Immortal and Beloved: Beethoven and Bildung
Mark Evan Bonds, Beethoven: Variations on a Life. Oxford University Press, 160pp., 10 ills., $19 cloth.
Why is Beethoven important? Is he revered because of the image that was posthumously created for him—that of the always scowling, ever resentful, struggling albeit persevering, transcendent artist? Do we hear his music performed by every orchestra in the world because we are creatures of habit, yearning to hear what is familiar or is Beethoven’s music inherently better than that of other composers?
What does Beethoven have to offer us today? Does Beethoven touch our souls in ways we do not expect from a place of love or is it from a place of surprise, pain and confusion? What does he demand of the performer and the listener that makes us feel he knows something deep about the human experience? While there are no definitive ends to these kinds of questions and one should be suspicious of anyone who has ready answers for them, they can be addressed altogether in a discussion of Bildung.
Bildung is a term referring to the German Enlightenment era tradition of self-cultivation and introspection, in which education and philosophy become one in the same, referring to a process of both personal and thereby larger cultural maturation and eventual perfection. This striving toward perfection manifests itself in the individual by their achieving a unity between the mind and heart. Bildung becomes the means by which one approaches the justification and salvation of one’s own life. Naturally, this process is a lifelong struggle ad infinitum with each individual being at the mercy of obstacles unique to themselves. These obstacles are to be understood as necessary struggles in the journey toward becoming one’s self.
For Beethoven, the challenges met on the journey of Bildung were of a more arduous nature than most. We know of his unrequited and unrealistic approaches to romantic love, his constant financial burden that forced him to write large swaths of music that he would have preferred not to have brought into existence (made worse by the fact he despised the aristocracy on whom he relied for financial livelihood), and of course, his poor physical health and deafness which he dealt with for much of his professional career until death. The image of the struggling artist begins with Beethoven. However, without the art that arose despite (or because of) these afflictions, the life of Beethoven is not an exceptionally interesting or noteworthy one. That being said, after Beethoven’s death, music critics and historians alike began speculating that particular events in his life were inspiration for particular works, thus Beethoven’s searches for and failures in self perfection could be observed and dissected in specific musical examples, changing how academics and audience members heard music forever (for the worse, I might add). While this is a shallow and ultimately useless method to engage seriously with the music of Beethoven, who can blame a historian, critic, performer or listener for entertaining those ideas? For a figure of Beethoven’s renown, drama is always more appealing than truth.
According to Bonds, the lasting greatness of Beethoven can be attributed to his ability to analyze and observe things from endless perspectives all at once while maintaining his fundamental convictions about himself and his art.
What can be deduced as undoubtedly true about Beethoven comes mostly from his personal letters (Heiligenstadt Testament and the Immortal Beloved Letter) found posthumously in a secret compartment of his desk, as well as some first-hand accounts by friends and acquaintances. What those documents primarily convey is that Bildung was the ideal according to which Beethoven lived his life above all else. Despite books upon books worth of specious arguments as to what Beethoven may have used as tools for his self-cultivation, we know from primary sources that he was largely self-educated with regards to literature and philosophy, and believed himself capable, perhaps wrongly, of grasping any and all philosophical notions. Among his influences that he himself referred to were Homer, Plutarch, Shakespeare, Calderón, Herder, Goethe, and Schiller. It might be assumed also that Beethoven was well acquainted with the works of Kant, Hegel, Schelling and Wilhelm von Humboldt. The relationships between Beethoven and these thinkers must be given great consideration if one hopes to understand why and how Beethoven spent his life dedicated to Bildung, eventually producing philosophy through music and thus changing the way individuals and cultures interacted with and interpreted music. After all, Beethoven considered himself not merely a composer of the highest order, but a “tone-poet,” or one who poeticizes and philosophizes through music.
