Phil Grabsky has produce long documentary biographies of
Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. I rented
“In Search of Beethoven”, and found that it quickly takes us into the European
(especially Viennese) world (about the time the Eighteenth Century started)
where young men composed classical works for a living.
Beethoven left home in Bonn (his mother died shortly
thereafter, causing a return) for Vienna to study music at 17, and may have met
Mozart, but studied with Haydn. He was
actually accused of a plagiarism scam that almost ended his career, but
“revolution” back home enabled him to stay in Vienna and make a go of it as a
composer. He was already under filial
legal or moral obligation to support his brothers (as his father became
alcoholic), a fact that could foreshadow today’s hidden problem of filial
responsibility laws. Most of Beethoven’s
early masterpieces really were written for publishers on some sort of
commission.
Visually, one of the most striking images early in the film
are the old start claviers, with black and white keys reversed.
After the first 45 minutes or so, the documentary moves
toward and emphasis on Beethoven’s music, which well before 1800 had already
shown striking, but now familiar innovations. Beethoven had been a vigorous,
attractive and sometimes impetuous young man, but by his late twenties he was already
showing signs of deafness. He had met a
young woman to whom he dedicated his Moonlight Sonata. (It’s far from clear
that his tinnitus and eventual deafness came from syphilis or an STD.)
As “Fidelio” is discussed, Emmanuel Ax says, Beethoven was
less concerned with human beings in the flesh than with humanity as an idea. Later, Ax says, “To be a good composer, you can’t be
completely normal.” And it takes a long
time to become a good composer.
Beethoven’s own self-promotion came to a head with a concert
of his music in Vienna in 1808, where the programmatic Pastoral Symphony was
performed, followed by the Fourth Piano Concerto, whose harmonic adventures
were revolutionary at the time. The idea
of a business success was not as important as the idea that he could pull off
such a concert at all. At the time, Beethoven was the new "competitor" for Mozart (dead) and Haydn (old and feeble).
Later in life, Beethoven struggled with family
responsibility, despite his deafness, struggling to get custody of his nephew
while unable to care for himself in the end.
His latest sonatas show the effects of his life, with lots of short
hesitating phrases breaking up long lines.
The film ends by covering his Solemn Mass (a favorite work)
and Ninth Symphony. Norman Del Mar suggests that the Choral Symphony is a “flawed”
concept and the “joy” is hypothetical
rather than experienced. Yet, given what had happened in Beethoven's life, the "joy" in both these works transcends the composer, and sets a tone for all of western civilization.
The DVD is distributed by Seventh Art. The official site is here.
In 2006, MGM distributed a film by Agniezka Holland,
“Copying Beethoven”, a historical drama about Anna Holtz, who copy-edited
Beethoven’s scribbly manuscripts. That
movie presents Beethoven’s inspirations as coming to him from above, like a
musical manifesto.
My “drama” blog has a review of a similar film, “A
Wayfarer’s Journey: Listening to Mahler”, on March 1, 2009.
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