Chapter 17

CHAPTER XI

BEETHOVEN, THE TONE-POET

As Beethoven was such an intensely subjective composer, a
knowledge of his personality and environment is indispensable
for a complete appreciation of his works.[132]

[Footnote 132: Hence is given a more extended biographical
account than in the case of former composers.]

Beethoven, Ludwig van (1770-1827), born at Bonn on the Rhine,
though his active career is associated with Vienna, may be called
the first thinker in music; for at last the art is brought into cor-
relation with man’s other powers and becomes a living reflex
of the tendencies and activities of the period. Notwithstanding
the prodigious vitality of Bach’s work, we feel that his musi-
cal sense operated abstractly like a law of Nature and that he
was an unconscious embodiment, as it were, of the deep re-
ligious sentiment of his time and of the sturdy independence
of his race. At any period and in any place Bach would have
been Bach. Beethoven’s music, however, in its intense person-
ality and as a vivid expression of the ideals of his fellow men,
was different from any the world had heard before. There were
three paramount advantages in his equipment: first, Beethoven
was a strong character who only happened to find in music his
most suitable means of self-expression. The full import of his
works cannot be understood unless he is recognized, great cre-