That So-Called Infinite Yearning
INWARD SOUND | 12.6.20
For much of the pandemic-plagued world, December is the Month of Good Riddance to 2020. For those who still have the stamina, it’s also Beethoven Month. It was 250 years ago this month — most likely on the 16th — that Ludwig van Beethoven saw the light of day in the provincial German city of Bonn.
In the New York Times this week we devote our monthly “Five Minutes that Will Make You Love [Blank]” feature to Beethoven with contributors chiming in on favorite moments that show the breadth of his innovation. Beethoven redefined what was possible on the piano, expanded the expressive reach of the string quartet, and changed ideas of what a symphony can and should be.
Another thing that changed irrevocably with Beethoven is how we’re expected to listen.
The image above is a case in point. “Liszt at the Piano” by Josef Danhauser sets a high bar for swooning. Note how the listeners — among them the violinist Niccoló Paganini, the opera composer Giacomo Rossini and the writers Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo and George Sand — seem to lean on each other for support, weakened by reverence and ecstasy. At Liszt’s feet — but also where those of Beethoven would be if he were more than a bust — Marie d’Agoult melts into a puddle.
The critic E.T.A. Hoffmann set the tone in 1810: “Beethoven opens the locks of awe, fear, terror and pain and awakens that infinite yearning which is the essence of Romanticism.”
Please note: if you’re not yearning (without end) you’re doing it wrong.
I wish I could say that Beethoven had no part in the sacralization of his music. As the musicologist Deirdre Loughridge writes, the composer’s admirers did spread stories (multiplied after his death) about a genius so averse to performing that they had to devise ruses to eavesdrop on him from another room.
But the same Beethoven once stopped a concert mid-piece to protest the lack of silence in the room. “I will not play for such swine!” is how history reports his outburst.
Contrast the Danhauser painting with this Frieze of Listeners carved by the Expressionist sculptor Ernst Barlach. Today it is on display at the beautiful little Barlach Haus in Hamburg. Barlach completed it in 1935, when he was already vilified by the Nazis, but the design came out of a commission for a (never built) Beethoven Monument in 1927.
Each listener in the frieze represents an archetype. From left to right, Barlach names them as follows: The Dreamer. The Believer. The Dancer. The Blind One. The Wanderer. The Pilgrim. The Sensitive One. The Blessed. The Expecting One.
All of them seem to be listening intently. But unlike the denizens of the Romantic salon, none display floppy-limbed surrender. Straight, solid and self-possessed, they retain their own dignity and mystery. The music acts on them, yes, but they each activate something in the music, too. A hidden dance. A map. A promise.
There might be yearning at play when an expectant mother listens to Beethoven. But I’d say it’s more temporal than infinite.
I see Barlach’s Frieze of Listeners as a validation of multiple hear-points. (Is there a better equivalent to ‘viewpoint?’) A good way to reclaim that multiplicity can be in the awareness of our own states of mind when we listen. You can try it out here, on the Liszt transcription of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 that is the object of veneration in the painting. (The sky suggests it’s the fourth movement, depicting a storm, that is just being played.)
And whatever the music, it’s never forbidden to dance.