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The New Beethoven
Copyright © 2020 by the Editor and Contributors
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation, no
part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted,
recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission of the copyright owner.
First published 2020
University of Rochester Press
668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA
www.urpress.com
and Boydell & Brewer Limited
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
www.boydellandbrewer.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-58046-993-7 (print)
ISBN 978-1-78744-812-4 (ePDF)
ISSN: 1071-9989 ; v. 172
Cataloging-in-Publication data available from the Library of Congress.

Cover image: Portion of full-length statue depicting Beethoven by Thomas Crawford,

1856. Jordan Hall, New England Conservatory, Boston.

Photo by Matthew Cron. Cover design: riverdesignbooks.com

 For Lewis Lockwood:
Scholar, Colleague, Friend
 Contents
Preface xi

Chronological Bibliography of Books, Articles, Book Chapters, and

Musical Editions by Lewis Lockwood xv

Acknowledgments xxi

Introduction 1
Jeremy Yudkin

Part One: A Creative Life

1 Of Deserters and Orphans: Beethoven’s Early Exposure to the
Opéras-Comiques of Monsigny 9
Steven M. Whiting

2 “A Really Excellent and Capable Man”: Beethoven and Johann Traeg 37

David Wyn Jones

3 A Four-Leaf Clover: A Newly Discovered Cello, the Premiere of

the Ninth Symphony, Beethoven’s Circle of Friends in Bonn, and
a Corrected Edition of the Song “Ruf vom Berge,” WoO 147 50
Michael Ladenburger

4 “Where Thought Touches the Blood”: Rhythmic Disturbance as

Physical Realism in Beethoven’s Creative Process 78
Bruce Adolphe

5 The Sanctification of Beethoven in 1827–28 89

Christopher Reynolds

Part Two: Prometheus / Eroica

6 The Prometheus Theme and Beethoven’s Shift from Avoidance to
Embrace of Possibilities 123
Alan Gosman
viii ❧ contents

7 Beethoven at Heiligenstadt in 1802: Deconstruction, Integration,

and Creativity 148
William Kinderman

8 “Mit Verstärkung des Orchesters”: The Orchestra Personnel at

the First Public Performance of Beethoven’s Eroica 161
Theodore Albrecht

Part Three: Masses

9 “Aber lieber Beethoven, was haben Sie denn wieder da gemacht?”
Observations on the Performing Parts for the Premiere of
Beethoven’s Mass in C, Opus 86 205
Jeremiah W. McGrann

10 Heart to Heart: Beethoven, Archduke Rudolph, and the Missa

solemnis 228
Mark Evan Bonds
11 God and the Voice of Beethoven 244
Scott Burnham

Part Four: Quartets

12 “So Here I Am, in the Middle Way”: The Autograph of the
“Harp” Quartet and the Expressive Domain of Beethoven’s
Second Maturity 261
M. Lucy Turner

13 Meaningful Details: Expressive Markings in Beethoven

Manuscripts, with a Focus on Opus 127 274
Nicholas Kitchen

14 The Autograph Score of the Slow Movement of Beethoven’s

Last Quartet, Opus 135 332
Barry Cooper
15 Early German-Language Reviews of Beethoven’s Late
String Quartets 355
Robin Wallace
 contents ❧ ix

Part Five: Explorations

16 Three Movements or Four? The Scherzo Movements in
Beethoven’s Early Sonatas 389
Erica Buurman

17 Utopia and Dystopia Revisited: Contrasted Domains in

Beethoven’s Middle-Period F-Major and F-Minor Works 405
Barbara Barry

18 Schooling the Quintjäger 437

David B. Levy
19 Cue-Staff Annotations in Beethoven’s Piano Works:
Reflections and Examples from the Autograph of the
Piano Sonata, Opus 101 448
Federica Rovelli

20 Another Little Buck Out of Its Stable 466

Richard Kramer

21 Beethoven’s Cavatina, Haydn’s Seasons, and

the Thickness of Inscription 483
Elaine Sisman

List of Contributors 529

Index of Works by Beethoven 533

General Index 539

Figure P.1. Lewis Lockwood. Photo by Robert Goddyn.
 Preface
It is a great pleasure to write here briefly about my friend and colleague
Lewis Lockwood, for whom, on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday, this
book was conceived, planned, organized, edited, and produced over the last
many years, and to whom it is dedicated. I have known Lewis since 1982,
when he was at Harvard, and I arrived to take up a position at Boston
University. Since then our paths have become much closer. While I was serv-
ing as chair of the Musicology and Ethnomusicology Department, I invited
Lewis—after his retirement from Harvard—to assume the honorary posi-
tion of Distinguished Senior Scholar at Boston University, a position he gra-
ciously accepted. He taught seminars for us and advised graduate students,
and in 2014 he and I founded the Boston University Center for Beethoven
Research, for which he continues to serve as Co-Director.
A formal review of his life so far would include the following facts. He
was born on what was most probably the same day as Beethoven’s birthday
in 1930 and educated at the High School of Music and Art in New York
City, where he studied the cello, an instrument that he still plays and for
which he has a special fondness. He attended Queens College as an under-
graduate and studied with one of the best-known scholars of Renaissance
music, Edward Lowinsky. For graduate school he also had as teachers the
leading lights of musicology at Princeton University—legends in the field,
such as Arthur Mendel, Nino Pirrotta, and Oliver Strunk—and completed
his dissertation on the sixteenth-century composer, Vincenzo Ruffo. (This
was later published as The Counter-Reformation and the Masses of Vincenzo
Ruffo [1970]). He played with the Seventh Army Symphony, also known as
“Uncle Sam’s Orchestra,” overseas for a year and a half during the mid-1950s
and then returned to the United States to take up his own appointment at
Princeton, where he taught from 1958 to 1980. He edited the Journal of the
American Musicological Society from 1964 to 1967 and served as president
of the American Musicological Society from 1987 to 1988. In 1980 he was
appointed to the Department of Music at Harvard University, where he was
later named Fanny Peabody Research Professor. He was appointed an emeri-
tus professor in 2002.
xii ❧ preface

His career has been marked by important contributions in two very dif-
ferent fields. His work on Renaissance music culminated in his important
book Music in Renaissance Ferrara, 1400–1505 (1984), which established the
reputation of that city-state as one of the most important musical centers of
the fifteenth century and which received the Marraro Prize of the Society of
Italian Historical Studies and the Otto Kinkeldey Award of the American
Musicological Society. The book was revised in 2008, and in that year
Lockwood was also awarded the Paul Oskar Kristeller Lifetime Achievement
Award from the Renaissance Society of America for his work in Renaissance
Studies. A book of essays on music in Renaissance cities and courts was pub-
lished in his honor in 1996.
But he has also been described as “the leading American authority on
Beethoven,”1 and his work on Beethoven is highly regarded throughout
the scholarly world. His first book in this field was Beethoven: Studies in the
Creative Process (1992), a highly influential work that brought the sketches
and autographs of the composer under a new spotlight. In the same year
he founded the yearbook Beethoven Forum, which ran for fourteen years.
His biography, Beethoven: The Music and the Life (2003), was a finalist for a
Pulitzer Prize in biography. This was followed by a book on the string quar-
tets (2008) together with the members of the Juilliard Quartet and, more
recently, by a book on the Beethoven symphonies (2015). A new book
on the history of Beethoven biography, Beethoven’s Lives: The Biographical
Tradition, is scheduled for publication at about the same time as this volume.
His scholarship encompasses a broad range of articles, primarily focused
on Beethoven’s creative process, and his largest project in this area was the
work, carried out over seven years in collaboration with the music theorist
Alan Gosman, on an edition of and commentary on one of the largest of
Beethoven’s sketchbooks, the so-called Eroica Sketchbook. He has worked
assiduously on the opus 69 Cello Sonata, with a facsimile of the first move-
ment, edited by Lockwood and Jens Dufner of the Beethoven-Haus in
Bonn, appearing in 2015. This is a work that has fascinated Lockwood since
1970, when his over-one-hundred-page groundbreaking article on the sonata
appeared in the yearbook Music Forum.
I have compiled (you will find it below) a chronological bibliography of
Lewis Lockwood’s publications. I took awed note as I did this that—standing
as a rebuke to mere mortals and a cautionary warning to young scholars—
there are sixty-five items that have appeared over a period of sixty-three years:
fifteen books, six as editor; a journal with a run of fourteen years; several
 preface ❧ xiii

musical editions, thirty-five articles in journals and conference proceedings,

and twelve book chapters.
He has received honorary degrees from the Università degli Studi
di Ferrara, the New England Conservatory of Music, and Wake Forest
University. He was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences in 1984, and in 2013 to the American Philosophical Society.
In 2018 he was named a co-recipient, with Margaret Bent, of the Guido
Adler Prize of the International Musicological Society, in the inaugural year
of the Prize. And in the same year he was elected an honorary member of the
Beethoven-Haus Association, only the second American scholar to have been
so honored.
Over his career he has taught a very large number of students, many of
whom have themselves forged distinguished reputations as teachers and
scholars. Not all of them, for a variety of reasons, were able to contribute to
this book, but certainly a significant number are represented in these pages.
But in addition to noting these striking academic achievements, it must
be loudly acknowledged that the most remarkable of Lewis’s qualities is his
profound humanity. This reveals itself in all his work, in his never forgetting
that the subjects of his research were human beings, living often challenging
lives, or—in the case of Beethoven—tragic and painful ones. This human-
ity can be sensed throughout his biography of the composer, in the many
articles on Beethoven’s life and work, his moving comments on Beethoven
symphony performances in the Lodz ghetto, his sympathy with and under-
standing of Beethoven’s nephew or his royal pupil or his friends. But for
those of us who are fortunate enough to know Lewis personally, this aspect
of him shines through every interaction, every conversation, every one of
his expressions about people and their lives. And this is not to mention the
manifold ways in which he has quietly helped and supported so many of us.
I have said this about him before, but I would like to put it here in writing:
Lewis Lockwood is a deeply thoughtful, sympathetic, and caring man. His
humanity is palpable and instinctive. All the authors in this book and many
others around the world who know him agree: he is, in the terminology of
his (and my) people, both in his scholarship and in his life, a true mensch.

Note
1 Joseph Kerman, “Beethoven the Unruly,” New York Review of Books, February 27, 2003
(accessed May 24, 2020).
 Chronological Bibliography
of Books, Articles, Book
Chapters, and Musical
Editions by Lewis Lockwood
“Vincenzo Ruffo and Musical Reform after the Council of Trent.” Musical Quarterly
43 (1957): 342–71.
“A Note on Obrecht’s Mass ‘Sub tuum praesidium.’” Revue belge de musicologie 14
(1960): 30–39.
As editor. Antonius Divitis: Missa “Quem dicunt homines.” Das Chorwerk 83 (Wolfen-
büttel: Möseler, 1961).
“A Continental Mass and Motet in a Tudor Manuscript.” Music & Letters 42 (1961):
336–47.
As editor. Drei Motetten über den Text “Quem dicunt homines.” Das Chorwerk 94
(Wolfenbüttel: Möseler, 1964).
“A View of the Early Sixteenth-Century Parody Mass.” In The Department of Music,
Queens College of the City University of New York: Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Fest-
schrift, edited by Albert Mell, 53–78. Flushing, NY: Queens College Department
of Music, 1964.
“A Dispute on Accidentals in Sixteenth-Century Rome.” Analecta Musicologica 2
(1965): 24–40.
“On ‘Parody’ as Term and Concept in 16th-Century Music.” In Aspects of Medieval
and Renaissance Music: A Birthday Offering to Gustave Reese. Annotated Reference
Tools in Music, edited by Jan LaRue, 560–75. New York: Norton, 1966.
“Computer Assistance in the Investigation of Accidentals in Renaissance Music.”
Proceedings of the Tenth Congress of the International Musicological Society, Ljubi-
ljana, 1967, 444–57. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1967.
“A Sample Problem of Musica Ficta: Willaert’s Pater noster.” In Studies in Music His-
tory: Essays for Oliver Strunk, edited by Harold Powers, 161–82. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1968.
xvi ❧ chronological bibliography of works by lockwood

