In an anonymous travelogue published in 1828, Karl Postl, better known as Charles Sealsfield, set down his impressions of his native Austria.Footnote 1 Among Sealsfield's scathing remarks on the Austrian education system is this description of its censored schoolbooks, ‘the most barren and stupid extracts which ever left the printing press’ which turned professors into ‘ex-officio spies’. In required reports on each student, ‘a strict vigilance is paid to his reading; trials are made with classic authors, his opinion is elicited about characters such as Brutus, Cato, and the account thereof faithfully inserted’.Footnote 2 Sealsfield suggests here that the biographies of Marcus Junius Brutus and Cato the Younger, two of Plutarch's Parallel Lives, were offensive to both church and state. The reasons are obvious: both Brutus and Cato opposed Julius Caesar because of their republican principles, and both died by suicide, an act contrary to Catholic doctrine.Footnote 3
Histories of ancient Greece and Rome have always had political implications; Sealsfield's account suggests that these were particularly intense during the last years of Ludwig van Beethoven's life. This new book by Jos van der Zanden is particularly welcome because its content sits at the intersection of two recent themes in musicology, Beethoven's religion and his politics post-1815.Footnote 4 By choosing this subject, van der Zanden ventures into potentially controversial territory. However, his approach is anything but polemical. He sets out to explore his topic ‘in a thoughtful and cautious manner, with sufficient supply of background material’ (p. 3). He aims to get closer to Beethoven's actual state of mind and avoid
tangential correlations … between ancient figures that were known to Beethoven … and such themes as German idealism (the realm of love, freedom, and beauty), heroism, republicanism, rebelliousness, etc. As will be seen, many of these themes had their actual roots not so much in Beethoven's time, but in the later nineteenth century, predominantly in the second-half. (p. 7)
These exclusions signal to readers that they will not hear about the Eroica symphony and two often-cited connections, to Homer and Virgil (Hector Berlioz), or to the Prometheus legend (Paul Bekker).Footnote 5 Also passed over will be the assumed reference to Orpheus in the slow movement of Op. 58 (A.B. Marx).Footnote 6 This clear focus is consistent with van der Zanden's previous work, which tends toward detailed investigations of under-researched questions that can then illuminate Beethoven's stances in general.Footnote 7 The book is full of pertinent detail, and I believe its chief objective is fulfilled. It is clear that Beethoven read widely in Greek and Roman literature (in translation), and that it affected both his personal philosophy and his music. Van der Zanden provides the additional service of disentangling this assertion from Anton Schindler's unreliable influence.Footnote 8 This book will be an invaluable reference for future studies on the intellectual context of Beethoven's life and works.
Among previous discussions of Beethoven and antiquity, two earlier articles from the 1970s stand out. Günter Fleischhauer relied on primary source material for a convincing picture of Beethoven's involvement with antiquity, concluding that ‘Beethoven's idea of individual excellence as useful for society comes close to the concept of virtus in ancient Rome’.Footnote 9 Several years later, Renate Reschke connected Beethoven's knowledge of Greek and Roman literature with his political liberalism.Footnote 10 A new phase of research on Beethoven's intellectual influences was opened by Maynard Solomon, with the publication of Beethoven's Tagebuch and associated commentary.Footnote 11 In his article ‘The Quest for Faith’, Solomon attempted to harmonize Beethoven's inherited Christianity with other facets of his spirituality: ‘nature worship, enlightened ideas’, and later ‘Eastern and Egyptian ritual, Classical mythology, and Christian theology’.Footnote 12 An important article on Beethoven and Plutarch by E. Kerr Borthwick, a specialist in ancient music and Greek drama, was published in 1994.Footnote 13 Lewis Lockwood drew upon Borthwick's article, his own study of Plutarch, and Beethoven's exposure to Schiller's early dramas to reinterpret the concept of heroism in Beethoven.Footnote 14
Because of its emphasis on primary sources, especially Beethoven's conversation books, van der Zanden's study emphasizes the later periods of Beethoven's life.Footnote 15 He addresses this potential bias with two chapters covering Beethoven's life in Bonn and his early life in Vienna. Two different influences on Beethoven are featured there: eighteenth-century neoclassicism, especially prominent in the visual arts, and countercurrents which he could have found in Schiller and Winckelmann.Footnote 16 After that, van der Zanden divides his discussion into specific topics. On Greek literature he covers Homer (Chapter 4) and Xenophon, Euripides, and Greek Poetry (Chapter 5); on Roman literature: Plutarch, Horace, and Tacitus (Chapter 6). Homer is particularly important because Beethoven's own copy of the Odyssey survives, and van der Zanden adds his own interpretation of Beethoven's markings contained therein to the work of several other scholars.Footnote 17
I found Chapter 7, ‘The Role of Hellenistic Philosophy’, especially intriguing. Here, van der Zanden emphasizes the compatibility of Beethoven's attitudes with Stoicism. In this way, while he seems unconvinced by the more definite assertions of Beethoven's Christian orthodoxy, he can bypass controversy by ascribing core beliefs to him that often coexisted with various forms of Christianity. Enlightenment philosophers influenced by Stoicism include Kant and Rousseau.Footnote 18 Specific to Austria, Roger Bauer mentions Plutarch and Seneca as state-sanctioned sources of Stoic thought. Bauer also sees Stoic influence on Heinrich von Collin and his play Coriolan, the inspiration for Beethoven's Coriolanus overture; and Franz Grillparzer, who knew Beethoven and wrote a libretto for him.Footnote 19 Van der Zanden admits that Plutarch was an avowed Platonist and only influenced by Stoicism, and that Beethoven's exposure to verified Stoic sources is conjectural. But he finds one convincing piece of evidence: a series of entries in a conversation book where Beethoven must have been defending the concept of natural law, a key tenet of Stoicism. As T.H. Irwin describes it:
