Pianists and Their Composers: Chopin

by Frances Wilson, Interlude

The music of Frédéric Chopin is perennially popular – it has never lost its universal appeal and Chopin remains one of the greatest composers for the piano. Virtuosic, imaginative, and emotionally profound, Chopin’s music offers pianists a wealth of expressivity, requiring a combination of superior technique, which always serves the music (rather than as an end in itself), refined touch, a beautiful cantabile (singing) tone, highly nuanced dynamic shading, supple phrasing and rubato, and an appreciation of the interior architecture of this multi-layered music. Chopin is also symbolic of Poland, the country of his birth, whose musical idioms are evident in almost all his music, most obviously, the Mazurkas and Polonaises.

Frédéric Chopin

When asked, the great Chopin player Arthur Rubinstein could not explain why Chopin’s music spoke to him, but like the music of J.S. Bach (which Chopin greatly admired and studied), it expresses universal humanity which, combined with a certain vulnerability, speaks to so many of us, and on many different levels.

Arthur Rubinstein

Arthur Rubinstein

“When the first notes of Chopin sound through the concert hall there is a happy sign of recognition. All over the world men and women know his music. They love it. They are moved by it. When I play Chopin I know I speak directly to the hearts of people.”

An unrivalled authority and one of the greatest interpreters of the music of Chopin, Rubinstein brought great dignity and refinement to the music, avoided unnecessary mannerisms and sentimentality, and revealed the structural logic of Chopin’s writing. His playing is memorable for its elegant vocal phrasing, beauty of tone, and natural yet sophisticated shaping.

Arthur Rubinstein Plays Chopin’s Polonaise in A Flat Major, Op.53 

Dinu Lipatti

Dinu Lipatti playing at his last recital © Michel Meusy

“A master of the keyboard” (Harold C Schonberg), Dinu Lipatti was the pupil of an older Chopin master, Alfred Cortot.

Lipatti’s immaculate performances of the waltzes, in particular, are spontaneous, light and nimble, lyrical and suitably dancing, with subtle rubato and great charm.

Maria João Pires

Maria João Pires © classicosdosclassicos.mus.br

“It’s very inner music and very deep,” Maria João Pires has said of Chopin. For her, he is “the deep poet of music”. That depth is really evident in Pires’ playing of the Nocturnes – intimate, refined and passionate, her interpretations eschew drawing room night-time sentimentality and capture all the drama and emotional intensity of these much-loved pieces.

Maurizio Pollini

Maurizio Pollini

Described by one critic as “the greatest Chopin player to have emerged from Italy since the Second World War”, Maurizio Pollini’s association with Chopin goes right back to the beginning of his professional career when he won the Chopin Competition in Warsaw when he was just 18. His unsentimental, cultivated interpretations are notable for their clarity of expression, perfectly judged poetry, and close attention to the bel canto melodic lines which make Chopin’s music so immediately appealing.

Alfred Cortot

Alfred Cortot © Commentary

Cortot is one of the most celebrated Chopin interpreters, combining flawless technique with a deep appreciation of the structure, voicing, and textures of Chopin’s music. His recordings are acclaimed to this day, and his detailed, annotated editions of Chopin’s music remain highly prized among pianists and teachers.

Janina Fialkowska

Janina Fialkowska

Hailed by her mentor Arthur Rubinstein as “a born Chopin interpreter”, Polish-Canadian pianist Janina Fialkowska captures the soul of Chopin, in particular in her performances of the Mazurkas, works which reveal Chopin’s patriotism and innermost sentiments towards his homeland. Fialkowska is sensitive to both the humble, peasant origins of the Mazurka and Chopin’s elevation of the genre into concert pieces. She really captures the poetry, poignancy, and whimsical emotions of these Polish folk dances, and her rubato is perfectly judged, especially important in these pieces where suppleness of pace lends greater emphasis to the emotional depth of the music.

