I’m about halfway through a massive biography of my favorite composer, Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph (2015) by Jan Swafford, and I’ve found many parts of the book eye opening and inspiring.
I began loving Beethoven during my school years as a piano student. It was amazing to me how he could compose pieces so dynamically rich within the constraints of his chosen instrument (the piano forte) and the strictures of classical music. That is, he was able to stretch time and volume before Romantic composers like Chopin did away with any allegiance to an exact, consistent tempo. For a very basic illustration of this shift, listen to a Mozart sonata and then a Chopin nocturne or a Debussy suite. Beethoven exists between these two ends – the pace of Beethoven’s music does not ebb and flow as dramatically as it does in Chopin or Debussy according to the player’s individual artistry and sense of emotional resonance. Nor are Beethoven’s mature piano works as neatly contained and measured out as Mozart’s. I’ll admit to painting with a broad brush here, but Beethoven’s piano oeuvre as a bridge between the Classical and Romantic periods has always been one of art’s great miracles to me.
And of course I knew about the deafness, but I didn’t realize he lived with chronic illness throughout his adult life. In one section, Swafford describes a day of composition when Beethoven was improvising and writing through frequent bouts of vomiting and diarrhea. This kind of day was more the rule than the exception – or, at least, it was not an uncommon occurrence. Even before he started to lose his hearing in his late 20s, he was not a healthy young man.
Then came the hearing loss:
“Beethoven was doomed to go deaf by something that occurred before, maybe typhus or one of the other illnesses of his past years, or childhood smallpox – in any case, something that had passed but left behind a terrible legacy. If that moment of fury was when deafness first manifested itself, he was not entirely deaf, or only briefly. His hearing returned, but not all of it. Now what he heard was accompanied by a maddening chorus of squealing, buzzing, and humming that raged in his ears day and night” (224).
Jan Swafford, Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph
Beethoven would go on living and performing and composing, but it was unavoidably only a matter of time before his hearing loss would force a change in his habits, psychological state, and music. Swafford puts it with beautiful bluntness:
“Now his body became his most virulent, most inescapable enemy. His livelihood, his creativity, his spirit were under siege by a force that did not care about his music, his talent, his wisdom….At first there had to have been disbelief, a young man’s refusal to countenance what was happening to him. It was imperative to hide the decline of his hearing, to hide his panic and depression. He feared it would ruin his career if it came out, and that fear was entirely reasonable….Other than death itself, going deaf is the worst thing that can happen to a musician. That is easy to understand, terrible to bear” (225).
Jan Swafford, Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph
A breaking (or turning) point came in 1802 when Beethoven retreated from Vienna to the country village of Heilingenstadt at the recommendation of his doctor. Despite the tranquility of the place and easy access to mineral baths, his hearing did not improve. In Heilingenstadt, Beethoven wrote a latter to his brothers that he never mailed. Part confession, suicide note, and will, he described his miserable condition to his brothers.
The letter is worth reading in its entirety (text available here), and Swafford includes nearly all of it in his biography. Beethoven claims that only his art has kept him from suicide. The determination to create what he believes remains within himself pushes him to endure. On the outside of the letter, though, Beethoven added an additional reflection. Swafford writes that here Beethoven “falls into his dashes, his breathless mode, as if gasping – or drunk. This has not been part of the draft, part of the plan. This is the true cry from the cross” (305).
“Heiglnstadt [sic], October 10th, 1802, thus I bid you farewell – and indeed sadly – yes, that fond hope – which I brought here with me, to be cured to a degree at least – this I must now wholly abandon. As the leaves of autumn fall and are withered – so likewise my hope has been blighted – I leave here – almost as I came – even the high courage – which often inspired me in the beautiful days of summer – has disappeared – Oh Providence – grant me at last but one day of pure joy – it is so long since real joy echoed in my heart – Oh when – Oh when, Oh divine One – shall I feel it again in the temple of nature and mankind – Never? – No – Oh that would be too hard.”
Ludwig van Beethoven
Swafford’s commentary on Beethoven’s crisis at Heilingenstadt alone makes the book worth reading. Beethoven’s own words are heart wrenching, but I appreciate how Swafford contextualizes the composer’s pain. Beethoven’s deafness would not only impact his ability to perform, compose, and function. It would also radically shift Beethoven’s sense of himself – his very identity.
Prior to reading this biography, I had viewed Beethoven primarily as a composer, and when I thought about his hearing loss, I thought about it in terms of composition. How could he compose if he couldn’t hear? I (naively) hadn’t thought much about him as a performer.
But he was a virtuosic performer and improviser, and he had built his career on that. That’s how he got to Vienna. That’s how he got into the rooms of patrons and connoisseurs. That’s how he shared his compositions. One contemporary said, “If you haven’t heard Beethoven improvise, you haven’t heard improvisation.” And the piano forte was his instrument in more ways than one. He was a pianist-composer, but he was also an innovator of the instrument. Piano makers in Europe consulted with him and took his advice. While only a certain range of keys tended to stay in tune on the piano forte during this time, Beethoven disregarded this constraint and composed pieces with the notes many avoided. As soon as piano makers added new keys to the keyboard, he used them. This is all to say that he quite literally expanded the scope of the instrument.
When writing about Beethoven’s hearing loss, Swafford states,
“On the most elemental level, the decline of his hearing meant that he had to let go of a long-cherished view of himself as pianist-composer. Since childhood he had devoted much of his time and energy to making himself the virtuoso he was. Much of his reputation in Vienna and elsewhere had come from his playing. In losing his hearing, not only was he losing his most prized sense but with the end of his performing career he also was going to lose part of his identity and half or more of his income. In the next years, while his hearing was in some degree still functional, he would perform on occasion, if rarely publicly. But in 1802, the prospect of having someday to let go of the piano was part of his anguish. At around this point, it appears, he stopped practicing” (306-307).
Jan Swafford, Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph
This is where the book brought me to tears. Not the moment Beethoven calls out to the “divine One” for an answer, but the moment he stops practicing – the moment when Swafford makes it painfully clear that this experience altered the great musician at the core – that he had to let go of his primary sense of himself, and that he had to let go of something that gave him joy.
As usually happens when I read an engaging book, these pages in Swafford’s biography led to various Google searches over the past few days about elements of Classical music and Beethoven’s life. When looking around on the website of Beethoven’s birthplace in Bonn, I discovered an audio project of the museum that attempts to approximate what his music would have sounded like to him as his hearing diminished. The project is called, in English, “Heard with Beethoven’s Ears.” I recommend going to the page and listening as each piece recedes from your ears. And then maybe shed a tear for Beethoven the pianist.
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