Читать книгу Ludwig van Beethoven (Biography in 3 Volumes) - Alexander Wheelock Thayer - Страница 9

He studied in Parma, says Neefe, with the first violinist Angelo Moriggi, a pupil of Tartini, and in Parma, Mantua and Bologna conducted grand operas like “Orfeo,” “Alceste,” etc., by the Chevalier Gluck with success. He owed much to the example set by Gluck in the matter of conducting. It must be admitted that he is a man full of fire, of lively temperament and fine feeling. He penetrates quickly into the intentions of a composer and knows how to convey them promptly and clearly to the entire orchestra. He was the first to introduce accentuation, instrumental declamation, careful attention to forte and piano, or all the degrees of light and shade in the orchestra of this place. In none of the qualifications of a leader is he second to the famed Cannabich of Mannheim. He surpasses him in musical enthusiasm, and, like him, insists upon discipline and order. Through his efforts the musical repertory of this court has been provided with a very considerable collection of good and admirable compositions, symphonies, masses and other works, to which he makes daily additions; in the same manner he is continually striving for the betterment of the orchestra. Just now he is engaged in a project for building a new organ for the court chapel. The former organ, a magnificent instrument, became a prey of the flames at the great conflagration in the palace in 1777. His salary is 1,000 fl.

The chapelmaster (appointed May 26, 1774) was Mr. Andrea Lucchesi, born May 28, 1741, at Motta in Venetian territory. His teachers in composition were, in the theatre style, Mr. Cocchi of Naples; in the church style, Father Paolucci, a pupil of Padre Martini at Bologna, and afterwards Mr. Seratelli, Chapelmaster of the Duke of Venice. He is a good organist and occupied himself profitably with the instrument in Italy. He came here with Mr. Mattioli as conductor of an Italian opera company in 1771. Taken altogether he is a light, pleasing and gay composer whose part-writing is cleaner than that of most of his countrymen. In his church-works he does not confine himself to the strict style affected by many to please amateurs. Neefe enumerates Lucchesi’s compositions as follows: 9 works for the theatre, among them the opera “L’Isola della Fortuna” (1765), “Il Marito geloso” (1766), “Le Donne sempre Donne,” “Il Matrimonio per astuzia” (1771) for Venice, and the two composed at Bonn, “Il Natal di Giove” and “L’inganno scoperto,” various intermezzi and cantatas; various masses, vespers and other compositions for the church; six sonatas for the pianoforte and violin; a pianoforte trio, four pianoforte quartets and several pianoforte concertos. His salary was 1,000 fl.

Christian Gottlob Neefe’s Career

The organist of the Court Chapel was Christian Gottlob Neefe, son of a poor tailor of Chemnitz in Saxony, where he was born February 5, 1748. He is one of the many instances in musical history in which the career of the man is determined by the beauty of his voice in childhood. At a very early age he became a chorister in the principal church, which position gave him the best school and musical instruction that the small city afforded—advantages so wisely improved as to enable him in early youth to gain a living by teaching. At the age of 21, with 20 thalers in his pocket and a stipend of 30 thalers per annum from the magistrates of Chemnitz, he removed to Leipsic to attend the lectures of the university, and at that institution in the course of time he passed his examination in jurisprudence. Upon this occasion he argued the negative of the question: “Has a father the right to disinherit a son for devoting himself to the theatre?” In Chemnitz Neefe’s teachers in music had been men of small talents and very limited acquirements, and even in Leipsic he owed more to his persevering study of the theoretical works of Marpurg and C. P. E. Bach than to any regular instructor. But there he had the very great advantage of forming an intimate acquaintance with, and becoming an object of special interest to, Johann Adam Hiller, the celebrated director of the Gewandhaus Concerts, the then popular and famous composer, the introducer of Handel’s “Messiah” to the German public, the industrious writer upon music, and finally a successor of Johann Sebastian Bach as Cantor of the Thomas School. Hiller gave him every encouragement in his power in his musical career; opened the columns of his musical “Wöchentliche Nachrichten” to his compositions and writings; called him to his assistance in operatic composition; gave him the results of his long experience in friendly advice; criticized his compositions, and at length, in 1777, gave him his own position as music director of Seyler’s theatrical company, then playing at the Linkische Bad in Dresden. Upon the departure of that troupe for Frankfort-on-the-Main, Neefe was persuaded to remain with it in the same capacity. He thus became acquainted with Fräulein Zinck, previously court singer at Gotha but now engaged for Seyler’s opera. The acquaintance ripened into a mutual affection and ended in marriage not long afterward. It is no slight testimony to the high reputation which he enjoyed that at the moment of Seyler’s flight from Frankfort (1779) Bondini, whose success had driven that rival from Dresden, was in correspondence with Neefe and making him proposals to resign his position under Seyler for a similar but better one in his service. Pending the result of these negotiations Neefe, taking his wife with him, temporarily joined Grossmann and Helmuth at Bonn in the same capacity. Those managers, who knew the value of his services from their previous experience as members of the Seyler troupe, paid a very strong, though involuntary, tribute to his talents and personal character by adopting such unfair measures as to compel the musician to remain in Bonn until Bondini was forced to fill his vacancy by another candidate. Having once got him, Grossmann was determined to keep him—and succeeded.