To live in accordance with virtue, therefore, is to live in accordance with human nature, and to live in accordance with the requirements of correct reason. … since facts about human nature fix the requirements of correct reason, these requirements belong to natural law. Hence, according to the Stoic doctrine of natural law, virtuous people, in following the requirements of correct reason for human nature, fulfill the natural law that applies to all rational agents.Footnote 20
Chapter 8 discusses Beethoven's music on antique themes. He seems to have been especially drawn to the subject of Bacchus (in Greek, Dionysos) and a god in his retinue, Pan. The purpose of a short musical sketch found in the Scheide sketchbook, an invocation of Pan, has long been a mystery. It is preceded by remarks from Beethoven on ‘unresolved dissonances’, and a reference to an ‘opera’; both have inspired speculation by many scholars since Thayer and Nottebohm. Surely thanks to the ongoing digitization of historical sources, van der Zanden was able to locate Beethoven's text in a dramatic work with music by Friedrich von Drieberg.Footnote 21 He has to share the credit with Federica Rovelli, though.Footnote 22 Both of them identified the source of the libretto as Der Mäusefallen- und Hechelkrämer by Christian Heinrich Spiess, an author of popular adventure novels and ghost stories. Drieberg, who knew Beethoven personally, had investigated ancient Greek music and probably wanted Beethoven to compose something in a clearly differentiated ‘antique’ style. Since the story does not seem to take place in ancient times, the ‘Pan’ chorus would have been deliberately retrospective.Footnote 23
I have stressed van der Zanden's authorial logic and discipline throughout this review, but he does allow himself one literary flourish. To get the full effect, one needs to start from Chapter 1, where he introduces us to Austrian writer and theatre director Joseph Schreyvogel. Research into Schreyvogel and his works reveals him as a fascinating figure, and he did have connections to Beethoven, though he was not part of the composer's inner circle. Schreyvogel is extensively quoted in Chapter 7 on Hellenistic philosophy, particularly on Stoicism. But his main role is found in Chapter 8, on Beethoven's music. There we find a long discussion of the never-composed oratorio Der Sieg des Kreuzes. Van der Zanden draws a connection between the libretto of this work and the biography of one of Schreyvogel's protegés, the young Franz Grillparzer. He observes that the subject matter of this oratorio, the emperor Constantine's victory at the Milvian bridge, can be connected to Grillparzer's poem ‘The Ruins of Campo Vaccino’ through the symbolism of Christ's cross. This poem was condemned as blasphemous by the Austrian establishment, with a major negative effect on Grillparzer's career. Van der Zanden argues that this could have caused Beethoven to abandon the oratorio project, perhaps because he thought his independence as an artist could be compromised.Footnote 24
In his review of Carl Richard's The Founders and the Classics. Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment, John Buckler dismisses a debate among historians: were the classics ‘a fashionable façade’ to the Founding Fathers, or ‘a sage guide to politics and life, one that combined civic duty with private morality’? Buckler sees all this as accessory to a principal goal: ‘The main reason to read a book on the Founders and the classics is to determine the use made of classics in the framing of the Constitution’.Footnote 25 I would not put it in so peremptory a fashion, but in the final analysis, how does Beethoven and Greco-Roman Antiquity contribute to our understanding of Beethoven's music?
Chapter 8 gives a list of 35 works; the majority, especially among those considered ‘directly related to antiquity’ are sketches, canons, or ‘unrealized’. Initially, the contents of this list seem out of balance with the scope of this study. But keep in mind that the synopsis of an unrealized symphony, starting with the words ‘Adagio Cantique – Pious song in a symphony in the old modes’ is often thought to be an early programme for the Ninth Symphony.Footnote 26 The ‘unrealized’ category also contains some of Beethoven's most ambitious plans for dramatic works. Any one of the projected operas or oratorios would have been a major addition to his catalogue.
I submit that we see Beethoven engaged here in a quest for new sounds. The ‘Adagio Cantique’ would have featured Beethoven's imagined music for Greek religious services and Bacchic revelry. Drieberg's ‘Pan’ chorus and Der Sieg des Kreuzes would have given him an opportunity to contrast Christian and pagan music. How do these antique elements fit with suggestions of Romantic influence in Beethoven's late music? We might consider the works mentioned in Solomon's Late Beethoven, or in Richard Kramer's recent From the Ruins of Enlightenment.Footnote 27 Some scholarship on Goethe's rather ambiguous concept of Weltliteratur sees it as an attempt to maintain the privileged place of the classics in dialogue with a more historically informed, cosmopolitan Romanticism.Footnote 28 Could this have also been Beethoven's view? Could he have been thinking, in analogy with Goethe's Weltliteratur, of reaching over boundaries of time and space with ‘Weltmusik’?
I don't know how van der Zanden might respond to these questions, but my final task here is to recommend the conclusion of his book, an object lesson in how to demarcate a huge topic that could have been unworkable. Many of his ‘paths not taken’ will be well worth pursuing. It is clear that this study, despite its many highways and byways, began and ended with devotion to Beethoven's life and music. Congratulations to Dr van der Zanden on this achievement, and let's hope he has a new project already started with the same enthusiasm he displays in this one.
