becoming his own hero in grabbing Fate, two quick knocks at the door to start the symphony on its way?

Perhaps not. It's always dangerous to read anything into what Beethoven may have been thinking because he never told anyone what was specifically on his mind – even the reference to the “Tempest” is so vague, it hardly begins to answer the question.

But whether it is a musical portrait of Beethoven – or more likely his state of mind – or of Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of France, is immaterial. You may hear great armies marching across battlefields in the first movement or hear in it a portrait not of Bonaparte but of Alexander the Great (as one writer insisted) but that may have nothing to do with what Beethoven was thinking about when he composed it.

What it comes down to is more like what Arturo Toscanini said: it is Allegro con brio, the tempo Beethoven gave to the first movement. It is about music and how it's put together: what you make of it is your own side of the equation.

- Dick Strawser

This three-part essay was written as a companion post for the Harrisburg Symphony's opening concert of the 2014-2015 Season with conductor Stuart Malina, which featured Beethoven's 3rd Symphony as well as the 4th Piano Concerto, October 18th & 19th. It is not intended as a scholarly or analytical article and is designed merely to augment a listener's appreciation of the music, the time in which it was composed, and the life of the composer who wrote it. Other essays in this on-going series can be read by following the tag up close.

Beethoven's Eroica: The Music & the Hero, Part 2

Beethoven in 1803

You can read the first segment of this essay, an introduction to Beethoven's Third Symphony, here.

This segment could be entitled "Some People & Places Behind the Eroica."

Given the news today – pick your horror story: Ebola, ISIS, gun violence, political campaigns, what-have-you – it's sometimes difficult to imagine yourself living in some other era that could be any worse (your good-old-days or someone else's).

We often view Art as a means of escaping from our daily travails, a chance to forget about reality and lose ourselves in the glories of some past century.

But we often forget about the composer's reality at the time this music was being written and usually dismiss it as unnecessary to our enjoyment of it.

Granted, one can enjoy Beethoven's Eroica without knowing what was going on in his life or beyond hearing how it had once been dedicated to Napoleon Bonaparte.

But if, after you've heard this composition – regarded as the first major work to unleash what became known as 19th Century Romantic Music – you wondered “where did that come from?”, then read on.

To open last season, Stuart Malina programmed Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring which is credited as being where 20th Century Music began. This season, he begins with Beethoven's Eroica which is usually given the credit for being the starting point for the 19th Century, dividing what's become standard classical music fare from the 18th Century's Baroque and Classical styles.

Heroic, indeed, whether it was inspired by Napoleon or not. It was longer than any symphony written before it and it was far more dramatic than anything Haydn had ever written. The demands on the listeners – not to mention the players – were unprecedented. What must it have been like to hear this for the first time in 1804, knowing only what listeners in Vienna knew? How can we, today, forget everything we've heard that's been written since then – written, mostly, in Beethoven's shadow?

Prince Lobkowitz

I'd recently discovered this 2003 BBC film – it lasts less than 90 minutes – which attempts to do just that: it takes place on the day Beethoven rehearsed his new symphony with an orchestra hired by his friend and patron, Prince Lobkowitz. Considering how Hollywood usually treats the arts – classical music, in particular – this is not a bad representation of the possibilities (at least no St. Bernards were harmed in the filming of this program). Many comments (whether they occurred that day or not) are factual or at least taken from historical documents. But it gives you a reasonable idea as far as “historical fiction” is concerned what could have happened.

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The BBC/Opus Arte film “Eroica” (2003) directed by Simon Cellan-Jones with Ian Hart as Beethoven:

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What discrepancies exist are minor – the room it was filmed in may not be the music room of Lobkowitz's Vienna palace (see below) and the military gentleman, Count Dietrichstein, could not be the same Count Dietrichstein who exists in Beethoven's biography, a man five years the composer's junior who, aside from being artistically astute and a close friend, was also a composer himself.

Yes, Beethoven was in love with the young woman, Josephine von Deym, née Brunsvick (who arrives late with her older sister, Therese – both were piano students of Beethoven's and both have been considered candidates for the Immortal Belovéd who figures in Beethoven's life in 1812 - you can read more about the women in Beethoven's life in my blog post, here). Yes, she was recently widowed with four children (though one of them was only a few months old at the time, despite the scene where all four of them romp through the music room). Hopeful of marrying her, Beethoven was well aware of the laws which forbade her, an aristocrat, from marrying a “commoner” like Beethoven, despite his being a genius and being – well, Beethoven!

And yes, since the composer often styled himself in French, signing his name as Louis van Beethoven, his close friends are calling him Louis – not Louie...

Ferdinand Ries

Keep in mind Beethoven was 33 years old at this time – we tend to forget that he was only 56 when he died. His student, Ferdinand Ries (the son of Beethoven's first violin teacher back in Bonn), he who makes the hapless comment about the horn player coming in early, would have been 19, then. A month later, Ries made his debut as a concert pianist playing Beethoven's C Minor Piano Concerto (No. 3) with his own cadenza. Though he left Vienna in 1805, it is his account, written 34 years later, that supplies most of the information we have about this particular day along with several other anecdotes which give us such a wonderful view of the human who was The Master.

The biggest doubt about the film, of course, is the level of the performance. Ries remarks that the rehearsal was “terrible” and indeed here it begins that way. It is hard to imagine that, after a particularly bumpy start, this sight-reading session of such new and strange music should suddenly become a performance any ensemble today would be proud of – and kudos to the Orchestre Revolutionaire et Romantique for supplying the musicians of the orchestra (except for one of the bass players and perhaps the second horn player) who are, in fact, led here by their actual concertmaster if, in the soundtrack, by John Eliot Gardiner. Still, it would be excruciating theater to subject modern audiences to what the actual rehearsal may have sounded like.

One of the things I like about this presentation is watching the faces of those people hearing this music for the first time – and not just hearing it but hearing music like it for the first time. There are those who are confused by it or perplexed by certain passages – especially the more dissonant ones – and those who are excited by it. For instance, Princess Caroline, Lobkowitz's wife, has an eagerness about her listening: clearly the music thrills her and she is up on the very latest of what is “new.”

There are those who clearly have no clue what is going on here, musically or otherwise, and can only compare it to what they know (“if this were by Haydn, it would be over by now,” someone – a footman? – says near the end of the first movement). There are those who have no clue what is going on, either, but are somehow aware whatever it is is something significant.

