I am Beethoven

An account of Beethoven being lost in his creative world:

Thayer tells us of a conversation he had with a Professor Blasius Höfel, a teacher of fine arts at Weiner Neustadt, a little town near Vienna.  one evening, Höfel was in a tavern with some of his colleagues, the Commissioner of Police being a member of the party.  A constable appeared and said to the commissioner, “we have arrested somebody who will give us no peace.  He keeps on yelling that he is Beethoven; but he surely is a tramp.  He has no hat, wears an old coat, and has nothing on him by which he can be identified.”  The commissioner, perhaps unwilling to have his convivial evening spoiled by so trifling an incident, told the constable to keep the man under arrest until morning and he would then investigate the matter.  At eleven o’clock that night commissioner was awakened by a policeman with the information that the prisoner insisted that the musical director of the Wiener Neustadt, a man by the name of Herzog, be called to identify him.  Troubled now, the commissioner got up, dressed, went out, woke up Herzog, and both men went to the jail.  As soon as Herzog saw the man, he exclaimed, “That is Beethoven!”  Herzog took him home, gave him his best room, and the next day the mayor of the town came, falling over himself with profuse apologies.

Cited in: Marek, George (1969) Beethoven: Biography of Genius. London: William Kimber, p. 564-565

Posted

in

by

Greg

Tags:

, ,

Featured Content

A poet is a nightingale
A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why. Percy Shelley, A Defence of Poetry, 1821
Stravinsky on Verdi’s Rigoletto
“I say that in the aria ‘La donna è mobile’, for example, which the elite thinks only brilliant and superficial, there is more substance and feeling than in the whole of Wagner’s Ring cycle.” – Igor StravinskyCited in Brandenburg, Daniel (2012). Verdi: Rigoletto. Bärenreiter.
The inexpressible depth of music
The inexpressible depth of all music, by virtue of which it floats past us as a paradise quite familiar and yet eternally remote, and is so easy to understand and yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from […]
Ravel’s compositional process
Robert de Fragny recalled a conversation with Ravel about his compositional process: The G major Concerto took two years of work, you know.  The opening theme came to me on a train between Oxford and London. But the initial idea is nothing.  The work of chiseling then begun.  We’ve gone past the days when the […]
Harbouring doves and crocodiles
Beethoven, who is often bizarre and baroque, takes at times the majestic flight of an eagle, and then creeps in rocky pathways. He first fills the soul with sweet melancholy, and then shatters it by a mass of shattered chords. He seems to harbor together doves and crocodiles. A review of Beethoven’s First Symphony, Tablettes […]
Brahms’ harmonic exercise
It was during the summer of 1858 that Brahms met Agathe von Seibold.  He had gone to visit Ise Grimm at Göttingenm the university town where Joachim spent his holidays.  Ise had recently married, and his home was a meeting place for the younger musicians. I have invited some people in this evening,” he told […]
Abstraction VI
Title: Abstraction VI Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Cello and piano Product medium: PDF score and part SAMPLE:
The framework of a symphony
The framework of a symphony must be so strong that it forces you to follow it regardless of the environment and circumstances: [it is] an “ethical necessity”. Jean Sibelius, to Jussi Jalas, 1 October 1939 Cited at: www.sibelius.fi [accessed 31 Mar 2010].
The Ruffled Knights
Title: The Ruffled Knights Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score
Busoni on invention
I came to think that every notation is already the transcription of an abstract invention. From the instant the pen takes hold of it, the idea loses its original feature. … The invention (Einfall) becomes a sonata, a concerto: it is already an arrangement of the original. From this first transcription to the second, the […]