Beethoven: The struggle to overcome
Under wind-rippled leaves and upon warm, sunny stretches of sidewalk, I ambled down the Eroicagasse (Eroica Lane — a clue as it alluded to the title of the composer’s third symphony) before veering right. I passed a series of buildings, one a Viennese wine tavern. From its open kitchen window overlooking the narrowed street, the drumming and stern pounding of schnitzel could be heard. I spied a woman wearing a traditional Austrian dress hammering at a slab of pink veal cutlets, her forehead shining with sweat. She huffed and looking up, grinned. I nodded at her.
A breeze brushed by me as I carried on. The day itself felt pastoral. A scent of warm dust and stone was floating over everything. Carrying on, a glance here, there, my eyes widened; I had arrived at the former home of one of the world’s greatest composers.
Beethovenhaus
Tracing roots and exploring
“Die Straßen Wiens sind mit Kultur gepflastert. Die Straßen anderer Städte mit Asphalt. (The streets of Vienna are paved in culture, while the streets of others cities are paved in asphalt.)”
In 2012, during a tour of Europe, I had visited Bonn and Beethoven’s birth house in the former West German capital. The house-turned-museum placed more careful focus and emphasis on the origins of the composer’s family, set against the backdrop of the rise of Napoleon following the French Revolution.
Here, in Vienna, more specifically the 19th district of Heiligenstadt (literally, ‘healing city’), the museum’s intent is on exploring the daily habits of the composer while in the former spa municipality. After buying a ticket, one begins the journey in a shaded courtyard, where the various sections of the house are numbered. There are the composing rooms, the performing rooms and what I found fascinating, the rooms for recuperation or rather, section 2, the rooms for ‘rejuvenating’ — the German, Erholen.
Mineral bottles - Beethovenhaus - Source, author’s
Walking into the latter, one is first presented with a massive shelf of bottled mineral water and below, in a display case, a photograph of Heiligenstadt’s former Mineralbad und Gasthaus. And amongst the placards providing a bit of information regarding the well-attended spa in Vienna, there were additional ones detailing Beethoven’s health concerns.
The ‘abdominal’ Beethoven
Many of us are familiar enough with the tragic story of Beethoven’s hearing loss. Of all the great tragedies in the world of the arts, a man gifted with music should be unable to hear his composition must rank as the most painful to consider. How could it have happened? To answer this, some research recently has stated such a physical impairment was possibly due to local Viennese wine tainted with lead. The deadly ingredient, then used as a preservative, is the likely reason for the composer’s hearing loss.
However, in addition to his failing hearing, the lead may have contributed to other ailments. For instance, Beethoven suffered equally from bowel problems. According to placards in the museum, the composer consulted with physicians all his life regarding his bouts of diarrhea and constipation, as well as lower abdominal pain. Complimenting the throbbing bouts he experienced, there were episodes of agonizing fever. These symptoms, when taken together in the light of modern medicine, might be termed irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). (The same scientists raising awareness of the tainted wine also ruled out inflammatory bowel disease — IBD — as there was no reported blood in his stools.)
Yet having learned on my own healing journey that though the physical can demonstratively have an effect on us (for me, a bacterial infection, with Beethoven, the lead-tainted wine) our rampant emotions as much as our repressed ones can also overburden us in our body’s suffering. In a previous podcast concerning the philosophy of Chinese medicine, I discussed how the bowel has associative emotions and has been termed the ‘abdominal brain’. According to Traditional Chinese Medicine and its overview of emotions in the body, anger resonates in the upper right side of our intestinal tract, while sadness manifests itself on the middle left and middle right.
Fear manifests itself physically in the lower area.
The struggle and secrets of the heroic
Fear — this emotion would have played a portentous and decisive part in the great composer’s life, especially upon learning of his developing deafness. Unlike Mozart, who endlessly struggled to make ends meet and perished in near-poverty, Beethoven benefited from a wide range of generous patrons who supported him financially. This amply afforded him his hours of solitude and his blessed time for composition.
Yet he worried about losing their support. At the age of 30, in a letter Beethoven wrote to a friend, also a physician, and the composer had this to say of his situation: “For two years I have avoided almost all social gatherings because it is impossible for me to say to people ‘I am deaf’. If I belonged to any other profession it would be easier, but in my profession it is a frightful state.”
It is sad to reflect that in order to better remedy his bowel complaints, Beethoven imbibed from the region’s wine — the very drink which held traces of lead, the very chemical further debilitating his hearing.
Overcoming obstacles to compose
“Musik ist wie ein Traum. Einer, den ich nicht hören kann. (Music is like a dream. One that I cannot hear.)”
Still, how did he manage to compose with failing hearing?
In the Beethovenhaus, guests can sample a device mimicking how the composer managed to bypass his impairment. This device functions by placing the end piece against one’s forehead or behind the ear and hitting a piano keyboard attached to a tube. The vibration is then carried from the instrument via the tube into the body. Beethoven did something similar with a pencil or a stick, placing it in his mouth and with one end touching the soundboard of the piano, he could feel the vibration course throughout his body.
