In Search of Beethoven: A Personal Journey (eBook)

John Suchet (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
272 Seiten
Elliott & Thompson (Verlag)
978-1-78396-811-4 (ISBN)

Infos

'From palaces to warzones, John Suchet goes on a Beethoven odyssey' The Daily Telegraph 'This personal account of his life-long passion has an appealing light touch' Financial Times Best Books of the Year 'This is a wonderful tale of self-realisation, of what we can gain from turning to genius in life's many crises.' Norman Lebrecht, author of Why Beethoven From the bestselling author of Beethoven: The Man Revealed, In Search of Beethoven is John Suchet's latest and most personal book dedicated to the life of this extraordinary composer. Part biography, part memoir, part travelogue, Suchet draws on his own life and career as a foreign correspondent and news anchor to show how Beethoven's music has accompanied him through the best and worst of times. It was with him as a music-loving and adventurous teenager, as a journalist entering Beirut in the grip of civil war, and as he has continued to explore the old cities of Bonn and Vienna, in search of the man behind the music. In this novel and compelling book, we see Beethoven brought vividly - and sometimes painfully - to life. Suchet traces Beethoven's footsteps from his early years in Bonn to his dying days in Vienna, taking us on a journey both literal and symbolic, as he uses his own experience as a Beethoven aficionado to demonstrate the life-changing power of great music. 'This is a comprehensive yet accessible history of Beethoven wrapped up in an inviting, immersive tale of adventure and discovery, delivered in an inviting, engaging and endearing way typical of this master storyteller.' Debbie Wiseman OBE, composer and conductor

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'From palaces to warzones, John Suchet goes on a Beethoven odyssey' The Daily Telegraph'This is a wonderful tale of self-realisation, of what we can gain from turning to genius in life's many crises.' Norman Lebrecht, author of Why BeethovenFrom the bestselling author of Beethoven: The Man Revealed, In Search of Beethoven is John Suchet's latest and most personal book dedicated to the life of this extraordinary composer. Part biography, part memoir, part travelogue, Suchet draws on his own life and career as a foreign correspondent and news anchor to show how Beethoven's music has accompanied him through the best and worst of times. It was with him as a music-loving and adventurous teenager, as a journalist entering Beirut in the grip of civil war, and as he has continued to explore the old cities of Bonn and Vienna, in search of the man behind the music. In this novel and compelling book, we see Beethoven brought vividly and sometimes painfully to life. Suchet traces Beethoven's footsteps from his early years in Bonn to his dying days in Vienna, taking us on a journey both literal and symbolic, as he uses his own experience as a Beethoven aficionado to demonstrate the life-changing power of great music. 'This is a comprehensive yet accessible history of Beethoven wrapped up in an inviting, immersive tale of adventure and discovery, delivered in an inviting, engaging and endearing way typical of this master storyteller.' Debbie Wiseman OBE, composer and conductor

Textauszug

15

Waldstein. There is a name etched in musical history. Go to your recording of the complete Beethoven piano sonatas and you will find it a little past the halfway mark, Piano Sonata No. 21 in C, Op. 53 (Waldstein). What’s in a name? In this case, plenty.

Count Ferdinand Ernst Joseph Gabriel Waldstein und Wartenberg von Dux. A name that, despite its grandeur, would be entirely lost to history had its owner not come into contact with a teenage boy in Bonn who was rapidly making his mark as pianist and composer.

Count Waldstein was a member of one of the most aristocratic families in Vienna, whose father had the ear of the emperor, no less. But his misfortune was to be the youngest son, and as such he struggled to find a role in the imperial capital. Taking a path well worn by those in a similar situation, he joined the Teutonic Order, a largely ceremonial body dating back to the Middle Ages.