Count Dietrichstein, depicted here as an old fuss-budget clearly out of sorts over Beethoven's dedication to Bonaparte, is deeply affected by the slow movement, its funeral march: perhaps he is remembering friends he has lost on the battlefield? And the young woman – who is Josephine von Deym, the woman Beethoven is disappointed had not, at the beginning, arrived yet – is no doubt thinking about her late husband who'd died that January.

Prince Lobkowitz, historically described as “absent-minded,” is at times unsure what he is hearing, closing his eyes to better concentrate, perhaps, or is he nodding off, a bit? Suffering from gout? Perhaps.

Typical would be the discussion heard after the first movement – what each listener heard in the music, whether inspired by knowing it was a “Bonaparte Symphony” or simply in hearing great armies marching across history to do battle. Listeners have always heard music their own way, trying to create some story, perhaps, to hang on to, to explain what they're listening to when all the composer may have been thinking about was how to lead up to these particularly dissonant chords at the climax of the development section.

Haydn arrives at Beethoven's rehearsal

I don't know, frankly, if Haydn did show up at his student's rehearsal – and if he did, why not late, after all? – but I love the shot where Beethoven is standing in front of the orchestra (not as a conductor: conductors with batons didn't exist at the time!) and we see the old man Haydn entering behind him, like a ghost peering over his shoulder. Brilliant. Even more brilliant is the expression on Haydn's face as the camera moves in to focus on him, as Beethoven commits something his teacher (and many in those first audiences) would have viewed as a mistake – “why would he do that?”

What he says at the end is perhaps the most telling line in the entire film. Attributed to Haydn, I'm not sure (since I can't verify it anywhere other than having heard it so often) if it is factual or one of those mythological statements created by the well-meaning Anton Schindler years later, but it does sum up an attitude about Beethoven that transcends the usual misunderstanding between the Old Guard and the New.

“He's placed himself at the center of his work,” Haydn tells his hosts after the rehearsal has concluded. “He gives us a glimpse into his soul – I expect that's why it's so... noisy... but it is quite, quite new – the artist as hero – quite new... Everything is different from today.”

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To help imagine the mortal who could create such music, here is a video-montage of still photographs of a house in Döbling, now a section of Vienna. It is here that Beethoven lived when he composed most of his Third Symphony during the summer of 1803.
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(The soundtrack is part of the slow movement of the C Minor Violin Sonata, Op. 30/2 – here with Pinchas Zukerman and Daniel Barenboim – which was composed in the summer of 1802 when he was in Heiligenstadt, though I've never seen it referred to as the “Eroica Sonata” before. It's from the set I'd mentioned in a previous post as having been dedicated to the Russian tsar, Alexander I.)

The apartment Beethoven occupied that summer is accessible through a door off the courtyard just off the street. Presumably, he had a view of the fields and woods beyond though today, one can see only the house across the street.

The house itself – much less the grounds – is different from what it would have been during Beethoven's stay here, a house built in the 1790s on the main street of a quiet country suburb. The second floor was added in 1840 and the ornate lamp post is certainly later still. The house is currently a museum – apparently it was not open the day the poster of this video visited – and contains little actual material about Beethoven beyond some period furniture and informative displays, but you can find a little more about it and see a couple images from the inside at the official Vienna Museum website, here.

The Palace of Prince Lobkowitz (left), Vienna

The Palace of Prince Josef Maximilian Lobkowitz still stands in Vienna though the main family castle is in Prague. The Prince who was Beethoven's friend and patron (and, for a time, landlord) was the 7th prince of the family and lost much of the family fortune not only in supporting the arts in Vienna, maintaining his own orchestra, but in the political instability and economic downturns that affected Europe during the Napoleonic Wars.

The music room where this first “read-through” of the symphony took place is now called the “Eroicasaal” (or Eroica Concert Hall). In the photograph here, it is a scene of a lecture. It figures also in a scene from the PBS “Keeping Score” episode on the Eroica with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas walking through the space.

Though you would think the Viennese palace would be the spot for this, the family's collection of Beethoven memorabilia as well as numerous instruments and other manuscripts is housed at the castle in Prague. Here is a Viking Tours promotional video about the Lobkowicz's Palace. The Beethoven Collection begins c.3:20 into the clip:
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Beethoven also dedicated his 5th Symphony to both Prince Lobkowitz and Count Razumovsky, the Russian ambassador who commissioned the three string quartets bearing his name (he also had household musicians which frequently played and premiered Beethoven's newest works). Among other works dedicated to Prince Lobkowitz are the Op. 18 String Quartets (first heard in 1800) as well as the “Harp” Quartet, Op. 74 (published in 1810), the Triple Concerto (written, however, for the Archduke Rudolph, the Austrian Emperor's youngest brother, who as both a piano and a composition student of Beethoven's and who was a frequent performer at the Lobkowitz's), and the song cycle, An die ferne Geliebter (“To the Distant Belovéd”) in 1816.

Lobkowitz, one of three aristocrats to guarantee Beethoven a pension to keep him in Vienna, was nearly ruined in the Depression of 1811 and was forced to renege on his contribution, much to Beethoven's displeasure. He wrote a small cantata for the Prince's birthday in 1816 to be sung to him by members of his family – he and the Princess had, by the way, twelve children – but the performance did not take place. The prince was “deathly ill” at the time and died a week later.

After Prince Joseph Maximilian's death, the family usually rented out the palace before selling the building in the mid-19th Century. It was for a while (with a bit of irony) the home of the French Embassy from 1869-1909: Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew ruled France as the first popularly elected President in 1848 who then staged a coup and overthrew his own government, naming himself Emperor Napoleon III in 1851 and ruled until 1870. From 1945-1980, it housed the French Institute of Vienna before becoming a government building which, since 1991, has been part of Vienna's Museum of Art and History, the Kunsthistorisches Museum.

As for Beethoven's pupil, Ferdinand Ries went on to become a well-known composer and pianist, if forgotten today beyond his association as Beethoven's Student. As Beethoven said of him, "He imitates me too much." As Grove's Dictionary put it, he caught the style and phrases but not the immortality of his master. For instance, the second symphony he composed - written in 1813, it was later published as No. 5 in D Minor - uses the famous Fate-Knocks-at-the-Door rhythm from Beethoven's 5th.

Opening of Ferdinand Ries' Symphony #5 (arr. as a Septet) 1813

(One should also point out, so did Gustav Mahler in his 5th Symphony...)

