Sketch of Handel and Beethoven Part 6

"Haydyn," says Reichardt, "drew his quartets from the pure source of his sweet and unsophisticated nature, his captivating simplicity and cheerfulness. In these works he is still without an equal. Mozart's mightier genius and richer imagination took a more extended range, and embodied in several pa.s.sages the most profound and sublime qualities of his own mind. Moreover, he was much greater as a performer than Haydyn, and as such expected more from instruments than the latter did. He also allowed more merit to highly-wrought and complicated compositions, and thus raised a gorgeous palace within Haydyn's fairy bower. Of this palace Beethoven was an early inmate; and in order adequately to express his own peculiar forms of style, he had no other means but to surmount the edifice with that defying and colossal tower which no one will probably presume to carry higher with impunity.

"If any man," says an able writer in the Quarterly, "can be said to enjoy an almost universal admiration as composer, it is Beethoven--who, disdaining to copy his predecessors in any, the most distant manner, has, notwithstanding, by his energetic, bold, and uncommon style of writing, carried away a prize from our modern Olympus."

Beethoven, like most great men, had many peculiarities.

In winter, well as in summer, it was his practice to rise at daybreak, and immediately to sit down to his writing-table. There he would labour till two or three o'clock, his usual dinnertime. Scarcely had the last morsel been swallowed, when, if he had no more distant excursion in view, he took his usual walk--that is to say, he ran in double quick time, as if hunted by bailiffs, twice round the town--whether it rained, or snowed, or hailed, or the thermometer stood an inch or two below the freezing point--whether Boreas blew a chilling blast from the Bohemian mountains, or whether the thunder roared, and forked lightnings played, what signified it to the enthusiastic lover of his art, in whose genial mind, perhaps, were budding, at that very moment, when the elements were in fiercest conflict, the harmonious feelings of a balmy spring.

The use of the bath was as much a necessity to Beethoven as to a Turk--and he was in the habit of submitting himself to frequent ablutions. When it happened that he did not walk out of doors to collect his ideas, he would, not unfrequently, in a fit of the most complete abstraction, go to his washhand basin, and pour several jugs of water upon his hands, all the time humming and roaring. After dabbling in the water till his clothes were wet through, he would pace up and down the room with a vacant expression of countenance, and his eyes distended, the singularity of his aspect being often increased by an unshaven beard. Then he would seat himself at his table and write; and afterwards get up again to the washhand basin and dabble and hum as before.

Ludicrous as were these scenes, no one dared venture to notice them, or to disturb him while engaged in his inspiring ablutions, for these were his moments of profoundest meditation.

Many anecdotes are told of him likewise.

The wife of an esteemed pianoforte player, residing in Vienna, was a great admirer of Beethoven, and she earnestly wished to possess a lock of his hair--her husband, anxious to gratify her, applied to a gentleman who was very intimate with Beethoven, and who had rendered him some service. Beethoven sent the lady a lock of hair cut from a _goat's beard_--and Beethoven's own hair being very grey and harsh, there was no reason to fear that the hoax would be very readily detected. The lady was overjoyed at possessing this supposed memorial of her saint, proudly showing it to all her acquaintance; but, when her happiness at its height, some one who happened to know the secret, made her acquainted with the deception that had been practised on her--the lady's wrath who will attempt to describe?

Beethoven's name I have already told you was Ludwig Von Beethoven. In some legal proceedings in which he was concerned, it was intimated by the court that the word von, of Dutch origin, does not enn.o.ble the family to whose name it is prefixed--according to the laws of Holland--that, in the province of the Rhine in which Beethoven was born, it was held to be of no higher value--that, consequently, the halo of n.o.bility ought to be stripped from this Von in Austria also. Beethoven was accordingly required to produce proofs of his n.o.bility. "My _n.o.bility_! My _n.o.bility_!" he exclaimed--"_Why, my n.o.bility is here, here!_"--clapping his forehead.

Right, Beethoven, brains are the highest n.o.bility, if not the richest.

I love birth, and ancestry, when they are incentives to exertion not the t.i.tle deeds to sloth. Who would not prefer being the descendant of a Stephenson, an Arkwright, or a Crompton, or any other of those great architects of their own fortunes, and to feel some of their n.o.ble energies, firing their blood to efforts of industry, than to be for ever falling back on some legend or fiction of ancestry; and in the absence of any _personal_ claim to greatness to be referring back and depending on those great mistakes of our forefathers, when he who waded through slaughter to a peerage was honoured _above_ those whose brains and whose industry were the means of promoting the comfort of their fellow men.

