Beethoven: How the World's First Rock Star Changed Music Forever BY Lucas Reilly December 1, 2016 Thumbing his nose at authority and whipping crowds into a frenzy, he changed music forever. Little did they know, Beethoven was composing like a man possessed. At his apartment, he stomped out tempos and pounded his piano keys so hard the strings snapped. Sweat-stained manuscripts littered the room. He was so focused, he often forgot to empty the chamber pot under his piano. The piece would be his grandest yet: Symphony No. 9 in D minor. With it, he planned to give those spies reason to worry— Ludwig van Beethoven was often not only would the piece be political, but he mistaken for a vagrant. With wads of yellow intended to play it for the largest audience cotton stuffed in his ears, he stomped around possible. The music, he hoped, would put the 1820s Vienna, flailing his arms, mumbling as nobility in its place. he scribbled on scraps of paper. Residents would frequently alert the police. Once, he was Born to a family of Flemish court tossed in jail when cops refused to believe he musicians in 1770, Beethoven had no choice was the city’s most famous composer. “You’re but to take up music. His grandfather was a a tramp!” they argued. “Beethoven doesn’t well-respected music director in Bonn, look like this.” Germany. His father, Johann, was a not-so- well-respected court singer who gave young The city was crawling with spies—they Ludwig piano lessons. Some nights, Johann lurked in taverns, markets, and coffeehouses, would stagger home from the tavern, barge into looking to suss out anti-aristocratic rebels. Ludwig’s room, and make him practice until Since Beethoven seemed suspect, these spies dawn. The piano keys were routinely glazed followed him and eavesdropped on his with tears. conversations. But authorities didn’t consider him a real threat. Like the rest of Vienna, they A decade earlier, 7-year-old Mozart had thought he was crazy. It had been nearly 10 toured Europe, playing music for royal courts years since he wrote his Symphony No. 8, and and generating income for his family. Johann just as long since he’d last given a public dreamed of a similar course for his son. He lied concert. “He is apparently quite incapable of about Ludwig’s age to make him appear greater accomplishments,” the newspaper younger, and for a time, even Ludwig didn’t Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung concluded. know his real age. But the Beethovens saw neither fame nor fortune. Johann’s drinking debts were so deep his wife had to sell her clothes. When resentment. A few hundred miles to the west, in Ludwig turned 11, his family pulled him from France, aristocrats were being queued up for elementary school to focus on music full-time. the guillotine, and a stiff anti-royalist air was The truncated education meant he never sweeping in toward Vienna. While not a fan of mastered spelling or simple multiplication. bloodshed, Beethoven supported the Revolution. He loved the free thought it By the time he was 22, Beethoven’s encouraged, and he toyed with the idea of world had changed. His parents passed away, setting music to Friedrich Schiller’s poem “Ode and he left Bonn for Vienna, where Mozart, the to Joy,” a call for brotherhood and liberty. aristocracy’s most cherished entertainer, had recently died too. The nobles were desperate to But he never wrote the piece. Harboring find his replacement, and Beethoven, who revolutionary sentiments left him in a pickle: improvised at the piano for royal soirees, His career depended on the people he wanted quickly became regarded as one of Vienna’s to see uprooted. So he kept quiet. As the decade most talented musicians—and Mozart’s heir. wore on, Viennese nobility continued to lionize him—he rose to be one of the city’s biggest But the more Beethoven hobnobbed celebrities. Then his ears began to ring. with aristocrats, the more he despised them. Musicians were treated like cooks, maids, and It started as a faint whistle. Doctors shoe shiners—they were merely servants of the advised him to fill his ears with almond oil and court. Even Mozart had to sit with the cooks at take cold baths. Nothing worked. By 1800, his dinnertime. ears were buzzing day and night. Beethoven sank into depression, stopped attending social Beethoven refused to be put in his functions, and retreated to the countryside, place. He demanded to be seated at the head where loneliness drove him to consider suicide. table with royalty. When other musicians arrived at court wearing wigs and silk Music kept him going. “It seemed to me stockings, he came in a commoner’s clothes. impossible to leave the world until I had (Composer Luigi Cherubini said he resembled