As long as the Grossmann company remained undivided Neefe accompanied it in its annual visits to Münster and other places;—thus the sketch of his life printed sixteen years later in the first volume of the “Allgemeine Musikzeitung” of Leipsic bears date “Frankfort-on-the-Main, September 30, 1782”; but from that period save, perhaps, for a short time in 1783, he seems not to have left Bonn at all.

There were others besides Grossmann and Helmuth who thought Neefe too valuable an acquisition to the musical circles of Bonn not to be secured. Less than a year and a half after his arrival there the minister Belderbusch and the countess Hatzfeld, niece of the Elector, secured to him, though a Protestant, an appointment to the place of court organist. The salary of 400 florins, together with the 700 florins from Grossmann, made his income equal to that of the court chapelmaster. It is difficult now to conceive of the forgotten name of C. G. Neefe as having once stood high in the list of the first North German composers; yet such was the case. Of Neefe’s published compositions, besides the short vocal and clavier pieces in Hiller’s periodical, there had already appeared operettas in vocal score, “Die Apotheke” (1772), “Amor’s Guckkasten” (1772), “Die Einsprüche” (1773) and “Heinrich und Lyda” (1777); also airs composed for Hiller’s “Dorf-Barbier” and one from his own republished opera “Zemire und Azor”; twelve odes of Klopstock—sharply criticized by Forkel in his “Musikalisch-Kritische Bibliothek,” much to the benefit of the second edition of them; and a pretty long series of songs. Of instrumental music he had printed twenty-four sonatas for pianoforte solo or with violin; and from Breitkopf and Härtel’s catalogues, 1772 and 1774, may be added the following works included neither in his own list nor that of Gerber: a partita for string quartet, 2 horns, 2 oboes, 2 flutes and 2 bassoons; another for the same instruments minus the flutes and bassoons; a third for the string quartet and 2 oboes only, and two symphonies for string quartet, 2 horns, 2 oboes and 2 flutes. The “Sophonisbe” music was also finished and twenty years later, after Mozart had given a new standard of criticism, it was warmly eulogized in the “Allgemeine Musikzeitung” of Leipsic. At the date of his letter to Cramer (March 2, 1783) he had added to his published works “Sechs Sonaten am Clavier zu singen,” “Vademecum für Liebhaber des Gesangs und Clavier,” the clavier score of “Sophonisbe,” and a concerto for clavier and orchestra. His manuscripts, he adds (Cramer’s “Magazine,” I; p. 382), consist of (a) the scores of the operettas which had appeared in pianoforte arrangements; (b) the score of his opera “Zemire und Azor”; (c) the score of his opera “Adelheit von Veltheim”; (d) the score of a bardic song for the tragedy “The Romans in Germany”; (e) the scores of theatrical between-acts music; (f) the score of a Latin “Pater noster”; (g) various other smaller works. He had in hand the composition of the operetta “Der neue Gutsherr,” the pianoforte score of which, as also that of “Adelheit von Veltheim,” was about to be published by Dyck in Leipsic. A year before at a concert for amateurs at the house of Mr. von Mastiaux he had produced an ode by Klopstock, “Dem Unendlichen,” for four chorus voices and a large orchestra, which was afterwards performed in Holy Week in the Fräuleinstiftskirche. In short, Neefe brought to Bonn a high-sounding reputation, talent, skill and culture both musical and literary, which made him invaluable to the managers when new French and Italian operas were to be prepared for the German stage; great facility in throwing off a new air, song, entr’acte or what not to meet the exigencies of the moment; very great industry, a cacoethes scribendi of the very highest value to the student of Bonn’s musical history in his time and a new element into the musical life there. This element may have seemed somewhat formal and pedantic, but it was solid, for it was drawn from the school of Handel and Bach.

Music in Private Houses of Bonn

Let us return to Neefe’s letter to Cramer again for some notices of music outside the electoral palace:

Belderbusch, the minister, retained a quintet of wind-instruments, 2 clarinets, 2 horns and a bassoon.

The Countess von Belderbusch, wife of a nephew of the minister, whose name will come up again, “plays skilfully upon the clavier.”

