LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN died at about 5-45 p.m. on March 26, 1827, as a violent snow-storm battered Vienna, a flourish that the genius would have loved. He had echoed such storms in several of his creations, with aggressive exultation in his Fifth Symphony and with triumphant joy in the Ninth. Beethoven died in an apartment in Schwarzspanierhaus (House of the Black-Robed Spaniards) behind the present-day Votiv church in the heart of Vienna. It was the last of 65 homes he had inhabited in the city since he arrived from Bonn in November 1792 in order to be closer to the patronage of the court of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Imperial Court encouraged artists, architects, musicians and scholars. For the exceptionally talented, it was the most welcoming of all the cities of Europe. Vienna, according to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was "the best place in the world" for young musicians. After hearing 17-year-old Beethoven perform, Mozart had said, "Keep an eye on that one. Some day he will give the world something to talk about!"
Vienna is too large for the diminutive country it is the capital of today. Once the centre of the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire, the city has retained some of its importance as the headquarters of many international organisations and remains exceedingly attractive. It has wide roads, magnificent churches, baroque buildings with ornate and spacious entrances and statutes bristling on their tops. There are statues everywhere in Vienna, even in the vast parks.
One visit is not enough to appreciate Vienna's old pubs and coffee houses, its amazing variety of buildings, its Gothic churches, its separate theatres for aristocrats and commoners from imperial times and the Red period (1920s), its museums (including a butterfly, electricity and war museum) and its quaint alleys and sylvan walks. Many of its monuments were badly damaged in the last-minute spiteful and unnecessary saturation bombing by the Allies at the end of the Second World War. Most of them, includintephansdom, the imposing, magnificent and spacious baroque cathedral (dom means cathedral) that has stood at its heart since the 14th century, have been carefully and lovingly restored and still reflect the glory of a grand and historic city.
BEETHOVEN'S conquest of the city has been more permanent than Napoleon's. There are four memorials or statues to him. One, of him sitting, is near the Concert House close to the Schwarzenberg Platz and a bust is near Nussdorf where he liked to go for walks and is called Beethoven Ruhe (peace). There is a street in this bustling village called Eroicgasse as he had stayed nearby in No. 26 Kahlenberger Strasse. Close by are the woods where he walked and the Danube that he loved to see in all its moods.
Yet the Vienna he could see from the hills of the Viennese woods has changed considerably. At that time there was a wide fortress wall enclosing the Stephansdom Quarter. It was replaced in the 1860s by a broad Ring Road (Ringstrasse). Most of the fine and old-looking buildings were not around during Beethoven's time. When he walked in the Hofburg compound there were no museums across the road and the statue of Marie Theresa did not provide a perch for pigeons. The new and most dominant wing of the Hofburg had not yet been built. He loved to walk in the Hofburg Complex, a collection of palaces where the Hapsburgs lived. Much expanded with dramatic and imposing extensions since Beethoven's time, it now houses the President of Austria, several museums, the famous Spanish Riding School, the National Library and a few interesting churches. Another of his favourite walks was the Prater, once an exclusive hunting forest for the emperors but which was given to the public in 1766. It is now one of the world's largest amusement parks, and definitely the most varied. Even the twin-pinnacled Votive church, the landmark behind which is the house he died in, was not there.
Yet there are elements that still remain. Next to the mid-19th century Greichische Kirche (Greek Church of Holy Trinity) in the old Fleischmarkt (meat market), close to Stephansdom, is Griechenbeisl, a 500-year-old restaurant. Beethoven was among the many famous musicians, scholars and artists who ate here. One of Beethoven's compulsory haunts was the Graben and some of the shops from Beethoven's time still exist, including the office of Artaria - one of his publishers with whom he had several legal fights. The Burggarten, Prater and the Schonbrunn's gardens, where he liked to walk, have their green spaciousness still intact.
A good way to understand Vienna's attractions could be to trace Beethoven's tracks. During his stay in the city and its suburbs, Beethoven shifted house 65 times because he did not like being stared at, did not like people listening to him playing on principle, and, in one case, because he wanted to be close to his friends. Yet while hopping from house to house he produced incomparable sonatas, concertos, marches and symphonies.