Bruno Walter - his life and his music

 

Bruno Walter was a German-born conductor, pianist and composer. Born in Berlin, he escaped Nazi Germany in 1933, was naturalised as a French citizen in 1938, and settled in the United States in 1939. He worked closely with Gustav Mahler, whose music he helped to establish in the repertory, held major positions with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Salzburg Festival, Vienna State Opera, Bavarian State Opera, Staatsoper Unter den Linden and Deutsche Oper Berlin, among others, made recordings of historical and artistic significance, and is widely considered to be one of the great conductors of the 20th century.  

Bruno Walter the Composer

by Georg Predota, Interlude

We easily remember Bruno Walter (1876-1962) as one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century. His legacy is secured in hundreds of recordings made between 1900 and 1961. However, around the turn of the century, he primarily considered himself a creative musician, a conductor-composer not unlike his friend and role model Gustav Mahler.

Bruno Walter in 1912

For one, Walter was a founding member of the “Society of Creative Musicians,” founded in 1904 and championed by Alexander von Zemlinsky and Arnold Schoenberg, with Gustav Mahler as the honorary president. The musicologist Guido Adler wrote, “the society aims to give contemporary music an ongoing platform and to keep the concert-going public abreast of current developments in music composition.”

From his earliest days at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, Walter was interested in composition as he “covered innumerable sheets of music of all kinds… none of them remarkable.” Initially, Walter prepared for a pianistic career but eventually turned towards composing and conducting. His composition activity flourished during his early years in Vienna, and in an article by the Mahler biographer Richard Specht, Walter was counted among the progressive composers of the day.

Arnold Rosé

Arnold Rosé

In 1901, Walter was appointed at the Vienna Court Opera at the request of Gustav Mahler. Walter knew Mahler from Hamburg, and he described him as a man “who renewed himself every minute, and who did not know the meaning of slackening either in his work or in his vital principles.” However, Walter initially built his most intense artistic relationship with the violinist Arnold Rosé, concertmaster at the Vienna Philharmonic and leader of a famed string quartet that bore his name.

As Walter writes in his autobiography, “I shall never forget the sublime beauty of his violin solos, and the magic of Rosé’s playing lost none of its enchanting effect on me in the course of a great many years… Never for a moment did the high tension of his playing relax, whether at rehearsals or performances…His musicianship was innate and intuitive, his intonation and sense of rhythm were infallible, and he was gifted with a perfect ear.”

As such, it is hardly surprising that the Rosé Quartet premiered Walter’s String Quartet in D Major on 17 November 1903. Walter told his friend Hans Pfitzner after the premiere, “Rosé performed my quartet exquisitely. The audience received the first two movements warmly, then listened to the third (most important) movement with icy silence, and the last movement ultimately unleashed a veritable battle; the press was at a total loss but were respectful.” The work was never performed again, and parts of the autograph score were presumed lost. Fortunately, a copy of the entire composition has recently been unearthed in Vienna.

Piano Quintet

Bruno Walter

The Rosé Quartet with the composer at the piano also performed the premiere of Walter’s Piano Quintet in F-sharp minor on 28 February 1905. This substantial four-movement work is modelled in the tradition established by Schumann and Brahms, and written in a late-Romantic style. As Wolfgang Klos writes, “the work is dedicated to Nina Spiegler (née Hoffmann), who almost became Mahler’s sister-in-law and whose salon brought together the leading intellectuals in Vienna at the turn of the century, including Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Karl Kraus, Alfred Polgar, Peter Altenberg and Arthur Schnitzler.”

Walter composed dense and propulsive outer movements, “tossing out ideas like darts that don’t consistently strike nor stick to the intended target.” Cast in three parts, the second movement marked “Ruhig und heiter” has melodic touches reminiscent of Mendelssohn punctuated by a fiery central section. I hear a bit of Mahler in the third movement, also in three parts, but it seems rather overly busy in parts.

