Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph (169 page)

12. Friedenthal,
Goethe
, 410.

13. Walden,
Beethoven's Immortal Beloved
, 30–31.

14. Marek,
Beethoven
, 277–78. The quotation is from Varnhagen von Ense.

15. Helps and Howard,
Bettina
, 204–5.

16. Ibid., 150.

17. Sonneck,
Beethoven
, 79–82.

18. If I am right that Beethoven in some unknowable degree allowed Bettina Brentano to put words in his mouth in her letters to Goethe, there are two possible and interlocking reasons for it. The obvious one is that he wanted to reach Goethe, and Bettina could write a more compelling letter than he could. The second reason is that, while Beethoven spoke very little about his music, he appreciated other people's rhapsodies inspired by his work, whether they came from critics like E. T. A. Hoffmann and Adolph Marx or from imaginative enthusiasts like Bettina.

19. Walden, in
Beethoven's
Immortal Beloved
, 95–100, details the changes Bettina made in her published letters from Goethe by comparing them to the ones that still exist (nine of the sixteen in her book). He shows her changes to be relatively minor and most often the kind of political statements that would have been unwritable at the time, because they would have been censored. In regard to Goethe's letters to Bettina that are missing, Walden speculates on what additions may have been made. He also notes that she never claimed to have published his letters exactly as written, and that she likely took more liberties with
her
side of the correspondence. Bettina's defenders say that her collections of letters are actually epistolary novels, like Goethe's
Sorrows of Young Werther
.

20. B. Cooper,
Beethoven Compendium
, 20–21.

21. Thayer/Forbes, 1:490.

22. As an element in his thesis that Bettina Brentano was the “Immortal Beloved,” whom Beethoven in a later conversation implied he met around 1810, Walden (
Beethoven's Immortal Beloved
) promotes a theory that Beethoven had known Antonie and her family since the 1790s. Walden's main source for that idea is Anton Schindler, a completely unreliable source. None of that is to say, however, that Beethoven did not know Antonie earlier, only that there is no clear record of it.

23. Solomon,
Beethoven
, 234–35.

24. Ibid., 235.

25. The portraits of Antonie are reproduced in ibid., 208.

26. Ibid., 233.

27. Ibid., 229.

28. Part of the tightly knit quality of the
Serioso
is the interrelationships of its key structure from beginning to end. The essence of that structure is the “sore” note D-flat in the beginning, part of the primal motif D-flat–C. (That in turn reveals the
Serioso
as the most important ancestor of Brahms's F Minor Quintet, which has, among other things, the same emphasis on D-flat, the same influence of D-flat on the harmonic structure, the same important D-flat–C motif, and a similar tragic tone throughout.) In the
Serioso
the keys of D-flat and G-flat turn up in later movements. For one example, the D-flat becomes C-sharp, the leading tone, in the D-major second movement. As Kerman and Ratner note, the quartet's abrupt opening move from I to N echoes the same harmonic move in the
Appassionata
and the E Minor
Razumovsky
Quartet.

29. The effect of the second theme, which I call unreal and evanescent, has to do not only with its startling contrast to the first theme but also with the highly unusual harmonic move to the flat side, the subdominant direction, in a second theme. Even in the C-major
Waldstein
Sonata, in which nearly every tonal move starting from the opening bars is in the flat/subdominant direction, the second theme is in E, a dominant substitute.

30. The keys of the strange uprushing scales in the first movement form a pattern of rising fourths: A major, D major, G major. Each one is a violent jump from the key at hand (though D and A have an N relation to I and V in D-flat major). Meanwhile, note that A, D, and G are V, I, and IV of D major, the key of the second movement. To say again, part of the conception of this quartet is tightly interlocking keys among the movements.

31. The striking B-flat that inflects the D major of the second-movement theme is part of a flat-sixth motif in the piece, also part of its
moll-Dur
tendencies, such as the heart-tugging moment in mm. 40–41 of the first movement.

32. Wyn Jones,
Life of Beethoven
, 128.

33. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 283.

34. Solomon,
Beethoven
, 182.

35. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 294.