Ries spent a busy decade in London where he was also instrumental in helping secure a commission from the Royal Philharmonic Society for what became Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Then he returned to Germany and became a respected composer and conductor in Frankfurt where he died in 1838 at the age of 53. He composed eight symphonies, eight piano concertos, three operas and two oratorios plus a large amount of chamber music and piano music, all of it forgotten today.

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Continue reading Part 3 of Beethoven's Eroica: The Music & the Hero, here...

- Dick Strawser

Beethoven's Eroica: The Music & the Hero, Part 1

Taking a brief break from posting my Beethoven-inspired novel, The Lost Chord, a classical music appreciation comedy-thriller, here is an essay in my up-close and the behind the music series. These are not intended to be scholarly works, but hope to explain the background of the music you may be listening to in a way different than your standard program notes or technical analyses.

Some years ago, I heard a radio announcer (no one I knew) say, “Beethoven is one of the few composers you could make an All-Beethoven program with” – and while that may seem obvious, I think what he meant was that there's enough variety in Beethoven's music, you can create an interesting, varied program of great music all by just one composer. And that's not something you can do with every composer.

Though it's easy to be overwhelmed by it, too – too much of a good (or great) thing, perhaps. So usually programmers balance their concerts by selecting from the three basic food-groups: Early-, Middle- and Late-Beethoven.

Stylistically, you've got the very “classical lines” and leaner textures of Early Beethoven, still emerging from the shadow of his teacher, Haydn; the larger emotions and epic proportions of Middle Beethoven, the “Romantic Beethoven,” say; or the more internal, more spiritual explorations of Late Beethoven, particularly in the late Sonatas and Quartets, which never seem to have been duplicated since.

And then there's “Heroic Beethoven,” the hero striding across the landscape of history, larger than life, with an intensity that can be shattering to us mere mortals, the Beethoven of myth and magic – in short, a composer comparable to today's comic book action heroes out to save the universe from evil.

And yet this music – and the myths we associate with it – came from somewhere more normal. The fact that it transcends normality is what gave birth to the myths that surround it – (insert deep and deeply awed announcer's voice, here) – the suffering, misunderstood artist, the loner, the genius – the composer who went deaf. The one who must be approached with reverence and... well, awe.

What is it about Beethoven – more to the point, his music – that affects us like this over 200 years later? And for over 200 years, that's something people have been asking, something every composer since then has been dealing with (or ignoring). It's that idea of a “giant treading behind you,” the way Brahms felt his legacy.

It's the same thing, for many people, one can feel after an exceptional performance of Shakespeare: how could any man create something like that? And why has it rarely, if ever, been equaled since...?

Beethoven's 3rd Symphony has always been known as “The Eroica” and it would seem obvious once you've heard it. The Hero – Napoleon Bonaparte, specifically – that inspired the music may be less important to it than the idea of a hero.

Certainly, Beethoven's Eroica is a ground-breaking work of immense proportions, compared to what people were expecting when he wrote it in 1803, but it is more than a depiction of a historically significant person (and a perception that radically changed from the time Beethoven began it to the time the audience first heard it two years later). And part of the impact of this piece (calling it a “piece” sounds so trivial...) can be heard in the 4th Piano Concerto that opens the concert – and which he began not long after he'd completed the Eroica.

Music, somehow, was going to be different, now.

Beethoven had his fans and he certainly had his detractors. Most of the audience, then, supporters and otherwise, probably didn't "get" what it is we feel about Beethoven today. It's not like Beethoven wrote a new piece and every other composer went and did likewise. It took a while for his innovations to become part of the musical landscape. It's just that we don't know much about all the other composers who lived and worked during Beethoven's lifetime or even the generation that followed his death. Except for the last few years of Schubert's life, the Marvel Comics version of Classical Music tends to jump right from Mozart (who died in 1791) and Haydn (whose last symphonies were written in 1795) to Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt, Wagner and Brahms, whose careers all began between the 1830s and the 1850s.
It's a bit sobering to think that, while Mendelssohn was 16 when he composed his Octet in 1825, two years before Beethoven died, Brahms' 1st Symphony (dubbed "Beethoven's 10th") wasn't finished until 1876.

Here's a performance from the 2012 BBC Proms with an orchestra created by Daniel Barenboim from young musicians of the Middle East including Israel, Egypt, Palestine and Iran, among others. I chose this particular clip as much for the performance (even the context of the performers) as for the interview segment that precedes it.

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The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra conducted by Daniel Barenboim (BBC Proms, 2012) (with interviews beforehand)

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If you're interested in finding out more about the world behind this music, check back for subsequent posts, including one featuring yet another BBC effort, a 2003 film called Eroica which is about the day Beethoven's new symphony was first heard.

Though I can't embed it here, you can also check out Michael Tilson Thomas' highly recommended “Keeping Score” episode from PBS with Beethoven's Third Symphony, here.

Here's a promo:


Within the comparatively small world of Classical Music, given the greater aspects of the Music Business in general, there's a whole “Beethoven Industry” out there that has turned the opening notes of Beethoven's 5th Symphony from the writer “E. T. A. Hoffmann’s vehicle of awe and terror [...] into a meaningless blur of disco beats, hip-hop samples, jingles, and ringtones.”

an epic Beethoven monument by Max Klinger, 1902

I'm quoting from Alex Ross' new column in the New Yorker magazine about the influence of Beethoven where he describes the final chapter of Matthew Guerrieri's book on the impact of Beethoven's most popular piece, a book called “The First Four Notes,” and I recommend both.

There are probably more books written about or inspired by Beethoven and his music than any other classical composer – no doubt the least of them being my own novel, The Lost Chord, a "classical music appreciation comedy-thriller" which you can read on the installment plan at my other blog – and in addition to Guerrieri's book, there's a new biography by Jan Swafford – appropriately entitled Beethoven: Anguish & Triumph – I can also highly recommend, as yet sight unseen, just on the basis of two earlier biographies, one of Johannes Brahms, the other of Charles Ives, that manage to make their subjects much more human than the typical, academic biographies that are generally available and generally of interest only to other typical academics.

I've just ordered mine and though it won't arrive before this weekend's concert – nor could I read much of its 1,100 pages in time, either – it is something I expect to enjoy in the coming months of what will no doubt be a dreary time of year for me.

And that's primarily because Beethoven is one of those composers who is a composer for all times and all seasons, not just the occasion of a concert.