“Vincenzo Ruffo and Two Patrons of Music at Milan: Alfonso d’Avalos and Cardinal
Carlo Borromeo.” In Il duomo di Milano: Atti del congresso internazionale, edited
by Maria Luisa Gatti Perer, 2:23–34. Milan: La Rete, 1969.
“The Autograph of the First Movement of Beethoven’s Sonata for Violoncello and
Pianoforte, opus 69.” Music Forum 2 (1970): 1–109.
The Counter-Reformation and the Masses of Vincenzo Ruffo. Studi di Musica Veneta.
Venice: Universal, 1970.
“On Beethoven’s Sketches and Autographs: Some Problems of Definition and Inter-
pretation.” Acta Musicologica 42 (1970): 32–47.
“Beethoven’s Unfinished Piano Concerto of 1815: Sources and Problems.” Musical
Quarterly 56 (1970): 624–46. Reprinted in The Creative World of Beethoven: Stud-
ies by Eminent Scholars in Beethoven’s Style, Technique, Life, and Works, edited by
Paul Henry Lang, 122–44. New York: Norton, 1971.
“Music at Ferrara in the Period of Ercole I d’Este.” Studi musicali 1 (1972): 101–31.
“Aspects of the ‘L’homme armé’ Tradition.” Proceedings of the Royal Musical Asso-
ciation 100 (1973–74): 97–122.
“Beethoven’s Sketches for Sehnsucht, WoO 146.” In Beethoven Studies [vol. 1],
edited by Alan Tyson, 97–122. New York: Norton, 1974.
“‘Messer Gossino’ and Josquin Desprez.” In Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Music
in Honor of Arthur Mendel, edited by Robert Marshall, 15–24. Kassel: Bärenre-
iter, and Hackensack, NJ: Boonin, 1974.
As editor. Palestrina, Pope Marcellus Mass: An Authoritative Score, Backgrounds and
Sources, History and Analysis, Views and Comments. New York: Norton, 1975.
“Pietrobono and the Instrumental Tradition at Ferrara in the Fifteenth Century.”
Rivista italiana di musicologia 10 (1975): 115–33.
“The Beethoven Sketchbook in the Scheide Library.” Princeton University Library
Chronicle 37 (1975–76): 139–53.
“Dufay and Ferrara.” In Papers read at the Dufay Quincentenary Conference, Brooklyn
College, December 6–7, 1974, edited by Allan Atlas, 1–26. Brooklyn, NY: Depart-
ment of Music, School of Performing Arts, Brooklyn College of the City Univer-
sity of New York, 1976.
“Josquin at Ferrara: New Documents and Letters.” In Josquin des Prez: Proceedings of
the International Josquin Festival: Conference Held at the Julliard School at Lincoln
Center in New York City, 21–25 June 1971, edited by Edward Lowinsky and Bon-
nie Blackburn, 1:103–37. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976.
“Nottebohm Revisited.” In Current Thought in Musicology, edited by John Grubbs,
139–92. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976.
“Jean Mouton and Jean Michel: New Evidence on French Music and Musicians in
Italy, 1505–1520.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 32 (1979): 191–
246.
As editor. Vincenzo Ruffo: Seven Masses. 2 vols. Recent Researches in the Music of the
Renaissance 32–33 (Madison, WI: A-R Editions, 1979).
 chronological bibliography of works by lockwood ❧ xvii

“Beethoven’s Earliest Sketches for the ‘Eroica’ Symphony.” Musical Quarterly 67

(1981): 457–78.
“Musicisti in Ferrara all’epoca dell’Ariosto.” In L’Ariosto: La musica i musicisti; Quat-
tro studi e sette madrigali ariosteschi, edited by Maria Antonella Balsano, 7–29.
Florence: Olschki, 1981.
“‘Eroica’ Perspectives: Strategy and Design in the First Movement.” In Beethoven
Studies, vol. 3, edited by Alan Tyson, 85–105. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1982.
Music in Renaissance Ferrara, 1440–1505: The Creation of a Musical Center in the
Fifteenth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984.
As editor with Phyllis Benjamin. Beethoven Essays: Studies in Honor of Elliot Forbes.
Harvard Publications in Music. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Depart-
ment of Music, 1984.
“Adrian Willaert and Cardinal Ippolito I d’Este: New Light on Willaert’s Early
Career in Italy, 1515–1521.” Early Music History 5 (1985): 85–112.
“Beethoven and the Problem of Closure: Some Examples from the Middle-Period
Chamber Music.” In Beiträge zu Beethovens Kammermusik: Symposion Bonn 1984,
edited by Sieghard Brandenburg and Helmut Loos, 254–72. Veröffentlichungen
des Beethovenhauses in Bonn: Schriften zur Beethovenforschung 10. Munich:
Henle, 1987.
“Communicating Musicology: A Personal View.” College Music Symposium 28
(1988): 1–9.
“On the Cavatina of Beethoven’s String Quartet in B-flat Major.” In Liedstudien:
Wolfgang Osthoff zum 60. Geburtstag, edited by Martin Just and Reinhard Wie-
send, 293–305. Tutzing: Schneider, 1989.
“The Four ‘Introductions’ in the Ninth Symphony.” In Probleme der symphonischen
Tradition im 19. Jahrhundert. Internationales Musikwissenschaftliches Colloquium
Bonn 1989, Kongressbericht, edited by Siegfried Kross, 97–112. Tutzing: Schnei-
der, 1990.
“Beethoven’s First Symphony: A Farewell to the Eighteenth Century?” In Essays in
Musicology: A Tribute to Alvin Johnson, edited by Lewis Lockwood and Edward
Roesner, 235–46. Philadelphia: American Musicological Society, 1990.
As editor with Edward Roesner. Essays in Musicology: A Tribute to Alvin Johnson.
Philadelphia: American Musicological Society, 1990.
“The Compositional Genesis of the ‘Eroica’ Finale.” In Beethoven’s Compositional
Process, edited by William Kinderman, 82–101. Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press in Association with the American Beethoven Society and the Ira F. Brilliant
Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University, 1991.
“Performance and ‘Authenticity.’” Early Music 19 (1991): 501–12.
Beethoven: Studies in the Creative Process. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1992.
xviii ❧ chronological bibliography of works by lockwood

“The Element of Time in Der Rosenkavalier.” In Richard Strauss: New Perspectives

on the Composer and His Work, edited by Bryan Gilliam, 243–58. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 1992.
“Text and Music in Rore’s Madrigal ‘Anchor che col partire.’” In Musical Humanism
and Its Legacy: Essays in Honor of Claude V. Palisca, edited by Barbara Hanning
and Nancy Baker, 243–51. Festschrift Series 11. Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon,
1992.
Founding editor. Beethoven Forum. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, and
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992–2007.
“Monteverdi and Gombert: The ‘Missa in illo tempore’ of 1610.” In De musica et
cantu: Studien zur Geschichte der Kirchenmusik und der Oper; Helmut Hucke zum
60. Geburtstag, edited by Peter Cahn and Ann-Katrin Heimer, 457–69. Musik-
wissenschaftliche Publikationen 2. Hildesheim: Olms, 1993.
“Music at Florence and Ferrara in the Late Fifteenth Century.” In La musica a Firenze
al tempo di Lorenzo il Magnifico: Congresso internazionale di studi, Firenze, 15–17
giugno 1992, edited by Piero Gargiulo, 1–13. Quaderni della Rivista italiana di
musicologia 30. Florence: Olschki, 1993.
“A Problem of Form: The ‘Scherzo’ of Beethoven’s String Quartet in F Major, op.
59, no. 1.” In Beethoven Forum, vol. 2, edited by Lewis Lockwood, Christopher
Reynolds, and James Webster, 85–95. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1993.
“Beethoven before 1800: The Mozart Legacy.” In Beethoven Forum, vol. 3, edited by
Glenn Stanley, 34–52. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994.
“Sources of Renaissance Polyphony from Cividale del Friuli: The Manuscripts 53
and 59 from the Museo Archeologico Nazionale.” Il saggiatore musicale 1 (1994):
249–314.
“Reshaping the Genre: Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas from op. 22 to op. 28 (1799–
1801).” Israel Studies in Musicology 6 (1996): 1–16.
“Film Biography as Travesty: ‘Immortal Beloved’ and Beethoven.” Musical Quarterly
81 (1997): 190–98.
“Beethoven, Florestan, and the Varieties of Heroism.” In Beethoven and His World,
edited by Scott Burnham and Michael P. Steinberg, 27–47. The Bard Music Fes-
tival 11. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Beethoven: The Music and the Life. New York: Norton, 2003.
“Beethoven and His Royal Disciple.” Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences 57 (2004): 2–7.
As editor with Mark Kroll. The Beethoven Violin Sonatas: History, Criticism, Perfor-
mance. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004.
“‘On the Beautiful in Music’: Beethoven’s ‘Spring’ Sonata for Violin and Piano, opus
24.” In The Beethoven Violin Sonatas: History, Criticism, Performance, edited by
Lewis Lockwood and Mark Kroll, 24–46. Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
2004.
 chronological bibliography of works by lockwood ❧ xix

“Beethoven’s Leonore and Fidelio.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 26 (2006):

473–82.
“Beethoven’s Moreel Besef Toen en Nu.” In Europees Humanisme in Fragmenten:
Grammatica van een Ongesproken Taal, edited by Rob Rieman, 84–93. Tilburg:
Nexus Instituut, 2008.
With the Juilliard Quartet. Inside Beethoven’s Quartets: History, Performance, Interpre-
tation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.
As editor with Jonathan Del Mar and Martina Rebmann. Sinfonie No. 9, Op. 125:
Autograph, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Beethoven-Haus
Bonn, Bibliothèque nationale de France. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2010.
As editor with Alan Gosman. Beethoven’s “Eroica” Sketchbook: A Critical Edition;
Transcription, Facsimile, Commentary. 2 vols. Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
2013.
“Beethoven as Sir Davison: Another Look at His Relationship to the Archduke
Rudolph.” Bonner Beethoven-Studien 11 (2014): 133–40.
Beethoven’s Symphonies: An Artistic Vision. New York: Norton, 2015.
Beethoven’s Lives: The Biographical Tradition. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2020.
 Acknowledgments
I would like to express my thanks to all the authors who contributed essays
to this volume. Their eagerness to create new and exciting work was matched
only by their enthusiasm for honoring Lewis Lockwood by their contribu-
tions. I am also most grateful to the senior editor of Eastman Studies in
Music at the University of Rochester Press, Ralph Locke. It was nothing but
a pleasure consulting with him on this volume. Finally, my ability to com-
mission translations of two contributions, originally in German and Italian,
respectively, was made possible by the generosity of the Harvard University
Department of Music.
 Introduction
Jeremy Yudkin

I have called this book The New Beethoven, because, as the commemoration
of the composer’s birth reaches and then surpasses 250 years, we continue
to find new things to say about the man, his life, and his remarkable works.
For a couple of decades at the end of the twentieth century, it was assumed,
naïvely, that everything about Beethoven had already been discovered, that
commentary about his music had been exhausted, and that no further
insights were possible. Over the past few years, however, with a burgeon-
ing of further analysis and discussion, the establishment of a new interna-
tional research group, and the founding of the new Center for Beethoven
Research in Boston, Massachusetts, the future of Beethoven studies seems
not just promising but bright with promise. Established scholars are publish-
ing important new research, and young scholars are finding in Beethoven
studies a vast landscape of intellectual and artistic opportunity.
Since 1770 few other composers in the Western musical tradition have
encompassed such a wide range of human experience. And Beethoven’s
music was regarded as a touchstone by composers who came after him,
from Mendelssohn, Wagner, and Brahms to Webern, Bartók, and Ornette
Coleman. This inspiration has continued into modern times. The play 33
Variations by Moisés Kaufman, inspired by Beethoven’s “Diabelli” Variations,
received its premiere in 2007. In 2015 the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra
commissioned five contemporary composers each to write a piano concerto
inspired by one of Beethoven’s five. The series ran for five years from 2015
to 2020. In 2016 the Pulitzer Prize-winning young composer Caroline Shaw
premiered her Blueprint, a work for string quartet modeled on Beethoven’s
String Quartet, op. 18, no. 6. Also in 2020 a global partnership was cre-
ated, with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and pieces of new music performed
on six continents and involving ten different orchestras. (And this is not to
mention the recurring presence of Beethoven, and snippets of his music, in
popular culture: Schroeder’s obsession in Peanuts cartoons; Walter Murphy’s
2 ❧ introduction

