In recent months, we’ve attended a few outdoor classical concerts –glorious celebrations of music during clear and starry summer evenings, so welcomed in the often rain-sodden country where we live. Our most recent outing was a play/concert hybrid about Ludwig van Beethoven, entitled ‘Beethoven: I Shall Hear in Heaven.’
The play was written by the actor Tama Matheson, who also played the title role, and just two other actors, who played everyone else: Beethoven’s violent, bullying father, his frail mother, his various love interests, his brother, his nephew, and more. There was no full orchestra, only a string quartet; Jayson Gillham, a renowned Australian pianist; and behind him, the English Chamber Choir. One or all would play or sing the relevant music whenever it linked to the biography.
The play told the tragic story of Beethoven’s life: his abusive father, whose frequent beatings, it was suggested, may have contributed to his son’s hearing loss, beginning at age 26; his unsuccessful attempts to spark a romantic relationship; his frustration and despair over his creeping deafness, even placing a pencil in his mouth and positioning it on a piano soundboard to feel the vibrations in order to identify the notes; his difficult relationship with his nephew, often an unwelcomed distraction, keeping him from his work.
And in complete counterpoint to this irredeemably tragic story was the extraordinary, uplifting nature of the music: highlights from sonatas, quartets, concertos, symphonies: the Eroica (number 3); the Pastoral (number 6): the da-da-da-dummmm fury of the 5th, often interpreted as ‘fate knocking at the door’ over his encroaching deafness; the ethereal late quartets; and, of course, the 9th symphony.
Then, at the point where Beethoven could only hear those sounds inside his head, he’d written his masterwork, with its choir blasting out the astonishing Ode to Joy, a fairly simple tune made magnificent with theme and triumphant finish.
Written by a man who had every right to write an ode to despair.
We came away from the play/concert, walking in the starlit night and full supermoon, and felt full of joy, reminded of the simple beauty of life itself to triumph over every type of adversity.
In the play, the Beethoven character concludes that he’s been made deaf to create more profound music. However, there’s no evidence that the composer ever believed his deafness was anything other than a cruel fate, and for many years, he attempted to hide it. At first he began to adapt his music, writing in lower registers the better to hear it, but, eventually, when he was stone deaf, he wrote in higher registers again – hearing it in another realm – and the late music does indeed have an extraordinary other-worldly quality to it.
Even if he didn’t ever actually say, ‘I shall hear in heaven,’ (it’s in the Bible – 2 Chronicles 7:14 – and is the line is attributed to God about hearing prayers on Earth), Beethoven’s music represents, in its totality, an overcoming of the greatest of adversities.
Think of the ideas expressed in Ode to Joy, an ode to hope, connection and unity – celebrating and giving thanks to joy, with words from the Erich Schiller poem. Here is Michael Kay’s version of a few of the stanzas, a more direct translation of the German poem into English, but focusing on the themes of joy, brotherhood and universal connection.
Joy, beautiful spark of Divinity,
Daughter of Elysium,
We enter, drunk with fire,
Heavenly one, thy sanctuary!
Thy magic binds again
What custom strictly divided;
All people become brothers,
Where thy gentle wing abides.
All creation drinks with pleasure,
Drinks at Mother Nature’s breast;
All the just, and all the evil,
Follow down her rosy path.
Kisses she bestowed, and grape wine,
Friendship true, proved e’en in death;
Every worm knows nature’s pleasure,
Every cherub meets his God.
. . .
Be embracéd, all you millions,
Share this kiss with all the world!
Way above the stars, brothers,
There must live a loving father.
Do you kneel down low, you millions?
Do you see your maker, world?
Search for Him above the stars,
Above the stars he must be living.
Here’s a lovely rendition, conducted by André Rieu and the Johann Strauss Orchestra performing live in Maastricht. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg3sEE18WsE
May you find joy in your everyday and unity in connection.
