BEETHOVEN, LUDWIG van. - Musician, b. in Bonn on 17 Dec. 1770, d. in Vienna on 26 March 1827. A descendant of 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 severe school of G. S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier.
In Apr. 1787 he went to Vienna to study with Mozart, but after a few lessons he was called home because of the worsening condition of his mother, who died in June. Deprived of the comfort of her whom he called "my best friend," and head of the family at 17 (his father, an alcoholic, had been placed under legal interdiction), he found himself alone to struggle with the difficulties of life, and his unhappy solitude was sweetened only by the sincere friendship he found, in Bonn, in the von Breuning family, in the composer F. Ries and in 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 which his activity advanced to the highest artistic peaks in a marvelous crescendo of industry and glory until 1815 (Congress of Vienna), which saw the crowned heads of Europe bow before his genius. B. was helped and supported by various patrons such as Prince Lichnowsky, Archduke Rudolph, Prince Rasumowsky, but he stands clearly apart from the character of the court musician, which Haydn and Mozart still were, because he dedicates the work of his genius, free and independent, solely to the service of art. The last years were particularly tragic for B., because they were shrouded in the deafness that, having begun in the early 1800s, was complete by 1819, and because they were embittered by the conduct of his nephew Karl, an ungrateful and unworthy object of his fatherly care.
Among his compositions, from opus 1, a group of trios commissioned by Prince Lichnowski (1793-94), to the variations, the sonatas, the piano concertos, the immortal crown of the nine symphonies, Fidelio (his only opera), and the Overtures, down to the last quartets (opp. 127-35) in which, after an initial Haydnesque and Mozartian influence, all the romantic pathos of his titanic genius vibrates, those of religious music are not the least to be remembered. A Catholic by birth and education, B. remained always a believer, and, for the most part, a practicing one. Faith was the most sublime and purest source of his works of religious inspiration, in which, beyond the composer's excellent technique, one feels 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).
Chronologically the first is an Oratorio: Christ on the Mount of Olives (op. 85), composed in 1801-2 for three soloists — Jesus, a Seraph, and Peter — chorus and orchestra, on a text by F. S. Huber, which, if it does not reach the sublime heights of the Missa solemnis, is nonetheless important, also because it procured for him, at the end of 1804, the commission, from Baron von Braun, owner of the Theater an der Wien, to compose Fidelio. Although we pass over in silence the sketches for a Mass in C minor (which remained a mere project), a funeral song, op. 195, originally a group of three pieces for 4 trumpets, composed in 1812 and later adapted by Seyfield to the text of the Miserere (4 voices) to be performed at B.'s funeral, and other minor things, 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 it does not have the cyclic structure of the grandiose construction in which the Mass in D is elaborated, is pervaded by a profound faith, which clothes the text in interior beauty. The second, conceived for the consecration of Archbishop Rudolph, and composed when deafness had already completely isolated him in the melodious silence of his soul, is truly the Beethovenian masterpiece for loftiness of inspiration and intensity of expressive pathos, in the tenderness with which it surrounds the characters and accompanies the announcement of the mysteries, in the grandeur with which, echoing a suffering and tormented humanity, it succeeds in expressing with the powerful voice of his genius the yearning of all mankind toward a divine, serene peace; it is the outburst 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 of faith, so admirably united, shine forth in these simple words of his, which contain a whole program and the secret of a style: "My chief aim, while working on the Mass, was to awaken religious feeling in the singers as much as in the listeners, and to make that feeling lasting."
The complete edition of B.'s works was edited by Breitkopf and Härtel (Leipzig 1864).
Bibliography9 works
Luisa Cervelli