“A Fifth of Beethoven” [1976], memorably interpolated into the soundtrack

of Saturday Night Fever; the 1991 video game Dragon’s Lair II: Time Warp;
and a 2015 episode of the science-fiction series Doctor Who.)
Beethoven is regarded as an icon of global reach. Beethoven’s Ninth is
performed with a chorus of ten thousand every New Year’s Eve in Japan. In
China, as new conservatories, orchestras, concert halls, and opera houses are
springing up around the country to celebrate the music of Western civiliza-
tion, Beethoven remains the most popular composer by far.
Beethoven’s music has been seen almost universally as a celebration of
human worth and independence, symbolizing freedom and dignity. Witness
the performances of the Ninth Symphony at the fall of the Berlin Wall, the
singing of the “Ode to Joy” as a symbol of protest in Tiananmen Square, the
conversion of the lyrics of that music to connote solidarity in Chile for pro-
testors against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, and “flash mob” per-
formances of the music in town squares, railway stations, and public spaces
around the world.
This book represents today’s new Beethoven. I am confident that every
generation will discover their own new Beethoven, and not just because
growing young people will begin to experience the power and tenderness
and transcendence in his music—though this is true. Research will con-
tinue; the thousands of pages of sketches and autograph manuscripts that
have yet to be studied will gradually yield to analysis; and we shall gain new
insights into the compositional process, performing practices, interrelations
among works, and musical meanings of this extraordinary composer. For, as
a twenty-first-century musician has said, “Beethoven’s voice is too powerful,
and the influence he had on the evolution of musical language too immense,
to be ignored.”1
Every one of the essays in this book exemplifies what I have written
here; every one of them provides new insight and encourages new thinking.
The range of topics is vast, including the circumstances of the first perfor-
mances of the Eroica; the meaning of the dedication of the Missa solemnis;
Beethoven’s relationships to friends in Bonn, a publisher, a poet, and other
composers; the instruments he owned; new thoughts about performance;
nuances of meaning and intention one can glean from close study of his
manuscripts; his structural and organizational practices; reflections of his
deafness in music; performing variants; changes among editions; the pres-
ence of the divine in his late works; revelations regarding the middle and
late quartets; contemporary reviews of the late quartets; the significance of
titles and inscriptions on some of Beethoven’s works; the legitimizing of an
 introduction ❧ 3

ungrammatical opening chord in the Seventh Symphony; new thoughts

about the “Tempest” Sonata, the Prometheus works, and a late cello sonata;
the world of F minor in the composer’s middle years; celebrations and musi-
cal tributes after his death; and a new way of looking at the Haydn/Mozart/
Beethoven axis in Beethoven’s String Quartet, op. 130.
Works under discussion here reflect the richness of the composer’s oeuvre,
from a tiny song setting to the Mass in C, the Eroica, the Missa solemnis, and
the Ninth Symphony; from piano sonatas to string quartets and ballets; from
overtures to variation sets; and from WoO 67 to opus 135. The authors, too,
are varied, hailing from across the United States, Europe, and the Middle
East, and including established senior scholars, distinguished performers,
and younger researchers about to embark upon their careers.
The book is divided into five parts. The first, “A Creative Life,” con-
tains four essays that consider aspects of Beethoven’s personal experiences.
Steven Whiting’s essay provides new insights into Beethoven’s exposure as
a young man to the opéras-comiques of the prolific French composer Pierre-
Alexandre Monsigny (1729–1817), who was one of the creators of this new
genre. Whiting persuasively suggests that this early exposure may have influ-
enced Beethoven’s later work. David Wyn Jones discusses the composer’s
relationship with the leading Viennese music dealer Johann Traeg, whose
catalogue listed many thousands of works, and reveals Traeg’s importance
in disseminating Beethoven’s music in the early years of the nineteenth cen-
tury. Michael Ladenburger’s essay has four parts, relating to a cello that may
have formed part of the original “quartet set” given to Beethoven by Prince
Lichnowsky, the early reception of the Ninth Symphony, Beethoven’s friends
in Bonn, and an important correction to the edition of the song “Ruf vom
Berge,” WoO 147 (1817).
It is often wondered in which ways Beethoven’s terrible deafness might be
manifested in his music. Bruce Adolphe suggests three possible passages: in
the String Quartets, op. 95 and op. 135, and in the Piano Sonata, op. 110.
The final essay in this section, by Christopher Reynolds, traces commemora-
tions of the composer in the year after his death and shows how composers
and poets and performers responded to this important event in the musical
life of German-speaking lands.
Part 2 groups essays that deal with the Prometheus/Eroica connection in
the works of Beethoven. These include the Contredanse, WoO 14, no. 7;
the finale of The Creatures of Prometheus, op. 43; the Piano Variations, op.
35; and the fourth movement of the Eroica Symphony, op. 55. These dis-
parate works show Beethoven’s fascination with the Prometheus theme, and
4 ❧ introduction

Alan Gosman suggests that they all evince a kind of restraint that is loos-
ened at the end of each work. William Kinderman analyzes the genesis of op.
35 and another contemporary piano work, the “Tempest” Sonata, in three
sketchbooks that Beethoven used in 1802. And Theodore Albrecht traces the
performers for and the circumstances of all the earliest performances of the
Eroica Symphony, from reading rehearsals in late spring of 1804 to the first
public concert with nearly fifty musicians in April of 1805.
The Mass in C and the Missa solemnis are the focus of part 3. Jeremiah
McGrann revealingly compares the performing parts for the first (unsuccess-
ful) performance of the Mass in C in 1807 with the published version of the
work in 1812. Mark Evan Bonds looks closely at the manifold meanings of
the words of Beethoven’s dedication of the Missa solemnis to the Archduke
Rudolph. And Scott Burnham shows how Beethoven grapples with musical
ways of addressing or representing the divine in the Missa, comparing these
attempts with similar struggles in the last movement of the Ninth Symphony.
Part 4 is dedicated to the string quartets, with performers joining schol-
ars to consider aspects of these crucial works. Nicholas Kitchen presents a
remarkably compelling argument for the view that we should take seriously
the varied and highly specific expression markings Beethoven wrote in his
autograph manuscripts. Other work on the quartets includes the essay by
Lucy Turner on the String Quartet, op. 74, in which she argues that the
work, less well studied than many of the other quartets, must be taken not
as foreshadowing some other style but on its own remarkable merits. Robin
Wallace presents translations of and revealing commentary on a cornucopia
of contemporary German reviews of the late quartets, while Barry Cooper
compares the autograph manuscript of the slow movement of the last quar-
tet, opus 135, with a set of parts that were copied out later by Beethoven
himself and which differ in some important ways from the readings given in
the autograph.
Finally, in the last part of the book, part 5, our authors address crucial
questions of style and interpretation. Erica Buurman looks at the “scherzo
question” in Beethoven’s early sonatas. Why do some of these works have
three movements and some four? Barbara Barry evokes the unique opposing
polarities of expression in the F-major and F-minor works of Beethoven’s
middle period. David Levy addresses the opening chord of the famous
Allegretto in the Seventh Symphony and shows that it is designed not only
to relate to the movement as a whole but also to send a message to music-the-
ory traditionalists. Federica Rovelli demonstrates that, contrary to received
opinion, corrections and emendations in the blank staves of autograph
 introduction ❧ 5

manuscripts do occur in piano scores, and she suggests possible reasons for
this. Richard Kramer closely analyzes aspects of the Cello Sonata, op. 102,
no. 2, and Elaine Sisman untangles the possible meanings of inscriptions on
music, especially the title of the fifth movement of the String Quartet, op.
130, finding possible antecedents in Haydn’s The Seasons.
This book makes Beethoven new again, for all of these essays shine new
light on Beethoven as a composer fighting with all his strength to create
unprecedented modes of expression through music, never to repeat himself,
to reach out to future generations—to us—to appreciate what he was try-
ing to lay before us. They shine new light on his relations with his friends
and colleagues, with publishers, with music dealers, with his patrons, with
musicians, with God. They shine new light on a large number of works, on
the way the music was conceived, the way it was emended, the way it was
presented to performers for them to animate. And they shine new light on
Beethoven the man—the imperfect, damaged, remarkable man, who contin-
ues so vitally to enhance our lives two hundred and fifty years after he was
born. And counting.

Note
1 Jonathan Biss, partner with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in the piano
concerto project. http://www.jonathanbiss.com/projects/beethoven-5-concerto
-commissioning-project-with-the-saint-paul-chamber-orch (accessed March 24,
2020).
 Part One

A Creative Life
 Chapter One

Of Deserters and Orphans:

Beethoven’s Early Exposure
to the Opéras-Comiques of
Monsigny
Steven M. Whiting

As a member of the electoral court orchestra in Bonn from 1783 through

(most of ) 1792, the adolescent Beethoven participated in performances of a
wide variety of theatrical works, both spoken and lyric. His first stint in such
a capacity was as rehearsal harpsichordist for the theatrical company directed
by Gustav Friedrich Wilhelm Grossmann (1743–96). Hired by Elector
Maximilian Friedrich in 1778, Grossmann had quickly assembled a versa-
tile troupe, mainly out of Abel Seyler’s disintegrating company (of which
he had been a member). Grossmann appropriated Seyler’s music director,
Christian Gottlob Neefe (1748–98), after Seyler disbanded his troupe for
good in August 1779. Neefe soon became court organist as well, and gave
lessons to Beethoven; Beethoven assisted him in both the chapel and the
theater. The earliest document relating to his participation is an endorsement
by court steward Count Sigismund von Salm-Reifferschied (dated February
23, 1784) of a petition by Beethoven to receive a regular appointment—that
is, to be paid for services he had been rendering for some time on a proba-
tionary basis: “The petitioner has been amply tested and found capable to
play the court organ as he has done in the absence of Organist Neefe, also at
10 ❧ chapter one

rehearsals of the plays and elsewhere, and will continue to do so in the future”
(my emphasis).1 After Max Friedrich’s death in April 1784, Grossmann’s
troupe was let go with four weeks’ salary (Neefe remained as court organ-
ist), and for several years Maximilian Franz, the next elector, hired various
theatrical troupes for Carnival seasons only. For Carnival 1785 the troupe
of Grossmann’s rival Johann Heinrich Böhm was engaged, but we know lit-
tle about what it performed, in which town it performed it, or whether it
used the court orchestra.2 For Carnival 1786 Maximilian Franz engaged a
“Französisches Hoftheater” formed from remnants of the French-language
troupe that had been resident in Kassel. A Hoftheater presumably used
the Hoforchester, which meant that Beethoven was probably playing.3 For
Carnival 1787 Maximilian Franz seems to have hired Grossmann, but the
engagement was quickly hamstrung by legal disputes between Grossmann
and his partner, Christian Wilhelm Klos.4 Finally, in January 1789,
Maximilian Franz reorganized the court theater under the musical direction
of Joseph Reicha, and Beethoven played not harpsichord but viola in the
orchestra, presumably until he left for Vienna in November 1792.
With regard to Beethoven’s experiences with Grossmann’s troupe,
Alexander Wheelock Thayer opined: “No comments need be made upon
the influence which daily intercourse with it, and sharing in its labors, espe-
cially in the direction of opera, must have exerted upon the mind of a boy
of twelve or thirteen years possessed of real musical genius.”5 Perhaps this
observation—that no comments need be made—was true in Thayer’s time;
but nowadays, when the theatrical repertoire in question has become less
familiar, a few comments may be welcome, if they tell us something about
the musical and dramatic procedures that Beethoven learned to take for
granted (or at least to consider as feasible options) at a young age, not to
mention the Lebensanschauungen to which he might have been exposed.
In the repertoire of the electoral theater, opéras-comiques loomed large,
whether in German translation or in their original French.6 Elsewhere I have
broached the question of what Beethoven may have taken from stage works
with music by André-Modest Grétry, of which he may have known as many
as fourteen before he left for Vienna in November 1792.7 Among French
composers whose stage works were offered in Bonn, the next in composi-
tional importance was Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny (1729–1817). Beethoven
almost certainly participated in performances of Le Déserteur, La Belle Arsène,
Rose et Colas, and Félix, ou L’Enfant trouvé. The scores of three more works
with music by Monsigny were held in the electoral library in Bonn, but no
performances there are known.8 These seven works with music by Monsigny
 beethoven's early exposure to monsigny ❧ 11

are listed in table 1.1 in chronological order of their premieres in Paris, with
notice of the original librettist and (in parentheses) the German translator
(when known or applicable). Finally, documented performances in Bonn are
noted. Any performances during Carnival 1786 were in French; the rest were
in German. As table 1.1 indicates, the scores of Le Roi et le fermier, L’Isle son-
nante, and Le Faucon were part of the electoral library but not performed (so
far as we know) in Bonn. Members of the court orchestra did enjoy some-
thing like borrowing privileges, though, so Beethoven was free to pursue any
curiosity he might have had about these three works. As we shall see, he
would have had good reason to take a look at Le Roi et le fermier, Monsigny’s
first collaboration with the librettist Michel-Jean Sedaine and in several
respects a break-through work. Rose et Colas was one of the handful of oper-
atic works that Grossmann staged before Neefe arrived in Bonn. Beethoven
would have been just eight years old. It was not given again until Carnival
1786, this time in French. Rose et Colas (or to use the German title, Röschen
und Colas) is the only one of these operas that Beethoven could have heard
again in Vienna. Among Monsigny’s operas, it is hardly surprising that Le
Déserteur enjoyed the greatest number of performances in Bonn because,
as John Warrack noted, it “had a long and successful career on German
stages.”9 Félix, ou L’Enfant trouvé, Monsigny’s last completed opéra-comique
and the third of his major collaborations with Sedaine, had a strong dose
of social satire and an inspiring plot. Beethoven may well have retained
a memory of it because Félix was performed during the fourth season of
the court theater as reconstituted by Elector Maximilian Franz (December
28, 1791–February 20, 1792), which was either the penultimate or the
last season in which Beethoven played viola in the court orchestra. He left
Bonn in early November 1792, and the fifth season of the court theater
had barely begun.10

