Beethoven Unvarnished. A Lecture by Vincent DeLuise

thank you for joining us and we are delighted to welcome back our dear friend dr. vincent de louise for this very special presentation on beethoven instant this is Benson second career he's a retired successful ophthalmologist and he's now a very frequent speaker and lecturer and a musician himself plays the clarinet and he's been we've been lucky enough to have him here for a number of musical presentations that he puts together coordinates and plays in and for some wonderful lectures as well he is also the cultural ambassador for the Waterbury Symphony Orchestra and he is the president of the Connecticut summer opera foundation and we're delighted to have him here again tonight for this very special presentation everyone please welcome thanks Emma thank you very much Margaret and thank you all for coming Beethoven you all know his music you all know something about his life and I thought what I would do for the next hour is demythologize him and therefore the title of my talk is Beethoven unvarnished on your way out this evening you'll have a book list and of the many books written about this greatest of composers in Western civilization and this is coming from me a Mozart fanatic the wondrously lyrical book by edmund morris who lives up here in this area called beethoven the eternal composer is probably the best initial book that you should read and of the great biographies yonce Wofford's is probably the best beethoven conflict and struggle it'll be on the book lists Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven close your eyes and listen [Music] of course many of you recognize where that comes from it's the last movement of the great fifth symphony but who was Beethoven so if I say to you Beethoven what kind of adjectives come to your mind indomitable monumental creative revolutionary passionate heroic defiant courageous some of those adjectives are part of Beethoven the myth if I asked you a little bit more about Beethoven in an unvarnished sense Beethoven also was arrogant stubborn money-hungry penny-pinching suspicious devious messy yet strict in himself that's Beethoven the man can we correlate combined come to some kind of acceptance of these of this dialectic of the difference between Beethoven the man from the myth can we separate the man from the myth all great geniuses have a mythology about them or in the case of Beethoven tonight or the man in the myth entwined so there's going to be this notion of conflict and struggle this dialectic and Beethoven like so many geniuses is a study in contrasts here's a monumental genius he brought Viennese classical style to romanticism even though others had knocked on that door there's no question that Mozart knocked on the door of Romanticism with his Fantasia and the C minor and D minor piano concerto and Don Giovanni and the Requiem but even though we say that Mozart was the first freelance artist actually Beethoven was the first freelance artist in that he never worked for anybody he never worked for anybody he worked for himself he wasn't under the thumb of a Kapellmeister and given a salary anywhere 342 compositions of which as many of you know if you know your numbers 138 of which are numbered as Opus Oprah of which we have nine symphonies as you well know 32 piano sonatas seven can charity for various instruments five for piano of course there's the violin concerto and 204 works without opus numbers in German that's vodka owner of opus wo oh the whoo numbers and the whoo some of the wolves are very famous pieces but they just don't have a number Beethoven didn't want to put numbers on some of them so he pushed them back even though he wrote them early in his life he pushed them back and they never got cataloged as such interestingly for a man who came from a vocal background as we'll see in a second one opera which he worked on four times as you know there's what four versions of the Leonore overture we we have the Fidelia overture which is the one that's in the Opera and then there's three other also-rans one opera Mozart wrote 22 luca von Beethoven we don't really know the date of his birth we know that he was baptised on 17 September question 17 December of 1770 and probably that's 24 hours after birth in North Germany in a Catholic town so we back into the 16th of December that's what we usually celebrate as Beethoven's birthday although there is no birth certificate to prove that he lived in bond until 1792 took a trip to Vienna in 1787 that I'll tell you about in a moment and he lived in Vienna for the rest of his life just with a couple of trips to Pressburg and a couple of other towns but he lived basically the rest of his life in Vienna dying there at the age of 57 years old which is amazing that he could have done so much at 57 then again look at Mozart at 35 years and 9 months the notion of nature and nurture genetics Herrmann has to be looked at Beethoven's grand father Ludwig van Beethoven the same name a man whom we worship even though Ludwig van Beethoven's senior died when when Beethoven was three so despite what Beethoven said during his life about how she knew and loved his grandfather how much do you remember before your third birthday Ludwig van Beethoven was a very prosperous man a successful organist and chorister made quite a bit of money so that's good but it was squandered largely by Beethoven's father johann van Beethoven who was a relatively mediocre tenor a hornist a French hornist of violist a