This problem minutely solved, the hearing loss would have nonetheless cut him off from others. Though he had his writing pad to assist daily communication, he had his resentful pride. The composer turned inward for consolation and to the blessings of nature, taking long walks in the nearby countryside. In the Beethovenhaus, one can find his walking stick and a painting of the composer on his rambles.
Julius Schmid’s Beethoven’s walk in nature — source: wikipedia
Only the lonely
In addition to his walks, he owned a telescope and enjoyed stargazing. Peering into the lens, he must have felt a kinship with the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), then banned in Vienna, and the famous quote: Das Moralische gesetz in uns und der gestirnte Himmel über uns. The moral law within us and the starry heavens above us.
But philosophy alone cannot always comfort. For those devoted to producing art, there is always loneliness inherently involved. Beethoven struggled with his connections to others. The deafness and bowel issues perhaps reflected his inability to better the bonds with those around him. Though he had loved his brother, with his passing, Beethoven became a monster when he gained legal guardianship of his own nephew. It was against the boy’s and his sister-in-law’s own wishes. It became apparent the composer was no father figure as he insisted the boy be kept far from Johanna van Beethoven’s presence, a woman Beethoven heartily disliked (he routinely called her ‘Queen of the Night’, the nefarious character from Mozart’s The Magic Flute.)
The composer-turned-curmudgeon-uncle made his nephew’s life a living hell. This would have dire consequences. When Karl van Beethoven was older, he attempted suicide before later being admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
Maybe it was jealousy of his brother’s happiness, or that he loved Johanna once and wanted revenge in the wake of his brother’s death, that prompted him to act so miserably and callously towards her son. There are numerous theories. What is certain is throughout his life he was never loved or looked upon like a husband or regarded as a father. Such piano pieces as ‘’Für Elise’ and his song cycle ‘An die fernte Geliebte’ (To the Distant Beloved) hint at romances that were sparked without ever becoming long-lasting flames or lending themselves to tender unions, to building a family.
Und du singst, was ich gesungen,
Was mir aus der vollen Brust
Ohne Kunstgepräng erklungen,
Nur der Sehnsucht sich bewußt:
(And you sing, what I’ve sung/What I from a full breast/With innocence have sung/All-too-aware of its yearnings.)
- from the song cycle, An die ferne Geliebte (Nimm sie hin denn, diese Lieder/Take, then, these songs)
It is sad, even devious, to think that if he had the requited love in his life, he would never have composed the great music he did. As Freud, a Viennese thinker from a further century, once wrote, a good poem, as much as a piece of tender music, was a result of sublimation.
The eternal convalescent as composer in his declining years
In the case of Beethoven, the man with bowel and hearing problems was eternally pining while turning his anguish, his longings, his rage and his other frustrated impulses into heartbreaking music. He suffered, while those that came after reaped the beauty of his work. One wonders: if Beethoven had more of a romp in the sack, if he had been occupied with raising children, would that mean us being robbed today of the inestimable beauty of his late quartets, symphonies and sonatas?
Beethoven’s works are in a sense a replacement of the peace, the unconditional and devoted love he never experienced, the gentle emotions he never completely enjoyed or allowed himself to experience. His works strove to heal his frustrated existence, to pacify the rage and relentless fear burrowed inside him.
His most joyous and life-affirming works like the 9th symphony and the ethereal, wondrous late quartet in A Minor, op. 132, its prayerful third movement entitled ‘A Convalescent’s Holy Song of Thanksgiving to the Deity, in the Lydian Mode — Feeling New Strength’ are works that embody the redemptive strength the composer must have felt he lacked.
But he didn’t lack redemption.
While in the Beethovenhaus, in the last rooms entitled, Vermachen (Bequeathing), one can find a kind of consolation here. When you turn your attention away from the intimidating and larger than life bust of Beethoven, it being our culture’s colossal accepted image of him, it is peaceful to linger long upon something else: the composer’s death mask. Upon the brow and etched over the eyes and lips, a semblance of eternal repose and respite in this humble form. In the background behind the visitor, the beguiling beauty of his late Sonata no. 32 in C minor, its second and most mysterious movement entitled ‘Arietta’ playing on.
They say in the worst early years of his deafness, not only did the composer avoid others but in his compositions, the high notes. Thinking of this, one might think of the laughter of children he never heard and yet imagined. Here, in this last piano piece, one can hear those high notes radiating on, like children’s laughter, like joy being sung towards the high windows of the cosmos. A joy undiminished by illness and pain.
When I was about to finish my visit to this great house, I remained in this room the longest. I felt it necessary, as a kind of honor and reverent appreciation of this man. Here, to be able to listen to the piece, as the restless shadows of sunlit leaves radiated on the walls and flickered all around me.