produced all that I felt was within me,” he an “unlicked bear cub.”) He refused to play if wrote. At 31, he was known as a virtuoso, not he wasn’t in the mood. When other musicians as a composer. But it seemed he had little performed, he talked over them. When people choice. He snuffed his performing career and talked over him, he exploded and called them dedicated himself to writing. “swine.” Once, when his improvisations moved listeners to tears, he chastised them for crying Artistically, isolation had its benefits. instead of clapping. Every morning, he woke at 5:30 a.m. and composed for two hours until breakfast. Then Most musicians would have been fired he wandered through meadows, a pencil and for this behavior, but Beethoven’s talent was notebook in hand, lost in thought. Sketching too magnetic. “He knew how to produce such ideas, he mumbled, waved his arms, sang, and an effect upon every hearer that frequently not stomped. One time, he made such a ruckus that an eye remained dry, while many would break a yoke of oxen began to stampede. He often into loud sobs,” Carl Czerny wrote in Cocks’s forgot to sleep or eat, but did pause to make Musical Miscellany. So Archduke Rudolph coffee—counting precisely 60 beans for each made an exception: Beethoven could ignore cup. He sat in restaurants for hours, scribbling court etiquette. music on napkins, menus, even windows. Distracted, he’d accidentally pay other people’s But Beethoven wasn’t alone in his bills. brothers of princes.” Beethoven had stronger He started grumbling more openly feelings, writing in his notebook, “Princes are about politics. He admired Napoleon and beggars.”) Adding words to a symphony would planned on publicly naming his third destroy the safety net of ambiguity that symphony for the general. It was a daring instrumental composers enjoyed, spelling move: Napoleon was imperial Austria’s enemy. Beethoven’s motives out for all to hear. But when Napoleon declared himself Emperor On May 7, 1824, Vienna’s Kärntnertor of the French, Beethoven was disgusted. “Now Theater was packed. Beethoven had spent he will trample on all human rights and indulge months preparing for this moment, corralling only his own ambition. He will place himself nearly 200 musicians and dealing with censors above everyone and become a tyrant,” he who quibbled over a religious work on the wrote, ditching the dedication. In 1809, program. They did not, however, complain Napoleon’s troops stormed into Vienna. The about Symphony No. 9. No one had heard it booming of his cannons hurt Beethoven’s yet. eardrums so much he retreated to the cellar and buried his head under pillows. Beethoven took the conductor’s baton, beating time for the start of each movement. In 1814, Napoleon’s empire collapsed The musicians’ eyes were glued to his every and Austria’s nobility attempted to restore move, but in reality, none of them followed his order. Within a few years, Prince Klemens von lead. They had been ordered not to. Stone deaf, Metternich had established the world’s first Beethoven was an unreliable conductor, so a modern police state. The press was banned friend actually led the orchestra. from publishing without the state’s blessing. The government removed university professors The piece was four movements long who expounded “harmful doctrines hostile to and lasted a little more than an hour. The first public order.” Undercover cops infested three movements were purely instrumental; the Vienna. Beethoven’s contempt for power grew. last contained Schiller’s ode. But when one of the movements finished, the hall exploded with Although he still had royal patrons, applause. Modern audiences would scold such Beethoven had fewer friends in high places. behavior, but during Beethoven’s lifetime, a Many were missing or dead, and his ordinary public concert was more like a rock show. friends were just as unlucky—briefly jailed or People spontaneously clapped, cheered, and censored. Thankfully, Beethoven wrote booed mid-performance. instrumental music. For years, listeners considered it an inferior, even vulgar, art form As the audience hollered for more, compared to song or poetry. But as tyrants Beethoven continued waving his arms, returned to power, Romantic thinkers like oblivious to the cheering and sea of waving E.T.A. Hoffmann and Goethe praised handkerchiefs behind him. The applause was so instrumental music as a place for solace and loud, and lasted for so long, that the police had truth. “The censor cannot hold anything against to yell for silence. When the performance musicians,” Franz Grillparzer told Beethoven. finished, a teary-eyed Beethoven almost “If they only knew what you think about in fainted. your music!” The Ninth was a hit.