The work was reasonably well received, but it has only recently been recorded. In addition, Universal Edition was an early publisher of Walter’s work, and they have finally issued the first edition as well. Contemporary reviews have been lukewarm at best, describing the Quintet as “a mess with clunky scoring and a dense and opaque texture. Walter chose the right career path.”

Symphony No. 1

Bruno Walter was intimately connected with premiere performances of the symphonies of Gustav Mahler, and he started work on his own Symphony No. 1 in 1906. He played through the work for Mahler in September 1907, but it clearly failed to make an impression. As Mahler wrote to his wife, Alma, “Unfortunately, it means nothing to me, and my frank opinion put him in a state of mild despair.”

The work did premiere on 6 February 1909 at the Vienna Musikvereinssaal with the composer conducting. As Erik Ryding notes, “A large and ambitious work, the symphony runs for nearly an hour, and shows Walter completely in control of his massive forces. For a first symphony, it is a remarkably advanced piece with well-wrought counterpoint and ingenious motivic development both within and across movements. The angular, chromatic lines and the sometimes-tortured atmosphere, specifically in the opening movement, may come as a surprise.”

A critic suggested that “Walter’s music strives to capture chivalric feeling, battle, glory, power, heroic victory and death,” sentiments that do seem to capture much of Walter’s musical expressions. However, Vienna’s most feared critic at the time, Julius Korngold wrote, “Walter’s themes seem artificial, not naturally grown…twisting laboriously, saying little of significance. Even the development, the structuring, indeed the use of material … are lacking in clarity and a deeper inner logic.” Erik Ryding disagrees, and sees the symphony not as an imitation of Mahler, but an original symphony that marks a significant step forward in style.

Lieder

Bruno Walter was a voracious reader who developed a passion for literature during his early years at school. He devoured the poetically inspired fairy tales of Andersen and the collection of Grimm, and he was soon captivated by the fabulous works of Greek mythology. As he recalls in his autobiography, “when I was nine or ten, the attraction to my juvenile books began to fade, and I felt drawn towards the treasures in my parents’ bookcase.”

He was soon reading Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Heine, Hauff, Rückert and Shakespeare. As he recalled, “my early eagerness for and susceptibility to the drama and my inclination to identify myself with literary figures clearly indicate a dramatic vein in my mental endowment. No wonder then that at the very beginning of my career, I was irresistibly drawn toward the opera.”

Walter soon graduated to a “well-ordered and profound cultivation of beloved authors,” and he found his way into poetry. Besides Goethe, “whose works implanted in me a passionate desire for self-education and the systematic development of my talents,” he became fond of the poetry of Joseph von Eichendorff. Predictably, Walter set a number of poems to music, and the featured Eichendorff selection bears the clear musical influence of Gustav Mahler.

Violin Sonata in A Major

Bruno Walter’s Violin Sonata score

The Sonata for Violin and Piano in A Major, premiered by and dedicated to Arnold Rosé, first sounded on 9 March 1909 with the composer at the piano. The dedication reads, “For my dear friend, the great artist Arnold Rosé.” This would be Walter’s final chamber music composition and the only one published during his lifetime.

The expansive opening movement provides for a rather complicated motivical development, while the “Andante” undergoes a series of mood changes that place serious technical demands on the performers. The “Finale” unfolds in the manner of a Rondo, with the refrain shared between the violin and the piano.

As Erik Ryding noted, “Walter composed in a post-Romantic, expressionist vein, and his well-crafted works are often thick-textured, ecstatic outpourings.” Walter emphatically stated later in life, “I am not a composer… yet there was a time when I still entertained the illusion of being one.”

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) An Anniversary Cello Tribute

by Georg Predota, Interlude

On 4 November 2024, we commemorate the 100th anniversary of the death of Gabriel Fauré. He might well have been the greatest master of French songs, with his settings achieving a beautiful balance of prosody, melody, harmony, and polyphony. In his music, Fauré aimed to convey a prevailing atmosphere, and he developed an immediately identifiable style and a highly personal musical language.

