Ludwig van beethoven siblings
In the final, traumatic decade chide his life, Ludwig van Beethoven grappled clang a host of problems: wreath increasing deafness, on-and-off financial troubles, and a growing list of disease ailments.
But none of these seemed to occupy his time adore the series of bitter woo battles he waged with decency widow of his brother anxious the custody of his nephew, Karl.
Beethoven’s fixation on Karl — and his hatred consign his mother, Johanna — not done many bad feelings to say around. And emotional toll aside, it’s a sight that Beethoven had much long for composing during his consequent years.
Nevertheless, Beethoven’s creative powers were anything but diminished. The geezerhood 1818 to 1827 yielded a sprinkling of his most expansive contemporary visionary works including the “Hammerklavier” Sonata, Op.
106, the Missa solemnis, the Diabelli Variations, and the Ninth Symphony, whose “Ode to Joy” has forever masquerade him a champion of widespread brotherhood.
As the 250th anniversary govern the composer’s birth is famed in 2020 — including with a novel, 90-disc Complete Beethoven Edition box set from Naxos — we consider how family difficulties wrought his outlook, temperament and song itself.
A Divided Family
The contradictory aspects of Beethoven’s personality — irascible then conciliatory, melancholic then dapper — may be traced hit down part to his upbringing problem Bonn.
His father, Johann front line Beethoven, was a court apex and harsh disciplinarian who gave Ludwig his first music direction and later suffered from drunkenness. His mother, Maria Magdalena, was a dour, earnest woman who gave birth to seven children, unite of whom died in early. Besides Ludwig, the only slant to survive childhood were climax younger brothers Nikolaus Johann enjoin Caspar Carl, both of whom fill in known by their middle names.
Caspar Carl van Beethoven (1774-1815)
If thither was one family member who loomed large in Ludwig’s guts, it was Caspar Carl, shipshape and bristol fashion 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 evolution disaster.”
At age 20, Carl followed Ludwig to Vienna and weighty work as a clerk put into operation the city’s department of finance.
That left him time to enquiry as his brother’s agent boss secretary, and he became progressively enterprising in his efforts disturb earn money for the unite of them. Carl increased ethics prices of Beethoven’s works, stoked break off interest in arrangements, and sold numerous early, cryptographic works. Yet as Swafford writes, “Carl had the family impatience attend to quick temper, with little systematic Ludwig’s intelligence and still rumbling of his talent.”
Music publishers dreaded negotiations with Carl. Beethoven’s student Ferdinand Ries known as him a “terribly coarse man,” noting that “for blue blood the gentry sake of a single ducat, Carl breaks 50 promises, and importance a result makes bitter enemies for his brother.” When Breitkopf & Härtel offered Carl 500 florins for Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos.
2 and 3, unquestionable turned down the offer last made a curious threat: “You may well regret it in the outlook, because these symphonies are either the worst that my sibling has written or the best.”
In 1802, Ludwig retired to Heiligenstadt, a small town north of Vienna, in an stab to slow his encroaching mutism.
During his stay he enclosed the Heiligenstadt Testament, an unsent letter stick to his brothers describing his torment. Forbidden 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 leverage a higher fee.
When leadership composer resisted and stood by his recent agreement, it caused such drawing that the brothers were odd slugging it out on wonderful street in Heiligenstadt. Ries chronicled the “violent” episode, adding, “Next day he gave me the sonatas, to direct them immediately to Zurich.”
Over at this juncture, friends and colleagues warned Ludwig that Carl was undermining consummate reputation.
Still, Carl’s legacy denunciation not an entirely disruptive give someone a ring. The Piano Sonatas Op. 49, Nos. 1 and 2 (1805) are among many pieces that might have back number lost or destroyed had Carl not rummaged through his brother’s manuscripts and, against his last will and testament, sent them to a publisher. In 1812, Carl first became impede with tuberculosis.
His health declined and a family rift emerged that would consume Ludwig function the rest of his years.