tavern keeper and an alcoholic and an abusive father in Beethoven's life that's one of the several things in that wondrous movie immortal beloved that was true about Beethoven's life that his father was abusive his mother Maria Magdalena was of German heritage and Beethoven really loved his mom Beethoven loved his mother and that plays into Beethoven's psycho dynamics as he got older Bonn in 1790 wasn't the capital of Germany because Germany wasn't yet a country in 1790 it was part of the Holy Roman Empire the German country like Austria and other countries came into being in the mid 19th century as you know Italy didn't become a country until 1860 as I said his grandfather was Ludwig van Beethoven so let me disabuse you of this van von thing right now it's Ludwig van Beethoven von Beethoven but it's not Ludwig von Beethoven Vaughan is the German appellative Ludwig van Beethoven came from the town of batula in Flanders which is Belgium so therefore going forward if I wake up at 2:00 in the morning it's V am most musicologists divided things in threes it's interesting and I believe in synthesizing more than dissecting so I'm going to lump two periods into one Beethoven's first period was the previa a period the bond works the bond compositions and there were some and then the VNA is classical style that begat began when he went to vagina for the for good in 1792 up to about 1803 the second period of Beethoven's compositional life was the hero style period from 1803 to about 1819 and then there is that mature sublime style of Beethoven that began in 1819 when his deafness was so profound that it was inconceivable that a man of this talent who needed to hear was bereft of that great sense he's one of the great one of the only people that I can think of who would have given up his sight for his hearing and indeed it's that third period that sublime period that mature period that gives some of his arguably most of his greatest works the Missis alumnus the last piano sonatas the last string quartets the DIA belly variations and of course the ninth symphony that was a personal journey through music given the roar on the other side of silence as George Eliot called it the roar on the other side of silence in terms of his physiognomies he was 5 foot 5 inches tall muscular and stocky pockmarked with acne and small or small pox scars which wasn't that uncommon back then and as all you know Orry you know he has a very prominent forehead unlike Mozart many of whose portraits are unattested and I've written a lot about that in the published literature Beethoven was painted by the best painters of his area in Central Europe we have numerous paintings of Beethoven that are truly him and you'll see them you'll see most of them this evening and you can see how prominent the forehead is a strong chin and he was dark complexioned interestingly enough to the point that in Bonn he was nicknamed it espanol or that would be Italian for the Spaniard because he looked swarthy and he looked Latin that muscular stocky body and that prominent forehead made him sort of lean forward when he was walking and this very famous caricature by techcheck of 1823 shows you our hero the object of our affection this evening sort of leaning forward as he is walking and he walked a lot as we will see Hyden Mozart Beethoven and when we talk about hidin Mozart in early Beethoven we are caught talking about the core the heart of Viennese classical style what was the relationship between these three great geniuses well you can see from the dates Hyden was the grandpa Mozart was 14 years older than Beethoven and well established in Vienna when Beethoven arrived for the first time in April of 1787 for two weeks specifically under the aegis of and promotion of the Bonn aristocrats count vol Stein and others who wanted him to meet Mozart so badly and as Beethoven left bond for the 600-mile journey to Vienna Beethoven's first patron further non-countable Stein said and I quote my dear Beethoven you are now leaving for Vienna to consummate a long desire with the help of assiduous work may you receive the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Hyden you will read that Beethoven played for Mozart and that Mozart said to his friends watch that man someday he's going to make a great name for himself and there'll be something to talk about my research which is part of the references that you will receive is that they never met Beethoven's arrogance was such that would he not have mentioned in his letters or to friends that he had met the great Mozart Mozart was the god of Vienna when Beethoven got there in April of 1787 after this five-week journey from bond but Beethoven was only there for two weeks because mom Maria Maddalena Beethoven was sick of tuberculosis and was dying and a letter got to him from his brothers and he had to run back to Bonn and so he left there's no mention in any of Mozart's letters that they met there's no mention in any of Beethoven's letters that they met Karl cherni and Ferdinand Reis Beethoven's - best friends don't think that he ever played for Beethoven and the only reference we have of this meeting this great meeting is Otto Yong in 1856 the great Mozart biographer who said that quote I have it on great authority that Mozart may have heard Beethoven playing and he goes on to describe the event and the quote that I gave you so there's some mythology for you but even though Mozart and Beethoven never met in my opinion and there's no data to prove me wrong there's