In October 1802, thinking his end was near, he wrote a letter to his brothers from his house in Heiligenstadt - the famous Heiligenstadt Testament. This house in the 19th district still stands, but no longer alone. He blamed his approaching deafness on Vienna, especially its water, which now is among the purest that one can get in any large city anywhere in the world. He writes: "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, a perfection such as few in my profession enjoy or ever have enjoyed." This was the Vienna of which cynics still say, "People look back to its past with hope."
Some of his houses are marked with plaques saying that Beethoven lived there. A short stroll away from Heiligenstadt in Grinzing is No 2, Pfarrplatz where he began working on his Ninth Symphony in 1817. It is now a Heuriger cafe where people drink wine, eat heartily and sing raucously. Beethoven had come to the 19th district to escape the rigours of Vienna, a city that he could not remain in for long stretches. The corner statue of St. Florian embedded in its wall is still there as it had been in his time. Next door is the church of St. James, rebuilt after it was destroyed by the Turks in the late 17th century, this being almost the last point that the invaders had got to before they were beaten back.
His homes in Dobling, Modling, Heiligenstadt, Eisenstadt and Baden, which stood in rural isolation during his time, are now surrounded by rows of neat houses and shops. At Baden he composed sections of his Missa Solemnis and the Ninth Symphony. He lived in Hetzendorf, about 10 minutes walk from the Schonbrunn Palace (1750) to be near its garden. There, sitting under a favourite oak tree, he finished the opera Leonore (Fidelio).
Beethoven's earliest homes were in Old Vienna or in the Stephansdom Quarter, whose narrow alleys and ordinary homes, crammed with beautiful historical surprises from about five centuries ago, are extremely hard to track down. A lot of his homes must still be standing but house numbers and names of streets have changed more than once. No. 45 Alsergasse, where Beethoven stayed in 1792, became No. 125, Haupstrasse and then No. 30 Alserstrasse. Some no longer exist, such as the Schwarzspanierstrasse, near the newly named Beethovengasse, where Beethoven died, which was torn down in 1905. Nevertheless, a typically Viennese wide ornate entrance with a plaque and flags remind people that Beethoven lived here.
Beethoven occasionally shifted house for interesting reasons. In October 1806, for instance, his host and patron Prince Lichnowsky wanted Beethoven to play for him and some of Napoleon's officers, whom he hid in an adjoining room in his house in Troppau. When he found them, Beethoven stormed out into the rain. From Vienna, he wrote: "Prince, what you are, you are by chance and by birth. There will be thousands of princes, but there is only one Beethoven." Pro-Republican Beethoven had become very anti-Napoleon.
By November 1803, he had finished writing the notes for his Third Symphony, the Eroica, which he completed by May 1804. It was originally dedicated to Napoleon Bonaparte, but by the time the symphony was completed, Napoleon had crowned himself Emperor. A disgusted Beethoven, then living in Prince Esterhazy's house, "das rothe Haus" (now gone) and opposite the Schwarzspanierhaus (also gone), tore the title page, raging, "Is he then, too, nothing more than an ordinary human being? Now he too will trample on all the rights of man and ...become a tyrant." Later, when Napoleon was defeated at Vittoria on June 21, 1813, Beethoven celebrated the Duke of Wellington's victory by writing the very formal Battle Symphony, which he completed in 1814.
From 1804 to 1808 Beethoven had lived in 11 houses, fought off adoration even from Napoleon, who had once sent troops to ensure that the composer was not troubled during his invasion of Vienna, and changed patrons so as to be financially secure. Yet he was able to produce during this time the stirring Fifth, the Pastoral or the Sixth Symphony, the Violin Concerto, the G Major Piano Concerto, and many other lesser but nonetheless brilliant works.