Gabriel Fauré © Pianodao

Stylistic developments none withstanding, Fauré developed his individual voice from his handling of harmony and tonality. Drawing on rapid modulations, he never completely destroyed the sense of tonality, always aware of its limits, yet freeing himself from many of its restrictions.

Fauré’s harmonic richness is complemented by his melodic invention. As Jean-Michel Nectoux writes, “he was a consummate master of the art of unfolding a melody: from a harmonic and rhythmic cell he constructed chains of sequences that convey, despite their constant variety, inventiveness and unexpected turns an impression of inevitability.”

Concurrently with his songs, chamber music constitutes Fauré’s most important contribution to music. The elegance, refinement, and sensibility of his melodic writing easily transferred into the instrumental realm. On the 100th anniversary of his death, let us celebrate Fauré’s highly developed sense of sonorous beauty by exploring his magnificent and highly popular compositions for the cello. 

Let’s get started with one of the most beautiful and popular pieces by Gabriel Fauré, the Sicilienne, Op. 78. The work actually has an interesting history, as Camille Saint-Saëns was asked by the manager of the Grand Théâtre to compose incidental music for a production of Molière’s “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.” However, Saint-Saëns was rather busy, and he recommended his former student Gabriel Fauré for the task.

Portrait of Camille Saint-Saëns by Benjamin Constant

Fauré went to work, and the music was nearly complete when the theatre company went bankrupt in 1893. The production was abandoned, and the music, including the first version of the Sicilienne, remained unperformed. Five years later, Fauré was engaged to write incidental music for the first English production of Maurice Maeterlinck’s play, Pelléas et Mélisande. Fauré would eventually publish a suite derived from this incidental music, which included an updated and orchestrated version of the Sicilienne.

Concordantly, however, the Dutch cellist Joseph Hollman, who frequently appeared in concert with Camille Saint-Saëns, was looking for a short encore. As such, Fauré fashioned an arrangement for cello and piano and dedicated the piece to William Henry Squire, a British cellist and principal with several major London orchestras. This most famous and memorable melody builds from a delightful lyrical theme in the minor mode. It evokes a pastoral mood with its lilting rhythms, and it has since been arranged for countless combinations of instruments. 

The two sonatas for cello and piano by Gabriel Fauré belong to his final creative period. The first sonata was composed in Saint-Raphaël, where Fauré liked to seclude himself far away from the hustle and bustle of Paris. Written between May and October 1917, the work echoes the unsettling dark days of the First World War. To be sure, Fauré’s younger son Philippe was in the army, and the A-minor sonata seemingly reflects the composer’s anxiety and apprehension.

Fauré’s older son Emmanuel suggested that the uncharacteristically aggressive tone of the composition also represents his father’s anger at his worsening deafness. Like much of his chamber music from this period, Fauré was searching for harmonic and contrapuntal freedom, “and the rarefied and austere character is reinforced by concentrated writing for the instruments.”

Gabriel Fauré in 1907

The opening “Allegro deciso” launches into a violent theme from a discarded symphony and also from the music of his warlike opera Pénélope. The lyrical contrast is short-lived, and the fiery ending features new unsettling piano figuration. Essentially a restless nocturne, the central “Andante” was the first movement to be composed. The music offers echoes from his Requiem, and the search for tranquillity is continued in the concluding “Allegro comodo.” However, brief glimpses of optimism are subdued by strict contrapuntal severity. 

Gabriel Fauré had a complicated relationship with the publisher Julien Hamelle. Hamelle was a shifty character who frequently lost manuscripts, and as he was severely “forgetful,” he was not particularly reliable. Always looking for quick sales, Hamelle loved to add fanciful titles to Fauré’s compositions. Such was certainly the case for the French “Flight of the Bumblebee” he commissioned from Fauré. This virtuoso miniature was composed in 1884 but only published fourteen years later, in 1898.