no question that Mozart was integral to Beethoven's life and musical style in fact the jupiter symphony C major so glorious and brilliant and the first symphony of Beethoven almost meld together so here is Symphony number one by Ludwig van Beethoven I'm sorry about the 30 second preamble but it's Leonard Bernstein in the event of thought harmonic so you'll enjoy that too so here we are in the music Baron in Vienna many loved the Vienna Philharmonic almost as much as he loved the BSO and the New York Philharmonic and they loved him some of his greatest recordings are with the Vienna Philharmonic Oh you got a love Lenny he's so cool he's just so cool he knows everything notice no score like metropolis before him and warn myself it's very different from that last moment of the fifth isn't it it's very controlled [Music] it's Mozart Ian but there's something also about it that's not Mozart here there's a propulsive quality to Beethoven even in the slow Adagio sections [Music] [Applause] so there's a mozart hangin hidin s quality too early beethoven they do mel together in this is classic Viennese classical style tonic dominant any modulation comes back to home keys very quickly nothing scary nothing's nothing passionately even but there's that repulsive momentous quality about it even as he was composing and even as he was making his way in Vienna six years before this date he wrote to his brothers that he was having trouble hearing and so in 1802 in the summer of 1802 he moved to Heiligenstadt which is outside of Vienna but was quieter and more pastoral it was a place that he could think and not be annoyed by the horse carriages and the yelling and of the street people but he recognized by the November of that yell by October of that year that the deafness was real and let me read you the Heiligenstadt Testament this is important do you have to hear all of it to my brothers Carl and Johann you who think I am stubborn how greatly do you wronged me you do not know the secret causes of my seeming to be so for six years I have been a hopeless case aggravated by senseless physicians cheated in the hope of improvement finally compelled to face the prospect of a lasting malady whose cure will take years or perhaps be impossible I was compelled to isolate myself to live in loneliness when I tried to forget all of this how harsh it was I repulsed by the sad experience of my bad hearing it was impossible to say to people speak louder shout for I am deaf how could I possibly admit to such an infirmity in the one sense which should have been more perfect in me than others a sense which I once possessed in the highest of perfection such as few surely in my profession have enjoyed I must live like an egg if I approach people a hot terrorist seizes upon me a fear that I may be subjected to the danger of letting my condition be observed thus it has been during the past year which I spent in the country commanded by my intelligent physician to spare my hearing as much as possible what a humiliation when one stood beside me and heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing or someone heard the Shepherd singing and again I heard nothing such incidents brought me to the verge of despair but little more and I would have put an end to my life only art has withheld me as it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt called upon me to produce and so I have endured this wretched existence the notion of creativity and genius is fascinating to me I would have killed myself or might have hurt myself and so would have you you would have been so disconsolate and so depressed you would have done something or you would have stopped composing you would have done something else you would have just been bummed out and you would have spent the rest of your days not being as created as you were yesterday a genius Mozart Monet with his cataracts do God with his optic neuropathy a genius Mozart with all of his many diseases a genius sees disease not as an obstacle but as an opportunity and we would not have Beethoven's music had he not gone death we would not have Monet's last great works had he not gone blind Duga changing from oils to pastels to sculpture to photography changing the media in which he worked not giving up his art think about that think about genius and creativity and the indefatigable courage and power of someone like Beethoven so that the chronology is the chronology diminished hearing in 1796 so he was born in 1770 so at 26 he starts not noticing he can hear that's early I mean you and I have been here but I'm in my 60s this was in 20 26 years of age tinnitus which is ringing in the ear which often occurs with neurosensory hearing loss we read the Heiligenstadt Testament he started using ear trumpets he was having difficulty with higher pitches he started having conversation books meaning he would write questions and people would write the answers or he would say the question they would write the answer in the conversation book and in 1819 that's when we talk about the mature sublime style the progression to total sensory neural deafened deafness now there's argument about that some authors say that Beethoven had some hearing well into the 1820s well into 1823 which is the date of the ninth symphony but whatever he had was minimal and we'll see a beautiful excerpt of immortal beloved to give you an example of what might have occurred in his life though there are some of his ear trumpets his loonette's and cornets and his conversation book there's