I have long argued that you have to separate artists from their art. I can admire the Eric Gill frieze above the entrance to Broadcasting House without for a second condoning the sexual abuse that appalling man subjected his daughters to. Gesualdo murdered his wife but that doesn’t stop me liking his madrigals. Henry Williamson was a member of the British Union of Fascists but Tarka the Otter is still a good book. The Siegfried Idyll is a charmingly beautiful piece but its composer, Wagner, was so virulently antisemitic that the Nazis saw him, and his music, as their inspiration. I could go on.
Beethoven was a difficult, troubled, misguided unlikeable man but almost every note of his music is sublime. Think of the finale of the fifth symphony (with the piccolo!) or the opening of the Pathetique piano sonata or any bar of the violin concerto. And the odd thing as, John Suchet finds, is that the more appalling the composer’s behaviour got the more celestial Beethoven’s music became.
Suchet, who has written extensively about Beethoven in the past, and delivered hundreds of talks on the subject, calls this eminently readable 2024 book a “personal journey”. Although it is, in part, a biography of the composer it also discusses Suchet’s own discoveries about, and relationships with, Beethoven from his childhood to the present day. The Eroica symphony, in particular, provided inspiration, solace and courage on more than one dangerous, war zone mission in his ITN reporting days.
He travels to many places associated with Beethoven in Germany and Austria and, by sheer serendipity, manages to hook up with several descendants of Beethoven’s sponsors and supporters. Any Beethoven lover, for instance, knows the Waldstein piano sonata (and Suchet explains how it got its name). Then 200 years later we are almost as moved, as he clearly is, when he catches up with Countess Waldstein in 2024 along with several others from families who had links with the composer.
Beethoven was a sick man for most of his life. His hearing, as everyone knows, went in his twenties although no one knows why. He also suffered all his life from debilitating gastric problems. Recent DNA analysis from hair samples suggest that he had cirrhosis of the liver and kidney failure resulting from mercury poisoning. Almost unbelievably to us in the 21st century, the wine was routinely sweetened with mercury which would also have been all around him in eating utensils, paint and so on.
Feeling permanently unwell does not, however, excuse his behaviour and Suchet eventually admits that while he adores the music in which he is steeped, he finds Beethoven the man hard to understand or like. The composer cared for nothing but music and had no empathy. Repeatedly he took money and other help from influential people and then lost his temper with them and walked away. He had a massive sense of entitlement and no concept of gratitude. Performers were treated with disdain when they tried to negotiate about “unplayable” or “unsingable” passages. Parts were often delivered only at the very last minute so there was no time to rehearse properly, if at all. Working with Beethoven was like teetering on the rim of a volcano.
Worse, however, is the very well documented treatment of his widowed sister-in-law, Johanna, whom he relentlessly sought to separate from her son Karl. She may (or was it exaggerated?) have been a bit free with her favours but, as Suchet observes, she was also a mother who naturally wanted to be with her son. Beethoven disapproved of her with venomous passion and fought for years through the courts to prevent Johanna and Karl from meeting, while, astonishingly, also composing some of his best work. It resulted in turning Karl into a very screwed up teenager. Eventually the young man tried to take his own life and, really, Beethoven was to blame.
Suchet has a pleasantly chatty style which includes conversations with his wife Nula and his late wife Bonnie, both fellow enthusiasts and active supporters as he goes about his research. As you read you can hear the music that sustains him (as it does me although I’ve never had to report from a war zone). And it’s like a mysterious alchemical process. How one earth did this irascible, awkward, misguided, ruthless genius produce this exquisite stuff? It feels like a massive contradiction but it proves my point: appreciate the art irrespective of what the artist was or did.
I’d now rather like to hear one of Suchet’s talks which he says have changed over the years because Beethoven research never stands still.
Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Tricked by the Kippers’ Knickers by Dick Dixon and Reine Mazoyer
