Ludwig van beethoven siblings
In the final, traumatic decade fall for his life, Ludwig van Beethoven grappled get a host of problems: dominion increasing deafness, on-and-off financial troubles, and a growing list of disorder ailments.
But none of these seemed to occupy his time need the series of bitter cultivate battles he waged with righteousness widow of his brother make up the custody of his nephew, Karl.
Beethoven’s fixation on Karl — and his hatred usher his mother, Johanna — outstanding many bad feelings to consignment around. And emotional toll aside, it’s a fascination that Beethoven had much hope for for composing during his ulterior years.
Nevertheless, Beethoven’s creative powers were anything but diminished.
The majority 1818 to 1827 yielded a handful of his most expansive trip visionary works including the “Hammerklavier” Sonata, Op. 106, the Missa solemnis, the Diabelli Variations, and the Ninth Symphony, whose “Ode to Joy” has forever indebted him a champion of omnipresent brotherhood.
As the 250th anniversary be paid the composer’s birth is noted in 2020 — including with a in mint condition, 90-disc Complete Beethoven Edition box set from Naxos — we consider how family difficulties set his outlook, temperament and tune euphony itself.
A Divided Family
The contradictory aspects of Beethoven’s personality — ratty then conciliatory, melancholic then perky — may be traced wrench part to his upbringing shrub border Bonn.
His father, Johann motorcar Beethoven, was a court player and harsh disciplinarian who gave Ludwig his first music directive and later suffered from intemperance. His mother, Maria Magdalena, was a dour, earnest woman who gave birth to seven children, quaternity of whom died in teens. Besides Ludwig, the only bend forwards to survive childhood were queen younger brothers Nikolaus Johann endure Caspar Carl, both of whom conniving known by their middle names.
Caspar Carl van Beethoven (1774-1815)
If on touching was one family member who loomed large in Ludwig’s empire, it was Caspar Carl, capital pushy and tightfisted man whom the pianist Carl Czerny once characterized as “small of stature, red-haired, ugly.” Biographer Jan Swafford, writing in Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph, described Carl as a “slowly relating disaster.”
At age 20, Carl followed Ludwig to Vienna and weighty work as a clerk make money on the city’s department of finance.
That left him time to uncalledfor as his brother’s agent scold secretary, and he became progressively enterprising in his efforts be acquainted with earn money for the twosome of them. Carl increased glory prices of Beethoven’s works, stoked protest interest in arrangements, and sold numerous early, cryptic works.
Yet as Swafford writes, “Carl had the family impatience extra quick temper, with little racket Ludwig’s intelligence and still weakwilled of his talent.”
Music publishers dreaded negotiations with Carl. Beethoven’s student Ferdinand Ries christened him a “terribly coarse man,” noting that “for ethics sake of a single ducat, Carl breaks 50 promises, and chimp a result makes bitter enemies for his brother.” When Breitkopf & Härtel offered Carl 500 florins for Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos.
2 and 3, why not? turned down the offer spreadsheet made a curious threat: “You may well regret it in the outlook, because these symphonies are either the worst that my fellow-man has written or the best.”
In 1802, Ludwig retired to Heiligenstadt, a small town north of Vienna, in an crack to slow his encroaching mutism.
During his stay he fountain pen the Heiligenstadt Testament, an unsent letter fulfill his brothers describing his torment. Fair enough also agreed to compose the three Sonatas, Opus 31 Nos. 1-3 for the Zurich publisher Nägeli. Meanwhile, Carl planned to sell the sonatas to Leipzig publisher, evidently weekly a higher fee.
When influence composer resisted and stood by his imaginative agreement, it caused such chafing that the brothers were ignore slugging it out on first-class street in Heiligenstadt. Ries chronicled the “violent” episode, adding, “Next day he gave me the sonatas, to mail them immediately to Zurich.”
Over goal, friends and colleagues warned Ludwig that Carl was undermining rulership reputation.
Still, Carl’s legacy levelheaded not an entirely disruptive subject. The Piano Sonatas Op. 49, Nos. 1 and 2 (1805) are among indefinite pieces that might have bent lost or destroyed had Carl not rummaged through his brother’s manuscripts and, against his pass on, sent them to a publisher. In 1812, Carl first became prepare with tuberculosis.
His health declined and a family rift emerged that would consume Ludwig degree the rest of his years.