a page from his conversation book he would ask a question and the recipient would write the answer I talked about Beethoven walking Mozart loved to walk in the forests outside of Vienna Beethoven to walk as did Brahms with pieces of paper settle settle chance scraps of paper on which he would write down motifs and melodic fragments against a tree on while he was walking he would write down six or seven notes figurations and then when he got back to Vienna he would figure that all out fascinating that walking that creative walking is such a catalyst for the creative spark for the creative process not only in Beethoven but in Mozart and in Brahms who adored both Mozart and Beethoven and in whose music we hear Mozart and Beethoven and Brahms probably was the last of the great romantics who incorporated classical style in his music even as he was prefiguring Schoenberg and modernism as I mentioned earlier Beethoven had patrons he didn't work for anybody but he had people that supported him that loved his work and that supported him Prince Carl each norske cart Andrei resumed offski and Prince Joseph lobkowitz were three of his Viennese patron look at what he wrote for them the piano trio opus one in the second symphony and the pathetique sonata for Telugu offski three great string quartets the opus 59 group for little for azimoff's key the reson watski quartets and for lobkowitz the third fifth and sixth symphonies three string quartets in the triple concerto but for the Archduke Rudolf who was by the way his only composition student Beethoven had about seven or eight well more than that he had many piano students mostly young pretty aristocratic women that we will talk about momentarily Mozart did too by the way Hummel being Mozart's greatest piano student that was a guy but most of Mozart's great piano students were phenomenally gifted women Beethoven as well had many piano students one composition student the Archduke Rudolf who was the younger brother of leopold ii and beethoven dedicated the Archduke piano trio the fourth and fifth piano concerto lays ado piano sonata the hammer clavier piano sonata the violin sonata opus 96 the missus alumnus was dedicated to the Archduke and the grossa fuga of the opus 130 which is today even today this modern dissonant apiece that's hard for us to really understand and listen to 200 years later let's listen to a bit of the beautiful Archduke which is one of the masterpieces of the piano trio literature with the trio solely steam this in the Tchaikovsky to me are the two greatest piano trios the a minor Tchaikovsky [Music] there's a sense of nobility here [Music] [Applause] [Music] we must move on to sadly even as he's composing even as he's losing his hearing his defiant courageous indefatigable self says I am not content with my work so far henceforth I shall take a new path and I sort of did a little bit of chronology difference near the opus 97 was obviously after 1802 we talked about people's handwriting's as a people's calligraphy as a barometer a benchmark a metric of who they are so there you see Beethoven in the ninth symphony and it's rushed but good but we have this thought that Beethoven would just scratch things out and rub things out and restart them and this is a this is a Beethoven composition that is classic Beethoven he didn't like that idea so he struck it out and started again not that Mozart is perfect this is a Mozart composition this is the beginning of one of the fantasies and you can see that it's clean much cleaner than Beethoven also notice how the the the staves are more vertical and Beethoven's were much more angular moving forward that propulsive quality is even seen in the calligraphy but made but Mozart made mistakes too this this mythology that Mozart was the a man who insists of the deity just taking the deities notes and just writing everything down as fast as he could is another lie the lie lie you know that's just you know the truth is the lie that all of us currently believe that's a lie that you shouldn't believe anymore the truth about Mozart is that he was a human being and he made mistakes but it is true that his compositions tended to be more cleaner but then again Mozart wrote largely in Viennese classical style with a lot of rules and a lot of constraints when you're dealing with Romanticism you're dealing with anything-goes you're dealing with breaking rules and when you break rules and there are no rules because you're inventing the rules as you're going along and you can see that Beethoven had to figure things out and that passion in Beethoven is evident everywhere Marie Cipollini the last movement of the apassionata sinara [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] again that propulsive momentum always pushing forward driving [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] diminished seventh that ambiguous chord and he goes on we talk about when does romanticism begin well I told you that romanticism really begins in the 1780s with Mozart let's not forget that and the young homo and the young Spore but really romanticism began on April 7th 1805 when the audience at the Teatro on der Veen which had just been built in 1801 heard the Eroica symphony and this is a fascinating story this is part of that new path in music that Beethoven was talking about the original dedicate a of the Eroica symphony was Napoleon himself beethoven liked the early Napoleon and that Napoleon was breaking rules and seeming to be someone who was going to destroy the