Debussy’s Wives: Rosalie Texier and Emma Bardac

By Georg Predota

Debussy

As far as women were concerned, Claude Debussy was a bastard! “There was a woman at each crossroad of Debussy’s life,” Marcel Dietschy writes. “Certainly women of all ages seemed fascinated by him, and they attached themselves to him like ivy to a wall.” In turn, he drove two women towards attempted suicides with revolvers, and was completely incapable of selfless love for anyone except his daughter. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Once he had separated from Gaby, he was deadly afraid to be alone. And so he found Rosalie Lilly Texier, a beautiful mannequin, whom he first met in the spring of 1899. “She is unbelievably fair and pretty, like some character from an old legend,” he writes. “Her favourite song is a roundelay about a grenadier with a red face who wears a hat on one side like an old campaigner, not very provoking aesthetically… She does not have much up top.” Gaby warned Lilly of Debussy’s extracurricular activities, and although Lilly hesitated before saying her “I do,” the couple got married on 19 October 1899. Apparently, Debussy had threatened to kill himself if she refused to marry him. Erik Satie witnessed the happy occasion, and Debussy paid for the wedding breakfast with proceeds from a piano lesson he had given that morning. 

Debussy and his wife Lilly

The dedication to “Sirenes” from his Nocturnes reads, “This manuscript belongs to my little Lilly-Lilo. All rights reserved. It is proof of the deep and passionate joy I feel at being her husband.” The couple enjoyed three years of happiness, with Lilly devotedly supportive of Debussy, jealously guarding his privacy and remaining content to live in poverty in his shadow. By all accounts, she was “affectionate, practical, straightforward and well-liked by Debussy’s friends and associates.” However, he soon found her unstimulating and overly possessive. And one slowly increasing source of disappointment was her inability to bear children. By 1903, married life had begun to lose its luster. He secretly admitted that her “voice and shrill laughter grated on his nerves.” At age 30 she was aging prematurely, developing jowls and her eyes becoming ever more “doe-like.” Still childless and sometimes short of money, in his correspondence with others Lilly became “my poor wife.” Debussy was clearly bored with Lilly.    

Debussy and Emma Bardac

Emma Bardac, wife of Parisian banker Sigismond Bardac was no stranger to extra-marital affairs. Her liaison with Gabriel Fauré had inspired the song-cycle La bonne chanson in the early 1890s. Debussy first met her on 1 October 1903, and their friendship developed rapidly during the early months of 1904. Thanking her for some flowers, Debussy wrote “I am made profoundly happy by your thought… Forgive me if I have kissed all these flowers as though they formed a human mouth.” Bardac was sophisticated, a brilliant conversationalist, and an accomplished singer. On 15 July, Debussy put Lilly on a train to her parents in Bichain, and secretly took Bardac to Jersey for a holiday. For all the passion, Debussy still had to tell Lilly that he was moving out. Lilly threatened suicide at least four times, but on the eve of their fifth wedding anniversary, she went to the Place de la Concorde, pointed a revolver at herself and fired. She survived, but the bullet remained lodged in her vertebrae for the rest of her life. Mary Garden reports, “And laying underneath Lilly’s left breast was a round dark hole where the bullet had gone in, without touching anything vital… That little token of her love for Claude Debussy stayed with her until she died in 1932.” Debussy never visited Lilly at the clinic, nor did he pay her bills. By now, he was a public figure and Lilly’s attempted suicide received coverage in every newspaper in the city. The scandal alienated a number of friends, with Fauré refusing to speak to him. By 2 August 1905 his divorce from Lilly was finalized, and since Paris had become unbearable for Debussy and Emma, they left for England.   

Debussy and Chouchou

Before departing, Debussy wrote to a friend, “You should know how many people have deserted me. It is enough to make one sick of everyone called man… Morally, I have suffered terribly… I don’t know, but I’ve often had to smile so that no one should see that I was going to cry.” Emma was by now seven months pregnant, and Claude Emma Debussy — known to all as Chouchou — was born on 30 October 1905 back in Paris. Debussy was besotted with his Chouchou, but life wasn’t entirely idyllic, as Emma’s uncle, the financier Osiris, had disinherited her in his will. The Lilly scandal still haunted them, and it even reached the stage in a thinly disguised melodrama by Henry Bataille called La femme nue. Debussy married Emma on 20 January 1908, but once again, married life was not agreeable. Emma was frequently ill, constantly possessive and extravagant, and far less easy to pacify than the devoted Lilly had been. Debussy frequently retreated to the sanctuary of his study and wrote notes to Emma in preference to actually having a conversation. During a matrimonial crisis in 1910, Emma actually wrote to her lawyer to enquire about a trial separation as she came to despise his “inaction, continued indiscretions, moral cowardice, self-pity and much-vaunted hypersensitivity.” Debussy, of course was acutely aware of his failings as he wrote, “in everyday life I stumble over the smallest pebble, which another man would send flying with a light-hearted kick.” Art, it seems, was his one and only lover.

Slave Pianist Sensation: “Blind Tom”

By Georg Predota 

“Blind Tom,” as he was generally known, was born into slavery in Columbus, Georgia in 1848. He was sold with his family during infancy to General James Neil Bethune, a country lawyer and newspaper publisher. The blind child was considered mentally impaired, but one day he crawled to the piano and started playing one of the pieces the General’s daughter was practicing. The General quickly recognized the musical aptitude of his young charge—not to mention the possibility of making serious money—and started Tom on lessons.

Blind Tom at the piano

By the tender age of five, Tom apparently composed his first tune and barely a year later he was performing publically throughout Georgia. Recognizing the commercial value of the autistic savant, Blind Tom was hired out to the travelling showman and concert promoter Perry Oliver. He was advertised as “a gorgon with angel’s wings,” emphasizing the transformation from animal to artist. A member of the audience wrote, “Before the audience’s very eyes, Tom would stop twitching and rocking. His blank open-mouthed expression would vanish. He would sweep his hands over the keys with the air of a master and draw the most beautiful, heartfelt music from the instrument. I am astounded. I cannot account for it, no one can, and no one understands it.”

Blind Tom and General Bethund

Blind Tom’s Wellenklange

Tom had the ability to reproduce complex musical scores after a single hearing, and over time his repertoire included several thousand works. Besides American and European vernacular music, he also played pieces by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Mendelssohn and Liszt, and well as over a hundred of his own compositions! A good number of his compositions, at Tom’s insistence, were published under the pseudonyms, “François Sexalise,” “Prof. W. F. Raymond,” “J.C. Beckel,” and “C.T. Messengale.”

His legendary performances were soon the talk of the nation—he had also been taken on a European concert tour—and he was summoned to the White House to play for President James Buchanan. Tom’s annual earnings from his concerts amounted to a staggering $100,000 dollars, making him the most highly paid pianist of the 19th century! Blind Tom’s life and incredible musical ability caught the imagination of various authors, including Mark Twain, John Steinbeck and Willa Cather who wrote, “Tom is a human phonograph, a sort of animated memory, with sound producing power.”

More recently he has been the subject of scholarly studies, documentaries, novels, poems, motion pictures and even a 2013 song by Elton John entitled, “The Ballad of Blind Tom.”

On This Day 9 May: Anne Sofie von Otter Was Born

by Georg Predota  

Born in Stockholm, Sweden, on 9 May 1955, Anne Sofie von Otter is one of the finest singers of her generation. Internationally recognised as a concert and recital singer of exceptional gifts, von Otter has built an incomparable catalogue of recordings. Her ever-evolving repertoire and versatility have seen her branch out into the world of opera, jazz, rock, and pop songs. 

Beatles and Cat Stevens

Anne Sofie von Otter

Her father Göran von Otter was a Swedish diplomat in Berlin during World War II, and Anne Sofie grew up in Bonn, London, and Stockholm. She knew absolutely nothing about classical music and cared even less. “I couldn’t tell the difference between a tenor or a bass, or between Bach and Mahler,” she explained in an interview. Growing up in comfortable surroundings, von Otter took obligatory piano lessons, but she was really into pop and rock music.

She loved the Beatles above all, but also Cat Stevens, Judy Collins and Crosby, Stills and Nash. “It was the nice tidy pop,” she greatly enjoyed. “The Rolling Stones were not for me.” Later, a friend introduced her to fusion jazz, which she thought was very daring at the time. However, she really loved the ballet, especially the Tchaikovsky ballets she attended in Stockholm and later in London, where her father was the Swedish Consul General for five years.

Dashing Music Teacher

Von Otter’s biggest dream as a child was to become a ballerina, and she did take dance classes.
As she once disclosed, “I was terribly disappointed when I realized that I could not do it.” Singing wasn’t even on the radar until her last two years of high school in Sweden when a dashing young music teacher took over the chorus, “and I just had to sign up.” She didn’t know anything about singing and had no experience of going to the opera. “It took me a while to understand,” she remembers, “that I had a gift for singing.”

However, as von Otter explained in an interview, “I always wanted to use the voice in a natural way, so classical singing, with all that it implies, for me was very strange. I didn’t like vibrato. It was horrifying. Whenever I sang in my teens it was with my natural voice.” Von Otter became a dedicated choir singer, learning to read music and different styles, from Baroque to Contemporary. She certainly never had any fantasies about becoming an opera singer at all, as she was “very self-conscious, nervous, and very shy.” 

Studying Under Vera Rózsa

Vera Rózsa

Von Otter sang in a number of choruses, always in the soprano section. “But it was killing my voice,” she said. “I wanted to be a soprano, and it was hurting, so what could I do?” She started taking singing lessons and her singing teacher told her, “You are not a soprano, you are a mezzo.” She won a place at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and studied with the legendary Hungarian teacher, Vera Rózsa. Her insight into a singer’s voice and technique was famous, and after listening for just a couple of bars, she immediately knew what exercise was needed.

For von Otter, the contrast between Rózsa’s high-energy and the more laid-back approach of her Swedish singing teachers was striking. Rózsa quickly undid some of the damage to von Otter’s voice, and she instilled in her the mantra that a good singer needs, “artistic temperament, concentration, dramatic ability, personality, good taste, and total devotion to the profession. An artist needs a heart on fire and a brain on ice.”

Shift to Opera

Rózsa organised a repertoire of operatic roles for von Otter and suggested that she audition for a position in an opera house. Von Otter was not enthusiastic, as “I didn’t want to be a soloist. I wanted to sing and I didn’t mind people hearing my voice individually but I would rather be up the back of a choir than have them look at me because that was embarrassing.” She certainly did not want to be in the spotlight, and the transformation to the stage did not come naturally.

At that time, von Otter still made a living from singing in a number of choirs in Stockholm, including the cathedral choir, the radio choir, and the Bach choir, and she made enough money to survive. She never dreamt of standing on the operatic stage, but her manager and agent, a little against her will, urged her to audition, and she was quickly snapped up by Basel Opera, making her debut in 1983. “I got my first job,” she recalled, “and indeed it was good for me. It developed me as a performer and my understanding of what I was singing about.”

5 May 1891: Opening Night at Carnegie Hall

by Georg Predota  

New York audiences and music lovers were treated to a momentous occasion in May 1891. Specifically, they witnessed the inaugural concert at Carnegie Hall, a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 5 May 1891. Carnegie Hall would soon rise to become one of the most prestigious venues in the world of music.

Carnegie Hall in 1895

The vision of a dedicated Music Hall was the brainchild of Leopold Damrosch, conductor of the Oratorio Society of New York and the New York Symphony Society. His son Walter, who met the businessman Andrew Carnegie during his studies in Germany, carried Leopold’s vision forward. Eventually, he was able to convince Carnegie to donate 2 million dollars and the Oratorio Society and New York Symphony bought nine lots at the southeast corner of Seventh Avenue and 57th Street.

Andrew Carnegie

They approached architect William Burnet Tuthill, a talented amateur cellist and board member of the Oratorio Society to design the Music Hall. Tuthill had engaged in extensive studies of European concert halls, and he brought his experience with acoustics to bear on the Carnegie Hall project.

“Old Hundred” arr. Vaughan Williams 

Designed in a modified Italian Renaissance style, the cornerstone for the Music Hall was laid by Carnegie’s wife Louise on 13 May 1890. Within the next 12 months, the original five-story brick and limestone building “containing a 3,000-seat main hall and several smaller rooms for rehearsals, lectures, concerts, and art exhibitions,” began to take shape. Andrew Carnegie said, “It is built to stand for ages, and during these ages, it is probable that this Hall will intertwine itself with the history of our country.” The Recital Hall opened in March 1891, and the Oratorio Hall in the basement opened on 1 April 1891. The Music Hall officially opened on 5 May 1891, starting a five-day Opening Week Festival.

William Burnet Tuthill

Contemporary reports write of “horse-drawn carriages lining up for a quarter-mile outside, while inside the Main Hall was jammed to capacity.” Conductor Walter Damrosch led the New York Symphony Orchestra and the Oratorio Society on Opening Night, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky had been engaged for a guest appearance. He was apparently paid $5,000 for his service, which in today’s money equates to roughly $150K. 

A contemporary eyewitness reports, “People are swarming everywhere trying to get into this magnificent hall. The architecture is absolutely gorgeous with a façade made of terra cotta and iron-spotted brick. I manage to get inside where the main hall is jammed to capacity. I look around to see that the magnificent architecture extends to the inside as well. I looked up at the boxes to see the Rockefellers, Whitneys, Sloans, and Fricks families. I find my seat, smooth my dress, and sit down.”