Le Roi et le fermier
Based on Robert Dodsley’s 1736 comedy The King and the Miller of
Mansfield, as translated into French twenty years later by Claude-Pierre Patu,
Le Roi et le fermier was Michel-Jean Sedaine’s first full-length opéra-comique.
As Sedaine would remember it, “In 1762 I achieved what I had believed
impossible: to elevate the tone of this genre, even to put a king on the stage,
in a three-act work that would take as long to perform as any five-act play
at the Théâtre Français” (i.e., the Comédie-Française).11 What was bolder
12 ❧ chapter one

Table 1.1. Opéras-comiques by Monsigny performed at court or held in score at the

electoral library in Bonn
Title Premiere in Original librettist Performances in Bonn
Paris (translator)
Le Roi et le fermier Nov. 22, Michel-Jean
1762 Sedaine
Rose et Colas March 8, Sedaine April 9, 1779; Feb. 4,
1764 1786
L’Isle sonnante Aug. 1767 Charles Collé
Le Déserteur March 6, Sedaine (J. J. Dec. 9, 1779; May 28,
1769 Eschenburg) 1780; April 6, 1783;
by July 13, 1787
Le Faucon Nov. 2, 1771 Sedaine
La Belle Arsène Nov. 6, 1773 Charles-Simon March 9, 1780; Jan.
Favart (J. André or 26, 1783; Feb. 1, 1786
Neefe)
Félix, ou L’Enfant Nov. 10, Sedaine (J. André) Jan. 22, 1792
trouvé 1777

than putting said king on the stage was subjecting him to a lecture from his
plain-spoken constable. Sedaine had offered the livret first to François-André
Danican Philidor, who pondered it at length before declaring it “unfeasible.”
Monsigny, by contrast, set it with alacrity—hence Sedaine’s lavish praise for
the composer in the avertissement of the published livret: “I had to find a
great artist, a skillful musician willing to have some confidence in me, and
finally, a friend willing to risk a new genre in music.”12 There were problems
with the censor in Paris, and a planned premiere at court fell through. For all
we know, the factors militating against a premiere at Fontainebleau also fore-
stalled performance at the electoral court. Still, Sedaine insisted on publish-
ing the livret as he had written it, not as he had to change it for performance,
lest he be accused of having wanted to stage reckless political discourse when
he only intended that one see “what an English farmer, irritated by an unjust
courtier, might say in such circumstances.”13
The fermier in Sedaine’s story is Richard, not only a land-holder but
also a royal gamekeeper who has, thanks to his father’s foresight, received
enough education to acquaint him with the world and to sharpen his inde-
pendence of thought. The ostensible abduction of Richard’s fiancée, Jenny,
by a maleficent local lord has set Richard’s feelings into jealous turmoil, but
 beethoven's early exposure to monsigny ❧ 13

now evening is approaching, a storm is brewing, and the king himself is

hunting in the woods. Richard’s duty (and that of his guards) is to prevent
poachers from taking advantage of the circumstances. Richard’s jealousy is
soon allayed by Jenny herself, who explains how Lord Lurewel’s henchmen
had diverted her flock into the courtyard of his castle and had sent her to
Lurewel to ask for them back. (Jenny is an orphan who has been taken in
by Richard’s family; her flock is all the dowry she has.) Jenny has not only
resisted Lurewel’s unwanted advances: she has made a daring escape after
Lurewel left off his seduction to join the hunt. Indeed, she is stout-hearted
enough to appeal directly to the king, if need be, against the capricious aris-
tocrat. “I shall throw myself at his feet: he will listen to me; he would not
be king if he were not just” (“Je me jetterai à ses pieds, il m’écoutera; il ne
seroit pas Roi s’il etoit pas juste”). The storm erupts full force in the entr’acte
music, and in act 2 we find the king unhorsed, disarmed, and separated from
his party. Richard finds him but has no reason to recognize him, so the king
can pretend to be one of the royal retinue. On the basis of simple human-
ity, then, Richard offers hospitality and leads him to his abode, where his
mother, his sister, and Jenny are waiting. Meanwhile, Lurewel and one of
his courtiers, also lost in the storm, are discovered and arrested by Richard’s
guards, who (mis)take them for poachers. The ensuing entr’acte music is, not
without irony, an “air de chasse.”
On the way home, as we later learn, Richard explains Lurewel’s attempted
abduction and saves the stranger from falling into a pit. The third act, set in
Richard’s humble dwelling, makes Jenny’s (and the author’s) key philosophi-
cal points about goodness and royalty. Soon the air of friendliness is such
that Jenny invites the noble stranger to their wedding. Jenny, Richard, and
the stranger each get an aria about what constitutes happiness: for Jenny, a
life shared with one’s beloved; for Richard, a life lived in the country rather
than in the corrupting city; for the stranger, who pretends to remember a
lesson imparted in an opera to a king by his tutor, true happiness is to spread
happiness to one’s subjects. It is a pithy statement of enlightened monarchy:

Le Bonheur est de le répandre,

De le verser sur les humains,
De faire éclore de vos mains
Tout ce qu’ils ont droit d’en attendre.14
14 ❧ chapter one

(Happiness is to spread happiness,

To pour it out upon other humans,
To make bloom from your hands
All that they have a right to expect from you.)

That tutor, Richard remarks, truly earned his wages. When Richard’s guards
bring in their presumed poachers, Lurewel quickly reveals his identity, then
his evil designs on Jenny (whom he imagines still locked up in his castle);
finally, he recognizes the king, setting the stage for an elaborate septet that
conveys the dénouement. Before the astonished peasants, the king questions
Lurewel and sends him off in disgrace. He tries to ennoble Richard, who
refuses the honor. He accepts the invitation to the wedding, and promises
to assume responsibility for Jenny’s dowry. After his departure, Richard’s
mother, ever the practical peasant, remarks, “If I’d known it was the king, I’d
have cooked the chicken!”
What in Monsigny’s treatment of the subject might have caught the
attention of young Beethoven? To begin with, the overture connects to the
opera by leaving the pattern of the Italianate sinfonia incomplete. There’s a
Presto ma non tropo in E-flat major and parallel binary form, followed by
an Andante Allegretto in C minor. Instead of a third movement, there is an
Allegro in E-flat major, which is Richard’s despairing first aria, “Je ne sçais
à quoi me résoudre” (“I don’t know what to do”). The overture figuratively
places the spectator in the middle of the first scene. This structural precedent
would be followed by Grétry seven years later in the overture to Lucile, and
by Mozart nine years later in Ascanio in Alba. Another source of musical
interest is the recurrent use of counterpoint to dramatic ends.
The first example is the passacaglia-like G-minor duet in act 1, scene 6
for Richard and his sister, Betsy. Betsy is hurt that Richard has been gruff
with her in front of the guards, and Richard, upon hearing that Betsy has
intelligence of Jenny, is very eager to achieve a reconciliation. An equally
humorous example comes in act 2, scene 4. Stumbling around in the dark
after the storm, Lurewel and the courtier think they hear the king’s voice,
which motivates a D-minor duet “à demi voix”: “Ah ciel! Ah si c’étoit le Roi”
(Oh, heavens! What if it were the king?”). It is a through-composed piece
of pseudo-ecclesiastical counterpoint for two hypocritical souls who, scared
out of their wits, claim only to tremble for the safety of their king. Quite at
odds with the symbolic implications of the texture, their diction takes on
the patter style of commoners, thereby offering purely musical commentary
on the difference between nobility of birth and nobility of character. (Two
 beethoven's early exposure to monsigny ❧ 15

quodlibet-like trios for the women in act 3 make similar use of light-hearted
counterpoint.) Yet the most impressive feature in Monsigny’s score is surely
the storm that connects acts 1 and 2. It begins to rise during the duet (act
1, scene 10) between Richard and Jenny, “Ah! Richard, ah mon cher ami”
(“Ah, Richard. Ah, my dear friend”), forcing the duet several times out of its
strophic form and into recitative, each time with more intense deployment
of the usual orchestral devices (including precisely indicated swells and trem-
olandos), so that the resumption of the duet (and of musical structure per se)
comes to express a denial of reality: “Jenny, qu’importe cet orage? / Ce nuage
n’est qu’un passage” (“Jenny, what does the storm matter? That’s just a passing
cloud”). Finally, the royal hunt hurtles by, with horns and galloping figures
in the upper strings, notated in  time, while the lower strings continue in .
Even the barking of the dogs seems to have its motivic counterpart. Finally,
sister Betsy joins them, and they flee for shelter. With barely a cadence in
B-flat major, the music plunges into the entr’acte proper, a G-minor orage in
which the petites flûtes make their obligatory appearance. The storm music
continues into the G-minor duet for two of Richard’s guards, which fills in
what has “happened” between the acts. The ebbing storm carries us onward
into scene 2, the entrance of the king with an E-flat-major “récitatif mesuré,”
declaring that weather is no respecter of rank. Nor (to judge from the musi-
cal interjections between his phrases) is it any respecter of musical structure,
since it has by now spilled across four discrete numbers. Beethoven would
encounter other operatic storms in Grétry’s Zémire et Azor and Gluck’s
Iphigénie en Tauride; but it is difficult when studying Monsigny’s entr’acte
not to think of the Sturm in Beethoven’s Sixth, especially given its carefully
staged incursion into the “merry-making of the peasants” and its dispersal
into the song of thanks.

Rose et Colas
Rose and Colas are the children, respectively, of Mathurin (a farmer) and
Pierre (a vintner), and they are in love. Their fathers are not opposed to
the match, although Pierre thinks they might be too young for marriage.
As crafty peasants, though, the fathers bargain at such length over the nup-
tial happiness of their children that they risk driving them both away. The
ninety-five-year-old wet-nurse of Mathurin helps bring the men to their
senses, and they allow Nature to take its course. This paysannerie in one act
was first performed in Bonn when Beethoven was a lad of eight years old,
16 ❧ chapter one

so it may be doubted whether he witnessed it. It may also be wondered

how Grossmann’s troupe tackled the more complicated ensembles with-
out a regular music director. Grossmann did have capable singers, and he
may have availed himself of the expertise of Kapellmeister Andrea Luchesi
or the concertmaster, Gaetano Mattioli, in rehearsing the C-minor “Trio
Fuga,” which extends over two hundred measures.
This trio may be considered the musical highlight of the show, and its dra-
matic context makes clear that its learned style and minor mode are not to
be taken at face value. The two peasants have agreed in principle to let their
children marry, but Pierre wants to delay the wedding until after his grape-
harvest (vendange), even until Epiphany, to make the youngsters more eager
to accomplish the work that he is growing too old to do. Pierre therefore
urges that they begin the process of negotiation but drag it out week by week
through a feigned quarrel (among other pretexts), thereby even increasing
the affection of their children for each other. They are sealing their agreement
with an embrace when they notice Rose entering. They immediately seem to
pick a fight, and the first subject entry is Rose’s despairing “Mais, mais ils
sont en courroux” (“But they’re really in a rage”). In their subject entries, the
two fathers hurl opprobrium at each other and call off the wedding, while
Rose goes over to a grieving countersubject. By the second exposition, while
Rose sets the exasperated question “Pourquoi vous mettre en colère?” (“Why
are you angering each other?”) to the subject, the fathers are using the coun-
tersubject to congratulate each other on how well their ruse is succeeding.
Each takes care to resume his posture of rage when it is his turn to sing
the subject. The pedal point is especially humorous in its effect. Mathurin
is warning of dire consequences should Colas try to enter his house, but
actually Colas is in the scene the whole time, rather like the low G, only in
hiding. The whole ensemble is a marvelous example of buffo fugato, in which
the learned style points a staged quarrel that the daughter takes seriously. The
confusion and comic effect are only heightened by the breakneck tempo of
the whole. Beethoven must have encountered serious fugues in C minor in
the context of his service as organist at Bonn, but Monsigny may have been
among his masters in the art of the humorous fugue.

