May 7, 1824, 200 years ago: Perhaps the greatest of all musical compositions has its premiere: Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Opus 125, also known as the Choral Symphony, by Ludwig van Beethoven.
He is said to have been born on December 16, 1770 in Bonn, in what is now the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. That date is probably correct: While there is no official record of his birth, there is one of his baptism, the next day, and, in Germany at the time, the tradition was to baptize the baby within 24 hours of birth. His family was from the Netherlands, hence the German version of Louis, "Ludwig," but also the Dutch-sounding surname. Bonn would serve as the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany from its 1949 founding until its 1990 consolidation with the Democratic Republic of Germany.
His father, Johann, was a musician and singer in the choir of the Archbishop of Cologne, and recognized his son's musical talent early. Later taught by Christian Gottlob Neefe, he had his 1st published composition at the age of 12, a set of keyboard variations. He studied under both Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Mozart's alleged rival, Antonio Salieri. (Aside from depicting his immature love of vulgarities, the play and film Amadeus are both to be regarded as something Mozart himself would have appreciated: Great art, but also pure bullshit.)
Mozart died in 1791. The following year, at the age of 21, Beethoven moved to Vienna, Austria, which Mozart had helped to make the capital of the world's music. He studied under Joseph Haydn, who, along with Mozart, made the symphony a standard form of composition.
Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th Century, the word "symphony" had taken on the meaning common today: A work usually consisting of multiple distinct sections or "movements," often 4 of them, with the 1st movement in sonata form. A sonata is a musical structure generally consisting of 3 main sections: An exposition, a development, and a recapitulation.
Symphonies are almost always scored for an orchestra consisting of a string section (violin, viola, cello and double bass), brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments, which altogether number about 30 to 100 musicians. Symphonies are notated in a musical score, which contains all the instrument parts. Orchestral musicians play from parts which contain just the notated music for their own instrument. Some symphonies also contain vocal parts.
It's been suggested that, with Beethoven's
symphonies, it’s the reverse of Star Trek movies: The odd-numbered ones are the
great ones. His Symphony No. 1 in C major premiered on April 2, 1800, when he was 29 years
old. This was followed the next year by a series of string quartets that gained some renown. In 1802, he dedicated his Piano Sonata No. 14, later known as his Moonlight Sonata, to his piano student, Giulietta Guicciardi. This was followed on April 5, 1803 by his Symphony No. 2 in D major.
Beethoven called his Symphony No. 3 in E♭ major (that's "E-flat major") the Eroica,
or the Heroic Symphony. He knew politics, and the situation in Europe, and he
dedicated this symphony to the man he thought was the greatest man in the world
at the time: Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of France.
He was 34, and had hit his stride: With Mozart dead, and Haydn forced into retirement by advancing age and illness (he died in 1809), Beethoven had become Europe's, and by definition the world's, most sought-after composer. But, in one of the great ironies in the history of artistic expression, he had begun to lose his hearing. He could still write the notes he wanted to hear on a scale, and he could produce them on a piano, but he could no longer hear them sufficiently. He could still conduct an orchestra playing his works in front of a live audience, but he couldn't hear them, or the applause that resulted.
Beethoven's 5th, long in the public domain, has been used in
everything from children's cartoons to the film V for Vendetta. In 1976, Walter Murphy
rewrote it as a disco song, "A Fifth of Beethoven," and hit Number 1 with it.
And when the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra did the opening medley for their 1981 album Hooked On Classics, of course, Beethoven's 5th was included, as was his 9th. Had he died after this dual premiere, before writing everything that came after the 5th, he would still have been one of the giants of world music.
After his death, found among his papers was a composition dated 1810, Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor, a piano piece that he marked "Für Elise." The piece was published under that name in 1867, and has been known by it ever since. Elise has never been positively identified.
Beethoven never married. Not that he didn't try: He is known to have had several failed romances. Like many a musical man before and after, women found him irresistible, and he was happy to oblige. His surviving letters show that he wanted to marry and have children, but his stormy personality likely doomed many of these relationships.
Found among his belongings after his death was a letter dated July 6, 1812, addressed to a woman he identified only as "Unsterbliche Geliebte," meaning "Immortal Beloved." The likeliest candidate for the recipient is Josephine Brunsvik, daughter of the Count of Brunswick. She and Ludwig had met in 1799, and they continued to meet and correspond despite her having married twice. Several letters found in her possession after her death use the term "beloved."