Carnegie Hall Opening Festival poster

The program opened with the hymn “Old Hundred,” a tune from the second edition of the Genevan Psalter. It is considered one of the best-known melodies in the Western Christian musical tradition, and it was the first work transmitted by telephone during Graham Bell’s first demo at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1876. Bishop Henry Codman Potter delivered a lengthy speech praising Carnegie’s philanthropy. Walter Damrosch entered the stage and the hall erupted in applause. The New York Symphony played “America,” and Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3. A member of the audience reported, “The acoustics are even better than I could imagine.”

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Marche solennelle 

Then it was Tchaikovsky’s turn. In his diary, he writes, “In a crowded carriage I reached the Music Hall. Illuminate and packed with the public, it made an exceptionally striking and grandiose impression…The pastor gave a long and, it was said, exceptionally tedious speech, and after this, there was a very good performance of the Leonore Overture. Interval. I went downstairs. Excitement. My turn came. I was received very noisily. The march (Marche solennelle) went off beautifully. A great success! I listened to the rest of the concert from Hyde’s box. Berlioz’s “Te Deum” was rather tedious; it was only at the end that I really began to enjoy it.”

Ticket from the Opening Night at Carnegie Hall

Tchaikovsky was also less than enthusiastic about the review he read in the papers the next day. As he records in his diary, “Tchaikovsky is a tall, gray well built interesting man, well on the sixty?!!! He seems a trifle embarrassed and responds to the applause with a succession of brusque and jerky bows. But as soon as he grips the baton his self-confidence returns.”

Carnegie Hall at night

Tchaikovsky was rather annoyed and added, “It makes me angry that they not only write about music, but about me personally. I cannot bear it when they comment on my embarrassment, and marvel at my brusque and jerky bows.” Tchaikovsky did not have much time to ponder the review, as he was in the audience at the second concert, which featured Mendelssohn’s oratorio “Elijah.”

Fugues and Other Musical Charms From Bach to Shostakovich

by Georg Predota  

An example of a fugue structure © composerfocus.com

Among the most feared course requirements for many aspiring composers and students of music is a class simply labeled “Fugue.” And it’s no wonder, as a good many universities that still teach this kind of skills will ask you to sit in this particular class for an entire semester. And invariably, you will have to compose a fugue for your final project. The basic premise is simple enough. Take a short melody or phrase introduced in one part. That melody then taken up by other parts and developed by interweaving the parts. What sounds simple is in reality a highly complex process of rules and restrictions that is commonly regarded as the most fully developed procedure of imitative counterpoint.

Bach’s unfinished fugue in The Art of Fugue

It is hardly surprising that a good many composers past and present consider the process of writing a fugue an “exercises in a dead language.” Yet for the musical and expressive genius Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), the possibilities within these restrictions were endless. His most celebrated and extensively studied collection of contrapuntal movements The Art of Fugue explores the possibilities inherent in a single musical theme. Demonstrating every compositional technique and method known to him, Bach composed eigthteen movements; fourteen fugues and four canons. The collection remained unfinished, however, as Bach died while incorporating his musical signature. How many more gripping jewels he might have composed, we will never know. 

Mozart’s “Jupiter” fugal entries

Even during Bach’s lifetime, fugues and other forms of imitative counterpoint were considered seriously old fashioned. The aesthetics of music and culture had simply changed dramatically. During his extensive travels, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) was exposed to a multiplicity of compositional styles, tastes and genres. Mozart, the undisputed pop star of the 18th century, unrelentingly integrated, synthesized and transformed stylistic and musical conventions. It might reasonably be argued, however, that it took the encounter with the music of Bach and all those marvelous fugues that eventually produced compositions of universal appeal and stunning individuality. Mozart had been exposed to counterpoint throughout his life, but he engaged in serious study of fugue only during the 1780s. The diplomat Baron Gottfried van Swieten—who penned the libretto for Haydn’s Creation—was an avid collector of musical manuscripts. Wanting to have these works performed, he held regular musical parties in his Viennese residence, and Mozart was a steady guest. He reports to his sister, “nothing is played but fugues by Handel and Bach.” Mozart’s contact with the mastery of the German contrapuntal tradition opened a completely new musical horizon. He produced a number of stand-alone fugues, and this newly gained compositional skill helped to inform the creation of his final sublime orchestral masterpieces. Words simply can’t describe the jaw-dropping and breathtaking fugal display of quintuple invertible counterpoint in the final movement of the “Jupiter.” 

