Beethoven
The Art of Living
"He
was a severe and difficult man, impetuous, disliking formality, frequently
reproachful and ill-tempered. But his sufferings were immense. For the last 30
years of his life he was deaf. For six years he kept his disability secret, and
in his anguish came close to suicide. Later, he became more reconciled to it
and carried a conversation book, in which his companions wrote their questions.
To achieve contact with the sounds as he composed them, he held a stick between
his teeth which returned vibrations from the piano."
-
An excerpt from the "Life and Times of Beethoven"
If I were to apply M.K. Gandhi’s quote “My life is
my message” to Beethoven’s life then his message is as loud and clear as a
trumpet in a fanfare: hard work and perseverance lead to great things.
Beethoven is considered great not because he composed despite being deaf, but
because his compositions were simply exceptional. Anyone who has heard his most
famous Ninth symphony knows this. But, for me, the real mystery is the source
of his motivation.
Beethoven’s life was riddled with every problem
imaginable. Poor family, Abusive father, early death of the mother, financially
struggles, heartbreak, deafness, depression, family problems, a suicidal nephew
to take care of….. the list goes on. Most people would think that true music
comes from misery and sorrow; the obvious motif of the Opus that is his life.
It definitely had an influence on the way he composed, dramatic, grandiose
sometimes philosophical. But I don’t believe that to be the whole reason for
his driving force. I believe the answer is a lot more complex and subtle, qualities
also present in his music.
Consider this: to write this simple article, a mere
5 paragraphs has taken me a whole night and day of thinking and formulating
sentences. Beethoven’s works, hardly simple, were 60-70 pages, sometimes more
than a 100 pages long. Works like the 5th symphony, 9th
symphony, Pastoral symphony, Emperor piano concerto, moonlight sonata, the Pathetique
sonata, and The Tempest sonata are no mean feats. Passion and emotion, they
last for short spurts of time. They produce ideas, but they do not help with
execution. It takes hours of patience and meticulous work to compose like this.
Beethoven was not just an artist, he must have been a scientist, rational and
practical, determined to uncover the secrets of music.
On a side note, sometimes I wonder: Suppose he
wasn’t deaf, would he still have composed the same pieces in the same way? Did
his deafness somehow help him compose better? He spent 30 years of his life
being deaf. Most of his greatest pieces were written after he went deaf. What
if he didn’t have a difficult life, and he never went deaf, what would his
music be like then?
So, to summarise the things we have so far
discovered about Beethoven: he was dramatic, subtle, passionate, emotional,
rational, practical, patient, meticulous, ill-tempered, and reproachful all at
the same time. In other words, he was human. Let’s make a note of this so that
when people talk about Artificial Intelligence being able to compose music, we
can still be proud to be and live as humans, as Beethoven has so wonderfully shown
us.
