Beethoven is 250 years old this week! He was baptized on December 17, 1770, and so his undocumented birthday was likely December 15 or 16, given the fact that babies were usually baptized when they were a day or two old.
This past year, I've enjoyed listening to all of Beethoven's recorded works on 90 CDs, in a Naxos set. If I had been really diligent, I would've purchased the Deutsche Gramophone set of 120 CDs, with duplicates of classic performances. 90 was plenty I took a few notes as I listened, which I labeled "Beethoven 250."
Beethoven is so well-known for his symphonies, concertos, piano sonatas, string quartets, and his single opera. It was interesting to me how much of his lifelong composition included other kinds of chamber works, as well songs, and vocal works for particular occasions. You can listen to the more famous works and have a tremendous number of pieces still to hear.
As I've written before on this blog: When I was little, I loved the Peanuts comics and enjoyed getting paperback collections of the strips. Nearly every December 16, the story concerned Beethoven’s birthday and Schroeder’s celebration of it. Of course, Schroeder also performed Beethoven sonatas and other works on his toy piano.
Thus inspired by a favorite comic strip, I liked certain Beethoven compositions when I was young. In those days, the Huntley-Brinkley evening news on NBC concluded with the scherzo from Beethoven’s Ninth. I wrote NBC to find out the title and got a letter back! Subsequently, I found a used recording of the symphony at our hometown library’s annual book sale. Eventually, I also found LPs of the fifth and seventh symphonies and some of his named sonatas. I took piano lessons, but somehow never managed the spontaneous, unpracticed skill of Schroeder.
Our hometown library acquired a copy of George R. Marek’s Beethoven: Biography of a Genius (Funk & Wagnall’s, 1969) when it was published or perhaps the following year. I didn't read the whole book but I enjoyed checking it out. I was 12 in 1969, and at 13 and 14 I had unrequited crushes on a couple of girls, which unfortunately aggravated some childhood depression I’d had even earlier. Feeling scarily hopeless at such a young age, I found comfort in the fact that, as Marek discussed, Beethoven struggled for acceptance, too!
Marek’s chapter on “The Immortal Beloved” is interesting. Beethoven's letter to his “Unsterbliche Geliebte,” dated July 6-7 and later analyzed to be 1812, was found among his effects after he died. But who was the woman, to whom Beethoven wrote with such passion? Was the letter returned to him, or did he never send it? Reviewing the numerous women important to Beethoven---like Josephine Brunsvik, Guilietta Guicciardi, Antonie Brentano,, Amalie Sebald, Bettina Brentano, Dorothea Ertmann, and Therese Brunsvik---many scholars argue for Josephine Brunsvik. Marek builds an interesting circumstantial case for Dorothea Ertmann. From time to time I still leaf through my own copy of Marek's thick book, which gives an excellent sense of the composer’s era and life.
Beethoven sticks to my childhood Christmas memories, I suppose because of the Peanuts paperback collections, some of which I received as presents. I still have them. And, of course, December 16 was, at least for the prodigy Schroeder, a significant day just nine days from Christmas, with a gladness all its own.
Happy birthday, Ludwig! I hope that, somehow, you know of the joy and love that so many of us feel toward you and your music!
(The photo is from the Charles M. Schulz Museum Facebook page, the strip for Dec. 15, 1958 https://www.facebook.com/schulzmuseum/posts/tomorrow-is-beethovens-birthday-this-strip-was-published-on-december-15-1958/10156044433168054/)
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