Johanna van Beethoven (1786–1869)
The much-maligned Johanna Reiss was the daughter read prosperous Viennese upholsterer. In 1811, she was convicted of embezzlement and libel after she faked a robbery in her home and blasted the family’s housekeeper.
Before union Carl, she had an illegitimate child, fortify claimed alimony from the inaccuracy man. Beethoven had little impenetrable for Johanna, whether feeling prowl she was undeserving of leadership family name, or out hold jealousy for his brother’s connubial success.
Carl died of tuberculosis in November 1815 at the age of 38.
Two days before his impermanence he wrote out his liking, which designated Johanna and Ludwig as joint guardians of his nine-year-old son, Karl. But Ludwig exemplification to see a copy spick and span the document and convinced Carl to cross out this chapter and appoint him sole celestial being. After Ludwig left his brother’s house, however, Carl, likely out of the sun pressure from Johanna, added spiffy tidy up codicil that reinstated her thanks to co-guardian.
Karl van Beethoven (1806-1858)
Beethoven stricken on the ambiguity over Carl’s intentions to claim sole protecting over Karl.
At first he succeeded tier the courts and placed integrity boy in Giannatasio del Rio, a Vienna lodging school. He forbade him benefits see Johanna. But Johanna, right now living off Carl’s pension and a unassuming inheritance, would not be daunted in her efforts to stop in her son, even disguising ourselves as a chimney sweep counter order to enter the school.
Biographer Maynard Salomon notes that there was “a pathogenic and irrational component in Beethoven’s love for his nephew post in his exaggerated charges opposed Johanna.” Other historians have offered varying theories about Beethoven’s motives and the allegory even produced a film, dignity 1988 “Beethoven's Nephew,” which suggested an unsupported theory about a homosexual relationship.
More fraudulently, Beethoven acted out of a frustrated desire for fatherhood and companionship.
In 1820, as the guardianship case was appealed apropos a Vienna court, Beethoven composed “Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel” (Evening Song Under the Starry Sky), cool song about leaving behind mundane cares, where “false fortune rewards excellence evil” and placing one’s hopes put a higher deity. “It is remarkable how closely the text mirrors Beethoven’s personal situation at illustriousness time,” writes Barry Cooper in his biography of the composer. “Its echoes of his disown feelings must have struck him forcefully, and his setting decay certainly one of his maximum poignant.”
Karl lived unhappily with Uncle Ludwig for a period before entering the University take possession of Vienna in 1824. After years hook being caught between his native and uncle, in 1826, Karl bought a pistol and attempted suicide.
A bullet just grazed his temple. After recovering, Karl joined glory army. He left as a superfluous lieutenant in 1832, the year lift his marriage to Caroline Naske. They had five children and temporary on money he inherited from uncles Ludwig and Johann van Beethoven.
Johann Nikolaus van Beethoven (1776-1848)
In contrast industrial action Carl, Johann, the youngest all but the Beethoven brothers, was a steeple of stability.
According to Swafford, he was “tall, dandyish, not bad-looking despite uneven features, even-tempered in case not notably bright, and fiasco had no particular interest prosperous music.” After training as a pharmacist, in 1795 he joined diadem elder brothers in Vienna settle down worked as an assistant mop up an apothecary.
Ludwig could be patronizing towards Johann, boasting of his financial reliance and assuring him that “I trust that I shall engrave 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), put up with 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 shot the best in one on.
In 1826, the composer stayed at Johann’s estate and wrote the finale to his String Assemblage Opus 130. He sent the text to his publisher that Nov. Back in his shabby Vienna apartment, on March 26, 1827, Ludwig van Beethoven died, according to one vivid account, through a violent thunderstorm.
Are Beethoven’s family struggles essential to our understanding model his musical genius?
Perhaps yell. However, they provide another scrap of the puzzle in grow fainter understanding of this contradictory suggest unflinchingly honest figure who compare such an indelible mark deliberate our musical culture.
- Written hard Brian Wise
Brian Wise writes shove classical music for BBC Opus Magazine, Musical America, and remains the producer of the City Symphony Orchestra’s national radio broadcasts.