aristocracy and destroy the status quo and destroy all it was sort of accreted and and caked and old and hierarchical and break all of that but even as Beethoven was writing the third symphony which he originally called bonaparte symphony he changed it because he saw what Napoleon was doing it was about to invade Vienna at this point and so he changes the dedication from Bonaparte symphony to pet fest Ajara else avenida de un grande war more in italian on the cover on the frontispiece to celebrate the memory of a great man meaning they uh Napoleon and he dedicates it to one of his patrons count lobkowitz heroic style we talked about this is the second part of Beethoven's style we had the early pianist of the early classical style this is the heroic style drama birth resistance strife rebirth driving rhythms the monumentality and the propulsion the transcendence so here is a bit of the Eroica so that we here what in 1803 while 1805 excuse me was the beginning of romanticism even though they have chocolate we dub each Napoleon on the horse in the back we know that it's not for Napoleon it was scratched [Music] now to our 20th century years it sounds pretty normal pretty classical almost but turn the dial back 200 years this was new this was new music it was different vital [Music] [Music] so Beethoven says the true artist is not proud he sees that art has no limits he feels how far he is from the goal though he may be admired by others he is said not to have reached that point at which his genius appears as a distant guiding Sun on December 22nd 1808 in the bitter cold of Vienna in an unheated auditorium at the theater and ravine Beethoven put on what is still considered the greatest show on earth in classical music one man one orchestra 8 pieces of music with an intermission that's what the little - reminds me of to tell you so there was an intermission it was about three and a half hours long it began with the beautiful Aria ah perfetto one of Beethoven's gorgeous vocal pieces odd delay EDA being another one undefended leaped of being another one this is a man who nobody thinks can write for the voice wrote gorgeous things for the voice then the pastoral symphony notice that it came before the fifth but that's another story about which was written first who doesn't really matter he programmed the pasture land by the way he called it the pastoral the two of the nine symphonies that were named by Beethoven were the Eroica he named it and the pastoral the third and the sixth the others if they have nicknames were not by him the Gloria and the from the mass in c-major which you don't hear very much the mass in cement you hear the mists of solemnity to perform but the mass and see is glorious as well the fourth piano concerto with our hero Ludwig as soloist of course then we intermission then the fifth symphony the Sanctus and Benedictus from the mass some improvisations and then he ends with the choral fantasy which if any of you know is this glorious piece of music for piano Orchestra and full chorus and has sort of ode to joy' Inklings in the in the last part of it go home and listen to the choral fantasy is absolutely spectacular it's a spectacular showpiece for the piano and then of course we have this great piece of music and again we have many and we have the Vienna Philharmonic and I guess if anybody asks you Beethoven this is what you're going to respond [Applause] [Music] the fifth I will take fate by the throat it will never Bend me completely to its will [Music] so that defiance is not mythology is it I love that Lenny tries to eke out every drop of passion and romanticism when he conducts Beethoven Brahms or Molly he draws it out of the orchestra [Music] I will take faith by the throat it will never Bend me completely to its will but there's an intimate side to Beethoven and when I was in medical school I found this record Robert White was still alive Sam Sanders was still alive as a very young yo-yo ma and Annika vafan who's been principal violinist of the New York of the New Haven's symphony until very recently I think she may still be in the top right this is one of my favorite records this is Beethoven writing Welsh Irish and Scottish songs Oh merry at thy window B I love this Beethoven with an exquisite yo-yo ma Robert White is still alive I apologize he's teaching a Juilliard my mistake thank goodness just listen to how sweet this is they told [Music] Oh [Music] isn't that nice that's sweet and these are relatively late opus 108 is up there the 18 teens 18 17 there you go and Robert White's sweet Irish tenor is just phenomenal [Music] music is like a dream one that I cannot hear so with all of the works that you hearing he's losing his hearing so as a physician I have spent decades looking at the medical histories of my heroes Mozart and Beethoven Schumann and Schubert Brahms so of course there's lots of diagnosis here partly because during his life we don't have lab data and we just have clinical information that we try to understand so he had smallpox his mother died of tuberculosis he was going deaf he had headaches and depression he probably was cyclothymic he had terrible GI problems terrible throughout his life colic in in deutsche diarrhea and abdominal pain he had rheumatic fever and gout as an ophthalmologist I've explored his eye problems he had recurrent uveitis iritis jaundice which is liver disease and at the end of his life dropsy which is tremendous lymphedema to the point that he had to be paracentesis many times in