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| Playing for Beethoven |
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James Fenton
copyright © 2005
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Originally published
in The Guardian
19 November 2005
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Just as we sometimes value an artist's sketches
more than his finished paintings, or at least we recognise in
them something not to be found elsewhere, so it is that we have
high hopes when we come across a document that remains undoctored,
imperfect and seemingly artless but still truthful and fresh.
The pianist and composer Ferdinand Ries, who
was taught piano by Beethoven, was modest about his memoir of
the master: "The plainness of style will, I hope, be graciously
overlooked, since hitherto I have communicated with the public
only through musical compositions ... I shall relate the events
as they occur to me; should the reader be of a mind to do so,
he will find it easy enough to put them in order." On the
next page we find Beethoven in bed writing out last-minute trombone
parts for an oratorio, and we are hooked. As Schumann said of
this volume: "One cannot stop reading it."
And it goes by very fast. Ries's actual memoir
is no more than 50 pages long, but it is the source of many
important stories. It was Ries who first told Beethoven that
Napoleon had declared himself Emperor, upon which Beethoven
went into a rage and shouted, "So he too is nothing more
than an ordinary man. Now he will trample all human rights under
foot, and only pander to his own ambition; he will place himself
above everyone else and become a tyrant!" Then Beethoven
went to the table on which lay the full score of a symphony
he had dedicated to Napoleon; he "took hold of the title
page at the top, ripped it all the way through, and flung it
to the floor. The first page was written anew and only then
did the symphony receive the title Sinfonia eroica."
Ries describes the moment he realised that
Beethoven was going deaf. He often went walking with his teacher
in the countryside. One day he called Beethoven's attention
"to a shepherd in the forest who was playing most pleasantly
on a flute cut from lilac wood. For half an hour Beethoven could
not hear anything at all and became extremely quiet and gloomy,
even though I repeatedly assured him that I did not hear anything
either (which was, however, not the case)." The specific
detail that the flute is cut from lilac wood (is this possible?
how would Ries know?) adds to the bucolic character of the sad
scene. But it is just this kind of detail that tends to get
dropped in the retelling.
Unlike the memoir I mentioned last week, which
sheds more light on Beethoven the man than the musician, Ries
conveys important information about the music. He tells us for
instance that when he is in London preparing the Hammerklavier
Sonata for publication, he receives an instruction from Beethoven
to insert two notes at the beginning of the adagio, making a
new opening bar. At first he is tempted to believe that Beethoven
has gone daft, as had been rumoured at the time. The great work
had been completed and revised six months before. How could
he now be adding more notes? And yet he was amazed at the effect
this insertion made (it is indeed simple, radical and very beautiful)
and he advises every music lover to try the opening of the adagio
both with and without the new measure, to see what effect is
made.
The book I am talking about is called Beethoven
Remembered, the Biographical Notes of Franz Wegeler and Ferdinand
Ries. It was first published in English only in 1987, a
lateness which surprised Christopher Hogwood, who provided a
short foreword. (Both the American and the English edition seem
hard to find, except on the internet.) Wegeler's half is a little
less interesting than Ries's, lacking the degree of intimacy
Ries enjoyed with Beethoven until he made his terrible mistake.
Beethoven had composed what became know as
the Andante favori, and played it to Ries and a friend, who
liked it so much they pestered him to repeat it. On the way
home, Ries passed the house of Prince Lichnowsky, and dropped
in to tell him about the marvellous new composition. The prince
begged to hear it, and Ries repeated what he could remember.
The next day, as a joke, the prince told Beethoven
he too had composed something, and he sat down and played a
part of the new Andante. Beethoven was furious, and thereafter,
despite the prince's pleas, would never play again in Ries's
presence, and demanded his pupil leave the room before he would
perform. It is a bitter lesson, and Ries takes it bitterly,
though his devotion to Beethoven's genius remains unimpaired.
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