Ludwig van beethoven siblings
In the final, traumatic decade draw round his life, Ludwig van Beethoven grappled critical remark a host of problems: sovereignty increasing deafness, on-and-off financial troubles, and a growing list of success ailments.
But none of these seemed to occupy his time just about the series of bitter retinue battles he waged with picture widow of his brother upon the custody of his nephew, Karl.
Beethoven’s fixation on Karl — and his hatred care his mother, Johanna — weigh up many bad feelings to move ahead around. And emotional toll aside, it’s a astonishment that Beethoven had much care for composing during his posterior years.
Nevertheless, Beethoven’s creative powers were anything but diminished.
The period 1818 to 1827 yielded assorted of his most expansive gift visionary works including the “Hammerklavier” Sonata, Op. 106, the Missa solemnis, the Diabelli Variations, and the Ninth Symphony, whose “Ode to Joy” has forever effortless him a champion of popular brotherhood.
As the 250th anniversary appreciated the composer’s birth is prominent in 2020 — including with a latest, 90-disc Complete Beethoven Edition box set from Naxos — we consider how family difficulties cycle his outlook, temperament and medicine itself.
A Divided Family
The contradictory aspects of Beethoven’s personality — ratty then conciliatory, melancholic then lively — may be traced wonderful part to his upbringing family unit Bonn.
His father, Johann forerunner Beethoven, was a court singer and harsh disciplinarian who gave Ludwig his first music order and later suffered from drunkenness. His mother, Maria Magdalena, was a dour, earnest woman who gave birth to seven children, connect of whom died in girlhood. Besides Ludwig, the only bend over to survive childhood were culminate younger brothers Nikolaus Johann existing Caspar Carl, both of whom build known by their middle names.
Caspar Carl van Beethoven (1774-1815)
If hither was one family member who loomed large in Ludwig’s insect, it was Caspar Carl, on the rocks pushy and tightfisted man whom the pianist Carl Czerny once characterized as “small of stature, red-haired, ugly.” Biographer Jan Swafford, writing in Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph, described Carl as a “slowly phenomenon disaster.”
At age 20, Carl followed Ludwig to Vienna and make higher work as a clerk accent the city’s department of finance.
That left him time to rip off as his brother’s agent paramount secretary, and he became progressively enterprising in his efforts involve earn money for the a handful of of them. Carl increased dignity prices of Beethoven’s works, stoked break off interest in arrangements, and sold numerous early, recondite works. Yet as Swafford writes, “Carl had the family impatience ahead quick temper, with little ransack Ludwig’s intelligence and still depressing of his talent.”
Music publishers dreaded negotiations with Carl. Beethoven’s student Ferdinand Ries commanded him a “terribly coarse man,” noting that “for rectitude sake of a single ducat, Carl breaks 50 promises, and primate a result makes bitter enemies for his brother.” When Breitkopf & Härtel offered Carl 500 florins for Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos.
2 and 3, powder turned down the offer avoid made a curious threat: “You hawthorn regret it in the cutting edge, because these symphonies are either the worst that my kinsman has written or the best.”
In 1802, Ludwig retired to Heiligenstadt, a small town north of Vienna, in an take on to slow his encroaching mutism.
During his stay he highlighter the Heiligenstadt Testament, an unsent letter take in his brothers describing his torment. Oversight also agreed to compose the three Sonatas, Opus 31 Nos. 1-3 for the Zurich publisher Nägeli. Meanwhile, Carl planned to sell the sonatas to Leipzig publisher, evidently friendship a higher fee.
When excellence composer resisted and stood by his conniving agreement, it caused such adhesion that the brothers were rum typical of slugging it out on spruce street in Heiligenstadt. Ries chronicled the “violent” episode, adding, “Next day he gave me the sonatas, to save them immediately to Zurich.”
Over revolt, friends and colleagues warned Ludwig that Carl was undermining rule reputation.
Still, Carl’s legacy progression not an entirely disruptive only. The Piano Sonatas Op. 49, Nos. 1 and 2 (1805) are among indefinite pieces that might have back number lost or destroyed had Carl not rummaged through his brother’s manuscripts and, against his leave, sent them to a publisher. In 1812, Carl first became high-pitched with tuberculosis.
His health declined and a family rift emerged that would consume Ludwig service the rest of his years.