Johannes Brahms

In 1899, Ernest Walker addressed the 25th session of the Royal Musical Association with a lecture on Johannes Brahms. He described the composer’s musical style as a “fusion of heterogeneous materials with the desire for emotional expression.” Essentially then, Walker saw Brahms as the logical union of Bach’s contrapuntal art and Beethoven’s formal perfection. To his contemporaries and critics, Brahms looked like a bastion of musical conservatism. Surprisingly, it was Arnold Schoenberg who suggested that Brahms was “a great innovator in the realm of musical language, and that his chamber music prepared the way for the radical changes in musical conception at the turn of the 20th century.” But let’s be clear, musical language for Brahms always starts in strict accordance with his extensive knowledge of counterpoint and fugue. He studied every available treatise on this subject and the integrity of the musical structure is paired with the attempt to achieve a deeper level of contrapuntally inspired motivic cohesion. Just listen to the finale of his E-minor Cello Sonata, a movement that epitomizes Brahms’ style. The fugal subject is derived from Bach’s Art of Fugue, and the movement weaves together a highly contrapuntal style with the exploitation of the possibilities inherent in sonata form. Through his study of fugue, Brahms became aware of his place within the Classical tradition, and the inspiration he drew from it resulted in the revitalization of classical form. 

Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin

As a young student, Nadia Boulanger discovered Maurice Ravel cheerfully writing counterpoint exercises in Fauré’s class. She recalled, “I had a surprise when I found myself in Fauré’s class and discovered Ravel was there, too, doing as I used to do then, traditional counterpoint. I didn’t always find it interesting, yet it seemed quite natural that Ravel should do it… It was only years later that I asked him why he was still studying counterpoint. ‘One must clean the house from time to time; I often do it that way,’ he replied.” Ravel’s devotion to the discipline of counterpoint and fugue provided the basis for his elegant and imaginative contrapuntal virtuosity. In fact, Ravel’s first-level entries in the Prix de Rome competitions between the years 1900 and 1905 were naturally five fugues. His engagement with strict contrapuntal forms continued in the piano suite Le Tombeau de Couperin, completed when he was discharged from military service in 1917. First performed by Marguerite Long in 1919, the audience was suitably surprised and impressed to discover that a meandering and jazz-inspired “Fugue” was part of the collection. 

The Esterházy castle

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) entered into the services of the Esterházy family as a court musician in 1761, and he would remain on the job for a total of 41 years. Much of his career was spent at the family’s remote estate, with Haydn reporting “Well, here I sit in my wilderness; forsaken, like some poor orphan, almost without human society… nobody is nearby who could distract me or confuse me about myself. I had no choice but had to become original.” Haydn had turned forty and was working on his six string quartets opus 20, when originality struck. Whereas in earlier efforts he would often fuse the viola and cello parts together in one musical line, he now made the fullest use of four completely independent voices. And one of the clearest ways of demonstrating complete independence of individual voices is to write strict counterpoint and fugues.

Haydn: Sun Quartets, Op. 20

For his opus 20, subsequently nicknamed “Sun Quartets” because the sun is displayed on the cover of the first edition, Haydn composed three fugal finales. Haydn was undoubtedly the leader of fugal composition and technique in the Classical era, and writing fugal finales also offered a brand new solution to the relative weighting of all movements. These fugues are not dry academic exercises, however, as Haydn greatly expanded the texture and dynamics and experimented with flexible phrase length and structure. Every measure is full of variety and unpredictability, with Haydn combining his extensive knowledge of historical sources with the furthest reaches of his brilliant musical imagination.

Beethoven: Sketches for the String Quartet Op. 131

As a young and eager student of music, Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) received thorough instruction in counterpoint and fugal writing. During his early days in Vienna he even attracted attention by playing fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier on his recitals. Fugal passages are found in his early piano sonatas and also in the “Eroica,” but fugues did not take on a central role in Beethoven’s oeuvre until late in his career. No doubt you are familiar with the fugue in the Cello Sonata, Op. 102 No. 2, the technically devilish fugue in the “Hammerklavier,” the massive dissonant fugue published as “Große Fuge” Op. 133, and fugal passages in the Missa Solemnis and the Ninth Symphony. However, it is his Opus 131 string quartet that is considered the pinnacle of his creative output. Writing in 1870, Richard Wagner published a poetic description of the work, “Tis the dance of the whole world itself: wild joy, the wail of pain, love’s transport, utmost bliss, grief, frenzy, riot, suffering, the lightning flickers, thunders growl: and above it the stupendous fiddler who bears and bounds it all, who leads it haughtily from whirlwind into whirlwind, to the brink of the abyss – he smiles at himself, for to him this sorcery was the merest play—and night beckons him. His day is done.” Written during a period of immense personal suffering, the opening fugue has been called “the most superhuman piece of music that Beethoven has ever written.” It is like a mysterious vision of another universe and represents for some critics “the melancholiest sentiment ever expressed in music.”

