BEETHOVEN, LUDWIG van. – Musician, born in Bonn on 17 December 1770, died in Vienna on 26 March 1827. Descended from a family of musicians of Flemish origin, he first studied with his father Johann, a tenor in the electoral chapel, but his true teacher was C. G. Neef, who initiated him into the rigorous school of G. S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier.
In April 1787 he went to Vienna to study with Mozart, but after only a few lessons he was called home because of his mother’s worsening condition; she died in June. Deprived of her comfort—he called her “my best friend”—and head of the household at the age of seventeen (his alcoholic father had been legally incapacitated), he found himself alone, struggling with life’s difficulties. His unhappy solitude was softened only by the sincere friendship he found in Bonn in the von Breuning family, with the composer F. Ries, and with Count Waldstein. In 1792 he settled in Vienna, where he studied for fourteen months with Haydn and, after the latter’s departure for London, with Albrechtsberger and Salieri, until 1802. After that, his activity rose to the highest artistic peaks in a marvellous crescendo of productivity and glory, lasting until 1815 (the Congress of Vienna), which saw Europe’s crowned heads bow before his genius. B. was assisted and supported by various patrons, such as Prince Lichnowsky, Archduke Rudolf, and Prince Rasumowsky; but he clearly departed from the character of the court musician, such as Haydn and Mozart still were, because he devoted the work of his free and independent genius solely to the service of art. His final years were particularly tragic for B., because they were overshadowed by deafness, which had begun in the early years of the nineteenth century and was complete by 1819, and embittered by the conduct of his nephew Karl, an ungrateful and unworthy object of his paternal care.
Among his compositions, from opus 1, a group of trios commissioned by Prince Lichnowsky (1793–94), through the variations, sonatas, and piano concertos, to the immortal crown of the nine symphonies, Fidelio (his only opera), and the Overtures, and up to the last quartets (opp. 127–135), in which, after an initial Haydnian and Mozartian influence, all the Romantic pathos of his titanic genius vibrates, those of religious music must also be remembered. A Catholic by birth and upbringing, B. always remained a believer and, for the most part, a practising one. Faith was the most sublime and purest source of his works of religious inspiration, in which, besides the composer’s excellent technique, one senses the heart of a man who seeks, calls upon, and adores his God.
(from E. Fermeil, Beethoven)
BEETHOVEN, LUDWIG VAN - B. composing the Missa solemnis in D. Painting by Stieler (1819).
First chronologically is an Oratorio: Christ on the Mount of Olives (op. 85), composed in 1801–2 for three soloists: Jesus, Seraphim, Peter, chorus, and orchestra, to a text by F. S. Huber. Although it does not attain the sublime heights of the Missa solemnis, it remains important, also because, at the end of 1804, it obtained for him the commission from Baron von Braun, owner of the Theater An der Wien, to compose Fidelio. Without discussing the studies for a Mass in C minor (which remained at the project stage), a funeral song, op. 195, originally a group of three pieces for four trumpets, composed in 1812 and subsequently adapted by Seyfield to the text of the Miserere (for four voices) to be performed at B.’s funeral, and other minor works, we shall recall in particular the two Masses: the one in C major, op. 86 (1807), and the other in D major, op. 123, Missa solemnis (1818–22). The first, although lacking the cyclic structure of the grandiose construction in which the Mass in D is elaborated, is imbued with a profound faith that clothes the text in inner beauty. The second, conceived for the consecration of Archbishop Rodolfo and composed when deafness had already completely isolated him in the melodious silence of his soul, is truly the Beethovenian masterpiece in the elevation of its inspiration and the intensity of its expressive pathos, in the tenderness with which it surrounds the figures and accompanies the proclamation of the mysteries, in the grandeur with which, becoming the echo of a suffering and tormented humanity, it succeeds in expressing, with the powerful voice of his genius, the yearning of the entire human race for a divine and tranquil peace; it is the outpouring of the Agnus Dei that crowns, with the invocation: dona nobis pacem, what B. himself defined as his greatest and most successful work. The purity and sublimity of art and faith, so admirably united, shine forth in these simple words of his, which contain an entire programme and the secret of a style: « My principal aim, in working on the Mass, was to awaken religious feeling both in the singers and in the listeners, and to make this feeling lasting ».
The complete edition of B.’s works was prepared by Breitkopf and Härtel (Leipzig 1864).