36. Ibid., no. 306.

37. Kinsky and Halm,
Das Werk Beethovens
, 773. Breitkopf & Härtel brought out
Christus am Ölberge
and the Mass in C as opp. 85 and 86.

38. Lockwood,
Beethoven: Music
, 308.

39. Anderson, vol. 1, nos. 300 and 301.

40. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 157.

41. Some of Beethoven's on-the-surface-less-bold pieces have, like the
Archduke
, some of his more striking formal and tonal excursions. The scherzo is an example. It's based in B-flat major; the enormous, multipart trio begins in B-flat minor and goes on to D-flat major and E major, and arrives at B-flat major well before the return of the opening theme. Then comes the slow movement in D major. The harmonic peregrinations of the gentle
Archduke
rival those of the furious
Serioso
, and both are planned in terms of close tonal relationships among the movements.

42. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 295.

43. Marek,
Beethoven
, 258–59.

44. Walden,
Beethoven's Immortal Beloved
, 133–34.

45. For Walden (ibid.), the
du
and “with pain”—three words—in Beethoven's surviving letter to Bettina are central elements in his argument that she was the Immortal Beloved. The two letters from Beethoven that Bettina published, and which do not survive, are more unequivocally passionate. Yet others saw those missing letters and testified to their existence, and there is no doubt that Beethoven wrote Bettina more letters than the single one that survives—he refers to them. Meanwhile there is no evidence that Bettina destroyed his letters or any of Goethe's. For all she knew, in other words, the originals of Beethoven's letters would still be around to compare to her published versions. And so the speculations and ambiguities continue their rounds.

46. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 303.

47. Clive,
Beethoven and His World
, 251.

48. Albrecht, vol. 1, no. 155.

49. Kinsky and Halm,
Das Werk Beethovens
, 227.

50. Anderson, “Beethoven's Operatic Plans,” 5.

51. B. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 195.

52. Lockwood,
Beethoven: Music
, 267.

53. Kinderman,
Beethoven
, 147.

54. Lockwood,
Beethoven: Music
, 267.

55. Burnham, in
Beethoven Hero
, writes that the coda of the
Egmont
Overture approaches naïveté, if not banality. I tend to agree.

56. Thayer/Forbes, 1:484–85.

57. Moore, “Beethoven and Inflation,” 200–202.

58. Ibid., 212–13. Moore's figures about the stipend and its travails differ from Thayer/Forbes's (1:552–53). I am assuming hers are more up to date.

59. B. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 203. Cooper has doubts that the music for Pest was actually written in three weeks and suspects Beethoven began it earlier. But Beethoven's account to Breitkopf & Härtel less than a month later is unambiguous. Recall that he wrote the hour-long
Christus
in two weeks, or claimed to have.

60. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 344.

61. Landon,
Beethoven
, 142.

62. Thayer/Forbes, 1:512.

63. Clive,
Beethoven and His World
, 378.

64. Ibid., 368.

65. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 312.

66. Thayer/Forbes, 1:515, 531–32.

67. Clive,
Beethoven and His World
, 379.

68. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 340.

69. Ibid., no. 325.

70. Ibid., no. 328.

71. Lockwood,
Beethoven: Music
, 76.

72. B. Cooper,
Beethoven
, 205–6.

73. Thayer/Forbes, 1:519.

74. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 330.

75. Clive,
Beethoven and His World
, 377.

76. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 334.

77. Thayer/Forbes, 1:520.

78. Plantinga,
Beethoven's Concertos
, 272.

79. Comini, “Visual Beethoven,” 287–90. Comini was the first to come to this commonsense understanding of why the Klein life mask turned out as it did and how that played into the Romantic cult of genius. It is the foundation of her
Changing Image of Beethoven: A Study in Mythmaking
, its subject Beethoven iconography.

80. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 369.

