Ludwig Van Beethoven.
BIOGRAPHIES OF MUSICIANS.
Life of Beethoven
BY
LOUIS NOHL
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN
BY
JOHN J. LALOR.
“Our age has need of vigorous minds.”
CHICAGO:
JANSEN, McCLURG & COMPANY.
1881.
COPYRIGHT.
JANSEN, McCLURG & COMPANY.
A. D. 1880.
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED
BY
THE CHICAGO LEGAL NEWS COMPANY.
INTRODUCTION.
Music is the most popular of the arts. It fillsman’s breast with a melancholy joy. Even the brutecreation is not insensible to its power. Yet, at itsbest, music is a haughty, exclusive being, and notwithout reason are training, practice, talent, andthe development of that talent, required for theunderstanding of her secrets. “One wishes to beheard with the intellect, by one’s equals; emotionbecomes only women, but music should strike firefrom the mind of a man.” In some such strain asthis, Beethoven himself once spoke, and we knowhow slowly the works of the great symphonist founda hearing and recognition from the general public.
Yet, who is there to-day who does not know thename of Beethoven? Who is there that, hearingone of his compositions, does not feel the presenceof a sublime, all-ruling power—of a power thatsprings from the deepest sources of all life? Hisvery name inspires us with a feeling of veneration,and we can readily believe the accounts that havecome down to us; how even strangers drew backwith a species of awe, before this man of imposingappearance, spite of his smallness of stature, with[4]his rounded shoulders, erect head, wavy hair andpiercing glance. Who has not heard of the twocharcoal-burners who suddenly stopped their heavilyladen vehicle when they met, in a narrow pass,this “crabbed musician,” so well known to allVienna, and who was wont to stand and think, andthen, humming, to go his way, moving about bee-likethrough nature from sunrise, with his memorandum bookin his hand.
We are moved with the same feeling of respectthat moved those common men, when we hear onlyBeethoven’s name, but how much more powerfullyare we stirred when we hear his music! We feelin that music the presence of the spirit that animatesand sustains the world, and which is continuallycalling new life into existence. Even theperson who is not a musician himself may feel, inthese mighty productions, the certainty of thepresence of the Creator of all things. Their tonessound to him like the voice of man’s heart ofhearts, the joys and sorrows of which Beethovenhas laid bare to us. We feel convinced, when wehear them, that the person who in them speaks tous has, in very deed, something to tell us, somethingof our