Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/855

1858.]

is upon record a remark of Mozart—probably the greatest musical genius that ever lived—to this effect: that, if few had equalled him in his art, few had studied it with such persevering labor and such unremitting zeal. Every man who has attained high preëminence in Science, Literature, or Art, would confess the same. At all events, the greatest musical composers—Bach, Handel, Haydn, Gluck—are proofs that no degree of genius and natural aptitude for their art is sufficient without long-continued effort and exhaustive study of the best models of composition. And this is the moral to be drawn from Beethoven's early life.

"Voilà Bonn! C'est une petite perle!" said the admiring Frenchwoman, as the Cologne steamboat rounded the point below the town, and she caught the first fair view of its bustling landing-places, its old wall, its quaint gables, and its antique cathedral spires. A pearl among the smaller German cities it is,—with most irregular streets, always neat and cleanly, noble historic and literary associations, jovial student-life, pleasant walks to the neighboring hills, delightful excursions to the Siebengebirge and Ahrthal,—reposing peacefully upon the left bank of the "green and rushing Rhine." Six hundred years ago, the Archbishop-Electors of Cologne, defeated in their long quarrel with the people of the city of perfumery, established their court at Bonn, and made it thenceforth the political capital of the Electorate. Having both the civil and ecclesiastical revenues at their command, the last Electors were able to sustain courts which vied in splendor with those of princes of far greater political power and pretensions. They could say, with the Preacher of old, "We builded us houses; we made us gardens and orchards, and planted trees in them of all manner of fruits"; for the huge palace, now the seat of the Frederick- William University, and Clemensruhe, now the College of Natural History, were erected by them early in the last century. Like the Preacher, too, "they got them men-singers and women-singers, and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that of all sorts." Music they cherished with especial care: it gave splendor to the celebration of high mass in chapel or cathedral; it afforded an innocent and refined recreation, in the theatre and concert-room, to the Electors and their guests.

In the list of singers and musicians in the employ of Clemens Augustus, as printed in the Electoral Calendar for the years 1759-60, appears the name, "Ludwig van Beethoven, Bassist." We know little of him, and it is but a very probable conjecture that he was a native of Maestricht, in Holland. That he was more than an ordinary singer is proved by the position he held in the Chapel, and by the applause which he received for his performances as primo basso in certain of Monsigny's operas. He was, moreover, a good musician; for he had produced operas of his own composition, with fair success, and, upon the accession of Maximilian Frederick to the Electorate in 1761, he was raised to the position of Kapellmeister. He was already well advanced in life; for the same record bears the name of his son Johann, a tenor singer. He died in 1773, and was long afterward described by one who remembered him, as a short, stout-built man, with exceedingly lively eyes, who used to walk with great dignity to and from his dwelling in the Bonngasse, clad in the fashionable red cloak of the time. Thus, too, he was quite, magnificently depicted by the court painter, Radoux,