Le Déserteur
Alexis is a young soldier who hails from a French village close to the Flemish
border. Shortly before his discharge, he is given a twenty-four-hour leave to
 beethoven's early exposure to monsigny ❧ 17

visit his home and his fiancée, Louise, on condition that he return to camp
in time for a visit from the king. But the local duchess decides, for reasons
never divulged, to make this leave the occasion for a cruel practical joke.
A mock wedding between Louise and her oafish cousin Bertrand is staged
just as Alexis is returning, and a child of the village is recruited to break the
“news” to him. Alexis despairs so completely that he attracts the attention
of four border guards; and, once he realizes that he can end his suffering
through military execution if he declares his intention to desert, he does so,
and the soldiers duly arrest him. Act 2 takes place in a military prison; the
jailer is kindly; the only other prisoner seems to be a bibulous clown with
the punning name Montauciel (Up to Heaven), who leavens Alexis’s tragic
monologues. Louise and her father visit, and are amazed that Alexis is not
cheered by the news that the whole wedding was a sham. They have no idea
of the condemnation that Alexis has brought upon himself and that he is
likely to be shot by evening. They soon discover the truth. While Alexis has a
brief hearing before the judges, Louise’s father wants to appeal to Madame la
Duchesse. Louise answers realistically: “Elle l’a mis dans la peine; elle ne sera
pas là pour l’en tirer” (“She’s the one who put him into this difficult position;
she won’t be there to pull him out of it”). After her father leaves, Louise asks
the jailer whether the king might grant a pardon in such a case. Yes, the jailer
replies, and no, it couldn’t hurt to throw herself at his feet and beg for grace.
This already gives us a clear idea of the dénouement; it is only a question of
delaying it until the end of act 3. And so act 2 closes with a comic duet for
Montauciel and Bertrand, Louise’s cousin.
Act 3 has another comic ariette for Montauciel, whose own elaborately
demonstrated illiteracy will make him the convenient bearer of a letter of
farewell from Alexis to Louise and her father. Then a soldier—one of the sol-
diers who arrested Alexis, with the punning name Courchemin (Shortcut)—
arrives with an official packet, and he tells of a strange young woman who
threw herself on the king’s mercy with a story so moving that even old sol-
diers were weeping. The king had granted the reprieve, and the girl had run
off, turning down the gold offered by certain nobles in the king’s retinue
because it would be too heavy for her to carry. Drums beat offstage; jailor
and soldier exit. And drums invade the following monologue for Alexis. The
executioners are approaching, but only Montauciel arrives, bottle in hand,
for a last drink with Alexis. Alexis hands over his letter and bids Montauciel
farewell. The soldiers enter together with Louise—at the end of her strength,
shoes in hand, hair in disarray. She can only manage to say “Alexis, ta . . .”
(“Alexis, your . . .”) before fainting in his arms. Alexis’s valedictory aria, “A
18 ❧ chapter one

Dieu, chère Louise” (“Adieu, dear Louise”), is cut short by recitative, in

which he urges the soldiers to end his misery through execution. We wit-
ness the dénouement from the perspective of the slowly reviving Louise, who
hears the offstage shouts of “Vive le Roi” and remembers the pardon she has
brought to Alexis. She runs off, as her father and aunt run on to proclaim
the royal pardon and jump for joy. This last entrance, tantamount to holding
up a poster, must have been to allow enough time for the final scene-change
to the public square, where a chorus celebrates the pardon of Alexis and the
bravery of Louise. With its cliff-hanging resolution, Le Déserteur was nothing
less than a rescue opera avant la lettre.
Arthur Pougin called Le Déserteur Monsigny’s masterpiece and Sedaine’s as
well.15 It was clearly a favorite of Grossmann’s. It was among the first operas
he offered after securing Neefe’s services as music director in October 1779,
and over the next two years he repeated it ten times in five different cities.
In Bonn, the role of Alexis was created by Tobias Pfeiffer, drinking buddy of
Beethoven’s father, Johann (they were both tenors), sometime lodger in the
Beethoven household, and early teacher of the young Ludwig.16 Beethoven
may have been involved in the performance on April 6, 1783, which cel-
ebrated the anniversary of Maximilian Friedrich’s elevation to the office of
elector. The last performance in Bonn is known only from a letter of July 13,
1787 from Neefe to Grossmann, concerning an initiative taken the preced-
ing May by Christoph Brandt, a member of the Hofkapelle.17 Brandt was
hoping (prematurely, as it turned out) to persuade Elector Maximilian Franz
to revive the court theater by mounting performances with an ad hoc troupe.
Neefe reported that the house was full for Le Déserteur, empty for the other
show, and that his wife took two roles, whereas he kept his distance from the
undertaking. In Neefe’s metaphorical assessment, the child was scarcely born
before it died. Beethoven, just returned from his first journey to Vienna, may
have played in the orchestra.
Beethoven’s very first exposure to this opera would have come before any
staging in Bonn, if it is true that the carillon tower of the electoral palace
intoned the overture on a daily basis, before it was destroyed in a fire one
month after his sixth birthday.18 The overture is indeed one of the most
innovative features of the opera, for it traces in advance the course of the
drame to come. Its opening presents pastoral and military renditions of the
same D-major melody—perhaps the very tune that sounded from the belfry
in Bonn. Then come three episodes in Sturm und Drang style (D minor,
Presto ma non tropo), alternating with pastorelle lamentations in D minor
and A minor, respectively, both dominated by oboes and bassoons. The
 beethoven's early exposure to monsigny ❧ 19

mournfulness is dispelled by a military tattoo (a reference to the king visit-

ing the camp?) and a striking motivic dialogue between falling thirds in the
oboes and surging triadic gestures in the strings (representing Louise’s appeal
to the king?).19 The initial section then returns in full. This very melody, in
its military guise, will become the refrain of the act 3 finale, with the text
“Oubliez jusqu’à la trace / D’un malheur peu fait pour vous: / quel plaisir! il
a sa grace, / c’est nous la donner à tous” (“Forget every trace of a sorrow ill-
suited to you; what a pleasure! He has his pardon, which we should extend
to all”).
This was the earliest significant example of what a recent scholar has called
the “ouverture à citation.”20 Not that the adolescent Beethoven would have
worried about historical priority, but he certainly would have noticed that
two more of Monsigny’s opéras-comiques—La Belle Arsène and Félix, both
performed in Bonn—had overtures that anticipate the dénouement. And
he would have found the same procedure adopted by Nicolas Dézède in
Julie and in several operas by Grétry, all of them in Grossmann’s repertoire
and frequently performed in Bonn: Le Magnifique, Le Jugement de Midas,
Les Evénements imprévus, and Zémire et Azor.21 Add to these Beethoven’s
repeated exposure to Mozart’s Entführung aus dem Serail, with its anticipa-
tion of Belmonte’s first aria amid the overture, and Don Giovanni, with its
anticipation of the final scene at the beginning of the overture, and it is little
wonder that three of the four overtures to Fidelio give foretastes of the opera
to come and that the overture to Egmont ends with the same music that
accompanies the conclusion and resolution of the play. Beethoven was thor-
oughly familiar with the procedure before he left Bonn.
Also predictive of Beethoven’s practice in Egmont was Monsigny’s use of
entr’acte music to suggest what was happening “between the acts.” The first
musical number in Le Déserteur is Louise’s ariette “Peut-on affliger ce qu’on
aime?” (“Can one afflict the person one loves?”). As we soon discover, Louise
is thereby expressing her reluctance to go through with the sham wedding
demanded by the duchess. Act 1 ends with Alexis denouncing the ostensi-
bly perfidious Louise as a “monstre cruel” (“cruel monster”). The following
entr’acte quotes Louise’s initial ariette, which contradicts Alexis’s denuncia-
tion, at the same time as that denunciation answers Louise’s rhetorical ques-
tion in the negative. The music between acts 2 and 3 (marked “Andante
amoroso”) anticipates the music Courchemin will sing (act 3, scene 6) to
relate the encounter between the unknown girl and the king (also marked
“Amoroso”); but in strict narrative sequence, Louise would obviously be
throwing herself on the king’s mercy before Courchemin’s account of the
20 ❧ chapter one

moment, so this entr’acte indeed alludes to what is happening between the

acts. As we have seen, Monsigny proceeded likewise with the entr’actes in Le
Roi et le fermier (especially the orage after act 1). Grétry clearly learned from
Monsigny’s example in Zémire et Azor, in which the music between acts 1
and 2 depicts Sander and Ali’s ride on the back of a cloud from Azor’s palace
to their home in Hormuz (the setting of act 2), and the music between acts 3
and 4 suggests through quotation of Zémire’s aria “Rassure mon père” what
would actually be happening at that moment.22
Equally striking is the mixture of “terror, pathos, and outrageous com-
edy” in Sedaine’s livret—a mixture possibly inspired by the model of
Shakespeare.23 The most obvious examples come in the juxtapositions of
Alexis’s death-row plight with Montauciel’s gallows humor in acts 2 and 3.
But the mixture is illustrated with particular clarity by the special case of
Monsigny’s contrapuntal numbers. One musical highlight of Rose et Colas
was the C-minor Fuga conveying the twists and turns of a feigned altercation
and the very real distress of a character directly affected by it. The C-minor
fugue in Le Déserteur likewise unfolds at a breakneck pace (Prestissimo) but
is deadly earnest. In act 2, scene 11, Louise bursts in, having learned the
truth about Alexis’s condemnation. Her consternation, “O ciel, quoi? tu vas
mourir!” (“Oh, heavens! Oh no! You are going to die!”) is conveyed with a
jagged fugal subject: a conjunct ascent from C to A♭, plunging to B♮, then a
sequential repeat starting from B♭. Each character has a different text to the
same subject, and each takes a turn at launching an exposition. The episodes
are more homophonic, with Louise and her father each declaring their guilt
and Alexis trying to console them.
The overall dramatic effect of the fugue is of three characters with their
individual perspectives, all caught in the same impossible situation. Were it
not for the tempo and the mode, one might almost glimpse a template for
“Mir ist so wunderbar” in Fidelio. To this sublime ensemble there is a ridicu-
lous counterpoise in Le Déserteur, at the end of act 2. Bertrand, the sup-
posed spouse-for-a-day, has come to visit Alexis in prison but only finds the
ever-tipsy Montauciel, who insists that he sing something. Bertrand, good-
hearted simpleton that he is, sings “Tous les hommes sont bons” (“All men
are good”), in the unlikely key of G minor. Montauciel thinks the song is
sweet enough to send the devil back underground, and so he launches into
his own paean to wine and love, “Vive le vin, vive l’amour” (“Long live wine,
long live love”). The melody is quite different, but (suspiciously enough) in
the same key, meter, and tempo as Bertrand’s song. When Montauciel insists
that they sing together, Bertrand protests that he doesn’t know Montauciel’s
 beethoven's early exposure to monsigny ❧ 21

song. “Qui est-ce qui vous dit de chanter ma chanson? Dites la votre, et
moi la mienne: c’est plus gai.” (“Who’s telling you to sing my song? Sing
your own, and I’ll sing mine; that’ll be more fun.”) And lo, the songs fit as
tightly together as a double-song by Irving Berlin. After the fugato tragedy,
Monsigny gives us counterpoint in the service of comic relief.
The only aristocratic character in Le Déserteur is Madame la Duchesse,
and we have no reason to find her sympathetic. Her caprice sets the plot
in motion, but we never see her, her motive is never explained, and she has
no part in the dénouement. Indeed, Louise’s terse comment, quoted above
(“She’s the one who put him into this difficult position . . .”), is the last refer-
ence to her at all.24 Not surprisingly, musical structures usually chosen for
the lyrical utterances of characters of higher social status are here used for
characters of inner nobility. In act 1, scene 7, Alexis, having just learned of
the “wedding” between Louise and Bertrand, steps into the opera seria role
of the noble soul in torment. He sings an out-and-out scena, “Infidèle, que
t’ai-je fait?” (“Faithless one, what have I done to you?”).25 (Even the label
is Italian: “Recitativo obligato.”) As Alexis swings back and forth between
outrage and tenderness, it becomes ever clearer that the oboe symbolizes the
imagined beloved—first at “Toujours chérie” (“Always beloved,” p. 53), then
even more explicitly at “J’accours à sa voix, oui c’est elle, c’est ma Louise qui
m’appelle” (“I run to her voice; yes, it’s her, it’s my Louise who’s calling me,”
pp. 55–56).
At this point, rage wins out, and the aria “Fuyons ce lieu que je déteste”
(“Let us flee this place that I hate,” Allegro, , p. 57) soon becomes an
ensemble, as Courchemin and three other soldiers observe Alexis’s attempted
desertion and comment on his deranged state before arresting him in the
coda. Once in prison at the beginning of act 2, Alexis has a tragic mono-
logue in D minor, “Mourir n’est rien, c’est notre dernière heure” (“To die
is nothing, it is [just] our final hour,” p. 84), that begins like a rage aria
but is interrupted as he takes out the last letter from Louise and re-reads it;
the oboes duly enter (“Viens, cher amant” [“Come, dear lover”], Andante
amoroso, F major, p. 89). This, however, breaks off with the next wave of
jealous rage, and Alexis reverts to recitative. The return to the A section
is much compressed, rhythmically and structurally, and gains in urgency
thereby. One can only wonder whether Beethoven remembered these scenes
when drafting the monologue for the imprisoned Florestan at the begin-
ning of act 2 in Fidelio. There, too, the oboe enters as Florestan’s delirious
vision takes shape—of the angel who so resembles his wife—“ein Engel,
Leonoren der Gattin so gleich” (“an angel, so like my wife Leonore”). Of
22 ❧ chapter one

course, neither prisoner yet imagines that the woman symbolized by the
oboe will, through an act of bravery, become his salvation.
In both Le Déserteur and Fidelio, the finale entails a sudden transforma-
tion of setting from prison cell to public square. Monsigny’s finale moves
from D minor to D major, as the 1805 finale of Fidelio moves from C minor
to C major. For all the differences between the two, the finale of Sedaine/
Monsigny’s rescue opera avant la lettre is a worthy precedent. An octet of
principals and a four-part chorus are deployed over 162 measures, either
in alternation, or with superimpositions, or blending with one another.26
Monsigny’s finale benefits from our sense of having come full circle, to a
resolution forecast by the overture.

