Creative geniuses as selfish — Beethoven version

How did Beethoven become Beethoven?

“The ‘personality’ of such a man as Beethoven is a slowly developed synthetic whole. It is formed by the gradual combination of its constituent elements into an organic unity. For the development of a personality a rich and profound inner life is necessary, and for that reason it is usually only great artists and religious teachers who impress us as being complete persons. Amongst the elements constitutive of Beethoven’s personality we must include his lack of malleability. This quality made him almost immune from purely external influences. Thus he was impervious to criticism; his manners were atrocious; he ignored conventions; he was permanently subject to no social passions, not even sexual love. The low standard of education he achieved seems to have been as much due to his lack of plasticity as to his lack of opportunities. He was not an educable man. He accepted none of the schemes of thought or conduct current in his time; it is doubtful whether he was even fully aware of their existence. He remained utterly faithful to his own experience. It is for this reason that his affirmative utterances, as in the Credo of the Mass in D, have such unexampled weight. Such utterances spring solely from his own personal and tested experience.”

Source: J. W. N. Sullivan, Beethoven: His Spiritual Development (Alfred A. Knopf, 1927), p. 44. A rough e-pub version is online here. (Parts of Sullivan’s description of Beethoven read like a description of Howard Roark in The Fountainhead. Sullivan’s book was published in 1927 and Rand’s in 1943.)

Related:
Creative geniuses as selfish — Rachmaninoff version.
Creative geniuses as selfish — Richard Wagner version.
Creative geniuses as selfish — Maria Callas version.
How great artists became great (Beethoven and Michelangelo).

7 thoughts on “Creative geniuses as selfish — Beethoven version”

  1. I think it unwise to compare fictional heroes with real live geniuses. Beethoven is acknowledged as unique, unique…compared to Mozart and Haydn who emerged from a school. He is more like Bach who transformed music during his lifetime. Moreover, like Bach, Ludwig was (as Wagner pointed out) the complete master of his trade — there was no musical refinement he did not know. Beethoven continued to improve his music until his death, a claim difficult to make about other composers, many of whom coasted along on their “genius.” He was also exceptionally virile as a man and composer — no pansy behavior or art for art’s sake. Beethoven was an idealist, he believed in mind over matter (and possibly, spirit over mind, without neglecting reason) and was republican in his politics, with a heavy emphasis on the brotherhood of man. Compared to Beethoven, Howard Roark stands one inch tall.

    [Note: This man Sullivan is but another biographer of Beethoven who wants to make Beethoven into a fictional character, as did Romain Rollande and others. The best bio of Ludwig is still the George Marek tome. The best characterization of Beethoven is Wagner’s “the man who liberated music.”]

  2. Hey, the first sentence of your first paragraph spotlights the ignominy of the last. But interesting reflections Mr. Dahl.

  3. Why is it unwise, Stephen?
    My point in raising the similarity was to wonder if Sullivan’s book was read by Rand and if his portrait of Beethoven’s character fed into Rand’s creation.

  4. Unwise, by its nature. One cannot compare a fictional person and claim him to be a genius to a real genius, the rarest of phenomena. Howard Roark, or John Galt, for that matter, are claimed to be geniuses by the author, but their appeal is that of moral agents, who embody and depose high principles. Ayn Rand (shrewdly?) chooses geniuses whose work she does not describe (like Roark’s buildings) or proposes as science fiction machinery (Galt’s energy machine). The drama and appeal of these characters is their heroic stance against villains. The tenor of Prof Hicks presentation I thought to have been genius, as in the links above. The subject of genius has frustrated many minds. Beethoven, in my view, is a genius of Titanic stature, as Newton was to physics, or Shakespeare to poetry. The language of music allows his “sense of life” to be transferred from age to age. Was it not disingenuous to assume the website reader would intuit the very subtle purpose of Ayn Rand being influenced by a presumptuous (see my other remarks on Sullivan) bio? She’s not easily taken in. [Again, get the Marek biography] Moreover, her comments on music are infrequent. She acknowledges Beethoven as a supreme master, but “I can’t stand him.” Whah? Huh?

    I would hazard that music hath its own metaphysics and that the “heart” or man’s intuitive sense resonates to it. Let us not impose the spider-web of metaphysics upon it. Music may inspire words, but the great songs contain poetry, or “music in advance.” In this way Goethe may be called the father of the German lied, rather than Schubert. But in opera, the highest form of art we know, the composer is king.

    Mr. Fox has done some pithy mud-flinging, alas — I would refer him to Edith Hamilton’s THE GREEK WAY and her discussion of mind versus spirit, and the art of Greece compared to that of Hindu India. See the chapter “The Ways of the East and West in Art”. I find his riposte somewhat ignominious. How can a putative genius like Howard Roark be compared to a real one?

    Readers of Ayn Rand should delight in her enormous moral integrity. The impact of her fiction should not confuse one to think these novels are great literature, ‘cuz they ain’t. They remain potent dramatizations of her thinking. In reading AYN RAND ANSWERS I was reminded of how forthright and refreshing she was, and how visceral her prose. How can one NOT benefit from this exposure? Let’s not forget that, by her own admission, one must also thank Frank O’Connor. Behind every great woman is a great man!

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *