Beethoven the Person

•Appearance and manner•Character and behavior•Relationships

Beethoven was slim until his early thirties.Penetrating brown eyes, broad forehead and thick eyebrows.Scars from childhood smallpox; cleft in his chin which becomes more marked in later years.Dressed elegantly and fashionably.

In his later years Beethoven became stockier.Grillparzer on changes in his appearance: “I first saw Beethoven in my boyhood years – which may have been 1804 or 5….Beethoven in those days was still lean, dark, and contrary to the habit in later years, very elegantly dressed….One or two years later I was living with my parents in Heiligenstadt, near Vienna. Our dwelling fronted on the garden, and Beethoven had rented the rooms facing the street….My brothers and I took little heed of the odd man who in the meanwhile had grown more robust, and went about dressed in a most negligent, even slovenly way.”

Röckel, the original Florestan in 1806, visited Beethoven about the same time and described his powerful physique: “…was placed the mighty bathing apparatus in which the Master was laving his powerful chest…and I had the opportunity of admiring his muscular system and sturdy bodily construction. To judge by the latter the composer might look forward to growing as old as Methuselah, and it must have taken a most powerful inimical influence to bring this strong column to so untimely a fall.”

Ries, on Beethoven’s clumsiness: “Beethoven was the most awkward and bungling in his behavior; his clumsy movements lacked all grace. He rarely picked up anything without dropping or breaking it….Everything was knocked over, soiled, or destroyed. How he ever managed to shave himself at all remains difficult to understand, even considering the frequent cuts on his cheeks. – He never learned to dance in time with the music.”

Beethoven’s personality was filled with contradictions:

good intentions / uncontrollable temper

kind / hard and coldmorose / high-spirited

On successive days he wrote to Hummel: “Don’t come to me anymore! You are a false dog and may the hangman do away with all false dogs!”

followed by…“”Dear little Ignaz of my Heart! You are an honest fellow and I now realize that you were right….Kisses from your Beethoven, also called dumpling.”

Frankness and rudenessAfter a quarrel with Prince Lichnowskyin 1806, Beethoven apparently said: “Prince, what you are, you are by an accident of birth; what I am, I am through my own efforts. There have been thousands of princes and there will be thousands more; there is only one Beethoven!”

Beginning when he was 27, his deafness grew worse and worse, leading to

bouts of despairmore reservedmore suspicious and distrustful of

others

Beethoven’s Residences

He rarely stayed in one dwelling for long.Baron de Trémont visited Beethoven in 1809:“Picture to yourself the dirtiest, most disorderly place imaginable—blotches of moisture covered the ceiling, an oldish grand piano, on which dust disputed the place with various pieces of engraved and manuscript music; under the piano (I do not exaggerate) an unemptied pot de nuit;…the chairs, mostly cain-seated, were covered with plates bearing the remains of last night’s supper and with wearing apparel, etc.”

But paradoxically, Beethoven was obsessed with washing—and often the water from the buckets he emptied over himself leaked through the floor.

Pasqualati House

Music room in Beethoven’slast apartment, on theSchwarzspanierstrasse

Beethoven’s DressingCount von Keglevics (nephew of Beethoven’s pupil Barbara): “He had the whim – one of many – since he lived across from her, of coming to give her lessons clad in a dressing gown, slippers and a peaked nightcap.”

As he got older, he became more and more eccentric, distrustful, convinced that he was in a bad state financially, and his appearance—especially his hair— grew more and more neglected.

Beethoven’s Daily Routine

frequent change of addresshousekeeping problemstrouble managing financial

affairsnegligence concerning

appearanceoverall untidinessmany rough and apparently

illegible sketches

But…Beethoven’s apparent

disorder was only external; he maintaineda disciplined approach to

composing

From Schindler:

“Beethoven rose every morning the year around at dawn and went directly to his desk. There he would work until two or three o’clock, his habitual dinner hour. In the course of the morning he would usually go out of doors once or twice, but would continue to work as he walked…..His afternoons were regularly spent in long walks. Late in the afternoon he would go to a favorite tavern to read the papers….Beethoven always spent his winter evenings at home reading serious works of literature. Only very rarely did he work with musical scores during the evening for the strain on his eyes was too great….He would go to bed at ten o’clock at the latest.”

On walking:

Beethoven would “twice make the circuit of the city in double-quick time”

“I encountered Beethoven several times on my walks in Mödling, and it was most interesting to see him, a sheet of music paper and a stump of pencil in his hand, stop often as though listening, and then write a few notes on the paper.