She was separated from her 2nd husband, an Estonian baron named Christoph von Stackelberg, in July 1812, and evidence suggests they met again in Prague, in what is now Czechia. He was 41 years old, she was 33. Three days later, he wrote the letter, but never sent it. Nine months later, on April 8, 1813, Josephine gave birth to a daughter, Minona. Stackelberg believed the child was not his. Was she Beethoven's?
Also in 1812, having fallen ill and gone to the health spa town of Teplitz (now Teplice, Czechia), he met author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who, not yet having met him, had commissioned musical pieces based on his writing. Even this meeting of the minds -- Europe's greatest living composer and the German language's greatest living writer -- was fraught with conflict.
Goethe wrote of Beethoven, "His talent amazed me; unfortunately he is an utterly untamed personality, who is not altogether wrong in holding the world to be detestable, but surely does not make it any more enjoyable... by his attitude." But in 1822, Beethoven wrote to him, "The admiration, the love and esteem which already in my youth I cherished for the one and only immortal Goethe have persisted." (He seems to have liked the word "immortal.")
His Symphony No. 7 in A major premiered on
December 8, 1813, on a double bill with his Opus 91, Wellington's Victory, also known as the Battle Symphony, even though it is not, itself, a symphony. It was in celebration of the Marquess of Wellington (who was made a Duke the following year) defeating Beethoven's former hero, Napoleon, at the Battle of Vitoria in northern Spain, deciding the long, bloody Peninsular War.
Beethoven's Symphony No. 8 in F major premiered on February 27, 1814. At the age of
43, he was now profoundly deaf, and it looked like that would be it: While
others had done more symphonies, some many more – Mozart had 41, and Haydn a record 104 –
Beethoven was seen as the master of the format, and it seemed difficult to
imagine that he could produce a 9th.
The final defeat of Napoleon by Wellington at Waterloo, Belgium on June 18, 1815 should have been a moment of celebration for Beethoven, perhaps the inspiration for a 9th Symphony, or some other great work. But this was the beginning of a very rough period in his life, marked by what he called "an inflammatory fever" and legal issues with his family back in Bonn, including a custody battle with his sister-in-law over his nephew, following his brother's death from tuberculosis.
By 1819, his health had recovered, and he had resumed composing, but the last of his hearing was gone. He had to have someone with him at all times, both of them with notebooks, and that's how they would communicate. (Apparently, he never learned sign language, or to read lips.) The survival of those notebooks has aided biographers and music historians for over 200 years.
He saw Josephine Brunsvik again as late as 1816. She died in 1821. That year, Beethoven composed the last 2 of his 32 piano sonatas, and some music historians are convinced they are both requiems for her. By that point, he was ill again, with rheumatism and jaundice.
The Philharmonic Society of London commissioned a 9th Symphony from him in 1817, but he couldn't do it, due to his illness and his other issues. Finally, in Autumn 1822, he began, and finished it in February 1824.
On May 7, it premiered at the Theater am Kärntnertor (the Carinthian Gate Theater) in Vienna. King George IV was on the throne of Britain. James Monroe was the President of the United States. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were still alive; Abraham Lincoln was 15, and Ulysses S. Grant was 2. There were 24 States in the Union. The fastest method of communication was still a man on a horse: There was no telegraph, and no railroad. And baseball was still around 20 years away from being invented.
Composer Franz Schubert was in attendance. So was the Chancellor of the Austrian Empire, Klemens von Metternich. Francis II, the last Holy Roman Emperor, and by this point the 1st Emperor of Austria, did not attend. Nor did King Frederick William III of Prussia, to whom the Symphony was dedicated.
To sing for this symphony, Beethoven had personally recruited 2 young women who had already begun to make names for themselves, even though he had never heard them sing: Henriette Sontag, an 18-year-old soprano from Koblenz; and Caroline Unger, a 20-year-old Viennese contralto.
The words he wrote for them suggested that someone told him, "Me: French is a language of love. So is Spanish. So is Italian. German could never be a language of love." And he said, "Halte mein Bier... "
Joseph Böhm, the Hungarian first violin that night, recalled:
Beethoven himself conducted, that is, he stood in front of a conductor's stand and threw himself back and forth like a madman. At one moment he stretched to his full height, at the next he crouched down to the floor, he flailed about with his hands and feet as though he wanted to play all the instruments and sing all the chorus parts. The actual direction was in [Louis] Duport's hands; we musicians followed his baton only.
