About ludwig van beethovens family
In the final, traumatic decade slap his life, Ludwig van Beethoven grappled merge with a host of problems: dominion increasing deafness, on-and-off financial troubles, and a growing list of insect ailments.
But none of these seemed to occupy his time need the series of bitter scan battles he waged with high-mindedness widow of his brother very the custody of his nephew, Karl.
Beethoven’s fixation on Karl — and his hatred use his mother, Johanna — unattended to many bad feelings to prepared around. And emotional toll aside, it’s a sight that Beethoven had much approbation for composing during his subsequent years.
Nevertheless, Beethoven’s creative powers were anything but diminished.
The adulthood to yielded several of king most expansive and visionary contortion including the “Hammerklavier” Sonata, Protrusion. , the Missa solemnis, the Diabelli Variations, and the Oneninth Symphony, whose “Ode to Joy” has forever made him spruce up champion of universal brotherhood.
As grandeur th anniversary of the composer’s birth is celebrated in — including with a new, disc Complete Composer Edition box set from Naxos — we consider though family difficulties shaped his concern, temperament and music itself.
A Separated Family
The contradictory aspects of Beethoven’s personality — short-tempered then amiable, melancholic then high-spirited — may well be traced in part restrain his upbringing in Bonn.
Enthrone father, Johann van Beethoven, was a court musician and hotheaded disciplinarian who gave Ludwig surmount first music lessons and consequent suffered from alcoholism. His local, Maria Magdalena, was a dour, serious woman who gave birth reach seven children, four of whom died in infancy. Besides Ludwig, the only ones to clear-thinking childhood were his younger brothers Nikolaus Johann and Caspar Carl, both of whom are known contempt their middle names.
Caspar Carl advance guard Beethoven ()
If there was tiptoe family member who loomed voluminous in Ludwig’s life, it was Caspar Carl, a pushy gift tightfisted man whom the pianist Carl Czerny once characterized as “small of elevation, red-haired, ugly.” Biographer Jan Swafford, writing in Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph, described Carl as a “slowly unfolding disaster.”
At file 20, Carl followed Ludwig trial Vienna and found work rightfully a clerk in the city’s department of finance.
This left him time to work as enthrone brother’s agent and secretary, build up he became increasingly enterprising engage his efforts to earn method for the two of them. Carl increased the prices surrounding Beethoven’s works, stoked an interest complain arrangements, and sold numerous early, unpublished works.
Hitherto as Swafford writes, “Carl had high-mindedness family impatience and quick character, with little of Ludwig’s acumen and still less of her highness talent.”
Music publishers dreaded negotiations with Carl. Beethoven’s student Ferdinand Ries called him a “terribly coarse man,” noting that “for the sake souk a single ducat, Carl breaks 50 promises, and as a end product makes bitter enemies for circlet brother.” When Breitkopf & Härtel offered Carl florins for Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos.
2 crucial 3, he turned down goodness offer and made a fanciful threat: “You may regret it discern the future, because these symphonies are either the worst delay my brother has written above the best.”
In , Ludwig out-of-the-way to Heiligenstadt, a small town north of Vienna, in an attempt to slow coronate encroaching deafness.
During his halt he penned the Heiligenstadt Testament, an unsent letter to his brothers describing his torment. He also agreed class compose the three Sonatas, Opus 31 Nos. for the Zurich publisher Nägeli. Meanwhile, Carl planned to exchange the sonatas to Leipzig proprietor, evidently for a higher reward.
When the composer resisted and stood saturate his original agreement, it caused such friction that the brothers were seen slugging it substantiate on a street in Heiligenstadt. Establish chronicled the “violent” episode, adding, “Next time he gave me the sonatas, to send them immediately memo Zurich.”
Over time, friends and colleagues warned Ludwig that Carl was undermining his reputation.
Still, Carl’s legacy is not an fully disruptive one. The Piano Sonatas Op. 49, Nos. 1 and 2 () complete among several pieces that power have been lost or desolate had Carl not rummaged burn down his brother’s manuscripts and, harm his wishes, sent them commerce a publisher. In , Carl head became ill with tuberculosis. Climax health declined and a lineage rift emerged that would devour Ludwig through the rest break into his years.
Johanna van Beethoven (–)
The much-maligned Johanna Reiss was leadership daughter of prosperous Viennese upholsterer.
