Anguish and Triumph

In the crowded field of Beethoven biographies, any addition to this body of literature must be outstanding in order to merit our attention. Composer and historian Jan Swafford’s, Beethoven - Anguish and Triumph, a mammoth new biography of the composer, warrants the effort of our careful study and thought. Casual readers should stay away from this thick volume, but those with a desire to deepen their understanding of this iconic figure would find their efforts amply rewarded.

Written in the spirit of Thayer’s voluminous Life of Beethoven, Swafford succeeded in giving us as complete a portrait of the composer as history allows us, separating the facts from the myths and legends that had been building up during the composer’s life and, especially, after his death.

Born into a Europe still reeling from the spirit and atmosphere of the Sturm und Drang movement, one that created the period that came to be called Romantic. Swafford stresses quite emphatically that Beethoven, from the earliest days, was a pianist rather than a harpsichordist. Beethoven himself gave conflicting reports of whether he heard Mozart play. If he did, he had only one comment about Mozart’s playing, “He had a fine but choppy way of playing – no legato”, which is interesting (if true) considering, Mozart’s own admonition that his music should be played “like oil”.

When he was almost twenty-two, Beethoven left Bonn for Vienna, the musical capital of Europe then as now, to study under the great Haydn. Emperor Franz II, conservative and fearful of change, had made Vienna a virtual police state. The police, however, could find no grounds to censor instrumental music, and music thus became the one thing in which the nobility and the aristocrats show their good taste. From the beginning, there was no love-loss between Beethoven and the Viennese. Yet, Vienna was to be the home for him for his professional, a place where he was to find fame and, to a lesser extent, fortune. Throughout his life, he would think of Bonn as his true home.

Swafford details Beethoven’s relationship with his many admirers and patrons, friends, colleagues, and love interests, many whose names are known to us only because of their association with certain works of Beethoven. Beethoven’s life was his work, his composition, and Swafford’s narration certainly centers around the evolution of Beethoven as composer. The author gives us quite detailed analysis of certain landmark works, the Missa Solemnis and the Symphony No. 9 each receiving its own chapters.

What makes intriguing reading is the author’s discussion of the psychology behind discussion of the structural, motivic (crucial in understanding Beethoven’s work), harmonic, and key-relationship of many compositions, as well as the importance and meaning of certain keys in Beethoven’s works. In the appendix, there is a section titled “Beethoven’s Musical Forms”, with explanations of the technical names mentioned in the text. All this makes for fascinating but certainly not casual reading.

According to Swafford, Beethoven also had a very complex relationship with Joseph Haydn. Many biographers had stated that Beethoven began studies with Haydn, but that the two had a falling out with each other. We can all see and hear the unmistakable influence Haydn’s music had on the younger composer. Beethoven’s formal lessons with Haydn only lasted until 1793, but “there would be contacts and consulting between them in the coming years, and now and then they appeared in concerts together.” Never was there a formal break between the two. Haydn had been patient and generous with Beethoven, and Beethoven was circumspect enough not to openly insult the foremost composer of Europe. Haydn even took Beethoven to Esterházy Palace to introduce this young talent to his former employer. When Haydn heard the premiere of the 24-year old Beethoven’s fiery C Minor Trio, he “had to sense that he was the past and this youth was the future.”

Beethoven was often jealous of Haydn’s great success and the adulation he receives. Haydn’s anthem, God Protect Franz the Kaiser, was so successful that it became the unofficial Austrian national anthem. The fact that “Haydn and not Beethoven had written such an anthem would burn in him until his own last years.” Beethoven admired and was influenced by Haydn’s The Creation, but it wasn’t until Haydn’s death in 1809 that Beethoven, knowing that he “was the only peer of Haydn alive,” begins to speak with unreserved admiration of Haydn.

No biography of Beethoven would be complete without a discussion of the possible identity of the “immortal beloved.” Swafford did not suggest any one woman to be the chosen one, but gives us the evidence available. Like a medieval knight with his idea of courtly love, Beethoven idolizes certain women in his life, mostly young and beautiful piano students from a much higher social class than a freelance composer and pianist. All but one of these attempts would end in rejection and bitterness (on his part), either by the lady herself or by her family.

In some ways, Beethoven’s relationship with women is similar to his dealings with those around him – friends, patrons, and family, especially his problematic nephew Karl, the one person who gave him no end of grief in his later years. Swafford discusses Beethoven’s solipsism, his complete inability to deal with the world beyond music, often with disastrous consequences. I feel that perhaps Leonore, the heroine of his opera Fidelio, represents an idea of his ideal woman – utterly loyal, and willing to risk even her own life to rescue her husband from the clutches of evil. What woman can measure up to that?

It is an amazing fact that in spite of all his difficulties, Beethoven attained success quite early on and maintained his popularity with the fickle Viennese. With the writings of E. T. A. Hoffman, early music theorist Adolph Bernhard Marx, and Franz Grillparzer, Beethoven becomes, after his death, a towering figure, a Romantic demigod, and a myth, one that persists to this day.

In his wonderfully readable book, Jan Swafford has successfully given us a picture of the man behind the myth, certainly the man behind the music. As with most great men, Beethoven was neither angel nor demon, but a man who had given us some of the most moving, passionate, and soul-stirring music of any time.