Oh, I know there are more Beethoven Festivals and All-Beethoven concerts in the Classical Music World, but there are few composers who could reach more people (in whatever way one cares to “reach” people, these days) and few works that can be embraced by more listeners beyond those “classical music aficionados” that Beethoven's 5th and 9th Symphonies – or, for that matter, the 3rd, the one known as “The Eroica.”

The Heroic Symphony – it's one of those defining works that give us a glimpse of Beethoven the Creator, that epic genius, suffering and misunderstood, striding across the landscape of mortal mankind, the composer who went from being Haydn's student to become first a marble bust and then the God of Classical Music.

That mysterious journey from mere mortal to mythologized hero begins with the opening chords of his Symphony No. 3 in E-flat, Op. 55 which, admittedly, doesn't sound as grand as calling it “The Eroica,” does it?

It is difficult to separate the man from the deity he became.

How does one “come to terms with” this music when music, generally speaking, was rarely something one needed to “come to terms with” before him?

As well-crafted as a Haydn Symphony may have been, it was always perfectly entertaining. The difference between what Haydn and Mozart composed, at least in the best of their works, and all those works by their contemporaries whom we no longer know or bother to remember is similar to what might be considered “art” and what we regard as “kitsch,” the idea of seeing Leonardo's Mona Lisa at the Louvre and the ubiquitously reproduced image that has come to mean “art” hanging on someone's living room wall.

We have become addicted to Beethoven. Generations have been trained to “fear” Beethoven. As Ross mentions in his article, he walked into Boston's Symphony Hall as a young would-be composer and saw the “name BEETHOVEN emblazoned on the proscenium arch [–] 'Don't bother,' it seemed to say.”

It's like those signs at amusement parks that were the bane of many a child's existence: “You must be this tall to ride.”

How different Brahms' life would've been – or at least his music – if Robert Schumann hadn't crowned him “Beethoven's Heir” when he was 20 years old. "You have no idea how the likes of me feels with the tramp of a giant like him behind you!" That's why it took him over 20 years to complete a first symphony – no pressure, right?

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About 3½ minutes into the PBS program Keeping Score's episode about Beethoven's Eroica, Michael Tilson Thomas, the San Francisco Symphony's conductor, said how much of his life had been spent coming to terms with this piece while showing you an incredibly marked up score that leaves little uncircled, unhighlted, unquestioned.

Part of the problem is it's so often performed “ponderously, seriously, perhaps because it's called the 'Heroic'” and certainly because... well, after all, it's by Beethoven! But Tilson Thomas didn't think that way, studying the score: he found it at times “light, breezy, confident, frustrating, dangerous – even comic” and so we go from trying to depict Napoleon in the first movement to understanding a composer dealing with life and all the things that can affect one's life.

Of course, it's difficult to remove images of Napoleon – speaking of marble busts – from our minds, given the famous story of Beethoven dedicating his new symphony to Napoleon (originally, it was the “Bonaparte Symphony”) then tearing up the title page when he heard his hero had crowned himself Emperor, erasing the word “Bonaparte” so vigorously, there's a hole in the paper. Later, it became a work dedicated to the “memory of a hero.”

But was the music “about” Bonaparte, then “First Consul” of France following the revolution, or inspired by what he stood for, elements of freedom after years of tyranny under centuries of French kings? The fact he became Emperor a few weeks before Beethoven's new symphony was first played through is a historical detail: I'm talking about the writing process, when the symphony was being composed.

It's true that Beethoven viewed Bonaparte (to distinguish him from the Emperor Napoleon) as a hero bringing the ideals of the French Revolution to The People. The fact that Beethoven lived in Vienna, an imperial city, and depended on its aristocrats for their patronage, it seems counterintuitive that Beethoven should support what people considered the “anti-aristocratic” policies of the French. But politics – then as now – were more complex than that. Beethoven was most interested in what was good for Beethoven and the fact that Vienna was proving to be a dead end, financially, had him thinking about looking for a new place to live – perhaps Paris?

In 1798, he had briefly been befriended by the French Ambassador, Bernadotte – a general who would later become King of Sweden, by the way – and there's little doubt that at some point in their conversations, the ambassador might not have suggested the composer write a symphony “about Bonaparte.” That's at least what Beethoven's later secretary Schindler recalled, though much of what Schindler seemed to recall is always suspect.

But if Beethoven would go to Paris, how would he get Bonaparte's attention? How did an artist get anybody's “attention” except by dedicating a work to them? A copy of the score would be sent to the dedicatee with an appropriate letter and in return the artist hoped for some gift, some form of remuneration. The trick was being allowed to dedicate a piece to that person – seeing that name on the title page was like an endorsement and would influence people who would buy and/or perform his new work.

It was expedient, given the musical politics of the day, that a young composer like the recently arrived Beethoven dedicate his first piano sonatas to the Great Man with whom he studied, Franz Josef Haydn. The first violin sonatas were dedicated to another important composer in Vienna, in fact the most powerful composer in a very politically aware musical society – Antonio Salieri.

It also had very little to do with gratitude. Even when he dedicated a new symphony to his patrons Prince Lobkowitz or Prince Lichnowsky, the composer expected something in return usually in the form of a gift of money.

In 1803, Beethoven dedicated his Op. 30 Violin Sonatas to the Russian tsar, Alexander I, whom he'd just been introduced to by the Russian ambassador, Count Razumovsky (who would soon be asking for three new string quartets for his house musicians). Nobody calls these the “Alexander Sonatas.” Beethoven simply anticipated a gift in return – if not cash, perhaps a ring or a jeweled snuff box which the composer could then sell or pawn. It seems crass, but how, then, did a composer like Beethoven – essentially a free-lancer – expect to pay his bills?

I've never understood why people think the Eroica is “about” Napoleon. Those Op. 30 Violin Sonatas are certainly not “about” Tsar Alexander I nor are those three string quartets “about” their namesake, Count Razumovsky, though his being Russian instigated the use of some Russian melodies in the first two.

And wasn't that what Beethoven was doing with his third symphony – initially dedicating it to Bonaparte, the First Consul of France, hoping that, with a positive enough response, he might find it worth his while to move to Paris and perhaps receive patronage from France's ruler.

1st Consul Bonaparte, 1801

Certainly, it's of a grand scale, suitable for a musical depiction of the great revolutionary leader of the French. Remember the epic style of painting that was a hallmark of French style following the Revolution, especially the grandeur of Jacques-Louis David whose portrait of Bonaparte, then First Consul, crossing the Alps in 1801 (see right), edifies the hero on the level with Hannibal – not to forget the official portrait of Napoleon's coronation completed about two years after the fact, harking back to the grandeur that was Rome.

