Beethoven as a boy

In his Beethoven: Biography of a Genius, Marek provides an insight into Beethoven as a boy:

The boy was looking out of the window, his head cradled in his hands.  His mien was serious, his glance rigid. Cäcilia Fischer came along the courtyard and saw him. “How are you, Ludwig?” she shouted up to him.  No answer. She said, “Foul weather seems to be with you.”  No answer. She said, “Well, no answer is an answer too.” Suddenly the boy exclaimed, “Oh, please, no, no, forgive me!  I was busy with such a beautiful, deep thought I couldn’t bear to be disturbed.”

This is one of the few vignettes which have survived.  It rings.  But how can one be sure?  Nor can any one anecdote flesh out the portrait of the boy Beethoven.  The boy, like the man, was contradictory – and contradictory were the impressions received by the people around him.

He was a merry boy, quite ready for pranks.  He played with the other children in the garden of the Palace.  He loved to be carried piggyback.  He sneaked into the hen house and stole some eggs.  Good-natured Frau Fischer caught him at it.  She called him a fox.  The fox steals eggs.  He said, “I am more of a music fox (Notenfuchs) than an egg fox.”

No, he was an exceptionally serious boy.  He was “shy and taciturn,” he was “enclosed in himself,” he was “peevish with people.”  He loved to turn the iron handle of the windows shutters and listen to the musical noise the handle produced. He was always maneuvering around the clavier and trying to improvise, to the annoyance of Johann, who said that he had first to learn how to play before he could compose.  His father took his little hand and guided the fingers in accompaniment of simple songs.  Then he set to work in earnest and stood before the clavier and wept.  He wept, probably because he could not master the instrument quickly enough.  He was ill cared for and often dirty.  Cäcilia said, “Why do you look dirty? You should make yourself proper:” He answered, “When I grow up, nobody will worry about it.”

Source:  Marek, George (1969) Beethoven: Biography of a Genius. London: William Kimber, p.39-40.

Posted

in

by

Greg

Tags:

Featured Content

The greatest applause
“The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world, is the highest applause.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson “An address delivered before the senior class in Divinity College, Cambridge, Sunday Evening, July 15, 1838”, The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, in 12 vols. Fireside Edition (Boston and New York, 1909). Vol. 1 […]
The delicate nature of Chopin’s pianism
Chopin gave a recital in the Gentlemen”s Concert Hall, Manchester, on 28 August 1848. The audience of 1,200 people was the largest Chopin had ever performed to, but Chopin’s delicate playing was not really suited to such a large venue. Conscious of this fact, Chopin requested that another pianist, George Osborne, who was also performing […]
Forgive (Tchaikovsky)
Title: Forgive ( Прости!) (opus 60, no. 11] Composer: Pytor Il'yich Tchaikovsky (arr. Greg Smith) Instrumentation: Cello and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:
Richter on Scriabin
“Scriabin isn’t the sort of composer whom you’d regard as your daily bread, but is a heady liqueur on which you can get drunk periodically, a poetical drug, a crystal that’s easily broken.” -Sviatoslav Richter, pianist Monsaingeon, Bruno (2001). Sviatoslav Richter: Notebooks and Conversations. Princeton University Press, p.267 Cited at: Wikipedia
Abstraction IX
Title: Abstraction IX Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Brass quintet (2 trumpets in B-flat, Horn in F, trombone, bass trombone) Product medium: PDF score and parts SAMPLE:
Arthur Schopenhauer on music
Now the nature of man consists in this, that his will strives, is satisfied and strives anew, and so on for ever. Indeed, his happiness and well-being consist simply in the quick transition from wish to satisfaction, and from satisfaction to a new wish. For the absence of satisfaction is suffering, the empty longing for […]
On thinking
“If you make people think they’re thinking they’ll love you: but if you really make them think, they’ll hate you.” Don Marquis, American writer, poet & artist. Creator of the characters such as Archy (1916), a cockroach who had been a poet in a previous life, who supposedly left poems on Marquis’ typewriter by jumping […]
Delius on the role of music
“The chief reason for the degeneration of present-day music lies in the fact that people want to get physical sensations from music more than anything else. Emotion is out of date and intellect a bore. Appreciation of art which has been born of profound thought and intensity of experience necessitates an intellectual effort too exhausting […]
Mahler’s bowing instructions
Rachmaninoff played his Third Concerto in January 1909 in New York, conducted by Gustav Mahler. Rachmaninoff recalled the rehearsal: Suddenly, Mahler, who had conducted this passage a tempo, tapped his desk: “Stop!  Don’t pay any attention to the difficult bowing marked in your parts. … Play the passage like this,” and he indicated a different […]
The effect of art
“There’s a phrase I’ve often heard from audience members at popular musicals (but, oddly, never anywhere else): the show, they’ll say, “really took me out of myself”.  They are saying something basic and profound about the ecstasy of art, the act of being taken out of one’s normal state to a different level of being.  […]