his 1802 stay in Heiligenstadt he had been spiraling into a maddening depression, caused by the despair over learning of his eventual deafness. This depression drove him away from people. He was gripped by a crippling fear at the thought of it being discovered that he – a musical genius and master musician, who by all means should have a better sense of hearing than the rest of us – was deaf.
This letter would later become known as the “Heiligenstadt Testament”. In it he decided that he would devote the rest of his life solely to the creation of music. In his Testament, Beethoven remarks upon the tragedy of not being able to hear music being made and says, “…but little more and I would have put an end to my life – only art it was that withheld me, ah it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt called upon to produce…”.(1) Although this kind of undying devotion to music is quite common among musicians now, it was relatively rare before Beethoven’s Testament.
This catharsis he experienced radically altered the way he wrote; evidenced in his third symphony, nicknamed the Eroica. With it, Beethoven created a musical experience that was altogether different from any symphonic piece of music that had ever been written. The Eroica is not entirely without Classical form or style, but with it Beethoven stretches and breaks conventions that were deemed unbreakable at the time. He brings the listener on the journey of a great hero(2); grand scenes of valor, tremendous battles, funerals, storms and celebrations are among the many images painted in our minds when listening all the way through the four movement piece. Parallels can be drawn here to Beethoven's struggle – born with an incredible talent for music, he battles with the single most feared condition by all musicians: deafness. The struggle leads him to contemplate his own demise, leads him to experience the storm of depression, but in the end he is saved by the hope that there is more work he needs to do before he dies. This hope allows our hero to vanquish his depression and live on to compose pieces like his Symphony No. 5 and Symphony No. 9 (“Ode to Joy”); pieces so undeniably brilliant and beautiful that they are still some of the most popularly performed musical compositions ever written.
It would be a gross understatement to say that Ludwig von Beethoven is one of the most influential musicians who has ever lived. The music he wrote transcends the boundaries of time and culture through its universal appeal to people of all backgrounds, in almost every generation since his death. Beethoven found hope where most of the rest of us would have found despair, and he used this hope to not only pull himself out of a suicidal frame of mind, but also to rock the foundations of music. His persistent and fervent hope for his own future started a revolution that would change music forever.
1. A. W. Thayer, Life of Beethoven (London: Centaur Press, Ltd., 1960).
2. It is generally accepted that Beethoven originally wrote his Symphony No. 3 (Eroica) for Napoleon Bonaparte, who he considered to be the savior of democracy and liberty in Europe. When he learned that Napoleon had crowned himself Emperor, Beethoven furiously scratched out the dedication (nearly scratching a hole all the way through the score) and replaced it with it's current title, and a subtext that read “To the memory of a great man”.
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