The 4th and final movement includes a section titled "Freude, schöner Götterfunken." No, this does not mean that God Himself was getting funky. It means "Joy, beautiful spark of the gods." It has become known as "The Ode to Joy," and is the most familiar part of the composition. It has been used for many things, from an Easter hymn to the theme for the 1990s NBC sitcom Suddenly Susan.
When the Symphony was over, Beethoven was several bars off and still conducting. Fraulein Unger walked over, and gently turned him around to accept the audience's cheers and applause.
By late 1826, he fell ill again, and by March 1827 was bedridden. According to Austrian composer Anselm Hüttenbrenner, a friend who was there over the last few days, on March 24, he said to those present, in Latin, "Plaudite, amici, comoedia finita est," meaning, "Applaud, friends, the comedy is over." Later that day, a gift of a case of wine arrived. When told, he whispered, "Pity. Too late."
At 5:00 in the afternoon on March 26, there was a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder. At this, Hüttenbrenner said, "Beethoven opened his eyes, lifted his right hand and looked up for several seconds with his fist clenched... not another breath, not a heartbeat more." He was 56 years old, and left everything he had to his nephew, Karl.
When Mozart had died in Vienna, 36 years earlier, there was not much of a funeral procession, and he was buried in an unmarked grave. When Beethoven died, there was a torchlight funeral procession of 10,000 people, including Hüttenbrenner and Schubert. He was laid to rest in Vienna's Central Cemetery. Schubert took his place as Europe's greatest living composer -- a title he held for only a year and a half, dying of syphilis at the age of 31.
Karl van Beethoven served in the Austrian army, then failed at business, but was able to live comfortably on royalties from his uncle's works. He died in 1858, of liver failure. He had 5 children, the last survivor of them living until 1919. The male Beethoven line has died out, but Karl's daughters have descendants who live today.
Minona von Stackelberg became a "lady's companion" -- someone to keep an older woman of means company, not at all implying a lesbian relationship -- and lived until 1897, age 84.
Louis Duport, the conductor for the 9th's premiere, died in 1853. Henriette Sontag, later the Countess Rossi, lived until 1854; Caroline Unger, until 1877.
Built in 1763, after a previous theater on the site burned down, the Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna was replaced in 1869, across the street named Walfischgasse, with the Vienna State Opera House. The Hotel Sacher was built on the site of the premiere of Beethoven's 9th.
In Charles Schulz' comic strip Peanuts, the character of Schroeder was a pianist, and obsessed with Beethoven. In 1956, rock and roll pioneer Chuck Berry had a hit with a song titled "Roll Over Beethoven," using him as a stand-in for all the music that teenagers' parents liked, from classical to the more recent Hit Parade stuff.
Berry was a smart guy, but, in this case, he didn't know what he was talking about: Beethoven rocked harder than most classical composers, and while he didn't use drugs, he drank and womanized as much as any rocker of the latter half of the 20th Century.
In 2011, the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History featured "Justin Bieber vs. Ludwig van Beethoven," the big star of the moment against an all-timer. Although ERB co-founder Nice Peter didn't give Beethoven a German accent (he later would give Mozart one in a battle against Skrillex), he really roasted Bieber:
There's a crowd of millions waiting
to hear my symphonies!
You wanna be a little white Usher?
Here: Show then to their seats!
Here: Show then to their seats!
There's an even better joke about Beethoven's 9th:
The Boston Symphony recently performed Beethoven's Ninth symphony, which is a wonderful piece that has a part near the end in which the bass violins do nothing. So, the bassists snuck offstage, out the back door, and next door to the local pub for a drink.
After quickly gulping down a few stiff drinks, one of them checked his watch and said, "Oh no, we only have 30 seconds to get back!"
Another bassist said, "Don't worry, I tied the last page of the conductor's score down with string to give us a bit more time. We'll be fine."
So, they staggered and stumbled back into the concert hall and took their places just as the conductor was busily working on the knot in the string so he could finish the symphony.
Someone in the audience asked his companion, "What's going on? Is there a problem?"
His companion said, "This is a critical point: It's the bottom of the Ninth, the score's tied, and the bassists are loaded!"
In 1985, the European Union adopted the "Ode to Joy" section of Beethoven's 9th as the Anthem of Europe.