In Mark Evan Bonds’s Beethoven, Bonds acknowledges that the question at hand in a worthwhile examination of Beethoven ought not to be how specific events shaped specific musical expressions, but rather how events shaped Beethoven’s unique, broader vision of art—as a vehicle to connect the empire of the mind with God and nature. According to Bonds, the lasting greatness of Beethoven can be attributed to his ability to analyze and observe things from endless perspectives all at once while maintaining his fundamental convictions about himself and his art (see two very different settings of the same text in L’amante impaziente, op. 82). Accordingly, Bonds’s depiction of Beethoven’s life and work is not arranged as a chronological biography, but as an attempt to comprehend the man and the music from multiple perspectives simultaneously. It is a daunting task that Bonds undertakes, endeavoring to present an adequate number of viewpoints without relying too heavily on speculative, spurious evidence, or contradicting himself (something Beethoven was known to do musically, politically and romantically) in a condensed account of only about one hundred pages. He executes this task remarkably well with a tone of great reverence, respect, excitement and awe. Nevertheless, of the endless possible approaches to comprehending Beethoven’s work, some perspectives are not as beneficial as others.
Surely having an intimate knowledge of Beethoven’s personal life can help us understand his art (It is worth noting that because we have so little verifiable information about Beethoven, much of what has been written about him is in fact speculation). However, infinitely more interesting than his deafness or on whom Beethoven had a crush (the list of possible women to whom the Immortal Beloved Letter was written tallies to eight and is discussed exclusively in Bonds’s chapter entitled “Love”; so much for the notion that Beethoven forsook personal intimacy for the sake of art) is the knowledge of which scholars he revered, and how we might make connections between those scholars’ thoughts and the music itself—speculation that is lacking in Bonds’s otherwise valuable examination.
Beethoven forces us to ask questions, to be uncomfortable, to listen, to try to understand forces working inside and outside of ourselves, to gain new points of view, and to elevate our hearts and minds in unison.
When it comes to having a night out at the symphony, Bonds has very helpful advice for the inexperienced active listener and musical analyst. He takes great care to explain how we should try to listen to Beethoven from multiple perspectives with a wonderfully diverse collection of easily understood musical examples for support, including discussions on differences between his early, middle and late periods, form, counterpoint, variation, and harmony (although little discussion on the uniqueness of Beethoven’s melodic instincts beyond their apparent simplicity). Most importantly, he reminds us that there is no wrong way to listen to Beethoven. Some questionable assumptions about the inherent nature of the music are made in the process, however.
Bonds asserts that the transcendence of instrumental music alone is capable of creating a legacy such as Beethoven’s, but hearing Fritz Wunderlich perform Adelaide, Op. 46 or An die Ferne Geliebte, Op. 98—the first song cycle ever written—will likely change one’s tune on that matter. Also, when one recalls the success of Bach, whom Beethoven revered as the master of harmony, as well as the intellectual enlightenment taking place all around Beethoven, one doubts that Bonds is right to argue that listeners of the time were not capable of understanding the philosophical and musical implications of the composer’s work. Beyond a wonderful summation of Beethoven’s life and suggestions for appreciating his art, Bonds ultimately addresses the most pressing question at hand. Why is Beethoven important?
Bonds recognizes Beethoven’s remarkable aptitude for challenging the listener through mastery of variation, malleability of perspective and extremity of feeling, frequently capturing aspects of the human condition. Hence, Bonds maintains the listener is rewarded with an always revelatory reminder of the power of music. While most composers’ genius is not manifested in a tripartite oeuvre that changes the course of music forever, it is safe to say that these aptitudes apply to all composers considered great. What distinguishes Beethoven is his insistence that the performer and listener engage in Bildung of their own through his music. This is his great achievement. Having performed a great deal of Beethoven’s music, I am often in awe not at what he wrote on the page, but what he left off it; that is to say what he forces the performer to interpret, discover and create themselves. For the performer and listener alike, his music presents a journey through struggle toward growth in which a single perspective is never sufficient. Few composers require more self-cultivation in understanding and bringing to life the philosophy inherent to their music. Beethoven forces us to ask questions, to be uncomfortable, to listen, to try to understand forces working inside and outside of ourselves, to gain new points of view, and to elevate our hearts and minds in unison.