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Beethoven
Pioneer Composer for the Piano
Centennial of Death of Celebrated Composer, Who Was One
of the First Composers to Realize the Full Musical Possi-
bilities of the Piano, Takes Place in March of This Year
L
UDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN, the cen-
tennial of whose death is to be celebrated
during the present year, was born on
December 16, 1770, in the city of Bonn on the
Rhine. His parents were from the low coun-
tries, for the family was known near Louvain
as early as 1650 and the name appears in the
registers at Antwerp for the year 1680. The
grandfather and the father of the master were
both musicians at the Court of the Elector of
Koln at Bonn. The house in Bonn where
Ludwig was born was decorated with a tablet
in 1870 and in 1889 was purchased by an asso-
ciation of music-lovers to be preserved forever
as "Beethoven's Geburtshaus."
The father of Beethoven appears to have
been a man of very ordinary talents, capable
of giving the little boy his first lessons and
of appreciating his unusual abilities; but him-
self of small acount, keeping his family on the
miserable stipend of 300 florins a year, which
he received as player in the orchestra of the
Electoral Court. The little Ludwig obtained
from his father no more than the rudiments of
violin and clavier playing, while at the common
public schools of the city he received all the
formal education he can be said to have ob-
tained; and even this ended when he was only
thirteen years old.
Youth
Occasionally befriended by musical amateurs
(one of whom appears to have been Mr.
Cressener, British Minister at the Electoral
Court, and another a certain Italian by name
Zambona, who taught the boy some Latin,
French and Italian) the young Beethoven grad-
ually acquired a knowledge of instrument
playing, and showed himself especially able to
master the intricacies of the organ and of the
harpsichord. When Beethoven was only twelve
he became for a time deputy organist at the
Electoral Chapel and a few months later was
appointed to a post which made him in effect
conductor of the Electoral Orchestra. In the
year 1783 he had already written some music
which was published and his career as a com-
poser was thus early definitely begun, although
he set no store by anything he wrote prior to
his Opus 1, which was published in 1795.
In 1787 Beethoven visited Vienna. How or
why is now not known, but there he met
Mozart and also the Emperor Joseph, whom
he appears to have greatly astonished by his
musical abilities, especially in improvisation.
He returned to Bonn and appears to have taken
up once more his musical duties at the Electoral
Court. His mother died this year and later
his little sister. From this time onwards seems
to date that terrible loneliness which so much
distorted Beethoven's life and made mere ex-
istence often so nearly unsupportable to him.
Vienna
In 1792, however, the new Elector, Max
Franz, who had succeeded Elector Max Fried-
rich in 1784, and had meanwhile taken a good
deal of a fancy to the young Ludwig, decided
to send him, on his regular pay, to Vienna,
to perfect his musical studies. Beethoven, accord-
ingly, arrived in Vienna, then and for many years
to come the musical center of the world. Here
for the next thirty-five years he was to live.
Here he was to carry on, to expand and to
reconstruct the musical structures erected by
the genius of Haydn and Mozart. Here he
was to pour out, year after year, that amazing
series of orchestral symphonies, piano and vio-
lin sonatas, string quartets, trios, songs, over-
(i JTT IS piano solo works first showed that
JLJ. the piano was much more, very much
more, than a mere improved
harpsichord.
He first proved to the world of music that
the piano was an individual, with a voice
of its own which called imperatively for
music thought out in its own idiom and
which had powers still undeveloped of ex-
pressing every feeling from tragic horror to
lyrical joy. . . . The pianoforte owes
everything to Beethoven
. . . "
tures, in each lighting some new candle of
inspiration.
Beethoven was the first musician to stand
socially on his own feet, the first who declined
to remain a superior lackey in the household
of some great nobleman, the first who stood
out entirely independent, trusting alone in the
power of his own genius. And Vienna admired
and loved him. The Emperor himself delighted
to speak of "our Beethoven." Archdukes,
princes, barons thought themselves lucky to have
from him a word of commendation for their
playing or singing. And with all this he was
not courtly, not polite, not even good looking.
Certainly by the time he was thirty the deaf-
ness which was to silence for him all sounds
had begun to make itself felt, so that he with-
drew more and more into himself, shunning
society and gradually acquiring a rough and
irritable demeanor which must have been a
sad trial to his faithful friends, to the von
Breunings who loved him so, to Bettina Bren-
tano, that odd wisp of a child, to the Archduke
Rudolf, to Prince Lobkowitz, Prince Kinsky,
Count Rassoumoffsky.
Fruitage
Beethoven wrote nine symphonies for full
orchestra. In the very first, published when he
was thirty-one, he broke new ground and
showed that a greater than even Mozart and
Haydn was arrived. In every other, especially
in the odd-numbered works, the third, fifth,
seventh and ninth, he went on to new and
extraordinary exhibitions of power. The third,
better known as the Eroica, definitely marks
his complete abandonment of the musical ideas
which he had learned from his predecessors
and his own stepping out into the light of a
new day. Certainly it must have struck mu-
sical Vienna with the effect of a bombshell.
Even to-day we listen to its awe-inspiring
funeral inarch and to the almost celestial strains
of the climax! in the finale, with a sense of
wonder which all the noise machines of the
modernists cannot awake in us. His works for
piano solo first showed that this new instru-
ment was much more, very much more, than
a mere improved harpsichord. He first proved
to the world of music that the pianoforte was
an individual, with a voice of its own, which
called imperatively for music thought out in
its own idiom, and which had powers still
undeveloped of expressing every feeling from
tragic horror to lyrical joy. His so-called
"Moonlight" sonata (he did not name it) begins
with a movement technically very easy, but as
a matter of expression one of the most difficult
things ever written. To-day, yes to-day, a
pianist who can make his instrument voice the
restrained but darkly deep sorrow of those
simple bars of music knows that he is a true
artist.
The pianoforte owes everything to Beethoven,
to that unhappy, proud, irritable and stormy
spirit, which drove friends away, while it spent
itself in unavailing love of a worthless scape-
grace nephew. The deaf, querulous, unhappy
old bachelor, who loved more than one woman
but whom no woman seems fairly to have loved
in turn, he who could write both the scherzando
of the Eighth Symphony with its childlike fun
and the finale of the Ninth with its choral out-
bursts of terrifying sublimity—to him the
pianoforte owes everything. One hundred years
ago this March, in the midst of a terrible
thunderstorm, that unquiet spirit sank to rest.
Every inhabitant of the globe to whom
the pianoforte means anything will on that day
bare his head and pause a moment to think
on the departed great.
This is no place to give a catalog of
Beethoven's music arranged for the player-
piano or reproducing piano. The list, however,
is large and rich. May much of it be bought
this year.
Watts Shop Moving
Watts Music Shop, formerly located at 7552
Cottage Grove avenue, Chicago, has taken
larger quarters at 7738 Cottage Grove avenue.
At the same time the business is being reor-
ganized and the capital stock is being increased.
Enlarges Display Space
Two additional showrooms have been added
by the Colorado Springs Music Co., Colorado
Springs, Colo., and will be used for the display
of grand pianos and reproducing instruments.
Buys Castator's Interest
T. J. Clark, vice-president of the McDowell-
Castator Music Co., which operates stores in
Ponca City, Okla., Enid and Pawhuska, has pur-
chased the interest of Frank Castator in the
business.
New Store in Amherst
Clarence Van Steenburgh, a musician and
teacher of Amherst, Mass., has opened a new
music store in that city, handling small goods,
sheet music and other musical accessories.