 

25. My Angel, My Self

 

1. B. Cooper,
Beethoven Compendium
, 22.

2. Anderson, vol. 1, no. 374.

3. Solomon,
Beethoven
, 215.

4. Based on the literal translation of Virginia Beahrs in “My Angel,” with additions for the sake of clarity from the version in Anderson, vol. 1, no. 373, plus elements from the German. I have added some paragraph breaks, also for clarity. Beahrs is a leading champion of Josephine Deym as the Immortal Beloved, Maynard Solomon (ibid.) of Antonie Brentano, Edward Walden (
Beethoven's Immortal Beloved
) of Bettina Brentano. The new entry in the debate by John E. Klapproth (
Beethoven's Only Beloved
) makes a book-length case for Josephine. In Klapproth I find dubious datings and translations and other fudging—see the final note for chapter 20 and note 6 below. My treatment of the Immortal Beloved mystery in this chapter gives an overview of the various theories, all of which amount to many pages of reasoning and speculation teetering on a handful of provable facts—some of those facts certainly tantalizing. As the text shows, I can't subscribe to any of the theories, even to the point of having a provisional favorite candidate, and after years of research and speculation I have no new theory to offer. Since I have no problem with mysteries—I am a musician, and music itself is a great mystery—I have kept my discussion to a summary of the more tangible and tantalizing aspects. Interested readers should examine Solomon, Walden, Beahrs, and Klapproth, for starters, with an open yet skeptical mind. Meanwhile, the George Marek biography votes for pianist Dorothea Ertmann, Romain Rolland (
Beethoven the Creator
) for Therese von Brunsvik, and Anton Schindler (
Beethoven
) for Giulietta Guicciardi. I don't believe any of those three are viable candidates.

5.
Unsterblich
is familiarly translated as “immortal,” but the word can also mean “undying.” As Anderson notes in
Letters of Beethoven
, the more literal sense of
Unsterbliche Geliebte
(usually the first word would be lowercase, but Beethoven capitalizes both) is “undying love.” Since both translations are valid, I've used the familiar one.

6. Solomon,
Beethoven
, 222. The resemblance of the Immortal Beloved letter to the ones to Josephine Deym is the centerpiece of Klapproth's argument for her (
Beethoven's Only Beloved
). Solomon's detective work in
Beethoven
places Antonie Brentano definitely in Karlsbad when Beethoven wrote the letter saying his beloved was in that town; her presence in Karlsbad is Solomon's centerpiece. For Walden's part (
Beethoven's Immortal Beloved
), he shows that Bettina Brentano was
planning
to go to Karlsbad and/or Teplitz, and Beethoven may have believed she was in Karlsbad. Bettina's trip was delayed, and she arrived in Teplitz at the end of July—which is when Walden believes they met and Bettina told him she was staying with her husband. The centerpiece of Walden's argument is the two disputed letters from Beethoven that Bettina published but which no longer exist. I'll add that Walden does a far more respectable job of making his case than Klapproth, whose argument is at times forced and deceptive. Still, I think there is a case to be made for Josephine that makes roughly as much sense as the others.

7. Walden,
Beethoven's Immortal Beloved
, 4.

8. Ibid., 2.

9. Ibid., xiii.

10. Perhaps inevitably, there have been theories that the child Antonie Brentano was pregnant with in 1812 was Beethoven's. That is among the most unsupported and unlikely speculations in the debate—though, of course, unlikely things happen all the time.

11. Solomon,
Beethoven
, 234.

12. Walden,
Beethoven's Immortal Beloved
, 9. Walden notes that Bettina agreed to marry Arnim in December 1811 and was probably exchanging letters (now lost) with Beethoven at the time. Though Walden duly cites this notion, it makes for a problem in his thesis. If Bettina was marrying Arnim for practical reasons and not love, and meanwhile she was in contact with Beethoven and they were falling or had fallen in love, why would she have gone ahead with the marriage? Soon after the wedding she wrote Goethe saying she was very happy with Arnim—though this was before her nearly fatal childbirth and subsequent depression.

13. Ibid., 30–31.

14. Bettina's four sons had the remarkable names of Siegmund, Friemund, Friedemund, and Huehnemund (Helps and Howard,
Bettina
, 134). The couple were often apart, and their letters are playful and intimate: “Farewell then, Arnim, but I am annoyed with you, you are not a bit affectionate, you hug me about once in a blue moon, and you don't kiss me as I should like to be kissed” (137). Bettina advocated giving children considerable freedom. In childhood, her daughter Gisela was given to crawling around under the table at dinner parties and biting the guests' ankles.