The irresistibility of Beethoven
Composer’s heroism, eccentricity and humanity still have a hold on us
“Roll over, Beethoven,” sang Chuck Berry, in one of those periodic rebellions against the cult of Ludwig van Beethoven that sometimes sweeps over the culture. Well, Beethoven refused to roll over. Next year is the 250th anniversary of his birth, and already the music industry is gearing up to celebrate.
What is it about Beethoven that has such a hold over us? First and foremost it is the music, of course. It ventures to extremes in a revolutionary way that his contemporaries found shocking and that can still stun us today with its sheer force. The ear-splitting dissonant trumpet-call that tears into the last movement of the Ninth Symphony (Wagner called it a schrekensfanfare, a “shrieking fanfare”) is one example.
Yet his music also glows with radiant humanity. Beethoven wrote some of the most sublimely calm music ever composed, in the Pastoral Symphony, and some of the most pitilessly concentrated and fierce, in his so-called Quartetto Serioso. He could be tenderly lyrical, as in the Spring Sonata, and had a mode of aristocratic elegance that could top even Mozart, as in the Andante con Moto. He could be gruffly humorous in a way that startles even now, as in the finale of Symphony No. 8. He could strike an antique note of solemnity, as in the Missa Solemnis, and yet often he seems to anticipate the future, as in the amazing Grosse Fuge, which, as Igor Stravinsky rightly said, will always sound like contemporary music.
Then there is also Beethoven the man. There is something incredibly moving in the story of a person stricken with deafness and who leaves a heartbreaking message to posterity where he confesses to suicidal thoughts but adds defiantly, “I will take fate by the throat.” The genius Beethoven was the rack on which the fallible, eccentric, difficult human being Beethoven was stretched. He gave up everything to serve his calling: fame, domestic happiness and love. And yet, failure in the life was rewarded with total success in the art. As philosopher Roland Barthes put it, “Beethoven won for artists the right to reinvent themselves.”
Central to Beethoven’s significance is the way he represents the idea of the hero. He scorned social conventions, showed scant respect to his aristocratic patrons and rose triumphant over every obstacle. And Beethoven’s compositions embody his unstoppable will. It’s in the blood-and-thunder works like the Third and Fifth Symphonies, the Emperor Piano Concerto, the heroic overtures like Egmont, and, of course, his great opera Fidelio. We internalize the music’s own struggle and make it our own.
Adding to this sense of ideal freedom is the fact that Beethoven seems to stand outside the musical categories of his time, being neither wholly classical nor wholly romantic, somehow transcending both. And because he expressed himself in notes rather than words, he could be an inspiration to ideologues of every stripe. The anarchist Mikhail Bakunin declared that he would happily throw the whole of bourgeois culture on the fire, apart from the Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. French Republicans were inspired by the idea that (as the Ode to Joy says) “all men will be brothers.” One of them actually described the Ode to Joy as “the Marseillaise of all Mankind” — but, naturally, German nationalists claimed him, too. Otto von Bismarck declared of the Ninth Symphony that “if I were to hear that music often I would become very brave,” and was himself described by the great conductor Hans von Bülow as the “Beethoven of German politics.”
In 1927, the centenary of Beethoven’s death, both the capitalist West and communist East were determined to claim him. At a celebration in New York, the state governor declared that “Beethoven was a true democrat whose high ethical aspirations makes his message vital for our time.” At the same moment, the cultural commissar of the Soviet Union Anatoly Lunacharsky praised the Ninth because its “world vision coincides with that of the proletariat.” This has continued right up to our own day. The EU adopted the melody of the Ode to Joy as its anthem — but not the words. Friedrich Schiller’s hymn to universality was thought to be insufficiently
European in sentiment. Not everyone has bought into the Beethoven myth. Some Communists, including Maoists, hated his “bourgeois heroics,” and Claude Debussy fought against the Germanic profundity that Beethoven embodied.
As for Beethoven’s stock now, at one level he’s ubiquitous. He is the establishment “genius” par excellence, his symphonies and chamber music are played everywhere. But do we actually want to hear the message behind the music? Enlightenment optimism is now out of favour. Indeed, hope of any kind is in short supply. Around us there seem to be nothing but crises, political or environmental, and within us there seems to be a constant gnawing anxiety.
But perhaps this is precisely why we need Beethoven now. His blazing music reminds us there is such a thing as hope, and that obstacles, however immense and crushing they may seem, can actually be overcome.
London Daily Telegraph