Simon Sechter

A few months before his death, Franz Schubert (1797-1828) first laid eyes on a score of Handel oratorios. “Now for the first time,” he writes, “I see what I lack, but I will study hard with Sechter so that I can make good the omission.” Simon Sechter was probably Vienna’s most famous teacher of counterpoint, and he recalled, “A short time before Schubert’s last illness he came to me… in order to study counterpoint and fugue, because, as he put it, he realized that he needed coaching in these.”

Organ at Heiligenkreuz Monastary

Schubert only managed to have one lesson with Sechter, before he was taken severely ill. He wrote to a friend eight days later, “I am ill. I have had nothing to eat or drink for eleven days now, and can only wander feebly and uncertainly between armchair and bed.” One week later Schubert passed away. Around his lesson with Sechter and his untimely death, Schubert and his friend, the composer Franz Lachner, visited the Heiligenkreuz monastery south of Vienna. Apparently, it was Schubert who suggested that they each write a fugue for the famous organ, which they both did. The Schubert manuscript is lost, but a copy of the work, written in four staves instead of the normally three for organ, did survive. As such, it was first published in 1844 for organ or piano four-hand, but it might well be the case that this fugue represents the very last composition Schubert ever completed. 

Dmitri Shostakovich © Deutsche Fotothek

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) rapidly composed his Twenty-Four Preludes and Fugues between 10 October 1950 and 25 February 1951. This polyphonic cycle is the first work composed in the twentieth century that follows the tradition and the dimension of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. The Shostakovich cycle embraces all twenty-four keys, however, it is organized around the circle of fifths, and not in chromatic ascending order like Bach. We know that Shostakovich played the Bach preludes and fugues as a young boy, and in 1950 he was an honorary member of the jury of a piano competition organized in Leipzig for the 200th anniversary of the death of Bach. Bach’s music, and especially the Well-Tempered Clavier, must have given Shostakovich a certain creative impulse and in conversation with some German musicians in Leipzig he exclaimed, “Why shouldn‘t we try to continue this wonderful tradition.” Back home, Shostakovich was in political hot water, fired from his teaching positions in Moscow and Leningrad, with his music officially banned from concerts and broadcast. In fact, he was on the verge of suicide, and he “decided to start working again… I am going to write a prelude and fugue every day. I shall take into consideration the experience of Johann Sebastian Bach.” As with Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, the fugue served as the vehicle for the expression of the most personal, intimate and uncompromising thoughts and feelings.

Ludwig von Beethoven “The Sounds of Silence”

by Georg Predota  

Ludwig van Beethoven, 1818

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) was the rising star on the Viennese music scene in the last decade of the 18th century. He made his name by showcasing his talents as a pianist, and he composed and performed piano sonatas of extreme technical difficulty. At the same time he composed music for a variety of musical ensemble and occasions. Ludwig van Beethoven needed to be busy, because he was a freelance musician. In fact, he was the first major composer in that city who did not depend on a fixed musical appointment. However, Beethoven had a dark secret. During his mid-20s, he gradually started to lose his hearing. At first, these periods of temporary hearing loss might not have caused him much concern, as he had suffered from a number of ailments, including abdominal pain, diarrhea, and spells of fever since childhood. It seems that he noticed the first symptoms in 1796, or possibly somewhat earlier. In 1815, he told the English pianist Charles Neate that the cause of his hearing loss could be traced back to a quarrel he had with a singer in 1798.

Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 3 in C major, Op. 2, No. 3 

Beethoven, 1800-01

The story goes that a tenor was visiting Beethoven in his apartment. Apparently, they got into a heated argument and the tenor stormed out in a huff. Unexpectedly he returned and knocked on the door. Beethoven is said to have jumped up from the piano angrily to rush and open the door. However, his leg got stuck and he fell face down to the floor. This small accident was not the cause of Beethoven’s deafness, but it triggered a long and continuous hearing loss that would end in almost complete silence. Supposedly, Beethoven said about that particular fall, “I found myself deaf, and have been so ever since.” The hearing loss initially affected mostly his left ear, and as it grew worse Beethoven started to suffer from a severe form of tinnitus. The continued buzzing in his ear made it increasingly difficult to hear music or conversations, and it drove him to the brink of suicide. Beethoven writes, “my ears keep buzzing and humming day and night, and if someone yells, it is unbearable to me.”