No doubt to his, and his family’s, surprise, he was summoned to Bonn to assist the prince-elector, Maximilian Franz, in his duties as Grand Master of the Teutonic Order. He arrived in this outpost of the Habsburg Empire in 1788 and felt immediately at home. Waldstein was passionate about the arts, particularly music, and was a dilettante pianist and composer himself. He was overjoyed to find that the prince-elector maintained an orchestra and chorus, and that there were regular performances. Naturally, it was not long before he heard about this amazing teenager who, it was said, was the best musician in Bonn.

Waldstein met Ludwig, now seventeen years of age, heard him play, heard him improvise, heard him perform his own compositions – and found his goal in life. He could see the difficult circumstances the Beethoven family were living under. They rented an apartment in the Wenzelgasse, further into the town and away from the river than the Rheingasse. Maria Magdalena was newly interred in the cemetery on the outskirts of Bonn. The father employed a maid but could barely afford to pay her. His three sons were now aged seventeen, fourteen and twelve. Living conditions were somewhat chaotic. The eldest son Ludwig spent most of his time at the Breunings’; the younger two more or less looked after themselves, and Johann van Beethoven drank himself into oblivion most days.

Waldstein secretly gave the family money. Exactly how he did it we do not know. He probably disguised it as payments from the court channelled through Ludwig. One way or another Johann had achieved his ambition of using Ludwig’s musical skills to enhance the family’s income, though hardly in the way he had imagined. Franz Wegeler, in his memoir, describes Waldstein as ‘Beethoven’s first, and in every respect, most important, Maecenas’. It is probably not an exaggeration. Ludwig van Beethoven had found his first true patron.

It was at about this time that matters came to a head within the Beethoven family. Johann van Beethoven’s behaviour was becoming ever more erratic. One evening he was so drunk he could no longer walk straight and was deemed a menace to others – ‘drunk and disorderly’ in today’s parlance. The police had no alternative but to arrest him and take him into custody. At the police station they put him behind bars and notified his eldest son. Ludwig had to go the police station where, apparently, he entered into a furious row with the police, before obtaining his father’s release.

Something had to be done. With Waldstein’s help and support, Ludwig took the drastic step of petitioning the prince-elector to dismiss his father from court service and pay half his salary over to Ludwig himself. The prince-elector, no doubt having discussed the issue with Waldstein, went further. He not only agreed to Ludwig’s request but ordered Johann to leave Bonn and live in a village in the country. In the event the banishment was not enforced. Johann remained confined to the house until his death.

In one sense this episode, which Ludwig would remember for the rest of his life, was a liberation. No more did he have to make excuses for his father. It was all out in the open. He could now concentrate on the one and only pursuit that mattered to him, his music.

Soon after coming to Bonn, Waldstein was made a Knight of the Teutonic Order by the prince-elector. He made plans to celebrate this in the most exotic, and traditional, way, with a procession through the town of knights and members, dressed in traditional German costume, followed by a musical performance accompanied by ballet scenes from German history.

Events, however, intervened. In Vienna on 20 February 1790, Emperor Joseph died at the age of just forty-nine. The Habsburg Empire went into mourning. This sad and unexpected news provided Ludwig with the most important musical opportunity of his young life. It was decided in Bonn that a local composer would be commissioned to compose two cantatas, one marking the death of the emperor, the other marking the accession of his successor.

There were several candidates, musicians in the court orchestra who had proved their worth as composers – all considerably older and more experienced than Ludwig. But his ‘Maecenas’ intervened once again. Using his influence at court, Waldstein secured the commission for nineteen-year-old Ludwig van Beethoven, who proceeded to produce his first compositions for full orchestra.

Unsurprisingly, the awarding of the prestigious commission to this young man, however talented he might be, caused a certain amount of resentment among more senior musicians. They bided their time, and then exacted revenge in the cruellest way. Members of the court orchestra – wind players in particular – declared the cantatas unplayable. The composer simply does not understand our instruments, they argued. Let him gain more experience before he attempts to write for full orchestra.

The orchestra won the day. The two cantatas were not only not performed as intended – on the day of the funeral and then on the day of the coronation. They were not performed in Beethoven’s lifetime. He never heard his first orchestral compositions.

