Beethoven: Impressions by His Contemporaries , livre ebook

Beethoven Impressions by His Contemporaries
by Oscar Sonneck

First published in 1926
This edition published by Rare Treasures
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
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Silhouette of Beethoven by Neesen, 1786
BEETHOVEN Impressions by his Contemporaries
by
OSCAR SONNECK
PREFACE
Anton Schindler first seems to have suggested in hisBeethoven biography (1845) that a collection of contemporaryimpressions of the composer would form avery interesting volume. This idea appealed to LudwigNohl who, in 1877, published his book “Beethoven asSeen by Contemporaries.” That pioneer-attempt hasdefinitely been superseded by the practically exhaustivecompilations of Friedrich Kerst (first edition, 1913) andAlbert Leitzmann (1914), whose research and interestin their task placed all future books of similar purportunder heavy obligation. Indeed, without Kerst andLeitzmann, this commemorative volume, too, wouldhave become, if not impossible, at least improbable as acontribution to the Beethoven Centenary on March 26,1927.
Recently a liberal selection of Beethoven’s letters hasagain been made available in English to students ofBeethoven’s personality. Hence, there was no need forduplicating the enterprise of a fellow-publisher. Furthermore,the honor of printing in the author’s native languagewhat is likely to remain for many years the authoritativebiography of the master, fell to us: AlexanderWheelock Thayer’s “Life of Beethoven,” published in1921 by The Beethoven Association. This monumentalwork includes many letters of Beethoven and a considerablenumber of recollections of his personality bycontemporaries, but no book is available in Englishwhich devotes itself exclusively to such impressions.Hence, we accepted the suggestion of our Vice-President,Mr. O. G. Sonneck, that he plan, compile and annotatefor the Beethoven Centenary a book of moderate size tofill that gap.
The book was not planned as a contribution to Beethoven’sbiography. For that reason, practically noattempt was made to “edit” the reminiscences of thecontemporaries in whose company, as it were, the reader iv visits the composer. That is to say, no attempt toreconcile errors of memory, time, etc., with the conflictingfacts. Of such errors many could be pointed out, butthey do not conflict with the impressions of the master’spersonality which visitors carried away with them andit seemed preferable not to mar their narratives byeditorial comment unessential for the real purpose of thisvolume.
Of the one hundred and fifty or more recorded reminiscencesof contemporaries who visited Beethoven,slightly more than thirty were selected. Such a selection,of course, will vary with every compiler, but the presentselection was arrived at only after a good deal of comparativevaluation of the available material in the interestof the general reader in America. Naturally, he willfind much repetition, but that lies in the nature of thesubject and could not be avoided. Indeed, it ought notbe avoided, since it acquires the force of accumulativecorroborative evidence. Beethoven, being what hewas, could not very well appear in a different light toevery visitor—and yet, how amusingly at times theimpressions of him contradict one another. Even so,the differences are not nearly so extraordinary asthose between the existing contemporary likenesses ofBeethoven!
In only rare instances were these impressions of contemporariesoriginally written in English. All otherscalled for translation. By courtesy of Mrs. Krehbiel afew translations were borrowed from Henry EdwardKrehbiel’s edition of Thayer’s “Life of Beethoven,”mentioned above. A few were made by Dr. TheodoreBaker, our former Literary Editor, and others weremade by Mr. Sonneck himself, but the majority wereentrusted to Dr. Baker’s successor, Mr. Frederick H.Martens.
G. SCHIRMER, INC.
New York , December, 1926.
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BEETHOVEN: Impressions of Contemporaries
Gottfried Fischer’s Story
The date of Beethoven’s birth at the “Beethoven Haus” in theBonngasse, Bonn, is not known with certainty. He was baptized onDecember 17, 1770. Therefore, the probability is that Ludwigvan Beethoven was born on December sixteenth. For many yearsBeethoven shared the belief that he was born in 1772. The suppositionis that his father—as other fathers of prodigies have done beforeand after—desired him to appear younger than he was. At anyrate, when his juvenile “Drei Sonaten für Klavier” were publishedin 1783, the dedication to the Elector of Cologne, Maximilian Friedrich,read “composed by Ludwig van Beethoven, age eleven years.”