his abdomen to remove liters of fluid of ascites fluid this multi-system analogic disease might have been Crohn's we're not really sure sarcoid has been posited systemic lupus whenever you have a lot of pieces a lot of diagnosis on a piece of paper nobody knows what's going on the diagnosis of his deafness has been debated the cochlear otosclerosis the sensory neural hearing loss people think that it was something to do with lead in the wine that he was drinking and it is true that they would fortify wines in Europe in that time with lead they didn't know that lead was toxic in the early 1800s so it's it's been it's been thought that Beethoven's problems were led related Beethoven's death was inferentially led related but I'm going to show you some data against that Paget's disease of bone not of the cervix Paget's disease of bone there are several pageants diseases would explain the high frontal bossing that he had this enormous forehead but that's and another guess at a diagnosis again the ophthalmology piece because I'm an ophthalmologist is that he dedicated the transcription of his opus 20 September 1 sin my life for clarinet cello and piano to a physician who was his eye doctor and Beethoven was nearsighted he was myopic and he developed my pain and he had several episodes of iritis which could have been related to his bowel disease we now know that iritis III inflammations have a relationship among other things to rheumatoid arthritis of course but also to inflammatory bowel disease there is a relationship there that's only been known for the last maybe 15 years he had liver failure and we know that as you'll see in a moment from the autopsy hepatic coma was the end and according to Anselm Hooton Brenner who was in the room the day that motivated Beethoven died March 26 1827 in the schwartzman year house he says there was a sudden flash of lightning which illuminated the death chamber while snow lay outside and a violent thunderclap at this startling awful peal of thunder the dying man suddenly raised his head and stretched out his right arm majestically like a general giving orders to an army this was but for an instant the arm sank down he fell back beethoven was dead what were Beethoven's last words another mythology some say was plowed et Ameche comedia finita s applaud clap friends the comedy is ended another source says that it was pity pity too late because his dear friend Hummel the same homeworld that Mozart trained had brought several wonderful bottles of wine and Beethoven understood what Hummel was giving him and said pity pity too late that I can't drink it because I'm I'm sick I'm very sick and says to Hummel is it not true Hummel that I have some talent after all interesting so one of those three things or perhaps none of those three things were his last words again there's mythology that we some tides can't figure out his funeral cortege was one of the most important things ever to happen to Vienna before the 1850s which over 30,000 people in the central square witnessing the cortege there's the death mask and you can see the swelling of his face it's tremendous swelling and you can see there so the official death certificate says vos they're stooped but Erick was also on Mozart's death certificate among other things but we're not talking about Mozart tonight the suit basically means water in the body so drop C or water or edema interestingly the autopsy was done by Professor Karl vogner whose assistant was Karl rokitansky Karl rokitansky was on the page one of our pathology book in medical school Cornell in 1973 rokitansky was the father the grandfather of anatomic pathology and his first autopsy of the 60,000 that he did in his brilliant career was assisting vogner not Ricard Wagner Karl vogner on the autopsy of beethoven emaciated skull with great thickness brain of deep and wide convolution auditory nerves that were shriveled arteries dilated to more than a crows quill and like cartilage massive amounts of abdominal fluid liver with cirrhosis a spleen double the normal size and renal papillary necrosis which was actually a diagnosis that they knew about back then in the kidneys now during that funeral cortege he lays in state and dozens of people walked by and a few of them snip hair it was something that was commonly done back then and several pieces or several lockets if you will of Beethoven's hair have gone found their way to the present day and there's an interesting book by Russell Martin called Beethoven's hair which you might want to get I didn't put it on the reference list because it's been debated about the hair but the hair exists in 1994 at South Beach it was purchased by the IRA brilliant Beethoven Center in California for seventy three hundred dollars not that much money for Beethoven's hair but anyway there are examples of Beethoven's hair in Hartford at the Library of Congress at the British Library in London and at the Beethoven House in Bonn and again in course at the IRA brilliant Beethoven's Center they have the IRA billions Center set the hair Sam two two laboratories the Argonne lab near Chicago being one of them and they sent bone samples from the skull it's a long story about the skull but we have Beethoven skull or at least bone fragments from the skull Mozart's calvarium a calvarium is a skull minus the mandible at the mozart am may or may not be Mozart's probably isn't and that's a long story that I can tell you about in a different day but with respect to Beethoven we do have bone fragments