Arrested for Loitering

Beethoven has a secret

Markand Thakar

“Well sir, quiet tonight it was. Little hoodlum pickpocket — I gave him a swift kick in the arse, and sent him on his way. And a streetwalker; I sent her on her way too, if you know what I mean. Biggest excitement was that bum I locked up for loitering. Country bumpkin ‘e was. And what a fright to look at! Why the smell alone would wake a dead man. Wouldn’t listen to me, neither; and ‘e put up quite a fuss. So I locked ‘im up. A night in the cage’ll do ‘im some good, that one. Eh? Famous, you say? That one? Great man? Pah. A great menace to decent folk, that’s what ‘e is.”

Jack the Ripper? Nick Nolte? No, it was Ludwig van Beethoven, the colossus who bestrode the centuries, the hero of mythical proportions whose music has stirred, inspired, exalted millions. Arrested as a bum for loitering. (I’m not sure why the German cop had a Liverpool accent, but just play along, OK?)

The year was 1820. The 50-year-old Beethoven was in the spa town of Baden for the summer. He’d come a long way from a hard-scrabble childhood as the son of an alcoholic father, who, as a third-rate musician, was a low-ranking, ill-paid servant in the court of Bonn (evidently his father’s passing was mourned by none more than the wine merchants). Ludwig survived the harsh upbringing, the hunger, and the humiliations, making his way to the musical capital of Europe: Vienna. There the young man played for Mozart and studied with Haydn.

He scratched out a living from the rich folk, for whom he taught lessons, composed pieces and entertained for hours with improvisations. Those were the days before movies, or TV, or even public symphony concerts. So the upper crust of Vienna tolerated a crude, poorly dressed, ill-bred, unkempt hick, who could entertain them and their friends so gloriously with his musical talent.

But Beethoven had a secret. He, surely the single greatest musician in Vienna if not the world, was going deaf. Every third-grader knows the story (at least they did before school music was slashed to the bone, but that’s another column). Already ill at ease in the high-society world, Beethoven shrank away. How could he face colleagues on the street if he couldn’t hear? How could he teach piano students, how could he live without hearing music? So this immortal genius shriveled into himself: lonely, coarse, anti-social, a recluse. And in this solitary, noiseless world of his was he free to live the music of his own sonic cosmos, producing sublime, immortal works of profound beauty and enormous power, changing how tones went together forever after, and becoming a shaping force in the rise of individual expression that characterized the Romantic Era.

You can hear the work of this extraordinary man on May 16, when the DSSO plays an all-Beethoven program. From his youth in Vienna comes the Piano Concerto no. 1, which the 25-year-old composer wrote for himself to perform. Two other major works date from his maturity, a period of significantly impaired hearing: the Symphony no. 8 and the Choral Fantasy for piano, chorus and orchestra. And don’t miss next season’s performance of the by-then completely deaf composer’s ninth symphony, perhaps his crowning achievement. Come in tails, or in jeans — no-one, I assure you, will be arrested!

Markand Thakar is the Charles A. & Carolyn M. Russell Music Director, Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra, the music director of the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, the principal conductor of the Duluth Festival Opera and the co-director of the graduate conducting program, Peabody Conservatory.