At the end of the book, I realized that even in this crowded field of Beethoven biographies, we must make room on our shelves for this one magnificent volume.

Musings on Mozart

It never ceases to amaze me that musicologists and biographers are still adding to the already very long list – longer than Don Giovanni’s list of conquests – of Mozart biographies. Historian Paul Johnson, known for his books on such diverse figures as Darwin, Socrates, Napoleon and Churchill, has now contributed to this crowded field with Mozart – A Life.

Not really a biography in the conventional sense – the book only runs to 164 pages long, including the index – but more of a musing on various aspects of the composer’s life and music by an intelligent writer who has knowledge of music. There are five chapters in the book - The “Miracle” Prodigy (Mozart’s childhood), Master of Instruments (his affinity for and ability on various instruments), A Married Composing Machine (Mozart’s married life in Vienna), Mozart’s Operatic Magic (a discussion of the major operas), and A Good Life Fully Lived (his last years) – each dealing with one aspect, or one period, in the composer’s short life.

Johnson gives Leopold Mozart a great deal of credit for Wolfgang’s proficiency in music. While acknowledging that Mozart junior would have (probably) become a great composer with or without his father, Johnson writes that it is Leopold’s doing that music becomes second nature to Wolfgang, that the boy “played and composed as he breathed,” which explains “why he was able to produce so much without sacrifice of quality.” While it is true that Leopold copied and corrected his son’s earliest compositions, it is difficult to ascertain how much influence he really had on his son. Certainly, Mozart’s amazing proficiency on the clavier, organ, violin and viola can be credited to his father’s dedication and effective teaching.

The writer devotes quite a number of pages, including an appendix, about the Mozart’s visit to London. Johnson speculates as to what Mozart’s life, and English musical life, might have been like had the family decided to remain in London. Mozart liked England, and professional prospects looked promising. Mozart even apparently mastered English enough to speak it fluently “and with a good accent”. Mozart was certainly appreciated by the English public, and they even had a firm contract for them to remain in London, an offer that Leopold turned down. Johnson opined that as a devout Catholic, Leopold would not have felt comfortable with the anti-Catholic sentiments of English society.

Throughout the book, Johnson also brings us to the question of Mozart’s own Catholic faith. Mozart was a practicing and faithful Catholic, but he was also a Freemason. Like many biographers before him, Johnson speculates upon any possible conflict between Catholicism and Freemasonry. The Catholic Church has, at various times, certainly condemned Freemasonry. But according to Johnson, in “Austria, Germany, and England the two institutions existed happily side by side at this epoch.” Mozart certainly tried to avoid the conflict between the two important aspects of his life. Johnson adds that for Mozart, “Masonry was an intellectual conviction, entirely of this world. Catholicism was a supernatural conviction, looking towards the next.” Speculation on the part of the biographer, perhaps, but Mozart could surely not have been the only Catholic who was also a Freemason in Vienna at the time. Being a Freemason certainly afforded Mozart the connections he so badly needed at various times of his life. Moreover, according to Johnson, Freemasonry appealed to Mozart’s attraction towards secret and reticence.

There is also quite an extensive discussion of Mozart’s stunning proficiency in various instruments. Other than being extremely proficient in his own instruments, Mozart was quick in absorbing the technique of new instruments he came in contact with, incorporating them into his compositions and, in many instances, writing concerti and chamber works for them that became standard pieces for those particular instruments. There are discussions of various works of Mozart’s involving different instruments. Description of various concerti, symphonies, quartets, and other chamber works are (deliberately, I suspect) quite general, and readable, so that casual readers would not be bogged down by details.

Johnson does have an interesting thought about the last three symphonies of Mozart, suggesting that there is a religious underpinning to the key and the mood of the three great works. The writer suggests that these last three symphonies suggest the Rosary, and that “the E-flat stands for the Joyful Mysteries, the G Minor for the Sorrowful, and the C Major for the Glorious.” No doubt this is an interesting suggestion – I would certainly try to look for such elements when I hear these three works – but that is probably what it would remain, a suggestion.

For me, there is not much new information in Johnson’s writings of Mozart’s last years in Vienna. H. C. Robbins Landon, in his various books on the subject, has already quite satisfactorily dispel the myths of Mozart’s death, as well as rehabilitating Constanze Mozart’s reputation from revisionist historians. Nevertheless, this well written and easily readable (but not unintelligent) book should appeal to those with some knowledge of the composer’s life and work already, and would like to further his or her understanding of Mozart’s life and work.

The genius of Mozart is one of the miracles of modern times, whose explanation calls for theology rather than musicology. To try to explain it is to try to contemplate how Christ fed the multitudes with five loaves and two fish. While it is true that no writer, no matter how eloquent, could adequately account for the drama, the joy, the pathos, the sadness - but never heartbreak, not in Mozart - and above all, the heavenly beauty that is behind the millions of notes written by this extraordinary man. One can only be thankful for this extraordinary creature that was in our midst, and gave us works that enrich, ennoble, and elevate our lives. And we can be thankful for the fact that this masterpiece of God will continue to fascinate historians, musicians, and music lovers.