DR LUIS DIAS
In 2020, a friend and I had made elaborate plans to visit Vienna for the 250th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s birth. We had booked flights, hotel and concert tickets for his symphonies, piano sonatas and string quartets. And then came the COVID-19 pandemic. Thankfully, we could recover most of our money.
Our visit earlier this year was centred more around opera than Beethoven, but it would be a shame not to doff my hat to Vienna’s most famous past resident (although as a tourism magnet, Mozart gives him stiff competition).
Vienna’s music history reads like a ‘Who’s who’ of the great composers. The ‘first Viennese school’ comprised Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, with Franz Schubert sometimes tagged on as well. Apart from the ‘second Viennese school’, (Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils, particularly Alban Berg and Anton Webern, and many others), the other ‘big’ names include Johann Strauss the Elder and Younger, Anton Bruckner, Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, and so many more.
Okay, time for a little riddle (which has relevance to the rest of this article, trust me): “Why did Beethoven write his famous ‘Eroica’ symphony in three flats?”
“Because he moved house a lot.”
A short explanation for those who need it: The question implies one is making a comment about the symphony’s key signature (E flat major, which has three flats). But the answer refers to ‘flats’ as in ‘living space’, and Beethoven was a terrible tenant. His lack of attention to personal hygiene, especially in his later years, is well-documented. His progressive deafness necessitated him pounding ever more forcefully at his piano, often at ungodly hours.
This is what Beethoven’s pupil and secretary Anton Schindler wrote in his biography ‘Beethoven as I knew him’ about the great man’s ‘peculiar’ relationship with water: “Washing and bathing were among the most pressing necessities of Beethoven’s life. In this respect he was indeed an Oriental: to his way of thinking. Mohammed did not exaggerate a whit in the number of ablutions he prescribed. If he did not dress to go out during the morning working hours, he would stand in great déshabillé [state of undress] at his washstand and pour large pitchers of water over his hands, bellowing up and down the scale or sometimes humming loudly to himself. Then he would stride around his room with rolling or staring eyes, jot something down, then resume his pouring of water and loud singing. These were moments of deep meditation, to which no one could have objected but for two unfortunate consequences. First of all, the servants would often burst out laughing. This made the master angry and he would sometimes assault them in language that made him cut an even more ridiculous figure. Or, secondly, he would come into conflict with the landlord, for all too often so much water was spilled that it went right through the floor. This was one of the main reasons for Beethoven’s unpopularity as a tenant. The floor of his living room would have had to be covered with asphalt to prevent all that water from seeping through. And the master was totally unaware of the excess of inspiration under his feet!”
In one residence, Beethoven’s landlord stopped him just in time from unauthorisedly breaking a hole in a wall for a window in order to get a better view of the city!
Is it any wonder that poor Beethoven had to move house at least 67 times in the 35 years from 1792 until his death in 1827?
Of those many residences, I visited the two famous ones that are open to the public: the Beethoven Museum (where he lived from April to October 1802) and Pasqualatihaus.
I took advantage of Vienna’s offer of free entry on the first Sunday of every month to visit the Beethoven Museum in the then spa town of Heiligenstadt, now accessible by the city’s excellent public transport.
Nevertheless, not many residents knew where it was. I worked out how to get to Heiligenstadt by the underground and then overground rail. But the bus driver for the final-mile connectivity dropped me a long way off from the museum.
This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as I realised it was the start of the Beethovengang, “a scenic walking path that Beethoven loved so much, winding through greenery, vineyards and parks, and dotted with memorials to him. The sunny Sunday morning was perfect for walking in Beethoven’s footsteps
The whole beautifully preserved house (Probusgasse 6) is now the museum, although Beethoven lived in a small upstairs apartment.
Here he wrote some of his most important works (the first sketches of his Eroica symphony and his ‘Tempest’ piano sonata) and the now-famous ‘Heiligenstadt Testament’, a letter he wrote to his brothers on October 6, 1802, reflecting his despair over his increasing deafness, even his contemplation of suicide, balanced by his continued desire to overcome his physical and emotional ailments to complete his artistic destiny.
I spent most of the day in the museum, breaking for lunch at a lovely nearby ‘heurige’ (tavern) with ‘Beethoven’s favourite coffee’ (“a small strong mocha with whipped cream and cinnamon, served with a Florentine biscuit’) on the menu.
Pasqualatihaus is more central, and Beethoven spent a total of eight years (1804-1808; 1810-1814) here with long-suffering Baron Pasqualati as his landlord. This is where Beethoven tried unsuccessfully to create a window for a better view of the Prater; the wall is intact.
Beethoven wrote his only opera ‘Fidelio, ‘his Fourth, Fifth and Seventh Symphonies and his Fourth Piano Concerto here. However, it was even more difficult to find, on the fourth floor of a lovely old building with steep steps (no elevator), and no signage on the door.
This little museum isn’t actually in the rooms occupied by Beethoven, but the adjacent apartment on the same floor. Sadly, a Jewish couple Eckstein living there was evicted in the 1940s by the Nazis and eventually murdered in Auschwitz, although their children survived on the Kindertransport to England and then the U.S.
For a long time, I was the solitary visitor, sharing the space with a passive-aggressive lady (commented upon by others on TripAdvisor as well) at the entrance. Her demeanour improved remarkably when a ‘Caucasian’ visitor (a French musicologist with whom I had the most interesting conversation about the causes of deaths of composers including Beethoven) joined us.
Making small talk while leaving, I learned she was Serbian. She recoiled when I said I was Indian. “India and Arabia (sic) don’t know how to respect women! I will never visit!” She rattled off news reports of rapes and sexual harassment in India as incontrovertible evidence. And I didn’t want to be baited into ‘whataboutery’ in seeming defence of patriarchy anywhere.
It will be Beethoven’s 255th birthday in two days’ time, December 16.
But all these years later, over 200 years after Beethoven wrote his groundbreaking Ninth Symphony, in 1824 (composed in a house in another spa town Baden nearby that I didn’t visit), ‘Alle Menschen warden Bruder’ [All men (and women) will be brothers (and sisters)] remains an elusive ideal. But we should never lose sight of that ideal, and keep trying. It is the best way to honour Beethoven. It is the ultimate, universal ‘Beethoven trail.’
