Beethoven and Goethe

8/12/2019 Beethoven and Goethe

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Beethoven and GoetheAuthor(s): Scott GoddardSource: Music & Letters, Vol. 8, No. 2, Beethoven (Apr., 1927), pp. 165-171Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/726520

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BEETHOVENAND GOETHEAMONG he contemporaries f Beethovenone is pre-eminent. Goethe(who was twenty-onewhen Beethoven was born, and lived five yearsafter his death) stands supreme in the history of art in eighteenthcenturyGermanyand after. During Beethoven's lifetime the writerenjoyed an honourablereputationand a far-reachingfame such aathe musician never attained to. Now the case is altered, and of athousand to whom the name Beethoven is at least not empty ofmeaning there are probably but ten in whom Goethe awakensresponse. But during their lives there was no question as to whichof the two played the greater part in the popular imagination.Goethe with his wide interests sustained by phenomenalpowersofcomprehension nd expressionwas lookeduponas thoughhe werethepossessorof divineattributes,andhis opinionwassoughtwithan almostDelphic reverence. His acquisitivemind had taken on, by the timehe reachedthe middleyears, a marvellousflexibility. There seemedto be nothing in which he was not willing to interest himself, andmost things he comprehendedwith a fullness that showed his extra-ordinarydepth of insight. He alone is worthyto be comparedwithmen of the Italian Renaissance like Leon Battista Alberti andLeonardo da Vinci, men whose minds were laid open to all thecurrents of knowledge,men irresistibly curious as to the nature ofthings and the ways of mankind. More surely than any of hiscontemporariesGoethewas able to keep under survey the whole fieldof humanknowledge, mmenselyextendedsince the days of Leonardo.It is only when we endeavourto determine the degree of his appre-ciation of music in general and of Beethoven's music in particularthat our admirationfor the high power of his intellect suffers acheck and is changedto a feeling of astonishmentthat in this direc-tion the admirable law which guided that great mind should haveceased to function. For there is no doubt that Goethe had littleknowledgeof Beethoven's work, and that what he did know failedto move him. Neither did he succeedin gauging the importanceofBeethoven in the developmentof art, though he was not alone there,and few peopleof that time wouldhave been anything but surprisedto hear the verdict of history that places the two men on the sameplane.It may be well to digress for a moment in order to attempt somediagnosis of Goethe's musical constitution. In his early years hewas taught the pianofortebut does not appearto have made sufficientheadway to make it possible for him to play even passably or tobecome interested, through the pianoforte, in instrumental music.


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MUSIC AND LETTERSWhen a young man he took lessons at Strassburg on the violoncellowith no more lasting result. For him music implied the voice. Thistendency was strengthened by his gradual severence from the ideasimplicit in the phrase " Sturm und Drang" (in which abstractinstrumental music with its increased freedom of expression found aplace), and by the journey to Italy (1786), where he seems to haveheard a large amount of vocal music. (In the "Italienische Reise "it is more often a question of that kind of music, and only seldomof instrumental compositions or performances.) The song and thearia were his chief delight, and his powers of appreciation stoppedshort at opera. In these genres he showed his usual lively criticalsense. Speaking, for instance, to Eckermann of Beethoven's settingof " Kennst du das Land " he said: " I cannot comprehend how it isthat Beethoven and Spohr so misunderstand the nature of a songwhile they are at work on it .... Surely they could haverealised that in this case they had to do with a simple song .Being what she is, Mignon may justifiably be made to sing a song-but not an aria " Goethe's inclinations tended more and more,as the years went on, towards purely vocal and away from abstractinstrumental music. He could appreciate Mozart, whom he hadheard in 1768 perform at a concert at Frankfurt, when they were bothsmlall children. "Mozart died in his thirty-sixth year, Raphael thesame, Byron but a little older. All these had fulfilled their missionperfectly and it was high time that they departed, so that other menshould still find something left for them to do in this long-livedworld." And again: " How can people talk of Mozart composing'Don Juan ' Composition As though it were a piece of biscuitmade up of egg, flour and sugar It is a creation of the spirit,the part as well as the whole coming from one source, at one burst,filled with the breath of life; so that it cannot be said that thecreative artist tried first this thing or cut that one into a certain shapeor disposed of anything as he himself willed it; the divine spirit ofhis genius so overpowered him that he was forced to carry out itscommands."