His next orchestral composition he most certainly did hear, and it is one of the most delightful – and rather bizarre – pieces of music he would ever compose.

With the period of mourning over, Waldstein resurrected his plan to celebrate his elevation to Knight of the Teutonic Order by combining it with a pageant to mark the beginning of the annual Carnival on Easter Sunday 1791. The procession would take place as planned. Then, at La Redoute palace on the outskirts of town, a ‘ballet’ would take place – in effect, members of the Teutonic Order, in medieval German dress, taking up characteristic poses illustrating the activities of their forebears – activities such as marching, hunting, drinking, romancing and giving battle.

Waldstein needed someone to write the music. There was no choice, obviously. But here is a remarkable thing; something that strikes us today as unthinkable but at the time was not that uncommon. Waldstein asked Ludwig if he would allow him to publish the music under his own name, in other words ‘Ritterballet [“Ballet of the Knights”] by Count Waldstein’. Ludwig, undoubtedly remunerated for his efforts, agreed.1

So here we have Ludwig van Beethoven, nineteen years of age, composer of two huge cantatas, a delightful small ‘ballet’, three piano sonatas, a piano concerto begun but not completed, several chamber works, and an unchallenged reputation as the most talented musician in Bonn – though not without the tensions and jealousies these achievements had caused.

Music was now Ludwig’s life, and a necessary escape from living with a father who was killing himself through drink, and two younger brothers with whom he had nothing in common. And music was about to provide him with a physical escape too, a boat journey that would broaden his horizons both figuratively and literally.

It is unlikely you will have the two Emperor cantatas in your Beethoven collection. You really should have though, not just because they are the first orchestral compositions by Beethoven – full chorus and soloists too – but because of how they point the way to the later Beethoven.

Listen to the Cantata on the Death of the Emperor and you will hear the seeds of the Eroica Symphony to come. In another passage the oboe soars above the orchestra exactly as it will in the dungeon scene in Fidelio many years later. No composer wastes a good idea, and Beethoven is no exception.

You definitely will not have the Ritterballet in your collection. It is a curiosity. There is a main melody, simple, short and sweet, that punctuates the scenes, clearly written to allow the knights to take up positions for each section. I find an overall sense of humour in the piece, imagining the young composer to be smiling as he writes it. Nothing serious, nothing heavy. This is music to accompany a spectacle, and Beethoven rises to it with energy and wit.

What of the man who commissioned it, his ‘Maecenas’, who did so much to advance Ludwig’s career – and who, in eighteen months’ time – would achieve for him the unthinkable, earning Beethoven’s undying gratitude in the form of a dedication?

The bare facts of his life are known to history, and make sad and rather eccentric reading. He later left Bonn, and the Teutonic Order, and married a countess twenty-three years younger than himself in Vienna. He...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 17.10.2024
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• Themenwelt: Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Musik
• Schlagworte: Absolutely on Music • Alex Ross • altmann • arts and entertainment • Bach • Ballet • Beethoven • Bernstein • Biography • Bonn • Bryan Magee • Callas • cheat sheet • Chopin • Christoph Wolff • Classical music • Classic FM • Clemency Burton-Hill • Composer • Composition • Concerto • eichler • Fiona Maddocks • Gareth Malone • Germany • Goodbye Russia • Guide • Handel • History • Humphrey Burton • John Suchet • Karl Jenkins • Last Waltz • Levitin • Listen • Man Revealed • Memoir • Mendelssohn • Michel Faber • Mozart • Murakami • music • Music Shop • Philip Glass • Piano • Primo Piano • Rachel Joyce • Rachmaninoff • Sarah Adams • sheet music • Sophia Lambton • Strauss • Symphony • tchaikovsky • Time’s Echo • Travelogue • Verdi • Vienna • violin • Wagner and Philosophy • Wagnerism • western music • Year of Wonder • Your Brain on Music
• ISBN-10: 1-78396-811-7 / 1783968117
• ISBN-13: 978-1-78396-811-4 / 9781783968114