JEFFREY DANE - ARTIST & VISIONARY

The Essays of Jeffrey Dane

Artist And Visionary

His very existence created a historical petri dish in which the culture of "The Temperamental Genius" grew and flourished.

His personal conduct could be very embarrassing. He was once seen returning to a ballroom still buttoning up his trousers from a lavatory visit. On one occasion he threw a chair at a nobleman who he thought had slighted him, and then said, "What you are, you are through accident of birth. What I am, I am through my own efforts. There have been princes before you and there will be princes after you - but there is only one of me!" - Very determined behavior, considering the nobleman was helping to support him financially.

He was instrumental in changing the course of history in his field. Almost single-handedly, not in concert with others, he wrenched the realm of his work from one century into the next. He actually foreshadowed those who followed him, and what he left posterity had a dramatic and lasting impact on it. His influence reached others clear into the next century, still 73 years away when he died.

He could see children jeering at him in the streets - but he couldn't hear them. He was deaf. They couldn't know he was enriching them then, and that even now he's enriching their descendants. His nephew, Karl, to whom he was strongly attached, was actually embarrassed to be seen in public with him. What he accomplished in his life and in his art is, in a word, a miracle.

His deafness began at 28 and was gradual but progressive. Though there were days when he could hear tolerably well during his maturity, he was effectively quite deaf during his last years and was unable, or (understandably) perhaps unwilling, to socialize normally. Self-assured in skill but self-conscious of affliction, he felt isolated and became withdrawn in the extreme. He never married.

By age 32 he realized his deafness was irreversible. He contemplated suicide, but fortunately - for him and for posterity - he decided otherwise. He would live for his art. This he did, unwaveringly. "Morality is the measure of what distinguishes one man from others, and it is mine." He suffered, but he gave the world proportionately far more than his peers ever could. In October, 1802 he wrote to his brothers a letter now known as the Heiligenstadt Testament, one of the most intense - and heartrending - documents in the entire vast literature that has evolved around him. It wasn't only artistically that he lived before his time. What's even more heartrending is that some specialists now believe that his deafness, at least in its early stages, could today be corrected by a relatively simple operation. The size of his "hearing aids," aptly called ear-trumpets, are in keeping with the magnitude of his work: they correspond in their bulk to the Univac as compared to our modern notebook computers.

When his deafness reached virtual totality, he invariably responded orally while his friends and visitors "spoke" with him by writing their words. For this he kept notebooks at hand. Because of his artistic status even then, many of these notebooks survived the passage and ravages of time and became known as the Conversation Books. Even if we hear only one end of a phone conversation today, we can often discern the basics of what's being said at the other end, by deduction. The Conversation Books reveal much about him and much about those who wrote in them.

He could be extremely difficult. Because of his notorious, momentary mood swings and now legendary outbursts one never knew what he'd be like at any given time, and the numerous ailments that characterized his daily life did nothing to improve his already volatile disposition. He was unable to hear conversation at normal volume - but when people spoke louder for him he got upset because he couldn't stand to be shouted at.

Despite the changes of time, residual effects of his presence still exist in areas he frequented in and around his adoptive city. The mention of his name in these places even today prompts a certain intangible but unmistakable posture, even from store-owners and postal clerks, which bespeaks a surprising degree of reverence. The atmosphere may be impossible to define and difficult to explain, but it's very easy to recognize.

This genius was if not the last of the Classicists then arguably the first of the Romantics. To say he had a forceful personality would be an understatement of some magnitude. What characterized that personality would today be called eccentricity in the wealthy (often actively encouraged), artistic temperament in the artist (often amusedly tolerated), and insanity in the layman (often dangerously ignored). Goethe spent four days with him, and wrote, "His talent astonished me, but his is a totally untamed personality, and he is not entirely wrong in finding the world detestable, though this attitude does not make it more pleasant, either for himself or others ... To think of teaching him would be an insolence even in one with greater insight than mine, for he has the guiding light of genius, whilst the rest of us sit in total darkness, scarcely suspecting the direction from which daylight will break upon us." The subject of Goethe's tribute responded in his own characteristic way: "The Court suits Goethe too much. It is not becoming of a poet."