The musicians that Goethe counted among his friends were, withone exception, unimportant figures whose name and work are nowforgotten. The exception is Mendelssohn, who came to Goethe whenthe latter was already an old man and was the first to interest himin Beethoven's instrumental music.* Zelter is the most interesting,

* Mendelssohn's description of the effect on Goethe of hearing the firstmovement of the C minor Symphony played on the pianoforte is of greatinterest as showing the narrow extent of his acquaintance with Beethoven'swork. " He said solemnly: ' Ah, but that doesn't move so much as astoundone; it's immense.' Then he muttered on to himself and after some timesaid: ' That magnificent stuff, quite crazy One might well be afraid ofthe roof's falling in And to think of what it must be like when they allplay it together ' And later at table, in the midst of other conversation,he returned to it again.'

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BEETHOVEN AND GOETHEboth for his published correspondencewith Goethe (with its rathercomplacenttalk about Beethoven)and because he was Mendelssohn'smaster and introducedthe young Felix to Weimar. Of Ph. Chr.Kayser, who went to Italy to stay with Goethe and whom Goethehelped, sending him to study in Vienna under Gluck, and com-missioning him to write music for "Egmont," Goethe's own wordsare sufficient comment: "Foolish, passionate bestowal of favourupon questionabletalent was a fault of my early years, onie fromwhich I never have quite been able to escape." Kayser was the firstcultured musician to enter the Goethe circle. Further there wasJoh. Ferd. Reichardt, executant and critic, an estimable musician,whose correspondence with Goethe may still be studied. And therewas von Seckendorff, composer of the music to Goethe's " Lila."None of these men were of first rank and none were able by theirexample to stir Goethe from his conception of music as being a thingthat a cultured person should know something of, in order that hemight be able to talk about it. Goethe with his passion for know-ledge of everything took music en passant. Music retaliated by with-drawing herself from such treatment.

The case is a curious one. It is as though Goethe's mind wasunable to project upon music that searching light of the intellect thatseemed always able, in other cases, to pierce the outward appearanceof things and lay bare their hidden spirituality. Goethe may be saidto have lived in a visible world whose reflection he revealed in poetryand the most poetic prose. Beethoven on the other hand, moved-itis the common experience of all writers of music-in an invisibleworld whose messages he translated into sounds. Herr Gundolf,writing of the two men and their mutual reactions, puts it in thismanner: " For him (Goethe) music was little more than a means ofproviding adornment, ease, dignity, charm to life, and in no waydid he feel for it as being that expression of universal principles thatBeethoven both saw in his imagination and realised in his works."This insensibility on Goethe's part to any but the more superficialappeal of music-differing signally from his approach and reaction tothe other arts-was the direct result of the changed outlook on lifethat he underwent when, after " Gotz von Berlichingen " (1778) and"Werther " (1774), works which reflect the ideas of " Sturm undDrang," he came under the influence of the hellenist Winckelmann,and eventually (1786) journeyed to Italy. From then onwards thecharacter of his work changed, tending towards a classicism that wasto strike what Walter Pater called a " note of revolt against theeighteenth century." But it was to be a species of revolt verydifferent from that which fired Beethoven's imagination. With himthe break with eighteenth century conventions was to lead, via the

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MUSIC AND I,ETTERSFrench Revolution, to the brotherhood of man. To Goethe,Napoleon, the man who had disappointed Beethoven, was always atype of hero. As late as 1818, just after Moscow, he could write tothe German patriots Korner and Arndt: "R attle away at yourchains This man is too big for you, you'll never be able to shatterhim " The revolt against the eighteenth century that Goetheindulged in was in another direction than that which Beethoven took.It led him to a purely aristocratic view of life wherein everything wasto be invested with the balanced grace of a Grecian mode of life.This change of front came as a surprise to those of his contemporarieswho had fallen under the spell of the unrestrained romanticism of" Werther," and was not understood, not even realised by themajority. It is certain that Beethoven failed to take it into account.To him Goethe was still the author of the " Sturm und Drang " works.His imagination was fired by " Egmont," a work pertaining to thatearlier period, which Goethe finished, with some feeling of a dutyperformed, in Rome as late as 1787, the last sign he gave of interestin the romantic feelings of his youth. That Beethoven was stronglyunder the influence of the early romantic works of Goethe is probable,and there is much to be said for KSgel's' observation that it is in; Werther " that one must look for the counterpart of that particularturn of thought and manner of expression which colours the piano-forte sonatas, Op. 13, 27 (2) and 57, and the C minor and D minorsymphonies. There is no doubt that the young Beethoven, like theyoung Mendelssohn of later years, was attracted to Goethe by" Werther." The passionate unreason of the book seems to haveimpressed itself as strongly upon his imagination as it did upon thato- all tlhe other young people of that day.- So far Beethoven could po

