Part Two: The Politics
Beethoven lived through a period of epochal change. At the time of his birth in December 1770, a large part of Europe was joined in a loose federation of states, centred on Austria's Catholic Habsburg monarchy, under the imposing but rather misleading title of 'The Holy Roman Empire'. Outside the more sophisticated European cities the values of feudalism still largely prevailed, and even a composer of the stature of Joseph Haydn was earning his keep as a liveried servant.
By the time of Beethoven's death in 1827, the Holy Roman Empire was no more than a memory. War and revolution had torn Europe from end to end. And although the international Congress of Vienna of 1815 - convened by the victorious powers after the defeat of Napoleon - did much to restore conservative values across the continent, the aristocracy had been forced to concede much of its power to the rising middle classes. Some countries had seen the Old Order toppled: temporarily in France, permanently in the newly independent United States of America.
Meanwhile in Britain, another kind of revolution had begun, one that would soon affect all of Europe: the Industrial Revolution. And by Beethoven's death the image of the composer had been transformed into that of the romantic hero. It is said that as Beethoven's funeral procession made its way through the streets of Vienna, an old woman was heard to remark, 'They are burying the general of the musicians'. Napoleon may have failed, but there was a growing hope, especially amongst idealistic young people, that the torch of liberty might now be taken up by the artist.
No composer was more acutely responsive to these immense changes in attitudes and social structures than Beethoven. One of his earliest large-scale works was a Cantata on the death of the Emperor JosephII, written in 1790 when Beethoven was nineteen. Joseph had a reputation as an enlightened ruler, strongly aware of the need for political reform. It is no coincidence that this is the work in which the young Beethoven, already a passionate believer in freedom and 'the rights of man', found his voice as a composer for the first time. Years later the composer Johannes Brahms wrote of this work: 'if there were no other name on the title page, no other could be conjectured - it is Beethoven through and through.' Beethoven clearly felt the same: years later he reused music from the Cantata in the closing scene of his great liberation-opera Fidelio, to magnificent effect.
Much has been made of the revolutionary element in Beethoven - reflected both in the beliefs he held and in the way he transformed the language of music, enhancing its power to convey not just emotions but even philosophical and political ideas. But Beethoven was a man of contradictions: it's one the facets of his character that makes him so fascinating. His idealism was genuine enough. Alongside an entirely natural desire for personal glory he held to a genuine, impassioned hope that his music might lead in some way to the bettering of human life and conditions. In 1800, as ideas about social change were being embraced in some quarters and stamped on in others, he wrote to his friend Franz Wegler that 'when the prosperity of our fatherland has improved, then my art must be directed towards the benefit of the poor. O happy moment, and how lucky I consider myself that I can contribute to this aim, that I myself can bring it to pass!' Joseph II's successor, the far less 'enlightened' Emperor Franz, is said to have refused to have anything to do with Beethoven on the grounds that 'There is something revolutionary in that music'.
Beethoven's everyday behaviour often bore witness to these attitudes. His great German literary contemporary Goethe was scandalized when, out walking with the composer, Beethoven refused to remove his hat as a noble gentleman rode by. To one of his most enthusiastic early patrons, Prince Karl Lichnowsky, Beethoven wrote: 'Prince, what you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am of myself. There are and will be thousands of princes. There is only one Beethoven'. But it must also be noted that Beethoven showed a marked partiality for aristocratic company. And it is interesting to see how he dealt - or rather didn't deal - with a misunderstanding concerning his name: Ludwig van Beethoven. 'Van', in the language of Beethoven's paternal Flemish ancestors simply means 'from' - it has no connotations of social status. But in German 'von' signifies nobility, and many of Beethoven's Viennese contemporaries took him to be a man of high rank. Beethoven made no attempt to correct them, and even used the misunderstanding to his advantage in the protracted custody case over his nephew Karl.
However Beethoven's admiration for Napoleon was clearly genuine enough - at first. His Third Symphony, the Eroica ('Heroic') Symphony, was originally intended to be dedicated to Napoleon. But in May 1804, before the newly completed symphony had been performed or published, Beethoven heard news that shocked and enraged him. The great freedom fighter Napoleon had declared himself Emperor of France. In his fury he scratched Napoleon's name from the Third Symphony's title page. 'So he too is nothing more than an ordinary man', he told a friend. 'Now he will trample on all human rights and indulge only his own ambition. He will place himself above everyone and become a tyrant'. How right he was!
Yet Beethoven continued to hold on to something of the spirit he had sensed at first in the French revolutionary movement. His Fifth Symphony, for example, has often been depicted as an expression of Beethoven's determination to 'take fate by the throat'- to triumph in spite of deafness, recurring ill health and depression. But the Fifth Symphony also contains themes - especially in the finale - that sound very like French revolutionary hymns and marching songs. His one opera Fidelio is a vivid portrayal of political tyranny, and its defeat by a lone woman, Leonore, the embodiment of heroic human love and hope.
And while there's every reason to take seriously accounts of the older Beethoven enthusiastically reading out reports of British parliamentary debates and hailing them as 'real democracy', his democratic ideals still went a lot further than those of William Pitt the Younger. Listening to Beethoven's last great piano works and string quartets one may sometimes feel that Beethoven had transferred his revolutionary zeal to the inner, spiritual world, away from the brutally disillusioning world of human politics. Yet there is still the evidence of his final symphony Choral Ninth (1817-23), with its climactic setting of Friedrich von Schiller's poem 'Ode to Joy' (originally 'Ode to Freedom', but changed to escape censorship). In the years of the 'Velvet Revolution' of 1989, East Germans hoping to defeat Communist tyranny made performances of Beethoven's Fidelio and Ninth Symphony their rallying points. One can imagine the electrifying effect of these words from Fidelio 's 'Prisoner's Chorus' on a people brought up with the ever-present fear of the East German secret police: 'Speak softly, be careful! We are observed by eyes and ears'. Beethoven may have been a product of his time, and its most acute musical chronicler, but in his greatest moments he speaks as directly to us, now, with all our contemporary pains and dilemmas, as he did to his first audiences.
© Stephen Johnson