so they tested the bone fragments and they found lead levels that were a hundred times normal so this is where the story of lead comes into play no mercury by the way and therefore no syphilis you know back then everybody had syphilis what beethoven didn't have syphilis and neither did mozart for that matter mercury was the only thing they had back then for syphilis they didn't have penicillin that was Fleming in 1940's so in 1800s they had mercury there was no mercury detected at all let poisoning can cause lots of stuff hypertension headaches irritability memory loss gastroenteritis hearing loss muscle pain good metal damage and cataracts just for starters but the lead poisoning hypothesis has been contested professor Todd at Mount Sinai in New York City got examples of the hair and bone and he says there are normal bone level a normal bone lead levels excuse me so professor Todd recently at Sinai disputes the lead story in Beethoven saying that he may have drunk led wine leaded wine but he didn't have sufficient amounts of lead to cause toxicity that argument has been rebutted by people that have gone deep into the bone fragments and claim that there's lead there because Todd's argument is if you find lead on a superficial part of bone that's irrelevant for lead to cause disease it has to be well deep into the bone and weld and you can't tell from the hair but well deep into the bone so there's an argument there as well Beethoven and eros Beethoven in love and so we're getting towards the back of the story now Beethoven was a serial monogamist as far as I know but he always fell in love with unattainable women they were beautiful talented either vocally or pianistic aleem or the latter and unattainable in that they were all aristocrats that was his life although his first love which most people don't know about was his best friend's sister eleanor von bronec back in bonn whom he sweetly used to call Lauren Lauren was his first love and as Professor Morris beautifully says in his book Beethoven the eternal composer the closest that Ludwig got to lauren was thigh to thigh touching during piano sonatas that they played together the Heiligenstadt Testament to his brothers Carl and Johann was never sent the letter to the immortal beloved was never sent and here it is good morning on the seventh of July 1812 though still in bed my thoughts go out to you my immortal beloved so there was a woman in his life that he loved more than the others joyfully then sadly waiting to learn whether or not fate will hear us I can only live fully with you or not at all yes I am resolved to wander away from you until I can fly to your arms and say that I am really at home with you and can send my soul in wrapped in you into the land of spirits yes unhappily it must be so you will be the more contained since you know my fidelity no one else can ever possess my heart never oh god why must one be parted from one whom one so loves and yet my life in Vienna is a wretched life your love makes me at once the happiest and the unhappiest of men at mine age age I need a steady quiet life can that be so in our connection my angel I have just been told that the male coach goes every day therefore I must close at once so that you may receive the letter at once become only by calm consideration of our consistence can we achieve our purpose to live together become love me today yesterday what tearful longings for you you you my life my all farewell I'll continue to love me never misjudge the most faithful heart of your beloved and we see his handwriting there on the right ever thine ever mine ever ours Ludwig von Beethoven so there are many candidates and this has been debated for decades countess Juliet the Richard II the philanthropist Antony Brentano the countess Josephine von Brunswick countess Teresa van Brunswick her sister Baroness Teresa Malfatti and the countess anna marie air Dodi so there's at least six women that are in the running for the dealer Bleeker gillip to the The Immortal Beloved for Julieta which are two he wrote the moonlight sonata and I love this scene from The Immortal Beloved Darry Oldham playing Beethoven those of you that have seen the movie and looking quite a bit like him there's Juliet da [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] sometimes cinema can really show you what might have really happened I choose to believe that this is sort of something that did happen but there were others that he loved the Baroness Theresa Malfatti he wrote a piece called fer Teresa but it was miss printed by breitkopf and it became something that you know even more for ELISA which every piano student does at about the third or fourth year [Music] for the countess era Dodie he wrote piano works he wrote vocal works and he dedicated his to opus one or two cello sonatas for countess Josephine von Brunswick he wrote Andy Hoffman for countess Theresa von brutha she also wrote some pieces of music Maynard Solomon Maynard Solomon and his great biography of Beethoven in the 1990s has come to the conclusion that of these two finalists it was Antony Brentano that was the immortal beloved and that's been contested as well but to Brentano there were the undie Goleta vocal works there was the dabeli variations in the last couple of years of his life and she was the presumptive dedicate a of the two great piano sonatas the opus one ten and the opus one eleven and so it is thought that she was the one that fits the bill as the dedicateed of the love letters from templates