A “Revolutionary Piano Sonata” as had been suggested by the publisher Hoffmeister in 1798 wasn't going to cut it, nor, for that matter, would an ordinary Haydnesque symphony. No, it would have to be something on a scale unheard of in Vienna at the time, something immense – something, like the painting equating him with Hannibal (who, it was overlooked, lost the war when he invaded Italy with his elephants, by the way), something epic - something French: the musical equivalent of a painting by David!

People could hear the stature of the general in this dynamic and highly dramatic music, in the sheer scope of the piece, unlike any symphony written before – as people wrote after first hearing the piece, imagining great armies marching across battlefields and so on.

But was that what Beethoven was envisioning when he wrote this music? A heroic portrait in music of the great general, Napoleon Bonaparte?

According to the famous title page – which was not “ripped in two” upon hearing the news of Napoleon's crowning himself Emperor – the text reads

Sinfonia Grande
Intitolata Bonaparte (erased so roughly as to leave a hole in the paper)
[1]804 im August
de[l] Sigr.
Louis van Beethoven
Geschrieben
auf Bonaparte

The lines in Italian were written by a copyist (and the date, [1]804 August, added by another hand) and Beethoven's name Ludwig was styled, as he often did, in French as “Louis” – at other times he used “Luigi” instead.

But the German lines – “Written for Bonaparte” – were added in pencil by Beethoven himself and were not erased.

To make it more complicated, though, even before he had completed the score Beethoven indicated to his would-be publisher, through his student-secretary Ferdinand Ries, he had planned on dedicated the symphony to Bonaparte but this created a problem because Prince Lobkowitz offered to pay him a considerable fee for six-month's “exclusive usage” – ultimately, the symphony was performed privately several times at his palace before its official public premiere on April 7th, 1805 – and so he would give the dedication to Lobkowitz in honor of the fee but entitle the work “Bonaparte.”

By this time, Beethoven may have thought less of the idea of leaving Vienna for Paris. Even so, in August of 1804, three months after removing Bonaparte's name from the title page's second line, he wrote directly to his publisher describing what he was working on, including the Triple Concerto, some new piano sonatas and a new symphony.

“The title of the symphony is really Bonaparte.”

By the time the work was officially published, however, it was called “Sinfonia Eroica, composed to celebrate the memory of a great man.”

Who Bonaparte had been in 1803 was different from the Napoleon who unleashed almost constant warfare on the rest of Europe for the next twelve years.

Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of the French in December, 1804, and then attacked and occupied the city of Vienna in September, 1805, before defeating them and their Russian allies at the Battle of Austerlitz that December.

It would hardly do to be the composer of a work bearing the name of Austria's enemy...

Still, in the autumn of 1808, Beethoven received an invitation from Jerome Bonaparte, youngest brother of Napoleon and newly named the King of Westphalia, created out of various German states with Kassel as its capital. It was a job offer – to become the royal court composer with a hefty salary. Jerome was intent on creating a great cultural center in his capital – the Brothers Grimm were already the royal librarians.

It was unrealistic for Beethoven to accept the position, given his by now anti-Bonapartist views, but he let it be known he was considering it. As a result, the Austrian emperor's youngest brother, the Archduke Rudolph (a student of Beethoven's), along with Prince Lobkowitz and Prince Kinski, guaranteed Beethoven a pension if he would stay in Vienna. He did.

But perhaps there's more to the “Hero” in this symphony than the name Bonaparte implies?

There is an old quote from Haydn which, at the moment, I can't verify or find, and which might just as well be one of those mythological details associated with Beethoven and his teacher.

It is used in the 2003 BBC film “Eroica,” set on the day the new symphony was first heard in a rehearsal at Prince Lobkowitz's – I'll get to this in my next post – in which Haydn, arriving late in the midst of the scherzo, tells his hosts afterwards,

“He's placed himself at the center of his work – he gives us a glimpse into his soul – I expect that's why it's so... noisy... but it is quite, quite new – the artist as hero – quite new... Everything is different from today.”

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continue reading Beethoven's Eroica: The Music & the Hero: Part 2....

- Dick Strawser

This essay is adapted from a series of posts written for the Harrisburg Symphony's first concert of the 2014-2015 Season, "Heroic Beethoven" which paired the 3rd Symphony with the 4th Piano Concerto (written the year after he completed the Eroica).

The Tale of the Master and of His Belovèd: Beethoven & the Immortal Belovèd (Part 2)

This is an excerpt from my recently completed novel, The Labyrinth of Klavdia Klangfarben and is a continuation of the account by Dr. Reiner Knussbaum concerning the relationship between his friend Ludwig van Beethoven and the mysterious woman known to history (at least, music history) as The Immortal Belovèd. I remind you that this is purely fiction.

You can read the first half of Knussbaum's Tale here. It concluded with Beethoven meeting a young music teacher in Vienna named Simon Sechter.

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Sechter was a young man of 26 who had studied with Koželuch (though the Master did not hold that against him) whom Beethoven, now considerably changed, had liked instantly despite his being so academic. Greatly honored by the request made of him, Sechter would take over the "administration" of what Beethoven now called "our Project." Sechter would look after the banking, keep the books and administer the fees to be paid to my uncle, Tobias Pflegermann, for the "maintenance" of the woman known as "Rosa Kohl" at his inn. It was my great responsibility as "Resident Hermes" (now, alas, no longer skinny) to carry correspondence between Sechter and the Master as well as any such correspondence directly between the Master and the Belovèd. Sechter and I jokingly called ourselves the "Unsterblichesverein" [the "Immortal Society" – translator's note] and such, I admit, was its unlikely beginnings.

My uncle, of course, had no idea regarding the source of this income, knowing only of the agent he corresponded with, Baron Ludwig von Zwischenstein-und-Schwerplatz, a fellow who acted for an unnamed Viennese aristocrat. Fortunately, it gave them the impression "Rosa" was to have married a nobleman, an assumption that didn't hurt our project's cause. It might ultimately explain why she found kitchen-work beneath her, whatever the cause, even if at times she put on airs. I told them reminding her of her loss would only sadden her more.