Beethoven's longest stay, 1804-1808, 1810, and 1815, was at Pasqualati Haus in Molkerbastei, which is opposite the Rathaus. Here he commenced composing the Fourth, Fifth, Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, the opera Fidelio, the string quartets and a piano concerto. His fourth-floor apartment is now a museum. His other well-known houses include the Esterhazy Palace and the Prince Lobokowitz house.
From 1822, Beethoven began work on the moving choral movement (Ode to Joy by Schiller) of the Ninth Symphony and within that year, he changed four homes. He began the year in 61, Kothgasse, moved to 20, Pfarrgasse, and then to a more spacious home at 62, Parkgasse across the Wien stream bridge. Beethoven used to shave by the window in the morning, and when this became known, knots of people would stand worshipfully to watch him. Predictably, he moved. Thirty-two Haupstrasse was a lively villa owned by Baron Pronay whose reverence irked him so much that he shifted yet again, this time to 94, Rathausgasse in Baden to share lodgings with a locksmith. Between the start and finish of his breathtaking Ninth Symphony in early 1824, he had lived in five houses.
The Ninth Symphony was moulded at a time when the by now stone-deaf Beethoven was in torment. He was waiting for death again, and yet was hopeful. In this magnificent symphony he introduced voices for the first time, and the theme was deliverance through joy. His disability would have crippled a lesser man. He overcame it resoundingly in the Ninth Symphony even though his critics said he had defied all canons of composition. An admiring Berlioz defended him, saying, "So much the worse for Law". Yet Vienna accepted it hesitantly.
Though immensely successful now, the best works of Beethoven were not understood in his time. After one performance in 1808 in Vienna where the thundering Fifth and pastoral Sixth symphonies, the Mass in C, the Choral Fantasy, and the Piano Concerto No.4 were performed with Beethoven himself playing, a music critic disdainfully described it as "unsatisfactory". Much later, after another performance, the applause was so thunderous that his assistant conductor had to turn Beethoven to face the rapturous audience.
Just before Beethoven died he said, "Applaud, friends, the comedy is over." Not quite. More than 30,000 mourning Viennese turned out for Beethoven's funeral. In a fitting meeting of Vienna's greatest musicians, Mozart's moving Requiem was sung in the Church of the Augustinians in the Stephansdom Quarter. On April 5, 1827, a final tribute was given in the Karlskirche with a performance of the Cherubini Requiem.
Even after death Beethoven did not rest in one place. His body moved from Wahring, a village near Vienna, to his final home in the musicians' corner in the picturesque Central Cemetery on Vienna's outskirts. Many of the graves here are grandly embellished with expensive and ostentatious woe. It is the largest cemetery in Austria with more than two and a half million graves. The Viennese wickedly refer to it as being half the size of Berne but twice as amusing. Beethoven's grave is marked by a plain obelix with just one word - Beethoven. Next to his grave is a memorial to Mozart and the grave of Franz Schubert. Reports of relic hunters were so worrying that in 1888 his body was exhumed, examined and finally re-interred.
PERHAPS inspired by Beethoven's iconoclastic ideas, at the end of the 19th century young artists in Vienna concerned with creating new styles made a strange windowless squat cube topped by a dome encased in gold filigree, which they called The Secession. Inside it, the best known exhibit is Gustav Klimit's Beethoven Frieze, a 34-metre-long decorative painting covering three walls. It is believed to be a tribute to the path-breaking Ninth Symphony.
Beethoven's radically innovative talent lives on in much of Vienna's bold architecture. Among the wildest are Otto Wagner's pavilions; the opulent stained glass entrance of the Steinhoff church (1905) with its brazen and flashy yet attractive interior; the Karl Marx Hof municipal council flats (1930); the glass-fronted, but incredibly well-blended Haas Haus opposite Stephansdom; the glittering mosaic that surrounds the golden globe-shaped chimney of the municipal incinerator; and the crazy, colourful, liveable municipal apartments called Hundertwasser (1985).
Vienna is still the music centre of Europe. Learning perhaps from its late recognition of Beethoven's immense genius, Vienna now encourages and tolerates all kinds of ideas, whether in art, architecture, music or politics.
COMMents
COMMents
SHARE