* u1dolf Kdgel. " oethe und Beethoven." Leipsir. 1894.t Kiigel also relmarks on the similarity that exists between that passagein the " Heiligenstadt testament" which begins "Ja die geliebtelHoffung -" and Werther's letter dated 4th Sept. beginning: Ja es.ist so."The Heiligenstadt will was dated 6th Oct., 1802. To this Beethovenadded a postscript on the 10th:-Thus I say farewell-a sad farewell; the hope I treasured-that I broughthere with me-of being cured, at any rate to a certain extent, now deserts,me utterly; as the leaves fall and wither in autumn, even so is my hopedry and withered. I leave this place almost as I came. The high hopesthat filled me in the bright summer days have vanished. 0 Providence, letthere dawn for me but one day of pure joy-it is so long since the stillvoice of true joy has been known to me When, when, O Godhead, will itbe mine to know joy again in the temple of Nature and of man ? Never ?Oh, that would be too cruel IHe speaks of his hopeless deafness; Werther of his hopeless love, as follows:Sept. 3. There are days when I cannot understand how another can befond of her-is permitted to be fond of her-seeing that I love her only,utterly, wholly, and have nothing else but her to know and understand andpossess.Sept. 4. Yes That is it. Nature has felt the first touch of autumn,and it is autumn in me and about me. My leaves turn yellow, and from thetrees all about the leaves now strew the ground. Didn't I tell you in one ofmy letters . . . ?

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BEETHOVEN AND GOETHEwith Goethe, finding in the early writings an echo of his own youthfulturbulence, seeking for a solution of his insistent difficulties.

In 1810 he finished the " Egmont " music, but not until 1812 didthis finally reach Goethe's hands. In the meantime Beethoven hadmet the man whose work he had known since long and for whomhe had come to have feelings of veneration. " When you mentionme in your letters to Goethe," he writes to Bettina von Arnim,"search out all those words that are expressive of my deepest rever-ence and admiration." And again: " How can one ever adequatelythank that most precious jewel of a nation, a great Poet "Here we may for a moment digress in order to review the actualcircumstances of the meeting between Beethoven and Goethe. Themost popular authority for a description of the meeting is BettinaBrentano (von Arnim, as she later became). Her reputation for

veracity has of late had a severe strain put upon it, and it is nolonger possible to accept her tale absolutely. The piquancy of herbest story-that of the meeting of Beethoven and Goethe with a groupof royalty in the streets of Teplitz-has been taken away by recentresearch; though what still remains true of the intimate dealingsbetween this delightful young literary lady and the two great menhas even now all the charm of the finest ingenious, yet ingenuous,tuft-hunting. It is evident that the discrepancies which are to befound between the facts as they are now known and as they weredepicted by Bettina von Arnim arise, not so much from a deliberateattempt at falsification on her part, but simply from an unrestraineddelight in writing a good, but not necessarily literal, tale.* And itmust be owned that Bettina von Arnim had enough discernment torecognise a big lion when she saw him. The situation was easy forher to deal with. Goethe had heard of Beethoven from Zelter, buthis music still remained practically unknown to him. Beethoven was,in this case, better informed. We have seen that he knew Goethethrough the early works. But it must be remembered that he hadremained under their influence and was unaware of the change in the

* Dr. Deiters (Thayer(Krehbiel)II, 227) has sufficientlydemonstrated heimprobabilityof the third of the so-calledBeethoven-Bettinaetters (that inwhichBeethovenis representedas himself describingthe notoriousmeetingwith the royal family in the streets of Teplitz, when Goethe is supposedtohave stoodlpolitely aside while Beethoven, settling his hat more firmlyonhis head, strode on through the amazed, awe-strucklittle group of royalpersonages). Thayer goes so far as to say that he will believe in theauthenticity of the letter so soon as he is confrontedwith the original.Kogel (p. 215), taking the date of the letter to be Aug. 15 (whichwould bring the " yesterday" of the letter to Aug. 14) points out thatBeethovenleft Teplitz at the latest-on Aug. 9, and Goethe on Aug. 11.Also it is improbablehat Beethovenwouldbe so lacking in either gratitudeor goodsense as to have treatedhis friend and patron, the ArchdukeRudolf(who is made to appear as one of the collectionof royalty throughwhichBeethovenmade his way that day) in such a manner.

