Week 18: Women Influencing Beethoven, Part 1

One pianist's journey to perform the 32 piano sonatas of Beethoven.

Women influencing Beethoven, Part 1

This week, I’m going to share a wee bit of a 60-page doctoral essay I wrote when I was exactly half the age I am now. Yikes. I was a student at Stony Brook, and I’d researched the history of women as Beethoven piano interpreters, from his time to the present. That effort got buried a year later when, after years of quiet wood-shedding, my life suddenly accelerated. Within a period of six months, I finished the doc, got engaged and married, moved back to Canada, won my first full-time professorship, and started a concert series. Arjun won a post-doc, we bought furniture from the new IKEA and a Toyota Tercel, and the essay got archived on a floppy disk – from which I recently rescued it. Here are pics from that year of my husband and I, in my new office, with my dot matrix printer in the background.

I found my topic for that essay to be astonishingly rich. Even more astonishing is that decades later, that history is still mostly unknown. In Part 2 next week, I’ll share some of my findings about how women fared as Beethoven performers during the 19th and 20^th centuries. But for today, I will just share a passage that describes women from Beethoven’s time who influenced the five sonatas that I’ll be performing in my next house concert on February 17^th.

By the way, that concert has no more audience room, but if you’d like to come to the next one in April, please write me! The April event is set to include Beethoven’s most difficult sonata, the notorious “Hammerklavier” Sonata Opus 106.  

So here’s my writing in a much younger voice. I have italicized the parts about the five sonatas I’ll soon be playing. Enjoy!

“Women influenced both the content and the interpretation of Beethoven's piano sonatas during his lifetime in four main ways.

1.     Patrons.

Powerful female patrons subtly guided Beethoven’s artistic development, commissioned piano sonatas that would be suitable for their purposes, and gave Beethoven the resources necessary to write them. The earliest was Hélène von Breuning, the wealthy widow of the court councilor at Bonn. The mother of four children, she invited the teenaged Beethoven to her home as a piano teacher (Beethoven became a close friend of her daughter Eleonore). Beethoven’s first comprehensive biographer, Alexander Wheelock Thayer, wrote that a “high opinion of the intellect and character of Madame von Breuning is enforced upon us by what we learn of her influence upon the youthful Beethoven…her kindness towards him gave her both the right and the power to urge and compel him to the performance of his duties; and this power over him in his obstinate and passionate moods she possessed in a higher degree than any other person."

When Beethoven traveled to Vienna to play for Mozart, he was befriended by the patron Nanette von Schaden, who was described by Reichardt as being “far and away the greatest pianoforte player, not excelled perhaps, by any virtuoso in skill and certainty...in every respect an amiable and interesting woman.” Much has been made of Beethoven's contact with Mozart, which was in fact quite perfunctory, but perhaps it was the welcome given him by Schaden that gave him real hope for sponsorship in Vienna. Subsequent sponsors in Vienna included the Princess Maria Christiane Lichnowsky, who together with her husband invited Beethoven to live with them during his early Vienna years. According to Thayer, she "belonged to the better class of amateur performers upon the pianoforte."  She must have been an excellent pianist, because at one musical soirée she performed the entire score of the opera Fidelio at Beethoven's request. Other musically accomplished sponsors were the composer Marianne Martinez, who presented weekly musical events (Haydn lived upstairs in her attic for a time), and the Countess Anna Marie Erdody.

Some of Beethoven's patrons were less advanced pianists, who commissioned sonatas either for their own playing purposes, to gracefully support him financially, or for the status of a dedication. Beethoven became a guest and instructor at the Countess
 Browne's home; he dedicated his sonatas, opus 10 to her, He also taught the Baroness Braun, to whom he dedicated the sonatas opus 14 and Princess Josepha Sophia von Liechtenstein, to whom he dedicated the sonata opus 27 no. 1 .  He composed his sonata opus 7 for Anna Louisa Barbara Keglevics, "when she was still a maiden, " according to Nottebohm. These commissioned sonatas were written with the abilities of their sponsors in mind; for example, the Sonata Opus 14 No. 2 is intended for an intermediate level of skill. That does not detract from its quality and appeal. Beethoven here seems less the mythical, isolated genius than a responsive, practical composer.