It was during the springtime of the following year – this was now 1814 – after "Wellington's Victory" had become a great success, much to the Master's constant bafflement and delight, despite some critic's occasional complaints (as Beethoven scoffed to me over lunch once, after reading one such review, "I shit better than what this moron composes!"). Not only did it bring him some much needed income, it brought with it a renewed popularity, even more than before, but more importantly, for his own benefit, a renewed sense of his self-esteem.

Fidelio was revived and was finally a success, the Viennese seeing it as a triumph over the inevitable fall of Napoleon (originally premiered during the French Occupation of 1805, it had been a disaster). And when, with Waterloo, Napoleon's collapse became reality, Vienna danced as Europe converged, redrawing the map after twenty years of war.

These were heady times for a boy in his mid-teens as much as they were for a genius in his mid-forties. Beethoven had many works inspired by current events that were being euphorically received. Sechter had taken me on as a student both in organ and theory, the better to explain my frequent appearances there. Though by now Beethoven had gone from having been forgotten to being acclaimed, he'd also gone from hard-of-hearing to totally deaf. He could scoff at what he was composing: he didn't mind the acclaim.

My uncle was amazed to discover I was becoming a frequently employed musician (no doubt through good connections with Baron Zwischenstein-und-Schwerplatz). He and my aunt (if not “Rosa” herself) were gratified I'd outgrown kitchen-work. But “Rosa” warned me in her half-serious way, that if nothing else materialized, one could always find work in a kitchen.

The strain of these years and her prolonged absence from the Master's side had no doubt been weighing heavily upon “Rosa,” and at times I could tell she missed the excitement of city life. Alone with Amalie (and how quickly she grew), life must still be dull living at a country inn far from Vienna.

Once, I suggested to the Master that I bring “Rosa” and the child in to Vienna for one of his concerts. He declared it would be more than he – or possibly she – could bear.

Wellington's Victory had struck a chord with people who never went into a theater to hear one of the Master's symphonies. Patriotic fervor rode high among the light-hearted Viennese and Beethoven mined it easily. Fame it may have been, but it didn't last long, a glorious moment like a flame extinguished by a fickle wind. As life after years of constant warfare gradually settled into a new normalcy, people wanted to feel comfortable, to be entertained. They didn't want to grapple with those intellectual issues fueling his earlier works.

With the responsibility of the Belovèd's finances given to the efficient Dr. Sechter, and relying less on me for any communications, it seemed the Master forgot about her and his daughter living far away. If everyone chose to ignore their own circumstances, was Beethoven doing the same and hiding one of his life's greatest frustrations?

So it was to my considerable amazement when – this would be late-winter, 1815 – the Master requested I visit him some evening. I don't recall having seen him once all season, busy with my studies. And when I arrived well after dinner, making sure not to disturb him, I found him neatly dressed and smiling broadly.

"Come, come," he said like an eager father, brandishing a sheaf of papers. "Look, look," and dropped it on his desk. He pulled out a chair and set me down in it. "There – see?"

The Master pointed impatiently at the top page which was only barely legible. "I finished it this morning – it took months!" His excitement continued as I paged through it, trying to read it (unsuccessfully). "You will need to copy it, with parts, then show it to Sechter, and find some friends to play through it."

I asked why he hadn't contacted Schuppanzigh who usually played his new quartets, but he only laughed, pushing his chair back.

"No, no, Falstaff" (so-called because of his girth) "will want to perform it."

That seemed a logical assumption, I told him, but the Master was adamant even though I couldn't possibly do it justice, looking at the second violin part which was far beyond my meager talents.

"Well, Hermes, then you will have to copy it and learn it quickly, for you must play it for Amalie's birthday."

The quartet, Beethoven stressed again and again, had to be kept a secret, intended only for the ears of his family which, likewise, had to be kept a secret, away from Vienna's prying eyes. This music had grown from his innermost feelings – whether the heart's or mind's – and became the most personal of utterances imaginable. It was the opposite of everything else he'd been composing during this time, all of it otherwise for the public moment. In this piece, there was nothing public there, only his most private thoughts.

"The world beyond these walls would not be ready for such 'interior' music, a world interested only in show and cajolery," he argued as I carefully deciphered his scrawl into something mortals could read. "I do it to protect myself from maladroits who could never understand it, but I do it also to protect them."

As I would begin copying a new section, he would carefully point out what this phrase or that unexpected modulation meant, thoughts behind his musical thinking, not mere story-telling but more than purely academic. It wasn't telling the story of some people as if on a stage, but described those responses he felt about them.

This motive, he'd say, was inspired by a glance from the Belovèd herself and how this new idea came from it – "there," his finger stabbed at the manuscript, "see?" – which became the child's theme.

It was music unlike any I'd heard before and rarely equaled since then – though I heard it only inside my head – both lyrical and dramatic, beautiful yet intricately complex – and long, much more expansive. There were passages he would blush over when I asked him about them: "those, I'm afraid, are too far beyond words."

It struck me far more serious than his last quartet, the F Minor (finished four years earlier, and still held back) yet he considered it overall a joyous work, much like his Seventh Symphony.

In the last movement, he pointed out how it became a dance-like fugue with a subject based on the Belovèd's motive; how the counter-subject expanded the Child's motive – turning eventually into a double fugue. Sechter, the master of counterpoint, had bragged of writing a fugue a day: how would he react to seeing this fugue?

By the time I had finished copying it and my colleagues and I had learned it (an arduous task in itself), we were two months late for Amalie's birthday – doubtful the child would notice. Only Sechter and myself knew the author's identity ("Rosa," of course, could guess) but there was no problem keeping it secret.

We had difficulties enough playing it but the others had more in listening, Amalie not the only one who fell asleep. Even Sechter, there as my teacher not as Beethoven's agent, found it indecipherable.

Gradually, my aunt, uncle and what few other guests all left the room to partake of beer in the outer parlor. Only afterward did an old gypsy woman staying nearby appear in the doorway.

She began reading everyone's palms, telling their fortunes. Rosa's palm proved a mystery: "such a long life-line – you must be immortal!"

When she got to the child, Amalie's hand created in her an immediate energy, causing her at first to drop it.

"There will be twins – and from their union..."

"Horrible – that's incestuous!" someone muttered.

"No, generations will pass, but when they join – and I see great peril – greatness equal to this child's father will result."

After everyone else had left, Herr Sechter and I remained by the fire, pondering this over another pleasant glass of wine.

"Where did that come from," shaking his head. "Plus, didn't she mention 'peril'?"

(after several events in the novel's course intervene, Knussbaum's narrative is then renewed.)