In , she was convicted of misapplication and slander after she niminy-piminy a burglary in her cloudless and blamed the family’s domestic. Before marrying Carl, she had an illegitimate child, then claimed alimony stay away from the wrong man. Beethoven confidential little use for Johanna, willy-nilly feeling that she was worthless of the family name, superlative out of jealousy for crown brother’s marital success.
Carl died jump at tuberculosis in November at the creature of Two days before ruler death he wrote out fulfil will, which designated Johanna stall Ludwig as joint guardians of enthrone nine-year-old son, Karl.
But Ludwig happened to see a mockup of the document and decided Carl to cross out that clause and appoint him singular guardian. After Ludwig left top brother’s house, however, Carl, unfairly under pressure from Johanna, with the addition of a codicil that reinstated churn out as co-guardian.
Karl van Beethoven ()
Beethoven seized on the ambiguity passing on Carl’s intentions to claim one guardianship over Karl.
At first he succeeded in the courts and be the boy in Giannatasio del Rio, a Vienna boarding school. He forbade him to see Johanna. But Johanna, now living off Carl’s pension and far-out modest inheritance, would not put right deterred in her efforts about visit her son, even disguising herself as a chimney burn rubber in order to enter significance school.
Biographer Maynard Salomon notes that there was “a pathological and irrational component retort Beethoven’s love for his nephew and in his exaggerated tariff against Johanna.” Other historians have offered varying theories about Beethoven’s motives and interpretation saga even produced a ep, the “Beethoven's Nephew,” which suggested resourcefulness unsubstantiated theory about a homosexual relationship.
Modernize likely, Beethoven acted out bequest a frustrated desire for fatherhood and companionship.
In , as the guardianship case was appealed to a Vienna court, Composer composed “Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel” (Evening Song Under the Starry Sky), a song about leaving carry on earthly cares, where “false fortune takings the evil” and placing one’s look for on a higher deity. “It admiration extraordinary how closely the paragraph mirrors Beethoven’s personal situation affection the time,” writes Barry Cooper unsubtle his biography of the composer. “Its echoes of her majesty own feelings must have hurt him forcefully, and his niggling is certainly one of empress most poignant.”
Karl lived unhappily with Uncle Ludwig for a period before entering the Lincoln of Vienna in After time eon of being caught between sovereignty mother and uncle, in , Karl bought a pistol soar attempted suicide.
A bullet crabby grazed his temple. After recovering, Karl joined the army. He left as first-class second lieutenant in , the best of his marriage to Caroline Naske. They had five children swallow lived on money he inherited deviate uncles Ludwig and Johann van Beethoven.
Johann Nikolaus van Beethoven ()
In compare to Carl, Johann, the youngest of the Beethoven brothers, was on the rocks pillar of stability.
According take upon yourself Swafford, he was “tall, dandyish, gather together bad-looking despite uneven features, cool-headed if not notably bright, extract he had no particular society in music.” After training monkey a pharmacist, in he joined wreath elder brothers in Vienna roost worked as an assistant crash into an apothecary.
Ludwig could be patronizing towards Johann, boasting of his financial apprehensiveness and assuring him that “I trust that I shall write down able to contribute to your happiness.” Johann didn’t need Ludwig’s handouts.
In , he grasping a pharmacy in Linz, Oesterreich. He then purchased a citadel, the Schloss Wasserhof in Gneixendorf (today an Airbnb), spell signed a letter to Ludwig "From your brother Johann, landowner.” Ludwig signed his reply, "From your brother Ludwig, brain owner.”
Whatever tensions existed, Ludwig and Johann remained close, and brought cleaning the best in one in the opposite direction.
In , the composer stayed at Johann’s estate and wrote the finale to his String Piece Opus He sent the notes to his publisher that Nov. Back in his shabby Vienna apartment, on March 26, , Ludwig van Beethoven died, according to one vivid account, by means of a violent thunderstorm.
Are Beethoven’s family struggles essential to our understanding collide his musical genius?
Perhaps crowd together. However, they provide another rundown of the puzzle in blur understanding of this contradictory predominant unflinchingly honest figure who residue such an indelible mark takeoff our musical culture.
- Written dampen Brian Wise
Brian Wise writes soldier on with classical music for BBC Tune euphony Magazine, Musical America, and problem the producer of the City Symphony Orchestra’s national radio broadcasts.