2.     Personal relationships.

Beethoven dedicated sonatas with no thought of financial gain to certain women with whom he formed close friendships and/or romantic attachments. It seems likely that these relationships affected the emotional or technical content of the music. Evidence of such influence can be found, for example, in the variations for piano and violin, WOO 40, dedicated to Eleonore von Breuning. When Beethoven sent her the work, he wrote to her:

The variation will be rather difficult to play, and particularly the trills in the coda. But this must not intimidate and discourage you. For the composition is so arranged that you need only play the trill, and can leave out the other notes, since these appear in the violin part. I should never have written down this kind of piece, had I not (desired) to embarrass those Viennese pianists, some of whom are my sworn enemies; I wanted to revenge myself on them in this way, because I knew beforehand that my variations would here and there be put before the said gentlemen and that they would cut a sorry figure with them.

Beethoven was in a competitive position with other "professional" pianists, who were primarily male and of a lower status than the aristocracy. They were expected to compose, improvise, and teach, as well as perform. "Amateurs" were those who pursued music as an act of cultivation, intellect, and expression. Those who could afford to do so were aristocrats, often women. Beethoven was willing to communicate his ideas to them as his confidants and allies; whereas he ranked male artists in relation to himself, often scorning or deriding them.

Beethoven wrote a number of piano works for two of his oldest friends, the sisters Thérèse and Josephine Brunsvik, including the Sonata Opus 78, dedicated to Thérèse. Josephine formed a particularly intense and at times romantic relationship with Beethoven. She wrote in 1800: "We had music in honor of the archduchess. I had to play and at the same time I was responsible for all arrangements and above all the concern that everything went well...Beethoven played the sonata with violoncello, I played the last of the three sonatas (the violin sonata opus 12, no. 3) with Schuppanzigh's accompaniment, who played divinely like everybody else."

Beethoven dedicated the “Moonlight” Sonata Opus 27 No. 2 to a cousin of the Brunsviks whom he met at their home, the teenaged Countess Giulietta “Julie” Guicciardi, with whom he fell in love. Julie wrote that Beethoven "had his music sent to her and was extremely severe until the correct interpretation was reached down to the smallest detail - He laid stress upon a light manner of playing...He would accept no pay, though he was very poor." This is one of many instances when Beethoven's creative process did not end with setting notes down on paper – he sometimes envisioned a performance event involving a specific person, working with them to create that event.

In his forties, Beethoven formed an intense relationship with Antonie “Toni” Brentano. Antonie’s sister-in-law, Bettina Brentano, was an enthusiastic admirer of Beethoven's music, whose romanticized accounts did much to foster his reputation during the nineteenth century.  At the time of Beethoven's first meeting with Toni, Toni’s daughter Maximiliane or “Maxi” was ten years old. He wrote a trio to encourage the child's piano playing, then ten years later dedicated the Sonata Opus 109 to her. In a letter to Maxi in 1821, Beethoven wrote; "A dedication!!!-well this is not one that is misused as in many cases... This is what is now addressed to you and what recalls you to me as you were in your childhood years, so equally your beloved parents, your admirable and gifted mother, your father filled with truly good and noble qualities.” Perhaps Beethoven found it safer to write for the daughter than for her mother. Toni’s husband Franz Brentano was helping to bail him out of financial difficulties incurred while writing the Missa Solemnis between 1819-1823.

During those years, Beethoven also composed most of his last two piano sonatas, opus 110 and 111, intending both for Antonie Brentano. However, opus 110 was published without dedication, while in 1822, the Viennese edition of opus 111 bore a dedication to Archduke Rudolph. But meanwhile, far from Vienna, the first London edition of 111 carried a dedication to Antonie Brentano.