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Being the conclusion of Knussbaum's "Tale of the Master and of his Belovèd"

There is little to add at this point beyond recounting the excruciating details of those well-known events of the Master's life, or, for that matter, those of the woman whom Beethoven called his "Angel" or the child he knew was his daughter. There was never any indication he ever said anything about them again except on rare occasions when he would ask me how the project's fund was holding out, whether the finances remained suitable enough. The quartet ended with a rising motive and three startling modulations before the final cadence which the Master told me represented "Eternally yours," "Eternally mine," and the final resolution to E-flat Major, "Eternally we." But yet, this motive, he said, became transformed into something for almost every piece he wrote from the Missa Solemnis forward.

For in reality, he said, thoughts of her and their child inspired not only the mass through which he sought forgiveness, but the last piano sonatas, the great Choral symphony (not just the finale), and especially the series of quartets he was embarking upon at the time, a motive so transformable as to be unrecognizable. When he showed me the manuscripts, I said I could not see what he was referring to, and he laughed aloud. "That, my rotund Hermes, is exactly the point! Only I know it's there!"

There is little to say about "Rosa Kohl" (it was how she was known to my aunt and uncle, after all) except that she continued to live the quiet life of a country widow, raising her child who enjoyed growing up with other children living nearby in the quaint if somewhat limited village of Oberunterdurchenwald. She never once went into Vienna because Herr Sechter had told her he would cut off her support if she did and she found village life for herself quite boring enough without being poor.

Every year around Amalie's birthday, I would bring three colleagues out along with Sechter to play for her her father's quartet though she found the music boring and her mother thought it was insufferable. And every year we would travel back to Vienna and tell the Master how much they both had enjoyed the music.

We both knew the Master would never release the quartet for publication without having to admit to whom it was dedicated and that the primary reason for their secret existence became the quartet's, also. After one such birthday, Beethoven made us once again swear to maintain the secret and continue the project past his death. He now wanted us to wait until after Rosa's death to publish it – even he had started to call her that – but to make no reference to her identity or to their daughter's existence.

Once, the Master belittled Sechter's habit of writing such academic, indeed awful fugues. Embarking on a series of new string quartets, Beethoven bragged he would show him how to write a really great fugue. (Whenever Sechter or I visited, we would keep our own separate "conversation books" to ensure nobody could read what we'd said.)

Another time, not long before his nephew – poor deluded boy – tried committing suicide, I again argued to release the Giocoso Quartet. When he said he would not, I shook my head: "Must it be?"

Slapping his palm on the table, he laughed, "It must be!" then paused and said, "wait, I must write that down..."

The Master's health was rarely good but there were times when it improved and it seemed he had many years left. Yet “Rosa” imagined he would die in the springtime during a fierce thunderstorm.

That December, after Beethoven returned from his brother's house in Gneixendorf, his nephew beginning his new life in a military regiment, the Master was seriously ill, so ill doctors thought he might die soon. I went to see him and again he pressed me about "our Project," hiding from Amalie what he called his "shame." He gave me several boxes filled with letters – those I'd carried back and forth between them over these past many years – of which he now said, "Hermes must give these over to Vulcan's fire."

He urged me to destroy our conversation books and to secure any letters from him which “Rosa” herself might have kept, consigning those to flames through which his sin could still not be cleansed. The next day, after a terrible storm, Sechter and I went to see the Master only to find him already dead.

We could not assist in the funeral arrangements because most of those close to him then knew nothing of our association. Instead, we walked amongst the throngs of mourners and grieved for our loss. Trudging along behind the coffin, someone asked me how I knew the Master. "Certainly as anyone who loved music knew him."

As we returned from the cemetery, deep in thought and lost in sadness, Sechter and I talked long into the night and wondered what need there was to continue hiding “Rosa” and Amalie's identities.

But soon we heard Schindler found among the Master's papers in his desk, a six-page letter written to an unnamed woman, someone called, among other things, the "Immortal Belovèd," a sad thing to read. Immediately, Vienna was abuzz with wonder that such a thing had gone undetected, that even his closest friends had suspected nothing.

What other things he may have forgotten to give me before he died, Sechter and I continued to worry anxiously about. Would there be more recent letters that implicated our roles in this deception?

Schindler had his theories and others made their own suggestions, to no avail: no matter who one guessed, it remained unprovable. And yet nobody was anywhere near the mark – they didn't know "Rosa" existed.

After hurrying off to Shady Pines, I was met by a stoic “Rosa” who told me bluntly that Beethoven had died.

Two unrelated things happened a few years not long after the Master died: my uncle Tobias died quietly in his sleep and Herr Sechter was offered a job teaching in Bavaria, someplace called Schweinwald(*1). Since Aunt Sophia said she could no longer maintain the inn by herself, she announced she was prepared to sell it. This meant we needed to find a place for “Rosa” and her daughter in order to remain true to the Master. Then Sechter announced he'd take them to Schweinwald as part of his household.

Fortunately, he also needed an assistant and someone who could teach organ, so he found a place for me, as well. There, together, we were able to maintain the secret indefinitely, far from Vienna. We had no idea how old “Rosa” may have been, by this time, but Amalie, now seventeen, made the trip easily.

The deception succeeded satisfactorily though not without curiosity, especially after Sechter resigned and returned to Vienna, having left Frau Kohl behind. By this time, "Rosa" was even less herself, if she ever had been. But it made others, asking me directly, wonder who she was to Sechter if he would not take her with him.

"She has become too ill to travel and being so well situated here, she would not do as well in Vienna. Therefore," I explained, "I had agreed to continue looking after both of them."

If I have time (which I fear I do not), I will return to write more about the Belovèd's life, here, and about Amalie and how she grew up practically as my foster daughter, instead, focusing here on what concerns the Master who loved Amalie greatly, her father except in being there to raise her.

Suffice it to say, she fell for the charms of student Everett Gutknaben and unbeknownst to him bore him a daughter to whom, for some unimaginable reason, she had given the name Claudia Ludwiga.

Barely two years later, young Amalie succumbed to an illness discovered too late, and then, on an otherwise felicitous summer afternoon, we laid her poor body to rest in the graveyard beyond the castle.

And so the years moved on, more quickly now than in the past, all without any further performances of Beethoven's quartet.

In the last decade of her life, our "Rosa" descended clearly into madness, brightened only by the presence of her granddaughter, and forcing me to swear, again, I would never reveal her family's secret. It was good that Beethoven should never have seen what their misalliance had led her to: he'd become even more despondent.