Hamelle insisted on first calling the piece Libellules (Dragonflies), then Papillon (Butterfly). Fauré was never enamoured with fanciful titles, and he angrily wrote back, “Butterfly or Dung Fly, call it whatever you like.” Fauré did insist, however, that the words “Pièce pour violoncelle,” a title more suited to his aesthetic approach, should appear as a sub-title.

Scored in five sections, it is a piece of pure virtuosity in the outer framing pillars. The middle episodes, however, contain the most beautiful lyrical passages. This gorgeous symmetrical song, as a commentator writes, “finally takes wing over one of Fauré’s favourite descending bass lines.” In the end, Hamelle was correct in appending a fanciful title as Papillon became incredibly popular with cellists from around the world. 

Fauré’s Papillon was actually a commissioned pendant for his already highly popular Élégie. That particular gem emerged in 1880 after the composer had finished a violin sonata. Fauré had decided to write a counterpart for the cello, and habitually, he started with the slow movement. When he played it for his friend and mentor Camille Saint- Saëns, his teacher was overjoyed. Work on the sonata progressed no further, but the slow movement with the title “Élégie” was published in 1883.

Gabriel Fauré’s Élégie, Op. 24

For Patrick Castillo, “the compact frame, its brevity, intimate scoring…belies its expressive range. The work seems to honour grief as a multifaceted thing and depicts it as such. Herein lies Fauré’s mastery. He possesses the sensibility to probe, with economy and exquisite subtlety, the depth of human emotion, giving graceful voice to our innermost feelings.”

Scored in three sections, the C-minor opening is reminiscent of a funeral march supported by a solemn progression of chords on the piano. As the middle section modulates to the major key, the music becomes more lyrical and melancholic. A sudden tortured outcry returns us to the opening melody, now transformed and supported by a flurry of notes in the piano. 

The Berceuse, later to become part of the Dolly Suite, damaged Fauré’s reputation for a very long time. Let me explain. It actually dates from his student years and was composed in 1864. It was originally titled “La Chanson dans le jardin,” and written for Suzanne Garnier, the daughter of a friend. The initial scoring called for violin and piano, but once it was published, the title page provided the option “for violin or cello.” In the event, this tender little piece caused Fauré to be known as a “salon composer,” a reputation that proved incredibly difficult to shake.

When Fauré first met Emma Bardac, she had recently given birth to a daughter, Hélène, nicknamed Dolly. Emma was married to a banker and Gabriel to Marie, and their affair lasted the better part of four years. Emma was his intellectual equal; she was outgoing, amusing, articulate, and exuded great warmth from the mothering side of her personality. After their affair ended, Emma met Debussy, and after eloping to England, the two got married.

Emma Bardac-Debussy

In the 1890s, Fauré composed or revised small pieces, especially for Dolly. These pieces celebrated a birthday, a pet, or various friends of the little girl. Combining six of these miniatures, Fauré produced the “Dolly Suite” for piano duet. The Berceuse marked Dolly’s first birthday in 1893. This dreamy lullaby rocks the cradle with a swinging accompaniment, a music-box texture, and charming harmonic transparency.

Romance

During his time as organist at the Église de la Madeleine in Paris, Fauré composed a short piece for organ and cello simply titled “Andante.” For unknown reasons, the composer delayed publication until 1894, but eventually adapted the original organ part for the piano. He changed the tempo from “Andante” to “Andante quasi allegretto” and appended the title “Romance.”

Gabriel Fauré’s Romance, Op. 69

The sustained organ chords became arpeggios, but the solo part remained essentially unchanged. This wonderful miniature places great emphasis on lyricism as the music grows into a long and flexible phrase. The principle theme is not new, as Fauré had already used it in his incidental music for Shylock, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. And you might also recognise it from his song “Soir,” a setting of a poem by Albert Samain.