Some time after Beethoven’s birth, his family moved to the houseof the Fischer family in the Rheingasse. This gave rise to a furtherlegend: the Fischer house in the Rheingasse came to be consideredthe house in which the composer of “Fidelio” and the “Ninth Symphony”was born and where thousands upon thousands in the courseof time paid homage to his memory, until the indisputable claimof the “Beethoven Haus” in the Bonngasse was established.
In the Fischer house Gottfried Fischer was born in 1780 anddied there in 1864. When about sixty years old, master-bakerGottfried, at the request of many pilgrims to his house, the supposedbirth-house of Beethoven, began to write down his and his oldersister’s Cäcilie reminiscences of Ludwig, adding to them until about1857. Under the circumstances, the Fischer reminiscences are acurious jumble of essential and unessential things, in awkwardlanguage, but they shed important and entertaining light on Beethoven’sboyhood.
When Ludwig van Beethoven had grown a bit heattended the elementary school, taught by Herr Huppert,at house No. 1091 in the Neugasse, which connects withthe Rheingasse; later he went to the Münsterschule. 4 According to his father he did not learn much in school;for this reason his father set him down so early before thepiano and kept him hard at work.
Cäcilie Fischer testifies how his father instructed him atthe piano; he would have to stand on a little bench andplay. That our former Oberbürgermeister Windeck hasseen, too.
Ludwig van Beethoven also had daily lessons on theviolin. Once he was playing without notes; his fatherhappened in, and said: “What silly trash are you scratchingtogether again now? You know that I can’t bearthat; scratch by note, otherwise your scratching won’tamount to much.”—When Johann van Beethovenhappened to have visitors and Ludwig came into theroom, he was wont to edge up to the piano and playchords with his right hand. Then his father would say:“What are you splashing around for? Go away, orI’ll box your ears.”—In time his father grew attentivewhen he heard him play the violin. He was again playingafter his own fashion, without notes, when his fathercame in: “Won’t you ever stop, after all I’ve toldyou?” He played again, and said to his father: “Nowisn’t that beautiful?” His father said: “That is somethingelse, you made it up yourself. You are not to dothat yet; apply yourself to the piano and violin, strikethe notes quickly and correctly, that is more important.When you have once got so far, then you can and mustwork enough with your head; but don’t concern yourselfwith that now—you are not to do that yet.”—Afterwards,Ludwig van Beethoven also took dailylessons on the viola.
When Ludwig van Beethoven had grown a bit more,often dirty, negligent, Cäcilie Fischer said to him: “Howdirty you are looking again—you ought to keep yourselfclean!” Said he: “What’s the odds? When I’m oncea gentleman ( Herr ) no one will take any notice of that.”
When Ludwig van Beethoven had been well trained 5 on the piano by his father, and began to feel himselfmaster of the notes and the piano, he was emboldenedto play on the organ and take lessons. And so he wentfor a trial to Brother Willibald in our local Franciscanmonastery, a masterly teacher who knew his father,Johann van Beethoven, well. He very obligingly acceptedhim, with permission of the Father Superior,and gave him instruction, including training in theChurch ritual, and made such progress that he couldoften make use of him as a substitute, so that he wasgreatly liked and esteemed by Brother Willibald.
As Ludwig van Beethoven became more and moreventuresome on the organ, he had a mind to play on alarger organ, and made an essay in the Minorite monastery.Here he won such a friendly footing with theorganist, that he was taken on to play the organ regularlyevery morning at 6 at Holy Mass. The bench on whichhe often sat is still to be seen there. There was a certainFather Hanzmann in the monastery who was likewise agood organist, and who also, when he cared to, playedthe organ. When the Beethovens had a concert at home,Father Hanzmann was always there. Ludwig could notbear him, and said to Cäcilie: “That monk, he alwayshas to come here; he might as well stay in his monasteryand read his prayer-book.”
In Bonn there was a middle-aged man by the name ofStommb, who had formerly been a musician and learnedto compose. Thereby, it was said, he had become insane;he used to wander through the town with a conductor’swand in his right hand and a music-roll in hisleft; not a word would he say. When he came into theground floor at Rheinstrasse No. 934, where no one hadthought to see him, he would strike with his wand onthe table in the ground floor and point up towards theBeethoven home as if to indicate that musicians werethere, too, and then beat time with the conductor’s wandon the music-roll, not saying one word.
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Ludwig van Beethoven often laughed about it, andonce said: “We can see by that how it goes with musicians;music has already mad