According to the Master's wishes that final day, after she was buried somewhere remote and safe, we should erect a monument, some likeness of him where he could gaze upon his "Fountain of Inspiration."

So this we did, Sechter returning for the funeral and for the quiet installation of Beethoven's statue on the castle's courtyard. But he returned to Schweinwald having discovered some disturbing news in the capital.

"There is clearly some peril," he reminded me, "attached to the revelation of the Master's secret, for we must proceed cautiously."

He explained Schindler unwittingly gave rise to rumours that this Immortal Belovèd may possibly have born a child to the Master, and some, incensed this besmirched his reputation, were out to destroy any proof.

According to some little list, apparently they suspected Schubert might know the truth: his death so soon afterwards now seemed suspicious.

"So it becomes clear, don't you see," my old professor explained to me, "we must continue to guard the Master's secret."

"And how do you propose we do this," I asked. "For all eternity?"

More years passed by in which I implemented Herr Sechter's improbably detailed plan to protect the descendents of the Master's legacy from the nefarious members of a secret society calling itself the 'Guidonian Hand.' We set up the Watchers – "Rosa" unendingly complained how we continually 'watched' her – responsible for keeping track of the future generations. These were people separate from the family line who were to act independently and, he specified, unbeknownst to the heirs themselves. No one who was descended from Amalie must know who her father was.

Of equal importance was that no one should know the true identity of her mother, he continued, not even the Watchers, thereby protecting them from this one crucial aspect of the Guidonian Hand's search. For the Hand's goal was two-fold: to destroy all evidence of those descendents and obliterate all knowledge of the Belovèd's identity.

Given the need for continued secrecy but also given the need for additional Watchers, at least those going into the future, we decided to induct Sechter's successor, Professor Dudley Böhm, into our "Immortal Club," a name we originally coined half in jest but which seemed, now, the Belovèd aside, a society for the "immediate eternity."

We had to make sure somewhere, somehow, someone would someday be able to discover the Truth and the secret be revealed. To that end we must hide the Belovèd's Will and the quartet's manuscript.

Alas, showing it to Sechter, I did not think this was what we wanted the future to know about their relationship, clearly having been the product of a diseased mind, as he put it. Who better than me to record the Master's side of these distant events? But not that just anyone could read it.

And so we devised a code that should not attract attention to itself but challenging enough not to be broken easily. (I need not explain what it is as you've already figured it out.)

So I will reluctantly hide with it the original manuscript and my copy of Beethoven's quartet which he called the Giocoso and which for obvious reasons Sechter and I always called The Belovèd Quartet.

Then, on a chilly April evening for what would have been Amalie's 35th birthday, we played the quartet one last time.

It was the first time in thirteen years anyone had heard the work which had by now grown on us considerably and Sechter and I wept for knowing we would never hear it again. My three colleagues who played it this time, never having heard it before, thought it a marvelous work worthy of publication.

It was the height of hubris to claim the work as my own so I said a friend had written it and she did not ever want it to see the light of day.

I have no idea whatever possessed me to say it had been written by a woman (rather than inspired by one) but that at least would explain the reason it could not be published.

Joking perhaps a rumour would begin it was written by the Belovèd herself, we then quietly burned the set of parts.

Now I am old and frail myself – my time is close at hand and I must finally put aside immortal longings and thank God (and the Master) for giving me such a long life.

It is a sad time, too, for Count von Falkenstein has died and with it any interest in maintaining the Academy.

Claudia Ludwiga has done well on her own, Count Albrecht Johann's second wife, giving birth to a daughter and twin sons.

Alas, one son died young without producing any offspring for any future union.

Count Albrecht's son, Ludwig, by his first wife, has closed the Academy and with it, quite frankly, my reason for living. He decided to sell much of the library, including our considerable Beethoven collection. Fortunately the library has been purchased by a music-loving English aristocrat whom I have met and chatted with at great length.

His name is Sir Sidney Leighton, the 9th Marquess of Quackerville, I believe, and apparently quite a "fan" of Beethoven's music. He had been traveling to Vienna when he heard about Count Leopold's collection.

We talked for hours about my having actually been in the Master's presence – he could listen for days to these anecdotes – though I was careful not to mention my most enduring connection to him.

It was then I decided this could be the Immortal Club's ideal solution: hiding the Belovèd in a distant English castle!

When I asked him if his castle's library had a musically knowledgeable librarian, Sir Sidney confessed there wasn't even a librarian, so I then took the opportunity of suggesting a former student of mine.

"He's English, a brilliant lad, and had been here a couple summers ago, having proved quite a promising composer and scholar.

"I think you would find, despite his youth and inexperience, a good selection and already acquainted with much of the material."

When he agreed, I told him the young man's name was Harrison Harty.

It makes me smile to think how everything has worked out – or I hope it will – keeping true to the Master. I wish Sechter and even old Böhm could be here to see it.

It does not seem possible to me, thinking back to those heady days, how it all began over seventy years ago!

I am giddy with excitement over how Fate has knocked at my door, how incredible it has been, answering that knock.

Young friends, recently entered into the Immortal Club, I leave you the future!

Now all that is left for me to do is finish this memoir, which I will instead leave here at Schweinwald.

(Yes, it would not do well for everything to be in one location.)

So now 'tis time to hand this to the next generation of Watchers.

(And have done so without revealing her name.)

* * ** *** ***** ******** ***** *** ** * *

(*1) Schweinwald is located in Bavaria and was at the time the estate of a German nobleman, Count von Falkenstein. He had converted the old family castle into a great music school where young composers from across Europe could gather to learn the magic of music and realize their full creativity. In 1880, the Academy is still in full force and a journal kept by one of the students there forms a major part of the previous novel in this series, The Lost Chord. In fact, much of the modern day part of that novel takes place at a music festival being held on the old Falkenstein estate. (Schweinwald is an actual location in southern Bavaria: it means "Hogwood" and seemed a logical choice for such a fine music academy.)

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This is an excerpt from The Labyrinth of Klavdia Klangfarben which I just completed earlier this month. The first novel in The Klangfarben Trilogy, another music-appreciation comedy thriller, The Doomsday Symphony, has already been posted on-line. The second novel, The Lost Chord, is now being serialized on the blog. You can also read about the completion of  The Labyrinth of Klavdia Klangfarben, here.

- Dick Strawser


© 2014 by the author, Richard Alan Strawser