Believe me, my young friends, the highest honour of earth, is the honour of independence, and the highest n.o.bility, _to be the Rodolph of your own fortune, and a benefactor to mankind_.

Beethoven died 26th March, 1827, in the fifty-sixth year of his age.

Although his warmth of temper, extreme frankness and singularity of manners, his little reserve in judging of people, and above all, that deplorable calamity--the greatest which can befall a man of his profession--his extreme deafness, seemed little calculated to endear him to the true admirers of his genius. Still, notwithstanding his foibles, which much more frequently belong to great than to ordinary men, his character as a man and as a citizen ranked deservedly high. Although his originality induced him to deviate from ordinary rules, in the little affairs of common life, yet his high feeling of honour and right produced a rect.i.tude in his moral conduct, which ensured to him the esteem of every honourable man.

Beethoven--the master spirit of his age-- Has pa.s.sed away to his eternal rest, His name belongs to history's page, Enrolled with men the n.o.blest and the best.

We to whom it was not given to view His living lineaments with wond'ring eye, May in his tones behold him pictured true In breathing colours that can never die.

For he could paint in tones of magic force The moody pa.s.sions of the varying soul; Now winding round the heart with playful course; Now storming all the breast with wild control.

Forthdrawing from his unexhausted store, 'Twas his to bid the burden'd heart o'erflow, Infusing joys it never knew before, And melting it with soft luxuriant woe!

He liveth! It is wrong to say he's dead-- The sun, tho' smoking in the fading west, Again shall issue from his morning bed, Like a young giant vigorous from his rest.

He lives! for that is truly living when Our fame is a bequest from mind to mind, His life is in the breathing hearts of men, Transmitted to the latest of his kind.

NOTES.

_Note on Page 19._

The earliest copy of the tune, as far as is known, stands in a Genevan edition of a portion of the English Psalter, preserved as an article of rare value in the library of St. Paul's Cathedral. The date of the Psalter is 1561. The tune is therein given to Sternhold's version of the Hundredth Psalm.

This fairly settles the _vexata questio_ as to the authors.h.i.+p of the tune. There is no evidence that it originated with Luther, to whom it is generally attributed--but there is evidence that it did originate with Franc, of Geneva; and the only claim to originality is grounded on the discovery of the sources from whence Franc derived the phrases of the tune. Those phrases are so palpably Gregorian, that Franc's construction of the tune can be regarded only a fragmentary compilation.

Considered, then, as Gregorian in its texture, "The Old Hundredth" is, indeed, very old, much older than is commonly imagined. Its several strains had been sung by Christian voices not only one thousand years before Luther was born, but for centuries before the Papal system was developed. Viewed in this light, the old tune a.s.sumes a new interest, and its antique tones vibrate with freshened impulse.

_Note on Page 32._

In 1699 and the following years many schools were established under the agency of the Christian Knowledge Society, in and about the metropolis; and, in the year 1704, when the first meeting of the children educated in these charity schools took place, in St. Andrew's Church, Holborn, the number of children present amounted to no less than two thousand!

From that time to the present, the children of these schools a.s.semble yearly in some church of the metropolis, when a sermon, appropriate to the occasion, is preached. In 1782, they first met in St. Paul's Cathedral, where they have ever since a.s.sembled.

_Note on Page 36._

We may reasonably hope that something will now be done towards effecting this object. Committees have been formed, and numerous meetings are being held to consider the subject. As might be expected, many and diverse tributes of respect are proposed, not the least sensible or suitable that of our national _Thersites_. "It will be hard to find a better site for the Memorial than in the Temple Garden, which is seen from the river, and will be seen from the embankment."--PUNCH, _26th December, 1863_.

_Note on Page 45._

A lady who heard this lecture has since told me an equally strange fact.

In her native parish there was an amateur choir, which a.s.sembled twice a week in the parish church to practise. On the lobby of the gallery wherein the choir a.s.sembled, there was a piano, to lead and accompany the voices; as regularly as the piano was played, a _Robin Red Breast_--an old tenant of the churchyard--would perch on the instrument, and remain as long as the music continued. My informant was frequently the performer and always had the pleasure of _d.i.c.ky's_ company.

THE END.