that we just read The Immortal Beloved love letter which by the way was found in Beethoven's desk along with the Heiligenstadt Testament by Schindler after Beethoven died neither letter was ever sent the other tragedy in Beethoven's life was the argument about his nephew Karl Karl was the son of Beethoven's brother called Kaspar and Joanna Reece von Beethoven and in the movie it's Joanna Reece that is the immortal beloved which is a fascinating psychodynamic that that the producers and the directors of the movie made the sister-in-law of all people The Immortal Beloved clearly the same way that Sally area wasn't there when Mozart died that that whole thing was Schaffer and Forman but it was a great movie Amadeus was one of the great movies ever made because of the music if nothing else and for Hollywood this was a great storyline but at what she wasn't The Immortal Beloved but she was the mother of Beethoven's nephew Karl there were lawsuits galore for seven years here's a man who can't hear who's trying to compose who's in courtrooms trying to take custody of his nephew and he ends up winning the lawsuit because Joanna was a bit dissolute in her life then he loses custody and he gains it again the poor kid attempts suicide along the way he does end up getting this and clearly Carl was the son that he never had from the woman that he never was able to marry or a woman that he was never able to marry we hear his anguish in the beginning of the string quartet in F major the opus 135 you can hear the words Moses sign must it be esamoo sign it must be [Applause] this is part of that mature sublime Beethoven on the other side of silence [Music] Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was begun in 1817 and completed in 1824 and you recognize it of course for that great glorious last movement and it was the first symphony because I can't think of one written by Hyden Mozart or Vivaldi or Haase or anybody that included a chorus the architecture is monumental there are themes that are in Sonata form which is harkening back to Viennese classical style there are modal motifs going back to the sixteenth century there's fugue encounter point from his days as a student with Hyden and yet it is all about Beethoven he is hearing was so bad at that point that he was not allowed to conduct the piece he was allowed to stand next to the conductor to give the tempi of the four movements and at the end of the Beethoven ninth you'll know the story he was so deaf but he couldn't know he didn't know that this that the symphony was over and so Carol Unger Carolyn Unger the alto had to turn him physically around to face the adoring crowd who was standing and throwing hats in the air and giving him the adoration that he so deserved this great work the symphony number nine and D minor the ode to joy' my German is terrible but listen to the words freude schöner Goethe funkin talked her house Elysium verba treyton foyer trunk and he militia din high leaked on diamonds Alber binden wieder vasty modus trinket Isle alle menschen werden brüder Vodun zanthor flugel vite what does that mean joy beautiful spark of the Gods daughter of Elysium we enter drunk with fire by heavenly sanctuary by enchantments bind together that which custom has divided all people become brothers where thy gentle wings abide this was a Schiller drinking song that Beethoven heard in the 1780s and re fashioned into one of the most glorious uplifting noble pieces of music ever written [Music] Simon Rattle [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] oh I said Sir Simon Rattle was franz veltrin most my apologies their hair looks like and so finally Beethoven's legacy a genius who was never satisfied the conflict and the struggle that defined his life a man who confronted and conquered his illness he broke open the door to romanticism any shaped music for a century the modern orchestra devolves from Beethoven the modern piano devolves from Beethoven music criticism devolves from Beethoven and those last and greatest works the roar which lies on the other side of silence as George Eliot said this monumental Universal indomitable spirit with who has statues everywhere in your a bond of course worships him there's two statues in Vienna one in the center of town and of course one in the central friedhof next to Schubert and Brahms he's in the middle in 1977 both Voyager spacecraft contained golden records and on those golden records were various types of music from all over the world the Beethoven pieces were the fifth symphony part of the fifth symphony and part of the opus 132 string quartet and so my last moment with you this evening is to listen to the heiliger danke song from the string quartet in a minor opus 132 a Cathedral of sound that he couldn't hear and it's the highlig of donkus on is a holy song of Thanksgiving he was sick as he was sick throughout his life and he got better and this is a convalescent giving thanks to the deity in the Lydian mode we're going to hear the Alban barracks quartet doing the Heidegger danke song movement of the string quartet in a minor opus 132 [Music] [Music] I hate to stop but it's getting late especially because it changes or something glorious so give me two minutes [Music] [Applause] [Music] music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy thank you very much [Applause] you

Channel: Ed Edelson

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Length: 67min 27sec (4047 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 08 2020