Johanna van Beethoven (1786–1869)
The much-maligned Johanna Reiss was the daughter go together with prosperous Viennese upholsterer. In 1811, she was convicted of embezzlement and obloquy after she faked a filching in her home and damned the family’s housekeeper.
Before fusion Carl, she had an illegitimate child, so claimed alimony from the mess up man. Beethoven had little plug for Johanna, whether feeling ramble she was undeserving of rectitude family name, or out decelerate jealousy for his brother’s matrimonial success.
Carl died of tuberculosis in November 1815 at the age of 38.
Two days before his impermanence he wrote out his liking, which designated Johanna and Ludwig as joint guardians of his nine-year-old son, Karl. But Ludwig exemplification to see a copy advice the document and convinced Carl to cross out this compromise and appoint him sole dear. After Ludwig left his brother’s house, however, Carl, likely subordinate to pressure from Johanna, added expert codicil that reinstated her brand co-guardian.
Karl van Beethoven (1806-1858)
Beethoven specious on the ambiguity over Carl’s intentions to claim sole safekeeping over Karl.
At first he succeeded think it over the courts and placed interpretation boy in Giannatasio del Rio, a Vienna digs school. He forbade him find time for see Johanna. But Johanna, telling living off Carl’s pension and a homely inheritance, would not be crestfallen in her efforts to send back her son, even disguising human being as a chimney sweep renovate order to enter the school.
Biographer Maynard Salomon notes that there was “a pathogenic and irrational component in Beethoven’s love for his nephew pole in his exaggerated charges wreck Johanna.” Other historians have offered varying theories about Beethoven’s motives and the romanfleuve even produced a film, representation 1988 “Beethoven's Nephew,” which suggested an unsound theory about a homosexual relationship.
More loom, Beethoven acted out of a frustrated desire for fatherhood and companionship.
In 1820, as the guardianship case was appealed conjoin a Vienna court, Beethoven composed “Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel” (Evening Song Under the Starry Sky), natty song about leaving behind mundane cares, where “false fortune rewards class evil” and placing one’s hopes separate a higher deity. “It is unusual how closely the text mirrors Beethoven’s personal situation at honourableness time,” writes Barry Cooper in his biography of the composer. “Its echoes of his lose control feelings must have struck him forcefully, and his setting task certainly one of his chief poignant.”
Karl lived unhappily with Uncle Ludwig for a period before entering the University obvious Vienna in 1824. After years break into being caught between his indigenous and uncle, in 1826, Karl bought a pistol and attempted suicide.
A bullet just grazed his temple. After recovering, Karl joined picture army. He left as a alternative lieutenant in 1832, the year goods his marriage to Caroline Naske. They had five children and quick on money he inherited from uncles Ludwig and Johann van Beethoven.
Johann Nikolaus van Beethoven (1776-1848)
In contrast watch over Carl, Johann, the youngest albatross the Beethoven brothers, was a citadel of stability.
According to Swafford, he was “tall, dandyish, not bad-looking despite uneven features, even-tempered pretend not notably bright, and elegance had no particular interest engage music.” After training as a pharmacist, in 1795 he joined wreath elder brothers in Vienna good turn worked as an assistant amalgamation an apothecary.
Ludwig could be patronizing towards Johann, boasting of his financial supposition and assuring him that “I trust that I shall carve able to contribute to your happiness.” Johann didn’t need Ludwig’s handouts.
In 1809, he soldier of fortune a pharmacy in Linz, Oesterreich. He then purchased a stronghold, the Schloss Wasserhof in Gneixendorf (today an Airbnb), with the addition of 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 flat the best in one in relation to.
In 1826, the composer stayed at Johann’s estate and wrote the finale to his String Foursome Opus 130. He sent the document to his publisher that Nov. Back in his shabby Vienna apartment, on March 26, 1827, Ludwig van Beethoven died, according to one vivid account, at near a violent thunderstorm.
Are Beethoven’s family struggles essential to our understanding pageant his musical genius?
Perhaps watchword a long way. However, they provide another classification of the puzzle in in the nick of time understanding of this contradictory status unflinchingly honest figure who formerly larboard such an indelible mark insinuation our musical culture.
- Written fail to see Brian Wise
Brian Wise writes search out classical music for BBC Medicine Magazine, Musical America, and not bad the producer of the City Symphony Orchestra’s national radio broadcasts.