La Belle Arsène
Unlike other Monsigny operas performed in Bonn, La Belle Arsène does
not have a livret written by Sedaine, and it is set in the mid-sixteenth cen-
tury, during the reign of Henri II and Catherine de’ Medici. On the basis of
Voltaire’s moral tale in verse La Bégueule (“The prude”), published the year
before,27 Charles-Simon Favart fashioned this comédie-féerie about a haughty
beauty eventually tamed—through trials that begin with an enchanted gar-
den in which her every wish is fulfilled and end in the wilderness with a
collier interested only in the fulfilment of his own wishes. (The stay in the
wilderness begins with another storm.) Having met her match in selfishness,
Arsène humbly acknowledges her love for the knight Alcindor, who has been
pining after her since the first scene. She conveniently faints so that the stage
may be transformed into a wedding chamber. Her fairy-godmother Aline,
who has arranged the trials, tells her she has brought her here to witness
the wedding of Alcindor; then she will be returned to her collier. Arsène
accepts this bitterly, before learning that she is Alcindor’s intended bride.
Aline unites the two with a homily that alludes to the opening of Voltaire’s
conte: “Un sage a dit: ‘Rien n’est plus périlleux / Que de quitter le bien pour
être mieux’” (“A wise man has said, ‘Nothing is more dangerous than leaving
what is good for what seems better’”).
The premiere at court in Fontainebleau (November 6, 1773) had no suc-
cess.28 Favart, feeling guilty for the failure and wanting to salvage at least some
of Monsigny’s music, offered his collaborator a different libretto and invited
him to fit to it as much of his score for Arsène as he could. Monsigny was
not interested. Favart reluctantly revised the livret of Arsène, and the revision
 beethoven's early exposure to monsigny ❧ 23

(now in four acts) was offered at the Comédie-Italienne on August 14, 1775.
Here too the reception was cool, but a revival in May 1779 launched a run
of performances that lasted several years. The performances in Bonn (starting
on March 9, 1780) were thus riding the crest of this new vogue for the show.
Beethoven may have participated in the second performance (January 26,
1783); for the third performance (in French), his services as harpsichordist
would certainly have been needed.
The musical highlights in Arsène are fewer than those in Le Déserteur. The
overture starts by anticipating the refrain from the final scene, sung by Aline
and her chorus, “A l’amour livrez vos cœurs” (“Surrender your hearts to
love,” bottom of p. 102 in the short score).29 It then goes back to the charac-
terizing ariette from act 1, scene 7, that launches the action: Arsène’s “Non,
non, j’ai trop de fierté pour me soumettre à l’esclavage” (“No, no, I am too
proud to submit to slavery,” p. 15). The secondary theme may refer to act 4,
scene 4, Arsène’s duo with the collier, “Ayez un cœur sensible” (“Have a sym-
pathetic heart,” p. 86). The storm music makes its appearance several pages
later, albeit in D minor instead of C minor (Arsène’s “Où suis-je? quelle nuit
profonde” [“Where am I? What a dark night”], on p. 70), followed by a
clearer reference to “Ayez un cœur sensible.” The overture then repeats the
refrain from the final scene before the bustling coda.
It is hard to gauge the full impact of the orage that begins act 4, since the
Bailleux score includes only the violin line, the voice(s), and the basso con-
tinuo. But it gives a convincing impression of the terror felt by Arsène, alone
and exposed to the elements for what is probably the first time in her life.
The highpoint of the storm comes with a tree-splitting lightning bolt, très
fort, on D-flat major (p. 73). Several pages later, Arsène glimpses “un mon-
stre” just before the storm ebbs; one must consult the libretto to learn that
the monster is a bear crossing the stage.30 (Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale comes
to mind.)31 How that particular stroke of staging was managed in Bonn is
anyone’s guess. But there seems to be little else in this score that might have
made a lasting impression on the young Beethoven.

Félix, ou L’Enfant trouvé

Monsigny’s last completed opéra-comique was premiered on November 24,
1777, at the Comédie-Italienne. Audiences were disconcerted by the acerbic
social satire, and the work did not catch on until the 1790s.32 It was per-
formed in Bonn during Carnival of 1792 (December 28, 1791, to February
24 ❧ chapter one

20, 1792), one of Beethoven’s last seasons in the orchestra. Reichard’s

Taschenbuch für die Schaubühne reported that Bonn too needed time to warm
to the opera; there as in Paris, the third-act trio was a success:

Felix [sic]. The opera at first did not quite manage to please; from the second
act onward, it pleased a great deal. Mademoiselle Willmann and Herr Müller
sang their duet with much feeling, and the sweet, hearty trio had to be repeated.
The last scene between Herr von Strahlheim and the wet-nurse was acted with
animation by Herr Steiger and Madame Neefe. Herr Dardenne performed the
role of legal scholar quite well.33

Herr von Strahlheim is the name given Sedaine’s character Gourville, as in

Johann André’s German adaptation.34
In Le Roi et le fermier, the son of the house was united with the young
lady whom his family adopted as an orphaned girl. In Félix, the daughter
of the house is united with the young man whom her family adopted as a
foundling. Félix has grown up amid three brothers and Thérèse, whom he
has come to love as more than a sister. Those feelings are reciprocated. While
Félix has been making the family farm thrive, the brothers have moved to
the city, and taken up occupations reflected in various modifications to their
family name:35 army captain (Morinville); lawyer (La Morinière); and abbé
(St. Morin). All three are ruthless social climbers who convince their father
to allow Thérèse’s betrothal to a local lord (Versac), who is looking to restore
his fortunes through a hefty dowry; to them, she is a commodity in a trans-
action to move the family up another rung.
As the opera begins, the family have gathered with Versac and the notary
to draw up the marriage contract. Félix ducks the occasion by going for a
walk, in woods made dangerous of late by bandits. Father Morin explains
that payment of the whole dowry is contingent on the expiration of a thirty-
year statutory limit: His farm had been bought with funds acquired under
obscure circumstances, and three more years must elapse before he can dis-
pose of his wealth. The servant-girl, Manon, reports shots outside. Versac
and two of the brothers run out (the abbé stays behind to pray for them);
Thérèse worries about Félix. The men return with a M. de Gourville, who
says his life has just been saved. A tall stranger, armed only with a walk-
ing-stick, has subdued his attackers but must have been wounded in the
gunfire. Gourville also muses at the fatality that, twenty-seven years previ-
ously, he lost everything on the same road. Instead of explanation, there
is a comic ensemble: Manon fends off the rude advances of Morinville,
 beethoven's early exposure to monsigny ❧ 25

the other brothers vacillate between restraining and encouraging the flirta-
tion, and Versac claims to have chased the robbers at least five hundred
paces before losing his breath. The quintet is interrupted on a V7 chord by
Morin, who (speaking) bids them to supper.
In act 2, Félix declares his intention to leave. Father Morin approves the
plan, without knowing its motive, and recounts the circumstances under
which he found Félix. There had been a storm, the causeway by the pond
had collapsed, and the countryside was flooded. Morin discovered a woman
tangled in the branches of a willow, unconscious, with a babe in her arms. It
was Félix’s wet-nurse. Morin took the baby to his hut, then rescued the nurse.
Two leagues away they found a dame drowned in her carriage with a valise.
They questioned the nurse repeatedly, but she spoke only German. Much
later, they learned that she came from “Noussdorff.” “Un grand monsieur”
had hired her and brought her to a noblewoman who engaged her to nour-
ish her newborn; fifteen days later the catastrophe occurred. If Félix wants
to learn more, the nurse still lives in the village. Morin offers a “petit sac”—
fourteen years of wages for the work Félix has done. And he hands over the
procès-verbal, signed by Morin’s pastor, of how he was found. Morinville (the
army captain) interrupts with a letter for Félix to sign—a letter committing
him to enlist in Morinville’s regiment.
Morin has convinced himself of Gourville’s connection with the catas-
trophe that so redounded to his benefit. Knowing their father’s solemn vow
to return everything should the owner present himself within thirty years,
the brothers try to dissuade him from giving “their” inheritance (and with
it Thérèse’s dowry) to this man they claim to have rescued. Morin will not
be moved, so they plot to get rid of Gourville as soon as possible. Gourville
retires to a bed-alcove but leaves the light burning. Unaware of his presence,
Thérèse and Félix bid each other farewell. When Thérèse notices that Félix is
bleeding, he describes his encounter with the bandits in the forest. Gourville,
peering through the curtains, recognizes the man who saved his life. Félix
gives Therèse the wages Morin paid him, so that she can support his nurse
after Morin dies.
Early the next morning, having visited the causeway, Gourville and Morin
convince Félix to stay another day, because the wedding is no longer certain.
Gourville asks about the yield of the farm. Morin answers that, when there
are lots of poor people, there is no profit at all; in better years, it can yield
two thousand écus. “And they are yours!” Morin feels sure that Gourville is
the original owner of the money with which Morin bought the property.
He produces the valise, and Gourville recognizes his monogram. Gourville is
26 ❧ chapter one

astonished by such probity. So are the sons, who protest their father’s honesty
in a progressive ensemble—a “duo which continues as a trio and finishes as
a quartet.” Morin sorely rues having sent his sons to the city to pursue any
career other than farming. But will Gourville employ him as steward of the
land he has returned?
At this juncture comes the “sweet, hearty” trio, in which Félix and Thérèse
promise not to abandon Morin, and Morin openly wishes that Félix were
his actual son. Gourville enters with the notary and a new contract, whereby
Gourville gives everything to Félix on condition that he marry Thérèse. Félix
promptly gives everything back to Morin. The brothers, horrified, demand a
reading of the contract. When Gourville’s noble titles are revealed, the lawyer
recognizes the weakness of their position. The only thing missing is Félix’s
nom de famille. He has none, Morin explains, because he is a foundling. The
recognitions now come thick and fast. When the old nurse arrives, Gourville,
questioning her in German,36 recognizes her as the wet-nurse hired twenty-
seven years previously, and she recognizes him. And so Gourville has been
saved by his own son. A massive ensemble ensues, in which Thérèse despairs
that Félix may no longer marry her because he is a nobleman; but this and all
other difficulties are resolved amid general reconciliation.
As this lengthy synopsis may suggest, there was much in this story to
inspire Beethoven. Virtue is upheld, a family is restored, human failings are
held up to ridicule and seem susceptible to improvement, and the boy gets
the girl. As in Jean-François Marmontel’s libretto for Grétry’s Silvain, the
last-minute revelation of nobility and thus of class difference between future
bridegroom and bride is brushed aside in the interest of true love. There was
just as much in Monsigny’s music to interest Beethoven. The very first ariette
for Félix—“Non, je ne serai point ingrat” (“No, I shall not be ungrateful”)—
is a turbulent statement in C minor with off-kilter phrasing—three-measure
syncopated motives, punctuated with low unisons, riddled with dynamic
contrasts—that plunges us straight into the heart of his psychological tur-
moil. After a more expository B section (in E-flat major), there is, instead of
the expected repeat (da capo or dal segno), a new section in C major (adagio,
triple time, with flutes and horns to the fore over pizzicato strings), as Félix
describes the tender feelings he harbors for the daughter of his benefactor,
“Et je séduirois sa fille?” (“And would I seduce the daughter?”). The section
closes by prolonging the crucial dilemma, “Mais la quitter, ma douce amie?”
(“But to leave her, my sweet friend?”). The dal segno repeat (from the first
vocal entrance) is meant to answer this heart-rending question. It is a stun-
ning opener.
 beethoven's early exposure to monsigny ❧ 27