3.     Superb pianists.

Several women pianists were regarded by both Beethoven and critics as consummate interpreters of his sonatas. They read Beethoven's works for him in private, and introduced them to society in salon concerts, The foremost was the Baroness Dorothea von Ertmann (1781-1849, née Graumann). She began to study with Beethoven in 1803, and became a great interpreter of his music, continuing a profound intellectual friendship with him until his death. Reichardt wrote after hearing her in 1808-9:

A lofty noble manner and a beautiful face full of deep feeling increases my expectation still further at the first sight of the noble lady; and then as she performed a great Beethoven sonata I was surprised as almost never before. I have never seen such power and innermost tenderness combined in even the greatest virtuosi; from the tip of each finger her soul poured forth, and from her hands, both equally skillful and sure, what power and authority were brought to bear over the whole instrument. Everything that is great and beautiful in art was turned into song with ease and expression!

This description carries hallmarks of what became a female Beethoven interpretive tradition during the 19^th century. The first was calm dignity. The presentation was sober, rather than sensuously charming, and it reflected all of the authority and command of an educated, noble woman. The second was inner tenderness; this embodied the role of women as preservers of inner values, and signaled their responsiveness to the soul of the composer. Beethoven in fact used the words "Gesangvoll, mit innigster Empfindung" (“singing, with innermost sensitivity”) in his Sonata Opus 109 dedicated to Maximiliane Brentano. The third was a "singing" style - not surprisingly, considering that women in Western music who have achieved great recognition have most often been singers. The composer Felix Mendelssohn visited Ertmann in 1831, several years after Beethoven’s death; she had ceased to play at gatherings, but played for Mendelssohn. He later wrote his sister, the pianist Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, that “when sometimes she can bring no more tone out of the instrument, and begins to sing in a voice that emanates from the very depths of her soul, she reminds me of you.”

Beethoven’s friend Anton Schindler wrote of Ertmann;

This lady, an artist in the truest sense of the word, excelled particularly in the expression of the graceful, the tender, and the naive in music, and well as the deep and sentimental emotions...She gathered around herself a circle of true music lovers... This salon made a great contribution to the maintaining and advancing of the purest taste among the élite of society. She was a conservatory all by herself. Had it not been for Frau Ertmann, Beethoven's piano music would have disappeared even sooner from the repertoire in Vienna, but this lady of beauty, high birth, and sensitive nature was motivated by the most noble impulses towards a sense of better things that pitted her against the emerging new directions in composition and piano playing introduced by Hummel and his disciples.

Beethoven wrote his masterful late work, the Sonata opus 101 in A major for Ertmann. He sent it to her with a letter reading, in part; "Please accept what was often intended for you and what may be to you a proof of my devotion both to your artistic aspirations and to your person. Beethoven probably intended the work as a conversation. A moving story about the two concerns Ertmann’s devastating loss of her youngest child. Beethoven invited her to visit him: “When she arrived, she found him seated at the piano; and simply saying, ‘Let us speak to each other by music,' he played on for more than an hour, and, as she expressed it, 'He said much to me, and at last gave me consolation”.

4.     Piano builders.

The great piano builder Nanette Streicher collaborated with Beethoven in developing the innovations in piano building that made it possible for Beethoven to compose using an expanded range and new pianistic effects. She was the daughter of Mozart’s piano builder, Johann Andreas Stein. Piano historian Arthur Loesser writes, "She had inherited much of her father's genius and had grown up to be a person of great practical intelligence, thoroughly conversant with the mechanics of piano building. (She) married a worthy, mediocre musician named Johann Andreas Streicher, and a firm of which she was guiding director was set up under the name of "Nanette Streicher, née Stein." Nanette’s father had produced about seventeen pianos per year. She increased this output to between forty-nine to fifty-three pianos per year.  The piano scholar William Newman writes, "The documents confirm that all the favorable remarks Beethoven did make about pianos concerned only instruments made in Vienna according to Viennese practices. And most of those remarks, including his requests for pianos, concerned instruments made by the Stein and Streicher families.”

On my visit to Vienna in December, I discovered the Streicher family grave right next to Beethoven’s, and left Nanette a rose. I’m holding cedar I picked from behind Beethoven’s grave and brought back to Canada.