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No.1 in C major, Op. 21 

The young Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven continued to perform publically, and he was very careful to not reveal his deafness. He rightly believed that it would ruin his career. He writes, “I don’t hear the high notes of the instruments and voices, and sometimes, I cannot hear people who speak quietly. I can hear the sounds, but not the words. I can with truth say that my life is very wretched. For nearly 2 years past I have avoided all society, because I find it impossible to say to people, ‘I am deaf!’ In any other profession this might be more tolerable, but in mine such a condition is truly frightful. As for my enemies, of whom I have a fair number, what would they say?” In June 1801 Beethoven confides in his Bonn friend F. G. Wegeler, “that the malicious demon, however, bad health, has been a stumbling-block in my path; my hearing during the last three years has become gradually worse.” At that particular time, Ludwig van Beethoven was still hoping that his doctors might be able to help him. He was aware that his hearing loss would present some problems in his professional life, and “what was of equal importance for him, his social life as well.”

Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet in C minor, Op. 14, No. 4 

Kaspar Anton Karl van Beethoven, Beethoven’s brother

In a letter to his good friend Karl Amenda, Beethoven writes, “Your Beethoven is leading a very unhappy life and is at variance with Nature and his Creator…When I am playing and composing my affliction is hampering me least—it is affecting me most when I am in company.” However, he also reports that Lichnowsky had agreed to pay him an annuity of 600 florins for some years, removing all his financial concerns. His childhood friend Stephan von Breuning had moved to Vienna, and six or seven publishers were competing for each new work. “I often produce three or four works at the same time,” he writes. “My piano playing has considerably improved, and at the moment I feel equal to anything.” Predictably, Beethoven consulted a number of doctors in the hope of finding a cure for his hearing troubles. Initially he looked up Johann Frank, a local professor of medicine. Frank believed that the cause of Beethoven’s hearing loss was related to his abdominal problems. He prescribed a number of traditional herbal remedies that included pushing balls of cotton soaked in almond oil into his ears. Beethoven reports, “Frank has tried to tone up my constitution with strengthening medicines, and my hearing with almond oil, but much good did it do me! His treatment had no effect, my deafness became even worse, and my abdomen continued to be in the same state as before.”

Ludwig van Beethoven: Serenade in D major Op. 25 

Beethoven’s ear trumpets

Gerhard von Vering was a former German military surgeon and subsequently the Director of the Viennese Health Institute. He was a celebrity doctor, and among his patients was none other than Emperor Joseph II. When Frank’s almond oil treatment showed no healing effect, Beethoven consulted von Vering. He recommended that Beethoven take daily “Danube baths.” Beethoven followed that advice, and sat in tepid baths of river water combined with the ingestion of a small vial of herbal tonic. Apparently, “this treatment miraculously improved Beethoven’s digestive ailments, but his deafness not only persisted, it became even worse.” Beethoven continued to see Dr. von Vering for several months, but he started to protest the increasingly bizarre and unpleasant treatments. It was reported that Dr. Vering strapped toxic bark to Beethoven’s forearms that caused his skin to blister and itch painfully for several days at the time. Beethoven reports to his friend Franz Wegeler in November 1801, “Vering, for the last few months, has applied blisters to both my arms, consisting of a certain bark … This is a most disagreeable remedy, as it deprives me of the free use of my arms for two or three days at a time, until the bark has drawn sufficiently, which occasions a good deal of pain. It is true the ringing in my ears is somewhat less than it was, especially in my left ear where the illness began, but my hearing is by no means improved; indeed I am not sure but that the evil is increased … I am upon the whole much dissatisfied with Vering; he cares too little about his patients.”

Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major, Op. 15 

Beethoven, 1801

Dr. Johann Adam Schmidt had also started his medical career as an army surgeon. In 1789 he was appointed Professor of Anatomy in Vienna, and he published a number of important scientific articles. Beethoven implicitly trusted Dr. Schmidt, who recommended leeches and bloodletting as a means of treating the composer’s hearing loss. Dr. Schmidt dejectedly wrote to Beethoven after a number of treatments, “From leeches we can expect no further relief.” Schmidt also recommended for Beethoven to have one of his teeth pulled in hopes of improving the gout-related headache from which Beethoven had been suffering. I am not sure Beethoven heeded this particular advice, but he was clearly interested “in the newest trend sweeping medical science at the time, called galvanism.” That particular treatment involved passing a mild electric current through the afflicted part of the body “as a means of simulating normal bodily activity and aiding the healing process.” Beethoven wrote to a friend, “People talk about miraculous cures by galvanism; what is your opinion? A medical man told me that in Berlin he saw a deaf and dumb child recover its hearing, and a man who had also been deaf for seven years recover his—I have just heard that Schmidt is making experiments with galvanism.”

Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Trio in E-flat major, Op. 38 

Beethoven’s house in Heiligenstadt

There has been some scholarly debate whether or not Beethoven ever received galvanic treatment. The only known instance comes from an entry in his conversation books from April 1823. Apparently, he conversed with a man suffering from worsening deafness. Beethoven advised, “do not start using hearing aids too soon… Lately, I have not been able to stand galvanism. It is sad. Doctors do not know much, one tires of them eventually.” None of the proposed cures offered any kind of relief, and Beethoven fell into a deep depression. He gradually had begun to realize that his deafness was progressive and probably incurable. Dr. Schmidt finally advised Beethoven to move away from the bustling city and take refuge in the countryside. As such, Beethoven moved to the small town of Heiligenstadt in 1802, at that time located just outside the city limits. Being socially isolated with his hearing further deteriorating, Beethoven wrote a long letter to his two brothers, Carl and Johann, in which he explained his feelings and his condition in great detail, and admitted to having contemplated suicide. He writes, “For six years I have been a hopeless case, aggravated by senseless physicians, cheated year after year in the hope of improvement, finally compelled to face the prospect of a lasting malady whose cure will take years or, perhaps, be impossible.”

Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor, Op. 31 No. 2 “Tempest” 

“The Heiligenstadt Testament”

The “Heiligenstadt Testament”, as this letter has become known, continues, “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 it was that withheld me … and so I endured this wretched existence—truly wretched … It was virtue that upheld me in misery, to it, next to my art, I owe the fact that I did not end my life with suicide. Farewell and love each other. I thank all my friends … how glad will I be if I can still be helpful to you in my grave—with joy I hasten towards death. If it comes before I shall have had an opportunity to show all my artistic capacities, it will still come too early for me, despite my hard fate, and I shall probably wish it had come later—but even then I am satisfied, will it not free me from my state? Come when thou will, I shall meet thee bravely. Farewell and do not wholly forget me when I am dead.”

Ludwig van Beethoven: Violin Sonata No. 7 in C minor, Op. 30 No. 2 

Postcard of Beethoven in Heiligenstadt

Beethoven never posted that letter, and it was only discovered in his papers after his death. In this famous letter, Beethoven addressed and possibly resolved his inner turmoil. He came to terms with the fact that his hearing would never improve, and it marked a turning point in his life. Beethoven was ready to “seize Fate by the throat; it shall certainly not crush me completely—it would be so lovely to live a thousand lives.” This newly found zest for life was also “brought about by a dear charming girl who loves me and whom I love,” as Beethoven confided in a friend. “For the first time I feel that marriage might bring me happiness. Unfortunately she is not of my class.” This “dear charming girl” was no doubt the Countess Giulietta Guicciardi who had not yet celebrated her 17th birthday. Although she was flattered to receive attention from the famous Beethoven, Giulietta wasn’t inclined to take Beethoven’s devotion very seriously. Beethoven noted on one of his musical sketches, “Let your deafness no longer be a secret—even in art.” Determined to continue living for and through his art, he promised “a completely new way of composing.” This new way is reflected in a series of compositions that reflect or embody extra-musical ideas of heroism.

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 55 “Eroica” 

Waldmüller: Beethoven (1823)

While Beethoven was able to compose music, playing concerts, which had been an important source of income, became increasingly difficult. His student Carl Czerny once said that Beethoven could still hear speech and music normally until about 1812. By 1818, however, “Beethoven’s deafness had progressed to such an extent that, with increasing frequency, he began to carry blank books with him, so that his friends and acquaintances, especially when in public, could write their sides of conversations without being overheard, while Beethoven himself customarily replied orally.” Scholars have suggested that Beethoven never became completely deaf, and that he was able to hear muffled words when they were spoken directly into his left ear. Even in his final years, Beethoven was apparently still able to distinguish low tones and sudden loud sound.

Beethoven’s conversation notebook

One day after his death on 27 March, the Institute of Pathology in Vienna performed an autopsy with “specific focus on his ears and the cochlear nerves…” The Eustachian tube was very thickened… and the facial nerves of considerable thickness; the auditory nerves on the other hand shrunken and without pith; the accompanying auditory arteries were of a calibre of a crow-quill, and of cartilaginous consistency. The left auditory nerve, much thinner, arose by three very thin, greyish roots; the right by one root, stronger and pale white… The vault of the skull showed great tightness throughout and a thickness of about half an inch”. Today, physicians are generally in agreement that Beethoven’s deafness was caused by otosclerosis, a condition that exhibits abnormal bone growth inside the ear. In Beethoven’s case, this was accompanied by the degeneration of the auditory nerve. For almost 25 years of his life Ludwig van Beethoven struggled with his severe disability, but his passion for art was all consuming. Music became a mode of self-expression that “transcended the mundane and the narcissistic, as he artistically realized the potential for optimism and idealism within all of us.” Beethoven’s music is an endearing monument to the persistence of the human spirit in the face of adversity.