The next main character, Thérèse, has an equally striking ariette (act 1,
scene 3): a da capo structure in which the A section—“Quoi! tu me quittes,
tu t’en vas” (“What! You’re leaving me; you’re going away”)—is a Lamentabilé
in A major and the B section an Allegro starting in F-sharp minor. Monsigny
is pushing the received form to the maximum by introducing not only har-
monic contrast but changes of tempo and meter. With the central characters
thus introduced, the secondary characters, most of them caricatures, follow
with numbers and/or dialogue that highlight their flaws: general dissolute-
ness (Versac), brutality (Morinville), legalistic pedantry (La Morinière), and
pious hypocrisy (St. Morin). Sedaine practices the same economy with the
main characters. In act 1, scene 11, Thérèse expresses her concern for Félix
with an ariette—“Hélas! où peut-il être?” (“Alas, where can he be?”; allegro,
, G minor)—that has an unusually short introduction, as though she were
too agitated for anything longer than six measures. In the B section (B-flat
major but with much unrest in the dynamics) she looks with trepidation
to the morrow, when she will lose Félix and be stuck with Versac. With her
dilemma thus starkly drawn, Sedaine gives her no further solo numbers.
Likewise, Félix has no further solo numbers after the wistful Lamentabilé
with which he opens act 2: “Il faut, il faut que je les quitte, / Ces lieux si
chéris de mon cœur” (“I have to leave these places so dear to my heart”).
Both characters participate in ensembles, but we need learn nothing more
about them musically until the dénouement. Morin, by the way, goes with-
out any solo number until act 3, scene 7, when he declares that, whatever
his sons may think, he is doing the right thing by turning his property and
possessions over to Gourville: “Il est dans le fond de mon âme” (“There is, in
the depths of my soul”). This D-minor Largo has the variety of motive and
affect (although not the structure) that one would otherwise associate with a
noble character.
The trio singled out in many a contemporary review follows. In D major,
Félix assures Morin that he is doing the right thing—“Ne vous repentés
pas mon pere / D’avoir rempli votre serment” (“Do not repent, my father,
of having kept your oath”)—and that he will stay by his side to help him.
Morin answers in unison texture: “Bien malheureux qui se repente / d’avoir
fait ce qu’il a dû faire” (“Unhappy is the man who repents of having done
what he had to do”). The melodic diction is simplicity itself. After a cadence
in the dominant, both meter and tempo change (triple time, afectuoso amo-
roso [sic]) as Thérèse joins the ensemble in duet with Félix: working together,
they will look after their father until the end of his days. The ensemble ends
28 ❧ chapter one

