Beethoven at Zum Roten Igel
Last week, I got very excited about this link:
https://elenedom.wordpress.com/2015/07/21/beethoven-guest-blogger/
Here, Elene explores a musician friend’s contact with Beethoven, comparing it to her own subtle relation with him and with Chopin.
It inspired me to dig out my old sketches of Ludwig Beethoven, and to see what happens: to try perhaps a new one. I am reminded of a dream I had in 2011, of my hands like a child, and Beethoven touching them and looking onward … or mine resting on his:
My dream with Beethoven, 29 May 2011. He had Pluto and Venus in Capricorn – a musician’s Hades-Persephone marriage. Pluto is again in Capricorn – 2008-2024 – completing a cycle since Beethoven’s day. Pluto is the depth dredger in human affairs, but also represents – particularly in Capricorn – a depth and enduringness of human values, such as those which Beethoven heard, sang as he walked, and wrote. These values seemingly hidden by today’s turbulence, are perenially fresh for those who touch and find.
The Pluto Venus Capricorn glyph in this drawing speaks to me of the master’s depth and tenderness.
Journal 29 May 2011
“I dreamed – An eager young man, with some arrangement with Beethoven, built an Ascension vehicle which lifted us high to behold his vision and his project, for which he was gathering souls like mine, for faith and ballast. The landscape was stupendously beautiful – a great smooth sunset sea surrounded by distant mountains, their crazy, graceful outlines rimmed with supernal light. It was heart-catching: awe. The sea – the LENS – was like a very large bay or inlet, because ‘inland’ or harbour seemed to be to the right, below. It is my perennial vision of the human coastline and hinterland. Have faith!
“The man spoke of it all, and somewhere I touched the back of Beethoven’s hand. The vision was – as in the Eroica – of Beethoven’s divine pride and purpose. Beethoven was immediately to hand, the writing all joined up. It was time to go with the man and put it all into action … the young man’s voice had an Australian twang … …
“… I listened to Beethoven’s Adieux, Therese, the Goblins and the Fourth piano concerto, all played by Arrau … Artists and musicians are forgiven much. Grumpy old Beethoven – chunks of humanity off the old block – are put there for us to listen to their musical integrity, not to be wise or polite.
“I draw very slowly the line – and it was really hard to get a Beethoven likeness – eventually found photo of his sculpted head, taken from the life mask. I think this is the one he didn’t like, as the weight of the plaster dragged down his face – so we ALL think he went around with mouth down turned at the corners, and maybe he didn’t. He is said to have pursed his lips when concentrating, and certainly he stuck the lower one out. His chin was cleft like a great shell. His nose was ‘three cornered, like a lion’, his eyes rather small and exceptionally alive – changing colour, dark greenish hazel perhaps. He tended to roll them upwards. He was swarthy, pock marked, with leonine black hair ‘like a Spaniard’, and much hair over his body and hands. He dressed elegantly when he was young. When a fine lady complemented the nobility of his brow, he said ‘Salute it then, Madam’ and offered it to kiss.”
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Here is one of my efforts to sketch him yesterday – the young Beethoven, from the Hornemann portrait 1802: before his deafness and at the height of his performing powers.
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This drawing was done perhaps in the 1970s: the older man bends close to the keys in his struggle to hear.
Beethoven plays
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The above portrait was inspired by this painting by an unknown artist – my father has the sepia photo. I always assumed it was Ludwig Beethoven playing the violin, but if you look closely, you can see his life mask hanging on the wall … like a secret mirror.
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When I was a child we lived in a farmhouse with a large attic. Exploring up there, I found this cobwebbed photo of a painting by Franz Stvk. I have it still.
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When I was young, I played a lot of Beethoven on the piano, and identified – often painfully – with his darkness. In the 1980s I teamed with a violinist, Fred Barschak, and together we climbed the mountains of the Spring, Kreuzer and Seventh Violin Sonatas.
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Here are my earlier sketches of Beethoven, and their sources:
beethoven on a walk
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Beethoven at work
This portrait was inspired by Batt’s drawing (below) in the Oxford Companion to Music.
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Gallery: Beethoven by Batt, Klein, Stvk and von Kloeber
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Beethoen in later life
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More early studies – I made his forehead much higher than it really was. Beethoven’s brow had a noble, rounded breadth.
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Beethoven after the painting by F.Schimon
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These two pages are from a journal in 1969, quoting Schindler’s visit to the master when he was composing the Missa Solemnis Credo.
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And … within the cosmos of the late Quartets –
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Glancing at Elene’s other posts touching on Beethoven, here is a teaching of his to a pianist-composer friend – he sat in the car and said to Elene’s friend, “How do you get the perfect cut of meat? – you trim away all the fat.” While reading the earlier post, ‘More on Lou van B’, these words came to me: “before sitting down to play Beethoven, open and fill your heart with love.”
It is a struggle for me to find him sometimes – like climbing over fences. Perhaps it is the spiritual battle of the “heroic” with love; the personal ego with the truth; the ‘I-can-and-I-will’ with ‘listen’ … inheriting Beethoven’s philosophical dilemma in the Quartet opus 135 – must it be? It must be.
piano action
I am at present “exercising” Emily’s baby grandpiano in Southgate. It has a beautiful faded case; her father used to play popular classics on it, but he died nearly 30 years ago, and no one touched it since. The poor thing had sagged to honky tonk with three stuck notes, and yet I found a good, light action. I persuaded them to have it tuned. The sleeping beauty is in shock! – and now between tunings to stabilise – all her strings woke up and stretched and some of them already slipped. I put a vase of water underneath and a small dish of water inside, to counteract the heating in the house.
Yet her voice came out, singing and mellow, in the quieter places, quite sensual. It was wonderful to play and hear it in the restful, faded drawing-room which opens onto the long wisteria garden. I enjoyed a strange sense of flow and freedom of tone across the ‘vertical’ hammer system, in terms of touch and tenderness: Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and other slow movements spoke with love, and so did Bach preludes. Some of the bass notes growl. My fingers were – magically – not in the way. I thought of the Liszt method in Paul Roes’ book Music – the Mystery and the Reality. Magic happens in an individual variety of tone – part of the charm which older pianos have – which challenges me to find and adapt to its way of singing. The new or electronic instruments don’t have that playful intimacy.
Instrument. This is actually my father’s Petrof piano, as I have not yet photographed Emily’s.
Interestingly, in Elene’s post on conversations with Beethoven, he says new agey views of higher plane diaphanous white robes are nonsense – we wear what we wore in history and sometimes dress up in contemporary style for fun – like he did in a 1940s brown suit. “He still loves rain, baths, showers and the woods. His house is in the woods.” Because generation after generation discover and interpret his music, his commitment to humanity is timeless, covering a very wide landscape, and continually refreshed … “A German word in the ear, meaning energy flowing: projection: Vorsprung – projects like rock.“
Have we a Beethoven forum? Visit also https://edwardianpiano.wordpress.com/my-poetry/ for some evocative verse, haiku and pictures of Beethoven I never saw before. This fascinating site turned up last week in synchrony with Elene’s Beethoven, Guest Blogger; I had to jump in.
TO BE CONTINUED – my new attempts to draw Beethoven, and some more impressions.
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My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.
This blog is a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.
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