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A0MUSICND LETTERSwriter's outlook. Both men, in varying degrees, were pleased todeal with the resourcefuland amusing Bettina. It is only necessaryto read her description of her unexpectedlyappearingat a largedinner-partyaccompaniedby the great Beethovento realise that thecharacterof dea ex machina was not displeasingto her. Beethovenand Goethe were both willing to help towards a meeting, Beethoveneager to express the reverenceand admirationhe felt for the authorof " Werther,"Goetheby that time in the full tide of popularesteem," Werther" and all such youthful ebullitions well behind him, hisreputation as statesman and man of letters by nof unshakable,having no real knowledgeof Beethoven as an artist to cause him tolook to the meetingwith morethan a mild interest, a favourhe couldgrant to Bettina. They met and talkedonce or twice at Teplitz, inJuly, 1812, where they were both taking a cure. Beethoven's deaf-ness was alreadyfirmly enoughingrainedto be a hindranceto inter-course,especially in this case, where Beethoven's sense of reverencemay well have had the effect of making his sentences unwieldy, a:misfortunewhen dealing with Goethe, who was a master of the well-turned phrase and the well-modulated xpression. Goethe, too, wasnot in the habit of shouting his fine conversation. But Beethovenplayed to him and thus expressedhimself more completelythan hecould through speech. The encounter, none the less, resulted in nolasting friendship,and the two men were not to meet again.Their first recordedutterancesabout each other after the Teplitzmeeting show the impressionsthat remained. Beethoven, writing toBreitkopf and Hartel on Aug. 9th, 1812, says " Goethe is morefond of the atmosphereof courtsthan is becoming n a poet. No call,therefore, to talk of the absurd behaviourof virtuosi when poets,who should be looked up to as being the foremostteachers of thenation, forget all else for the sake of such outwardshow." AndGoethe, writing to Zelter from Karlsbad,on Sept. 2nd of the sameyear, says: "I made Beethoven's acquaintancein Teplitz. Histalent amazed me; unfortunatelyhe is an utterly untamed person-ality, not altogetherin the wrong in holding the world detestable;but he does not make it any more enjoyableeither for himself orothers by his attitude. He is, however,to be excused, and much tobe pitied, as his hearing is leaving him, which, perhaps, mars themusical part of him less than the social. He is of a laconic natureand will becomedoublyso becauseof this lack." On Feb. 8, 1828,eleven years after the Teplitzmeeting, Beethovenwroteto Goethetoask for a subscription or the edition of the " Missa Solennis " fromthe Weimar court. The letter was badly put together, turgid andredundant, the very thing to puzzle and annoy Goethe, himselfcareful of his words and delicate in his letter-writing. He is said

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BEETHOVEN AND GOETHEto have been ill at the time the letter came. At any rate the plearemained without attention. It is of interest to see how Beethoven,cognisant, at last, of the change in Goethe's mental outlook, tries toenlist his sympathy by touching on a subject that to the musicianmeant nothing, but to the writer much: " . . . . for years Ihave been a father to the son of a deceased brother-a promisingyouth-wholly devoted to science and already at home in the rich lordof Hellenism."He is reported by Rochlitz to have said (in 1822): " I becameacquainted with him (Goethe) in Karlsbad (Teplitz). ... I wasnot so deaf then as I am now, but hard of hearing. How patient thegreat man was with me . . How happy he made me thenI would have gone to my death for him; yes, ten times " Goethemight be expected to have been the one man among Beethoven'scontemporaries to understand and value the greatness of his genius.But as Ambros says: " Goethe . . . seems to have been movedbut little by the spiritual grandeur of this apparition (Beethoven).We must take it that, without in any way realising Beethoven's great-ness, he saw in him little more than a person unfitted for societythrough his deafness and rendered difficult of approach because of hisrough exterior and caustic temperament."*The failure lay with Goethe. Beethoven at least knew Goethethrough his works, a step that Goethe had never felt able to take withregard to Beethoven's compositions. Beethoven's note-books arefilled with quotations from Goethe, and it was he who said this toRochlitz: "He has killed Klopstock for me . . . You smilethat I should ever have read Klopstock I gave myself up to himmany years, when I took my walks and at other times. . . . ButGoethe, he lives and wants us all to live with him. That's the reasonhe can be set to music. Nobody else can be set to music so easilyas he." (Thayer (Krehbiel) II, 75). And in conversation withBiihler (1828) he said: " Because of money, which is necessary tome, I cannot write only what I like the most. By that I do notmean that I write simply for money. As soon as this stage is passed,I hope at last to write that which for Art and for me is the highestthing-' Faust.'"

SCOTT GODDARD.* Ambros: "Beethoven. Goethe and Michelangelo," quoted by Frimmel,"Beethoven und Goethe," Vienna, 1883.

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Beethoven and Goethe