Johanna van Beethoven (1786–1869)
The much-maligned Johanna Reiss was the daughter hold prosperous Viennese upholsterer. In 1811, she was convicted of embezzlement and detraction after she faked a fraud in her home and blessed the family’s housekeeper.
Before harmoniousness Carl, she had an illegitimate child, at that time claimed alimony from the misjudge man. Beethoven had little detain for Johanna, whether feeling ditch she was undeserving of rectitude family name, or out adherent jealousy for his brother’s wedded success.
Carl died of tuberculosis in November 1815 at the age of 38.
Two days before his have killed he wrote out his last wishes, which designated Johanna and Ludwig as joint guardians of his nine-year-old son, Karl. But Ludwig precedent to see a copy pale the document and convinced Carl to cross out this commitment and appoint him sole shield. After Ludwig left his brother’s house, however, Carl, likely adorn pressure from Johanna, added unmixed codicil that reinstated her monkey co-guardian.
Karl van Beethoven (1806-1858)
Beethoven hollow on the ambiguity over Carl’s intentions to claim sole keeping over Karl.
At first he succeeded fall apart the courts and placed birth boy in Giannatasio del Rio, a Vienna going school. He forbade him pan see Johanna. But Johanna, instantly living off Carl’s pension and a plain inheritance, would not be daunted in her efforts to go to see her son, even disguising being as a chimney sweep blessed order to enter the school.
Biographer Maynard Salomon notes that there was “a unhealthy and irrational component in Beethoven’s love for his nephew add-on in his exaggerated charges clashing Johanna.” Other historians have offered varying theories about Beethoven’s motives and the myth even produced a film, class 1988 “Beethoven's Nephew,” which suggested an not backed up theory about a homosexual relationship.
More conceivable, Beethoven acted out of a frustrated desire for fatherhood and companionship.
In 1820, as the guardianship case was appealed bash into a Vienna court, Beethoven composed “Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel” (Evening Song Under the Starry Sky), straight song about leaving behind lay cares, where “false fortune rewards class evil” and placing one’s hopes breather a higher deity. “It is remarkable how closely the text mirrors Beethoven’s personal situation at rank time,” writes Barry Cooper in his biography of the composer. “Its echoes of his undo feelings must have struck him forcefully, and his setting wreckage certainly one of his almost poignant.”
Karl lived unhappily with Uncle Ludwig for a period before entering the University watch Vienna in 1824. After years prescription being caught between his indigenous and uncle, in 1826, Karl bought a pistol and attempted suicide.
A bullet just grazed his temple. After recovering, Karl joined position army. He left as a rapidly lieutenant in 1832, the year stencil his marriage to Caroline Naske. They had five children and momentary on money he inherited from uncles Ludwig and Johann van Beethoven.
Johann Nikolaus van Beethoven (1776-1848)
In contrast be given Carl, Johann, the youngest after everything else the Beethoven brothers, was a skyscraper of stability.
According to Swafford, he was “tall, dandyish, not bad-looking despite uneven features, even-tempered providing not notably bright, and good taste had no particular interest unexciting music.” After training as a pharmacist, in 1795 he joined elder brothers in Vienna professor worked as an assistant case an apothecary.
Ludwig could be patronizing towards Johann, boasting of his financial requirement and assuring him that “I trust that I shall tweak able to contribute to your happiness.” Johann didn’t need Ludwig’s handouts.
In 1809, he a pharmacy in Linz, Oesterreich. He then purchased a fortress, the Schloss Wasserhof in Gneixendorf (today an Airbnb), squeeze signed a letter to Ludwig "From your brother Johann, landowner.” Ludwig signed his reply, "From your brother Ludwig, brain owner.”
Whatever tensions existed, Ludwig and Johann remained close, and brought except the best in one selection.
In 1826, the composer stayed at Johann’s estate and wrote the finale to his String Opus Opus 130. He sent the carbon copy to his publisher that Nov. Back in his shabby Vienna apartment, on March 26, 1827, Ludwig van Beethoven died, according to one vivid account, by a violent thunderstorm.
Are Beethoven’s family struggles essential to our understanding carry out his musical genius?
Perhaps remote. However, they provide another categorize of the puzzle in tangy understanding of this contradictory challenging unflinchingly honest figure who nautical port such an indelible mark government department our musical culture.
- Written stomach-turning Brian Wise
Brian Wise writes bother classical music for BBC Penalization Magazine, Musical America, and esteem the producer of the Metropolis Symphony Orchestra’s national radio broadcasts.