The Countess von Hatzfeld, niece of the Elector, was “trained in singing and clavier playing by the best masters of Vienna to whom, indeed, she does very much honor. She declaims recitatives admirably and it is a pleasure to listen to her sing arias di parlante. She plays the fortepiano brilliantly and in playing yields herself up completely to her emotions, wherefore one never hears any restlessness or uneveness of time in her tempo rubato. She is enthusiastically devoted to music and musicians.”[4]

Chancellor and Captain von Schall “plays clavier and violin. Though not adept on either instrument he has very correct musical feeling. He knows how to appreciate the true beauties of a composition, and how to judge them, and has large historical and literary knowledge of music.”

Frau Court Councillor von Belzer “plays the clavier and sings. She has a strong, masculine contralto of wide range, particularly downwards.”

Johann Gottfried von Mastiaux, of the Finance Department and incumbent of divers high offices, is a self-taught musician. He plays several instruments himself and has given his four sons and a daughter the best musical instruction possible in Bonn. All are pianists and so many of them performers on other instruments that the production of quintets is a common family enjoyment. He is a devoted admirer of Haydn, with whom he corresponds, and in his large collection of music there are already 80 symphonies, 30 quartets and 40 trios by that master. His rare and valuable instruments are so numerous “that he could almost equip a complete orchestra. Every musician is his friend and welcome to him.”

Count Altstädter: “in his house one may at times hear a very good quartet.”

Captain Dantoine, “a passionate admirer and knower of music; plays the violin and the clavier a little. He learned composition from the books of Marpurg, Kirnberger and Riepel. Formed his taste in Italy. In both respects the reading of scores by classical masters has been of great service to him.” Among his compositions are several operettas, symphonies and quartets “in Haydn’s style.”

The three Messrs. Facius, “sons of the Russian agent here, are soundly musical; the two elder play the flute and the youngest plays the violoncello.” (According to Fischer the members of this family were visitors at the house of the Beethovens.)

There are many more music-lovers here, but the majority of them are too much given to privacy, so far as their musical practice goes, to be mentioned here. Enough has been said to show that a stranger fond of music need never leave Bonn without nourishment. Nevertheless, a large public concert institution under the patronage of His Electoral Grace is still desirable. It would be one more ornament of the capital and a promoter of the good cause of music.

What with the theatre, the court music, the musical productions in the church and such opportunities in private it is plain that young talent in those days in Bonn was in no danger of starvation for want of what Neefe calls “musikalische Nahrung.”

So much upon the dramatis personæ, other than the principal figure and his family. Let an attempt follow to describe the little city as it appeared in 1770—in other words, to picture the scene. By an enumeration made in 1789, the population of Bonn was 9,560 souls, a number which probably for a long series of years had rarely varied beyond a few score, more or less—one, therefore, that must very nearly represent the aggregate in 1770. For the town had neither manufactures nor commerce beyond what its own wants supported; it was simply the residence of the Elector—the seat of the court, and the people depended more or less directly upon that court for subsistence—as a wag expressed it, “all Bonn was fed from the Elector’s kitchen.” The old city walls—(the “gar gute Fortification, dass der Churfürst sicher genug darinnen Hof halten kann” of Johann Hübner’s description)—were already partially destroyed. Within them the whole population seems to have lived. Outside the city gates it does not appear that, save by a chapel or two, the eye was impeded in its sweep across gardens and open fields to the surrounding villages which, then as now hidden in clusters of walnut and fruit trees, appeared, when looked upon from the neighboring hills, like islands rising upon the level surface of the plain. The great increase of wealth and population during the last 150 years in all this part of the Rhine valley under the influence of the wise national economy of the Prussian government, has produced corresponding changes in and about the towns and villages; but the grand features of the landscape are unchanged; the ruins upon the Drachenfels and Godesberg looked down, as now, upon the distant roofs and spires of Bonn; the castle of Siegburg rose above the plains away to the East; the chapel crowned the Petersberg, the church with the marble stairs the nearer Kreuzberg.

A Prospect of Bonn in Beethoven’s Day

The fine landing place with its growing trees and seats for idlers, the villas, hotels, coffee-houses and dwellings outside the old walls, are all recent; but the huge ferryboat, the “flying bridge,” even then was ever swinging like a pendulum from shore to shore. Steam as a locomotive power was unknown, and the commerce of the Rhine floated by the town, gliding down with the current on rafts or in clumsy but rather picturesque boats, or impelled against the stream by the winds, by horses and even by men and women. The amount of traffic was not, however, too great to be amply provided for in this manner; for population was kept down by war, by the hard and rude life of the peasant class, and by the influences of all the false national-economic principles of that age, which restrained commerce by every device that could be made to yield present profit to the rulers of the Rhine lands. Passengers had, for generations, no longer been plundered by mail-clad robbers dwelling upon a hundred picturesque heights; but each petty state had gained from the Emperor’s weakness “vested rights” in all sorts of custom-levies and taxes. Risbeck (1780) found nine toll-stations between Mayence and Coblenz; and thence to the boundary of Holland, he declares there were at least sixteen, and that in the average each must have collected 30,000 Rhenish florins per annum.