His reputation and conduct prompted the concept of The Temperamental Genius. The only thing consistently predictable about him was his consistent unpredictability. He could be abrupt and unpleasant with friends. He could also be cordial and accommodating with a total stranger who might visit him unannounced, unexpected and uninvited. Just because he was so far above us in his art doesn't mean he had to be far above us in general daily virtue. In historical context, the reason is valid and clear. Like us, he had a full set of human weaknesses, and his personal frailties make him more, not less, of a human being. The colorful nature of a divergent thinker precludes black and white judgements or descriptions. His ideals were lofty and noble. He quoted Schiller in his diary: "Life is not the greatest of blessings, but guilt is the greatest evil."

Many who preceded him knocked vainly at Fate's door. This man figuratively kicked it down, triumphantly marched right in, and defiantly made himself comfortable. And Heaven help those who objected, be they paupers in poverty or princes in palaces.

The passage and changes of time yield transformations. Though a few of the buildings in which he lived remain now as he knew them, the areas surrounding them would be totally unrecognizable to him today.

Behind the otherwise ordinary objects we find the revealing stories about him, many with their specific and persuasive anecdotal richness. Remainders and reminders of the great can affect and even inspire the devoted. Even daily objects of no intrinsic value are considered sacred relics. The quills he wrote with, and locks of his hair taken from his deathbed, are kept in glass cases at European museums. It's because of their association with him that these tangible but inanimate objects are so revered.

His impact corresponds to the then unprecedented early 19th-century views characterized by the Romantic era's perceptions of genius and historic greatness. The concept of the supreme authority of an artist, and the conviction that his word was definitive, were some of the notions of history that evolved during that age. The image of the creative mind was respected and in some cases even enhaloed, with The Artist and the aura that surrounded him an object of reverence, and his persona being seen as something bordering on divinity. This was the Romantic view, "romanticized" now but quite real then. The responsibility for the fostering and impetus of this 19th-century Romantic sentiment falls to this man.

The intervening seventeen decades have only deepened his seemingly impenetrable mystique and character. He enriched posterity with creations that outlived him and which will outlive us - perhaps in spite of his affliction, perhaps even because of it.

Some people, like Braille and van Gogh, became legendary posthumously. Others, like this man, even before the era of mass media coverage, became artistic and even cultural icons during their own lifetimes. He lived so long ago that the distance of time renders the contradictions and confusion about him almost impenetrable. He effectively became a kind of legend so early in Europe generally, in Austria specifically, and in Vienna in particular that the records are congealed with invention, fiction and fantasy, creating nearly insurmountable obstacles to the human features behind the mystique, if not clogging access to the man altogether.

We admire those we can't emulate but would like to. We also tend to invest martyrs with heroism and heroes with martyrdom: those who left life prematurely, at whatever age, prompt the most intriguing conjectures. His dramatic life and untimely death exemplify this: posterity was robbed of treasures we can now only try to imagine - including a Daguerreotype, if only he had lived even another fifteen years. His 57-year life contributed as much to 19th-century legend as to historical fact.

The obvious, by its very nature, often escapes our attention, so it may be worth noting that despite a life riddled with misfortune and malady, Beethoven accomplished more in a single year than most others do in their individual lifetimes, and that he was as alive then as we are today.

Author's Biography

JEFFREY DANE is a New York-based music historian, researcher and essayist whose work appears in the USA and abroad in several languages. His book, Beethoven's Pianos, was published by New York's Museum of the American Piano, and he's a contributor to several other volumes. He has a marked tendency to develop an almost emotional attachment to those people, living or not, whose work he studies. An eccentric preference of his is to deal with sensible people. He's been called by some a real idealist and by others an ideal realist. Both are right. He feels he's hitting his targets in his aim to make a contribution, even if it's ultimately only an incremental one, to the sum of human knowledge.

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