As I like Beethoven, I thought I would tell you a few things I’ve come to know about him. I spent a whole summer in my youth playing each day, as the first exercise of the day, the whole ‘Moonlight Sonata’. I never got tired of it. It is hard to play, to be sure, but it is deep, challenging, eternal. ‘A flower between two chasms’, as Liszt said referring to the gem of its second movement between the veritable storms of the first and the last. But one thing is knowing Beethoven’s piano sonatas and symphonies by heart, and quite another to know his character as a person and the anecdotes of his life. Among these, some give us joy and same make us sad. All of them together make up the whole of the genius’s life.

His father was a heavy drunker. When he died, some said in posthumous humour that his death was a loss for the nation’s economy as he had contributed heavily to its wealth paying taxes for alcoholic drinks. His mother resented her husband’s behaviour, and family life was not happy. This brought out a shy child, sceptical of marriage and unable to relate to women. As a young man he was unkempt and lazy, but he knew by then that something special was burgeoning within him, and when he was chided for his slovenliness, he would reply, ‘When I become a genius, nobody will pay attention to that’.

Haydn taught him, and he would despair because Ludwig could not learn the rules of harmony, counterpoint, and fugue. When he complained to his pupil that he was not showing any interest in learning the rules, the future genius answered him: ‘Rules are only good to break them.’ Genial. That fact is, Beethoven did not compose a decent fugue in his life. There is, of course, the last movement of his Hammerklavier Sonata, but that is more of a tornado than of a fugue.

When he was 17 he met Mozart who was 31 by then. Mozart asked the young man to play something on the piano, but did not pay much attention to it as he thought Beethoven, as child prodigies are wont to do, had come with an ‘improvisation’ well prepared and learned by heart. Beethoven noticed it and asked him to give him any theme to develop on the spot. He began with the undoubted improvisation, and Mozart was dumbfounded. He encouraged the lad, but they never met again.

At the beginning he was not very successful with his music. He had to put advertisements in the papers to sell his compositions. He did not have much money. To pay the house rent one day he had no money and the payment urged, he locked himself in his room, wrote in a hurry a theme with variations, and gave it to a friend to sell it for some money. His friend, instead of selling it, gave the paper to the landlord who first refused it but finally accepted it. The next day he came to tell Beethoven he could pay him with those little papers. To avoid payment and to run away from neighbours’ complaints, he was constantly changing house in Vienna – always carrying with him all his furniture and three pianos. He changed Vienna for Heiligenstat where he did persevere for some time in the same house. The house was near a church, and it was then that Beethoven realised that he was hearing less and less the sound of the church bells. He was getting deaf.  

He kept a diary of housekeeping diary with full details. Some excerpts:

January 31: Housekeeper dismissed.
February 15: Cook joins.
March 8: Cook leaves.
March 22: Housekeeper joins.
April 17: Cook joins.
May 16: Cook dismissed.
July 1: Cook joins.
July 28: Cook runs away at night.
September 6: Maid joins.
October 22: Maid leaves.
December 12: Cook joins.
December 18: Cook dismissed.

The problems with the cook were not only culinary. When he was composing his Solemn Mass and had already finished the Kyrie, he wanted to correct it again as he always did, but could not find the papers with the score anywhere. He was in despair thinking he had lost them and could not write the music again, when he found them in the kitchen where they had been used to wrap the cheese. Dressing-down for the cook. But some of the papers were still missing. They were found wrapping butter and lining the shelves. Out went the cook.

He did not brook any interruptions at table, and so the servant had to bring all the dishes from the beginning and leave them on the table. Now, whether Beethoven was eating alone of with friends, he would concentrate on his own thoughts or on the conversation going on, and the dishes got cold. Then he got angry with the servant because the dishes were cold. So the servant could not bring the dishes one after the other because he could not be interrupted, and could not bring them together because they got cold. Daily problem.

Saturday was the day for the girl servant to go to the market and buy provisions for the week. But, again, Beethoven could not be interrupted at his work. The girl dressed up, stood complete with bonnet and basket before Beethoven while he was composing, and waited there without saying anything. At long last, Beethoven looked up, noticed her, realised what her presence meant, but still protested and said:
- Do you really have to go?
- Yes, sir. I have to go.
- Is it that today is Saturday?
- Yes sir, it is Saturday.
- How do you know?
The girl had a calendar ready and pointed at the date. Beethoven then searched in his purse, gave her the money, and the girl went to the market. Beethoven’s favourite dish was fish, together with macaroni and bread soup. And eggs. He would carefully examine each egg, and if any one looked suspicious, he just would smash it against the wall. The fish he ate was river fish and was contaminated by the lead coming from factories on the riverside. A recent analysis of a lock of his hair has showed that it was poisoning with that lead that eventually killed Beethoven. He paid dearly for his fish. And we missed the tenth symphony.  

God made Beethoven deaf, Demosthenes a stammerer, and Homer blind. Lesson to conquer obstacles.

(cf. Fernando Argenta, ‘Los clásicos también pecan’, Plaza y Janés, Barcelona 2010.)