BOOKS IN BRIEF
Beethoven: The Universal Composer by Edmund Morris (HarperCollins, 256 pp., $21.95) In this brief biography of Ludwig van Beethoven, Edmund Morris sheds new light on the composer, not by refuting the common perception of a frenzied, misanthropic genius, but by fleshing it out in meticulous detail.
Morris situates his subject within a colorful historical context, showing Beethoven's career trajectory as a product of developments in Viennese society and Napoleonic expansion. And his strength as a biographer lies in capturing the broadness of Beethoven's appeal: "Climb the mildewed stairway of the most obscure building he ever lived in, and you can be fairly sure of bumping into a Welsh choral society or a party of reverent Japanese."
Much as he did in his biographies of Theodore Roosevelt, Morris combines the minute details of Beethoven's life (financial ledgers, compositional etchings, etc.) with an understanding of his timeless gravitas. This engaging approach involves constantly adjusting the scope of his expository lens, by turns revealing the forest and the trees of Beethoven's life and art. This technique is similar to the composer's own, whose works manage to be "microscopic as well as telescopic . . . cells and cathedrals of sound." Morris supposes that it was this breadth of Beethoven's sonic senses, this "ability to embrace the whole range of human emotion, from dread of death to love of life," that gives his music its uncontested place in the history of art.
If Beethoven's music comprised a clash of opposites, this was largely emblematic of the tempestuous state of the composer himself. That enormous body of work was the product of a troubled mind, plagued by fits of paranoia and rage. Resisting the temptation to romanticize his subject, Morris shows him to be as bitterly conniving as he was prolific. Nor does Morris sentimentalize Beethoven's childhood. Previous biographers have portrayed his Bonn upbringing as the first chapter of a rags-to-riches fable; Morris asserts that Beethoven's father earned a steady if modest income, and did not become a heavy drinker until his son's teenage years.
At 21, Beethoven was sent to Vienna, where he etched out the contours of his talent under the tutelage of Franz Josef Haydn. Haydn clashed with his precocious student, whose restlessness and egoism elbowed against the constraints of Haydn's formality and condescension. Wringing some manner of discipline and formal technique out of a capricious student must have been like pulling teeth, and Haydn and other patient men should be credited with giving young Beethoven a firm grasp of the art of counterpoint, freeing him to unleash the torrent of sound welling up inside his head, a harmonious rush that grew louder as his aural connection to the outside world diminished.
No examination of Beethoven would be complete without a discussion of his deafness. Morris's inclusion of the poignant "Heiligenstadt Testament" (1802) provides a glimpse of the emotional anguish that accompanied Beethoven as his hearing diminished, capturing his fear and embarrassment: "Ah, how could I possibly admit an infirmity in the one sense which ought to be more perfect in me than in others, a sense which I once possessed in the highest perfection. . . . For me there can be no relaxation with my fellow-men, no refined conversations, no mutual exchange of ideas."
Beethoven's deafness further alienated him from companions and associates, and heightened his feelings of solitude. And for every burst of productive mania experienced by the aging composer, there seems to have been a corresponding fit of paranoia, caused either by the conviction that players were deliberately stumbling over notes, or managers were conspiring to cheat him. When he learned that Napoleon was entering Vienna, "Beethoven, desperate to protect what was left of his hearing, took refuge in [his brother's] cellar, clutching pillows to his ears." At the same time, recognition of his failing health fomented productivity: "I would have ended my life--it was only my art that held me back," he wrote. "Ah, it seemed to me impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me."
The writing of these words seems to have unleashed a flood of creativity: In rapid succession over the next decade he composed "an opera, six symphonies, four solo concertos, five string quartets, six string sonatas, seven piano sonatas, five sets of piano variations, four overtures, three suites of incidental music for the stage, four trios, two sextets, seventy-two songs, an oratoria," and innumerable other pieces.
Morris creates a clear image of the man, but falters at technical analysis of Beethoven's compositions. He seems aware of his own shortcomings in this respect, quoting Hector Berlioz on the "Moonlight" Sonata as "one of those poems that human language does not know how to qualify." This does not stop him from trying to convey the Moonlight's "exploration of the most delicate possible aural nuances" and "sensuality of pure sound," coming to a head with a finale that "leaped out of the lower register of the instrument with tigerish force." But he also recognizes the hollow sound of such flowering prose: "When art conceals art . . . technical analysis seems almost impertinent."
Though Morris's critiques of Beethoven's work fall flat, the reader is likely to be more interested in the story behind the work than the work itself. Here Morris adds new dimensions to our knowledge of the solitary, contrarian Ludwig van Beethoven.
- Abigail Lavin