May Byron

“ There it once more stands before him as in the Pastoral Symphony: everything is rendered luminous to him by his inner happiness.
They seated themselves upon a grassy bank, and Beethoven discoursed freely of the things dearest to his heart: his keen desire to visit England, and his fear lest his deafness might prove a hopeless obstacle to this. Neate, speaking to him in slow German, close to his left ear, managed to make himself intelligible; while the master expressed his unbounded admiration for everything English, especially Shakespeare, who was his favourite poet. ”

“ Beethoven's greatest works, as years went on, were "conceived, produced and given complete to the world ... when not one of those wondrous succession of of phrases could by any possibility reach his ears:" when, in a "splendid isolation" beyond the average power to understand, he and Music dwelt alone in an inner shrine together. "Never has an earthly art created anything so serene as the symphonies in A, and F major, and all those works of the Master which date from the period of his complete deafness." ”

“ For Music contains, within its inexhaustible treasuries, not only all that we conceive of best, all those highest and most ennobling emotions which thrill us as at a touch of the Divine finger, but it also possesses all the characteristic beauties of other arts. The composer shares Form and Colour with the painter—a much more elastic variety of Form—and an incomparably wider use of Colour, in the magnificent paintbox of the orchestra. ”

“ And Ludwig van Beethoven had a means of "communing fearlessly" with his Creator, which, for him, was perhaps, as direct a road as prayer, if laborare est orare. For music, "although in its glorious fulness and power at that time unknown, was associated intimately by the early Christian writers with Christianity—with immortality." As Wagner has declared, music is of the "essential nature of things, and its kingdom is not of this world... Its spirit, like that of Christianity, is love." ”

“ Never in all his life had Neate met a man so wholly taken up with nature, so enwrapt with the contemplation of trees, flowers, cloud, and sward. "Nature seemed his nourishment," Neate said afterwards. "He seemed to live upon and by her." The parable of the Presto of the C sharp minor Quartet, here was openly fulfilled,—the master, rendered, from within, completely happy, cast a glance of indescribable serenity upon the outer world. ”

“ But he thoroughly enjoyed casting a glance, from time to time, at the sunny scene without; at the vista towards the Belvedere Garden, the Danube, and the distant Carpathians,—the view for the sake of which he had taken up his lodgings at this house in the Sailer-stätte, Vienna. For if there was one thing which still could afford a unique and cloudless pleasure to this sensitive, unhappy man, it was Nature in all her varied forms of light and loveliness. ”

“ Now, listeners on either side of a door—in or out—were, as it has been said, Beethoven's chief aversion. Pianoforte virtuoso as he was, fine performer on the organ, violin, and viola—anything that savoured of professional display was nauseous to him. "Music the art was for him the breath of life: music the profession, as generally understood," he relegated to the depths of distaste. ”

“ It was one Charles Neate, an English pianist, who had come, armed with a letter of introduction, to beseech the great Beethoven to receive him as a pupil for the piano.
The great Beethoven was for a moment inclined to be exceedingly bearish and inhospitable. To come on a morning when he was busy—to interrupt a man in the full flow of composition—these were unpardonable crimes! ”

“ It is therefore open to doubt whether an affliction, which in an ordinary man would command our pity, was so much to be deprecated in the case of Ludwig van Beethoven as at first thoughts one might imagine. ”

“ He had found that only among the silent solitudes of the hills and valleys could he fully release that throng of insurgent ideas which for ever clamoured in his brain for an outlet. Melodies, subjects, suggestions for their development and execution, flocked continuously through his mind; and to set them down in feverish haste—to imprison their "first fine careless rapture" in his note-book, for subsequent improvement and enlargement, was the occupation of all these country walks. ”

“ These, and innumerable other instances, each dear to the individual heart, identify Beethoven as the true lord of the Sonata.
The reader will doubtless feel some wonder that all this while the master was composing so rigorously at his desk, leaving the pianoforte untouched. But there were three very adequate reasons for this mode of action. First—that he was in the habit of writing everything, as he composed it, in notebooks; mostly out of doors in solitary rambles away from any instrument, where he would "hum to himself, and beat the air with an accompaniment of extraordinary vocal sounds." ”

“ From childhood my heart and mind have been devoted to benevolent feelings, and to the thoughts of great deeds to be achieved in the future.... Born with an ardent, lively temperament, fond of social pleasures, I was early compelled to withdraw myself, and live a life of isolation from all men. ”

“ For 'friends,' however, we had better substitute 'acquaintances'; because Beethoven declared: "I have only found two friends in the world with whom I have never had a misunderstanding. One is dead; the other still lives. ”

“ Hours upon hours could thus be dreamed away; yet who shall say that they were wasted? For gradually, out of the shifting panorama of rhythm and sound, a supreme and marvellous melody evolved itself.
Painting by E. B. Lintott.
"The Allegro Finale of the C-sharp-minor Quartet ... wild delight, the lamentation of anguish, ecstasy of love, highest rapture, misery, rage, voluptuousness and sorrow." ”