To the stranger, coming down from Mayence, with its narrow dark lanes, or up from Cologne, whose confined and pestiferously dirty streets, emitting unnamed stenches, were but typical of the bigotry, superstition and moral filth of the population—all now happily changed, thanks to a long period of French and Prussian rule—little Bonn seemed a very picture of neatness and comfort. Even its ecclesiastical life seemed of another order. The men of high rank in the church were of high rank also by birth; they were men of the world and gentlemen; their manners were polished and their minds enlarged by intercourse with the world and with gentlemen; they were tolerant in their opinions and liberal in their views. Ecclesiastics of high and low degree were met at every corner as in other cities of the Rhine region; but absence of military men was a remarkable feature. Johann Hübner gives the reason for this in few and quaint words:—“In times of war much depends upon who is master of Bonn, because traffic on the Rhine can be blockaded at this pass. Therefore the place has its excellent fortification which enables the Elector to hold his court in ample security within its walls. But he need not maintain a garrison there in time of peace, and in time of war troops are garrisoned who have taken the oath to the Emperor and the empire. This was settled by the peace of Ryswick as well as Rastatt.”

While the improvement in the appearance of the streets of Bonn has necessarily been great, through the refitting or rebuilding of a large portion of the dwelling-houses, the plan of the town, except in those parts lying near the wall, has undergone no essential change, the principal one being the open spaces, where in 1770 churches stood. On the small triangular Römer-Platz was the principal parish church of Bonn, that of St. Remigius, standing in such a position that its tall tower looked directly down the Acherstrasse. In 1800 this tower was set on fire by lightning and destroyed; six years later the church itself was demolished by the French and its stones removed to become a part of the fortifications at Wesel. On the small, round grass plot as one goes from the Münster church toward the neighboring city gate (Neuthor) stood another parish church—a rotunda in form—that of St. Martin, which fell in 1812 and was removed; and at the opposite end of the minster, separated from it only by a narrow passage, was still a third, the small structure dedicated to St. Gangolph. This, too, was pulled down in 1806. Only the fourth parish church, that of St. Peter in Dietkirchen, is still in existence and was, at a later date, considerably enlarged. After the demolition of these buildings a new division of the town into parishes was made (1806).

The city front of the electoral palace, now the university, was more imposing than now, and was adorned by a tall, handsome tower containing a carillon, with bells numerous enough to play, for instance, the overture to Monsigny’s “Deserter.” This part of the palace, with the tower and chapel, was destroyed by fire in 1777.

The town hall, erected by Clemens August, and the other churches were as now, but the large edifice facing the university library and museum of casts, now occupied by private dwellings and shops, was then the cloister and church of the Franciscan monks. A convent of Capuchin nuns stood upon the Kesselgasse; its garden is now a bleaching ground.

Holiday Times in the Little City

Let the fancy picture, upon a fine Easter or Pentecost morning in those years, the little city in its holiday attire and bustle. The bells in palace and church tower ringing; the peasants in coarse but picturesque garments, the women abounding in bright colors, come in from the surrounding villages, fill the market-place and crowd the churches at the early masses. The nobles and gentry—in broad-flapped coats, wide waistcoats and knee-breeches, the entire dress often of brilliant colored silks, satins and velvets, huge, white, flowing neckcloths, ruffles over the hands, buckles of silver or even of gold at the knees and upon the shoes, huge wigs becurled and bepowdered on the heads, and surmounted by the cocked hat, when not held under the arm, a sword at the side, and commonly a gold-headed cane in the hand (and if the morning be cold, a scarlet cloak thrown over the shoulders)—are daintily picking their way to the palace to kiss His Transparency’s hand or dashing up to the gates in heavy carriages with white wigged and cocked-hatted coachmen and footmen. Their ladies wear long and narrow bodices, but their robes flow with a mighty sweep; their apparent stature is increased by very high-heeled shoes and by piling up their hair on lofty cushions; their sleeves are short, but long silk gloves cover the arms. The ecclesiastics, various in name and costume, dress as now, save in the matter of the flowing wig. The Elector’s company of guards is out and at intervals the thunder of the artillery on the walls is heard. On all sides, strong and brilliant contrasts of color meet the eye, velvet and silk, purple and fine linen, gold and silver—such were the fashions of the time—costly, inconvenient in form, but imposing, magnificent and marking the differences of rank and class. Let the imagination picture all this, and it will have a scene familiar to the boy Beethoven, and one in which as he grew up to manhood he had his own small part to play.