Sérénade

The last small piece for cello, chronologically, is the “Sérénade” Op. 98. Dedicated to the Catalan cellist Pablo Casals, the piece was a gift to celebrate Casal’s engagement to the Portuguese cellist Guilhermina Suggia. Never mind that the relationship never transformed into marriage. Casals was enthused about the music as he wrote to the composer, “The Serenade! It is delightful every time I play it; it seems new, so beautiful, is it.” For a variety of obvious personal reasons, Casals neither performed the piece in public nor recorded it during his long career.

The “Sérénade” unfolds as an uneasy conversation between the two instruments. The cello line presents a delightful melody akin to the best of Fauré’s songs. However, the piano part is more than just mere accompaniment, interweaving melodic lines and unsettled harmonies. It immediately interrupts the lyrical seductiveness of the melody with arpeggio figuration before taking it over completely. Despite its brevity, the “Sérénade” is surprisingly complex, painfully avoiding rhythmic and harmonic resolutions.

Cello Sonata No. 2

Fauré has almost completely lost his hearing when he started work on his 2nd Cello Sonata, Op. 117. Actually, he was commissioned by the French government to write a funeral march for a military band for a ceremony to be held on 5 May 1921. That particular date marked the 100th anniversary of the death of Napoleon. The sombre theme he composed for the occasion remained in his mind and, as he said, “turned itself into a sonata.”

Gabriel Fauré’s grave and funeral

The reworked funeral march takes its place as the central “Andante” in the Sonata, exuding a relaxed tranquillity reminiscent of the mood presented in his Elegy, Op. 24. This sense of nostalgia is prefaced by an essentially lyrical opening movement that features two contrasting themes intertwined in free counterpoint. Jean-Michel Nectoux regarded the joyful finale “as one of the great Fauréan scherzos,” which sounds like an ode to life, “a moving profession of faith from an old man who knows that the end was approaching.”

Vincent d’Indy expressed his admiration for his friend’s work: “I want to tell you that I’m still under the spell of your beautiful Cello Sonata… The Andante is a masterpiece of sensitivity and expression, and I love the finale, so perky and delightful… How lucky you are to stay young like that!” Fauré continued to search for the purpose of music and wrote, “And what music really is, and what exactly I am trying to convey. What feeling? What ideas? How can I explain something that I myself cannot fathom?”

Fauré died from pneumonia on 4 November 1924 in Paris at the age of 79. His last words questioned, “Have my works received justice? Have they not been too much admired or sometimes too severely criticized? What if my music will live? But then, that is of little importance.” Fauré would certainly be delighted to know that his compositions for the cello are still performed with great enthusiasm and regularity. They beautifully reflect Fauré’s final thoughts that “music exists to elevate us above everyday existence.”

Casablanca 1942 - As Time Goes By (original song Dooley Wilson)

"As Time Goes By" is a song written by Herman Hupfeld in 1931. It became very famous in 1942 when it was sung by Sam (Dooley Wilson) in the film " Casablanca " Casablanca is a 1942 Hollywood romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman . The film is set at the beginning of World War II in the Moroccan city of Casablanca , then under the control of Vichy France. The plot focuses on the internal conflict of a man who must choose between duty and love , between the woman he loves and the need to help her and her husband, the leader of the Resistance movement , escape from Casablanca to continue the fight against the Nazis. Although Casablanca was created as an A-movie, with famous actors and first-rate scriptwriters, no one expected to achieve exceptional results

• and indeed, the first screenings brought a solid, but not spectacular success. It was considered to be one of dozens of run-of-the-mill films churned out in Hollywood every year . The film was quickly released to take advantage of the resonance surrounding the Casablanca Conference of the Allies and the landing of troops in North Africa , which took place a few weeks before the film's premiere and was still fresh in the minds of audiences.