as a trio in the new tempo and meter. There is no musical return and no
going back on this decision once taken.
While Monsigny and Sedaine seem never to have adopted the “chain-
finale” developed by Goldoni and Galuppi,37 the finales in Félix are nonethe-
less impressive for their length and complexity. The finale of act 1, motivated
by the simple act of Manon’s calling the brothers to supper, turns into an
aggressive flirtation (hunting horns are prominent in the orchestration) that
grows from a trio into a quintet of 246 measures, as the other brothers and
Versac all join in. The characters take turns with patter style that stands out
against the fuller rhythms of the other parts. When the tempo and meter
change (presto, ), a rough scene threatens to get even rougher, until (as pre-
viously noted) Morin interrupts them angrily with a spoken summons. The
quintet does continue, but with everyone singing “à demie voix [sic].” Five
characters pursue their individual perspectives, while leaving the stage and
urging quiet upon each other—“Chut! suivons mon père” (“Shh! Let’s follow
my father”)—to a pp close. Except for the dramatic situation and the key,
the technique would bring to mind the end of act 1 in Fidelio, with its ppp
dynamic and departing chorus. An audience hardly knows how to respond
to either finale, especially since Monsigny’s finale has, until then, given every
sign of driving to a raucous close.
The act 3 finale—“Quoi, c’est son fils” (“My goodness, it’s his son”)—
bursts attacca upon Gourville’s recognition of Félix as his son (the score
does have a cautionary note that the orchestra should sound a unison ut
beforehand). It too is massive, full of dramatic twists and turns as described
above; but after some twenty pages, the music rears up on the dominant,
“tous à demie voix” (“everyone mezza voce”) and continues in a hushed and
hymnic amoroso intoned by the chorus: “Vivez ensemble longtems” (“Live
together for a long time”). For the next eight pages Monsigny resorts again
and again to subito f and subito pp statements of this final benediction before
moving on to universal rejoicing, presto, ff, complete with a contredanse for
the huntsmen and the ladies of the village. Such closing tactics may remind
us how operatically Beethoven proceeds on the final pages of the Ninth
Symphony, with his sudden braking of energy, poco adagio, at measures 810
and 832, and the penultimate maestoso (m. 916) before the clamorous final
prestissimo. For all the musical differences, the rhetorical template would
seem to have been set in Bonn. As already noted, this is another dénouement
that is anticipated from the start; roughly the first half of the overture is a
bar-for-bar anticipation of the finale, up through the V chord just before the
hymnic amoroso.38
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in the strongest possible terms.
“We need stronger discipline in the army,” said the stern secretary
of war to the judge advocate. “The time has come when the
President must yield to our opinion.”
Judge Holt was himself one of the ablest lawyers of his day, and
had won fame as a forensic orator long before the war.
“In presenting these cases,” said he to the writer a few months
before his death, “in obedience to the wish of the secretary of war, I
used all the legal acumen at my command. One morning, with my
papers all ready (and I was deeply in earnest in the matter), I
proceeded to the White House; and, as I entered his private office,
the President looked up with his long, sad face, saying:
“‘Ah! Holt, what have you there?’
“‘I have some important cases for your careful consideration, Mr.
President, with documentary evidence sufficient to condemn every
man.’
“He took the papers and read them carefully, stopping at times to
reflect, then read on until he finished. There was no change in his
countenance this time, unless that it grew more sad and his
expression more serious. I had covered the cases in question with
strong and convincing argument and evidence. He finally raised his
eyes from the last paper and gazed intently through the window at
some object across the Potomac. Then, rising from his chair, with
the papers all folded together, he placed them in a pigeon hole
already filled with similar documents. With his tall, gaunt form facing
me, he spoke, in deep, sad tones, that would have touched the
heart of the sternest officer of the army:
“‘Holt (it was his custom to mention only the last name), you
acknowledge those men have a previous record for bravery. It is not
the first time they have faced danger; and they shall not be shot for
this one offense.’
 “I then thought it was my duty as the head of my department of
military justice to make further argument. For I knew Stanton would
nearly explode with rage when he heard of the President’s decision.
I began to speak and Lincoln sat down again, giving me his closest
attention. Then, rising from his chair and riveting his eyes upon me,
he said:
“‘Holt, were you ever in battle?’
“‘I have never been.’
“‘Did Stanton ever march in the first line, to be shot at by an
enemy like those men did?’
“‘I think not, Mr. President.’
“‘Well, I tried it in the Black Hawk war, and I remember one time I
grew awful weak in the knees when I heard the bullets whistle
around me and saw the enemy in front of me. How my legs carried
me forward I cannot now tell, for I thought every minute that I
would sink to the ground. The men against whom those charges
have been made probably were not able to march into battle. Who
knows that they were able? I am opposed to having soldiers shot for
not facing danger when it is not known that their legs would carry
them into danger. Send this dispatch ordering them to be set free.’
And they were set free that day.”
 THE LINCOLN PORTRAITS.
The Lincoln apotheosis is much more satisfactory than the
Napoleon apotheosis. Lincoln is not only our own, but a greater,
purer, sweeter, really stronger man than Napoleon. It is a good thing
to bring out the little-known portraits of Lincoln. What a marvelous
face! It is full of strength—with just enough of the big child in it to
kindle love and sympathy. Has anyone ever noticed the way in which
Lincoln’s face is cast on the lines of the North American Indian? We
have never heard that Lincoln had Indian blood in him; but take any
of his good, beardless portraits, with front or nearly front view; add
to it a shock of straight hair parted in the middle and falling down,
either straight or in two braids, on the shoulders; add a feather to it;
clothe the body in a blanket and let it take an Indian stoop; and no
one would question that the man was an aborigine. The face has the
gravity of the Indian countenance, but not the impassiveness that
we read about; but Indian faces, after all, are seldom impassive. The
face of Lincoln, who was not an Indian, has more of the aborigine in
it than of that other great President, Benito Juarez, who was an
Indian.
LINCOLN’S FAITH IN PROVIDENCE.
The raid made by the Confederate general, J. E. B. Stuart, in June,
1862, around the Union army commanded by General McClellan,
caused great anxiety in Washington. One of its results was the
interruption of communication between the capital and the army of
the Potomac. What this portended no one could affirm. That it
suggested the gravest possibilities was felt by all.
While this feeling was dominating all circles, several gentlemen,
myself among them, called on President Lincoln in order to be
definitely advised about the condition of affairs as understood by
him.
To our question: “Mr. President, have you any news from the
army?” he sadly replied: “Not one word; we can get no
communication with it. I do not know that we have an army; it may
have been destroyed or captured, though I cannot so believe, for it
was a splendid army. But the most I can do now is to hope that
serious disaster has not befallen it.”
This led to a somewhat protracted conversation relative to the
general condition of our affairs. It was useless to talk about the
Army of the Potomac; for we knew nothing concerning its condition
or position at that moment. The conversation therefore took a wide
range and touched upon the subject of slavery, about which much
was said.
The President did not participate in this conversation. He was an
attentive listener, but gave no sign of approval or disapproval of the
views which were expressed. At length one of the active participants
remarked:
“Slavery must be stricken down wherever it exists in this country.
It is right that it should be. It is a crime against justice and
humanity. We have tolerated it too long. It brought war upon us. I
believe that Providence is not unmindful of the struggle in which this
nation is engaged. If we do not do right I believe God will let us go
our own way to our ruin. But, if we do right, I believe He will lead us
safely out of this wilderness, crown our arms with victory, and
restore our now dissevered Union.”
I observed President Lincoln closely while this earnest opinion and
expression of religious faith was being uttered. I saw that it affected
him deeply, and anticipated, from the play of his features and the
sparkle of his eyes, that he would not let the occasion pass without
making some definite response to it. I was not mistaken. Mr. Lincoln
had been sitting in his chair, in a kind of weary and despondent
attitude while the conversation progressed. At the conclusion of the
remarks I have quoted, he at once arose and stood at his extreme
height. Pausing a moment, his right arm outstretched towards the
gentleman who had just ceased speaking, his face aglow like the
face of a prophet, Mr. Lincoln gave deliberate and emphatic
utterance to the religious faith which sustained him in the great trial
to which he and the country were subjected. He said: “My faith is
greater than yours. I not only believe that Providence is not
unmindful of the struggle in which this nation is engaged; that if we
do not do right God will let us go our own way to our ruin; and that
if we do right He will lead us safely out of this wilderness, crown our
arms with victory, and restore our dissevered union, as you have
expressed your belief; but I also believe that He will compel us to do
right in order that He may do these things, not so much because we
desire them as that they accord with His plans of dealing with this
nation, in the midst of which He means to establish justice. I think
He means that we shall do more than we have yet done in
furtherance of His plans, and He will open the way for our doing it. I
have felt His hand upon me in great trials and submitted to His
guidance, and I trust that as He shall further open the way I will be
ready to walk therein, relying on His help and trusting in His
goodness and wisdom.”—From “Some Memories of Lincoln,” by ex-
Senator James F. Wilson, in North American Review.
 LINCOLN’S LAST WORDS.
The very last words Lincoln delivered on the afternoon before the
assassination—last of those great utterances that for six or seven
years electrified and enlightened half the world—were a message of
suggestion and encouragement to the miners of the Rockies.
Schuyler Colfax was going thither and was paying his final call at the
White House. Lincoln said to him:
“Mr. Colfax, I want you to take a message from me to the miners
whom you visit. I have very large ideas of the mineral wealth of our
nation. I believe it is practically inexhaustible. It abounds all over the
western country, from the Rocky mountains to the Pacific, and its
development has scarcely commenced. During the war, when we
were adding a couple of million dollars every day to our national
debt, I did not care about encouraging the increase in the volume of
our precious metals; we had the country to save first. But now that
the rebellion is overthrown, and we know pretty nearly the amount
of our national debt, the more gold and silver we mine, we make the
payment of that debt so much easier. Now, I am going to encourage
that in every possible way. We shall have hundreds of thousands of
disbanded soldiers, and many have feared that their return home in
such great numbers might paralyze industry by furnishing suddenly a
greater supply of labor than there will be a demand for. I am going
to try to attract them to the hidden wealth of our mountain ranges,
where there is room enough for all. Immigration, which even the
war has not stopped, will land upon our shores hundreds of
thousands more from over-crowded Europe. I intend to point them
to the gold and silver that wait for them in the West. Tell the miners
for me, that I shall promote their interests to the best of my ability,
because their prosperity is the prosperity of the nation; and we shall
prove in a few years that we are indeed the treasury of the world.”
 A CHICAGOAN WHO SAW LINCOLN
SHOT.
Mr. George C. Read, of Chicago, at the time of President Lincoln’s
assassination, was a foot orderly under Generals Griffin and Ayers.
He was in Washington on the fateful April 14, 1865, and was an
eyewitness to the tragedy. He tells of it as follows:
“Some time in the latter part of March, 1865, I was sent to
Washington on account of the loss of my voice. I remained there
most of the time in barracks on east Capitol Hill. On the afternoon of
the fated April 14, 1865, I happened in the saloon next door to
Ford’s Theater to see the barkeeper, one Jim Peck. While standing
near a stove about the center of the room three men came into the
place laughing and talking loudly. They all went to the end of the bar
nearest the door and ordered a drink. One was a tall, handsome
fellow, dressed in the latest fashionable clothes, if I remember
rightly, and the others appeared like workmen of some kind. Both
were carelessly dressed, and I think one was in his shirt sleeves.
They had their drink, and then the fine-looking man turned toward
where I was standing and said, ‘Come up, soldier, and have a drink.’
I declined, for the reason that I had not at that time become
addicted to the habit of social drinking. He then approached me and
took me by the arm and said, ‘Have something; take a cigar.’ This I
did not refuse, and he put his hand in his vest pocket and, pulling
out a cigar, handed it to me without any further remarks. He then
returned to his companions at the bar. They remained, if I remember
correctly, about five minutes after, and then, all laughing at
something that Peck said, left the place. As soon as they were gone
I asked Peck who the big man was, and he said that he was an actor
—one of the Booth family—John Wilkes Booth. I had heard of him
before, but paid no further attention to it except to remark that he
seemed to be in a happy frame of mind, when Peck stated that he
was on a ‘drunk,’ and associated with the stage mechanics in the
theater all the time.
“As I was about to depart, little thinking what history would
develop in a few short hours, Peck asked me to accept a couple of
tickets to the theater for that night. I was glad to get them, having
no money to purchase the same, and knowing that the President
would be at the play. Later I found a young man, like myself, broke,
and invited him to accompany me to the play. We were on hand
early, and, having good reserved seats about the center of the
house, were elated over our good luck.
“Suffice it to say that the curtain went up and ‘Our American
Cousin’ was introduced. I was intently interested and cannot
remember positively what act it was that was on, except what is told
in history, when I heard a shot, and immediately a man appeared at
the front of the President’s box and, without waiting, jumped to the
stage beneath. I, as well as all others in the theater, was astonished.
He ran to about the center of the stage and raised his left hand and
said something I did not catch, and then disappeared behind the
wings. As soon as I saw him I recognized the handsome man I had
seen in the saloon that afternoon, and turned to my comrade and
said: ‘That’s Wilkes Booth, the actor, and I think he is on a drunk.’
Before I had finished even this a cry went up that the President had
been shot, ‘Stop that man!’ and many other exclamations I have
forgotten. It was all done so quickly that one had hardly time to
think. Immediately the audience rose as one person and cries were
heard all over the house, ‘Stop that man!’ ‘The President has been
assassinated!’ and many others. The people began to crush each
other and try to get out of the theater, but they were quieted to a
certain extent and the provost guard on duty there fought to make
them keep their places. Soon there was a movement on the side
aisle running from the President’s box, and from where I was
standing on my seat I could see what appeared to be a party of men
carrying some one. Later the rest of the party were conducted out of
the theater, and when I managed to get outside I saw a crowd
looking up at a house opposite. On asking what it meant, I was told
that the President had been carried there and was dying. I lost my
comrade in the crowd and have never met him since.
“It is unnecessary to go into any more details of what occurred
that night. I was excited, as well as every one else in the city, and
got little rest. But that is my experience, told as briefly as possible,
without any stretch of imagination. If I had to do with the same
again I think it would have been better if I had told the officials what
I saw that afternoon, but, as it was, all came out right, and the
really guilty ones suffered the penalty of their crime. I met Peck the
next year in New York City, but have never heard of or seen him
since.”
 MARTYRED LINCOLN’S BLOOD.
An interesting and valuable relic, which brings vividly to the mind
the historic scene in Ford’s Theater, Washington, on the night of April
14, 1865, is owned by Colonel James S. Case, at one time a resident
of Philadelphia, but whose home is now in Brooklyn.
It is only a play bill, but upon it is a discoloration made by a tiny
drop of President Lincoln’s blood. It was picked up just after the
tragedy by John T. Ford, the manager of the theater. He found it on
the floor of the box where it had fallen from the President’s hand
when the bullet of Assassin Booth pierced his head. It lay beneath
the chair in which the citizen-hero received his death wound. There
was a tiny spot of blood, still red as it came from the great heart of
Lincoln, on the edge.
Mr. Ford carried the precious paper home, and only parted with it
at the request of the late A. K. Browne of Washington, who was a
warm personal friend of the manager. It came into Mr. Browne’s
possession while the nation was still mourning for its idol, and soon
after his assassin had met justly merited fate at the hands of
Sergeant Boston Corbett.
The play bill is somewhat yellow from age, but otherwise in an
excellent state of preservation. The bloodstain is now a dark brown.
The program was of “Our American Cousin,” which was being given
for the benefit of Laura Keene. The bloodstain is nearly half way
down the program, opposite the names of John Dyott, and Harry
Hawk, Miss Keene’s leading support.
 A STRANGE COINCIDENCE IN THE
LIVES OF LINCOLN AND HIS
SLAYER.
When President Lincoln was assassinated on the night of April 14,
1865, while witnessing a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington, he
was removed to the Peterson house, which was directly opposite the
theater.
The late John T. Ford related that he had occasion to visit John
Wilkes Booth at the Peterson house once. The Davenport-Wallack
combination was playing “Julius Cæsar” at Ford’s theater. Booth had
been cast to play Marc Antony and was late in coming to rehearsal.
Ford went over to the house to ask him to hurry up. He found Booth
lying in bed studying his lines. He little dreamed then that Lincoln
would so shortly die in the same house, the same room and on that
identical bed, or that Booth would turn out to be his assassin.
 WHERE IS THE ORIGINAL
EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION?
When Lincoln went to Washington he had a sale of the furniture of
the Eighth street home at Springfield. Most of the articles were
bought by a well-to-do family named Tilton, who admired the
President in such a way as to make what had belonged to him things
to be treasured. When the troops passed through Springfield to the
front they visited the house “where Uncle Abe had lived,” and the
Tiltons used to confer great favor by permitting the boys in blue to
sit down in the dining room and have a glass of milk off the table
from which Mr. Lincoln had eaten many times. But the Tiltons moved
away to Chicago. They carried with them the furniture which had
been in the Lincoln house, prizing it more than ever after his death.
In 1871 came the Chicago fire, and with it went not only the Lincoln
furniture, but the original document, which, if it were in existence
now, would be preserved with the zeal that guards the Declaration
of Independence—the Proclamation of Emancipation. The draft of
the proclamation had been sent to Chicago to be exhibited for some
purpose and was burned in that fire.
 MR. GRIFFITHS ON LINCOLN.
“No other public man has been subjected to such scrutiny from
the time he was born until the end of his tragic career as was
Lincoln,” said Mr. Griffiths in a lecture. “He obtained his early
education from ‘Æsop’s Fables,’ ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ the ‘Pilgrim’s
Progress’ and a copy of the Indiana statutes. This was before some
of our later legislatures had made their records or his education
might have been marred instead of made.
“When he was elected President,” Mr. Griffiths continued, “he was
a plodding country lawyer whose library consisted of twenty-two
volumes. Through his public addresses he blazed his way to the
Presidency. He believed the position of a stump speaker to be one of
sacred trust. He had none of the platform graces. His figure was
ungainly; his voice was rasping. He always made the most careful
preparation and gave his best thought to the smallest audiences. He
had marvelous gift of expression and he knew more about the Bible
than Webster. He was not learned in the law and he despised the
legal routine. On a lawsuit he always dealt in the unexpected, which
greatly discomfited the opposing lawyer. He liked stories, but he
always told them to illustrate a point. He was a deeply religious
man.”
 A FAMOUS CHICAGO LAWYER’S
VIEWS.
“Into the story of the republic from 1861 to 1865 the patriot does
well to enter, there to find for instruction and example the manliest
of Americans, the highest type of Americanism, the central figure of
the century, Abraham Lincoln. The fierce partisanship which assailed
him during his short period of leadership became silent at his death,
and each succeeding year but serves to exalt his work and character.
“The judgment of time has already shown to be colossal him who
was called common—the honor that we offer to his memory is only
the spontaneous tribute of contemporary history—our enthusiasm is
but the sum of the world’s calmest thinking. For years in all lands
gifted speech has proclaimed his deeds and the pens of poets have
sketched his life. Thus does he receive his tribute from the people.
“In his mentality Lincoln shone in justice, common sense,
consistency, persistence, and knowledge of men. In his words he
was candid and frank, but accurate and concise, speaking strong
Anglo-Saxon unadorned—powerful in its simplicity. In his sentiments
he was kind, patriotic, and brave. No leader ever combined more
completely the graces of gentleness with rugged determination. In
his morals truth was his star, honesty the vital essence of his life.
“In his religion he was faithful as a saint. Providence was his stay
and he walked with God. As President his life and deeds were a
constant sermon. Love of men and faith in God were the
fundamental elements of his character. Poverty had schooled him to
pity and taught him the equality of all mankind.”—Luther Laflin Mills.
 LINCOLN WAS PLAIN BUT GREAT.
Lincoln’s forefathers were independent owners of the land they
trod on, barons, not serfs. You will say, perhaps, that Lincoln had
little education. We are apt to say that of our great men. Lincoln
knew how to speak, read and write. What more do we teach our
boys to-day? He knew the Bible, which cannot be said of everybody
in Boston. He read Burns, and this with the Bible gave him his
inspiration and sentiment. Æsop and “Pilgrim’s Progress” taught him
aptness and pregnant illustration.
The incidents of his life were few but notable. He was a resident
of three states before he was 21, and made a river trip to New
Orleans, longer than Thomas Jefferson had taken at his age. At New
Orleans he saw for the first time the auction and whipping of slaves,
which made so deep an impression on him that it may be said to be
the birth of his anti-slavery sentiment.
The choice of Mr. Lincoln for President was not a strained one. He
was the logical selection. Lincoln’s qualities, that sympathy with the
common people, that homely sincerity, have given him a place in the
people’s hearts a little closer, a little dearer, than is held by any other
public man. He had faults, but they were small compared with his
virtues. He had not Washington’s grandeur, the mental alertness of
Hamilton, or the intellectual force of Webster. His greatness was
made up of natural qualities, as of a hillside towering o’er a plain,
yet a part of it. Lincoln was surpassed in certain qualities by other of
our historically great men, but there are none, we feel sure, who
would have filled the place he filled as well as he.—Secretary of War
Long.
 LINCOLN’S SPECIFIC LIFE WORK.
One often thinks of his life as cut off, but no great man since
Cæsar has seen his life work ended as did Lincoln. Napoleon died
upon a desert rock, but not until Austerlitz and Wagram had become
memories, and the dust of the empire even as all dust. Cromwell
knew that England had not at heart materially altered. Washington
did not know that he had created one of the great, perhaps the
greatest, empires to be known to man. But Lincoln had a specific
task to do—to save his country and to make it free—and on that
fateful 14th of April he knew that he had accomplished both things.
There are those who would say that chance put this man where
he was to do this work. To the thoughtful mind it was not chance,
however, but design, and that the design of which all greatness is a
part. War is indeed the crucible of the nations. It is the student of a
century hence who shall properly place the civil war in American
history. But, whatever that place be, there can be no doubt of the
position in it of the war President. Like William the Silent, his
domination of all about him was a matter not of personal desire, but
of absolute and constant growth. There are few more interesting
characters in history than Lincoln. There is none who in quite the
same manner fits himself so absolutely into his circumstances. It is
the highest form of genius that so produces as to make production
seem effortless, and it is perhaps the greatest of all tributes to
Lincoln that what he did seems sometimes only what the average
man would have done in his place.
 THE PROPOSED PURCHASE OF THE
SLAVES.
The discussion on the question of whether or not Abraham Lincoln
suggested at the conference with the southern commissioners at the
so-called Fortress Monroe meeting, that he was prepared to pay
$400,000,000 for the slaves in the Southern States provided peace
with union could be obtained, is hardly likely to lead to any definite
conclusion, for the reason that the few who should have known
definitely about it are distinctly divided in their opinions. We are
inclined to believe that, if the proposition was made, Mr. Lincoln,
notwithstanding the immense influence that he then possessed,
would have found it exceedingly difficult to convince Congress and a
majority of the people of the North of the wisdom of the suggestion.
As a business proposition, entirely apart from sentiment, it might
have been, even at that late day, a wise plan to adopt. But the war
had then been going on for years, and the hard feelings engendered
would apparently have made the scheme a less tenable one then
than at an earlier day. It will, we imagine, appear to future historians
that, in spite of the example which had been set by England in the
West Indies, those representing both the North and the South
showed themselves, just prior to the war, wanting in the true
elements of statesmanship in not realizing that it was better to
peaceably adjust their differences than have recourse to physical
force. It is now well understood, and might have been well
understood at the time, that the main issue was the slave issue, and
that once out of the way, all other sources of division were
insignificant. We could have well afforded to vote, if need be, several
thousands of millions of dollars to purchase the freedom of the
slaves if by that means the civil war with all of its wastes and
sufferings could have been avoided; and if not now, a generation or
two hence, we feel convinced that the people, both of the North and
the South, will be of the opinion that such an outcome of the
contention would have been possible if we had had on both sides of
the quarrel, statesmen of the caliber of Washington, Jefferson,
Franklin, John Quincy Adams and other eminent Americans who
have made their mark in our national history.
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