Despite multiple changes of screenwriters who were trying to adapt a play that had not yet been staged for the big screen, and despite the fact that it was Bogart's first romantic role, Casablanca won three Oscars , including Best Picture . The American Film Institute declared the film the best American romantic comedy of all time . The characters, dialogue, and music became some of the most beloved by Americans, and the film's popularity grew to such a scale that it is still often named among the best films in Hollywood history. The film's premiere was timed to coincide with the city of Casablanca making headlines in the United States: in November 1942, the Allied forces occupied Casablanca, and in January 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill met there . Given this circumstance, Warner Brothers decided not to postpone the film's premiere. However, American soldiers in North Africa did not see it: the authorities did not want to provoke the numerous supporters of the Vichy regime in the French colonies. Casablanca was the seventh-largest film in the U.S. box office in 1943, but its appeal was not in its box office receipts or Academy Awards , or even its artistic originality (just compare Casablanca to Orson Welles's Citizen Kane ). Its strength was its timeliness, a reflection of Hollywood's ability to create movie magic despite its near- assembly-line production. Rick Blaine's reluctance to take risks for anyone was a metaphor for American society's attitude toward World War II, which was expressed in the isolationist policies that prevailed before Pearl Harbor . And the change that Rick experienced by the end of the film was symbolic of the change in American sentiment after the declaration of war.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN The man and the artist

 

Beethoven’s life presents a sharp contrast to his music; where he was often impatient, abrupt, and even careless in everyday matters, his approach to music was marked by profound patience and careful brooding. Although his personal life was frequently distracted and melancholic, his music conveys a sadness that is noble and universal, never mere despair. As a political revolutionist and social rebel, he rejected conformity, yet in his music, he respected traditional forms, choosing to expand rather than discard them. His extempore playing was audacious, yet in his written compositions, Beethoven was cautious and meticulously selective.

Beethoven’s sketchbooks—more than fifty of which were found after his death—are a testament to his slow and careful creative process. These books, filled with musical ideas and repeated revisions, reveal the germination of themes from simple beginnings into the artistic designs of his final compositions. Grove notes that each elaboration brought spontaneity, making them “perhaps the most remarkable relic” of any artist. Beethoven worked simultaneously on multiple compositions and often kept themes in mind for years. Nottebohm, author of Beethoveniana, speculated that had Beethoven completed all the symphonies outlined in these books, there would be at least fifty. His creative process involved relentless revision until each phrase expressed exactly the emotions he sought.

Though outside events occasionally influenced his music—as with the Eroica Symphony—his work was largely independent of his personal experiences. A profound example of this detachment is seen in the Second Symphony, composed in 1802, the same year Beethoven wrote the “Heiligenstadt Will.” In this document, born from his despair over his worsening health and incurable deafness, Beethoven poured out his anguish over his unhappiness and isolation, sentiments not reflected in the lively Second Symphony he composed simultaneously.

Beethoven’s anguish over his deafness and isolation was powerfully conveyed in his Heiligenstadt Will, written in 1802. He described himself as living in "exile," gripped by anxiety whenever near others, fearing his condition would be noticed. He confessed that at times he considered ending his life but was restrained by his dedication to art: "It seemed as if I could not quit this earth until I had produced all I felt within me." He expressed a desperate wish to experience "just one pure day of joy", yearning to feel true happiness once more.

This despair, however, was absent from the music he composed that same year, particularly the Second Symphony, where Beethoven’s artistic voice triumphed over his personal sorrow. Critics observe that this symphony radiates joy and strength. "The scherzo is as proudly gay… the andante is completely happy and tranquil… for everything is smiling in this symphony," showcasing Beethoven’s noble heart and the unblemished illusions of life that he preserved in his music.

There were rare periods, notably from 1808 to 1811 during his relationship with Therese Malfatti and again after his brother’s death in 1815, when personal struggles silenced his creativity. Yet, despite lifelong battles with sickness, financial strain, and heartbreak—including the turmoil caused by his nephew—these hardships rarely penetrated his music. The “Eroica” Symphony might reflect an emotional response, but more often, Beethoven’s compositions served as a refuge and defense against grief. His music was a shelter from sorrow, a fortress that shielded him from life’s woes, allowing him to transcend his trials through art.