Beethoven: The man who freed music; 7; Psychology of Beethoven

Make over three years commemorating the 200000 of our story of the birth of looking Beethoven in 1770 one of a series of programmes produced by the University of Michigan Broadcasting Service revealing the political and social life miserable climate of Europe during the lifetime of the music. Contemporary scholars have inherited a rich legacy of rather reliable information about the big fun Beethoven and researchers have made ample use of the materials but with varying degrees of success. Two of the most successful investigators of the psychological and psycho analytical aspects of Beethoven's life are doctors Richard and Edith Astaire Bob.

Both are particularly well-equipped to explore the stormy emotional life of Beethoven which grew to be increasingly disturbed if not a time psychotic. They are both Freud and psycho analysts in addition Mr. Bob holds a Ph.D. in musicology and Dr. Richard Starbuck is an accomplished violinist. They both grew up and lived in Austria which Beethoven made his second home. Today's broadcast in the series Beethoven the man who freed music as an interview with Dr. and Mrs. Deborah taped in the living room of their home in gross point. Dr. Richard step five and eight of the stabber are co-authors of a book entitled Beethoven and his nephew a psychoanalytic study of their relationship published in 1954 by Pantheon. And I understand to be issued in a paperback before too long in this country. Dr. stabber has with his wife been considerably interested over the years in

the creative process of creative individuals and has studied the work of Michelangelo as well as Beethoven. How did this interest in the psychoanalysis of creative people no longer alive become an interest of yours Dr. Tara Reid of personality are always present is always fascinating and one would like to nurture to know what makes him tick what gives them this tremendous importance to create and what is it in their personality that makes us but dissipate in their creations so much like his beetle. You can't help when you hear Beethoven. To be sucked in in his emotions and so biographies of great artists. They're always on the market because of those intervals. It's not an interest which we have alone but which everybody has

to some extent. There are some people who say I don't want to know anything about his life. He doesn't interest me as a personality. But there are in the minority. Most people would want to know a lot about this man blank who can move us so much. You can. They make us. But this is in his emotional upbringing and the soothing which his music can provide and no one can do that as well as Beatles. Still you up and coming down at the same time and that people who are interested in music must be interested of in the person and is there not a problem. However in studying someone with whom you cannot actually speak or hear or speak of obtaining accurate information about them that is of course a problem if you don't have the confirmation

through councils of unconscious utterances of the person whom you have on the Collatz like an analysis. It restricts the possibilities of interpretation. However in Beethoven's case there is something unique documentation of truth in the conversation books. When big talk of us increasingly deaf our lady which was after he's thirty fifth year approximately. His friends had to write down what they wanted to communicate to him. And sometimes particularly when he was in a restaurant or in a public place where he didn't know how loud his voice would sound because he couldn't control it than him anymore he rolled down one percent and four hundred.

So he had all of the little book with him in which he or his friends wrote and asked him a question or give him an answer. And from this you can reconstruct the conversation. It is as if you would listen in to somebody who talks on the telephone. You hear only one partner. But from bits and pieces of what he says you can't reconstruct what the talk is about and his reactions and their partners reactions and so on. And when Beethoven died there were 400 conversation books left. A lot of them which you had preserved. And if we had these of course we could get much more complete picture of his reactions and the reaction of his friends to

him and reconstruct from that. However his first by our government biographer who was a real face his name was Schindler found that in the conversation books there were so many things which he did not want to be known about it often because it disturbed the picture the idealized picture which he wanted to present of Beatle mania all his fears about the profit of a biography. And so he destroyed two hundred and sixty four of this most valuable documents and only a hundred and thirty six preserved and that barked by the Royal Library in Berlin and are still there. But from these alone one can reconstruct a lot and he couldn't destroy the letters although he said in his biography I wish I

could destroy many of these letters also because thinking gives her followers namely it through you know the least of them us. Mr. Stern but when you analyze a creative individual's personality and character can you do so best through what is written by him or about him. Or can you actually obtain considerable information from the art work created by that person whether it be in the case of Michelangelo his sculpture or in the case of Beethoven his music. Now we kill Angelo it was easier to get inside from he threw rocks because of rocks as always there and you can stab them with the music. It is much more difficult and we felt that our study who did not get into a discussion

of the new lesion to the problems be to me seemed to show to our species sciences that there are times where he was mostly concerned with his problems with the nephew. He is. Production stopped completely during the years where he had the greatest ferociousness about his nephew even composer towards all there for the ferry. It would have been wrong if one would have tried to dry up his music with his problems. And on top of it to be fairly over there trying to see his problems in his music would have been in a attempt to perhaps put an interpretation in the music which would have been done by us and to

which somebody else who was listening to his music would have felt quite differently about it. Whereas with Michelangelo For instance there are certain proofs in his sculptures of which undoubtedly we failed. Give us the right to see an explanation of his problems there. You can't however the void knowing the music and having heard it and having had it influence you in some way or another. Do you for instance have a musical background yourself or you. Yes and I do have a musical background myself because I have. PGD in psychology n2 musicology and I was the one who was able to find all the CI Tiriel which we needed in order to have

proofs even biographies. What we wanted to explain perhaps a little more on the base bases of death psychology. Did you in writing this particular book. Beethoven and his nephew attempt to study different aspects separately. Or did you work together on the entire text. How did you go about this. It was like there. I studied the material and made excerpts of what I felt was important to prove our point namely the very difficult highly in your article relationship Beethoven had to his nephew. And then we confer about it and then mostly doctors did it on the basis of my excerpts. The writing of the books because to be fair only one could do without the writing

but I provided the material on the basis of which the book was written. Dr. Sternberg The Minister has indicated that you tried to stay away from the use of Beethoven's music and explaining what was happening to him at a certain period in his life. But the mere fact that he was not writing music at least to any great degree during that particular period was important was it not most important because he absorbed all his energies. He was involved with the loss. So excited about it so still preoccupied that you couldn't think of anything else. And for four years while the lawsuits were going on that he wanted to acquire the next nephew as his son and eliminate the mother. He just stopped composing and was there any other period during his life. When something like

this happened or did it come quite suddenly this stopping of his creative process. This was definitely the four years during which they lived. Not that any of the people you know. So the women poured on the music and was there any preparation that you can detect in what he had done earlier that might indicate that this could have happened at that particular time in those particular circumstances. Only the relationship to his brother Carl who had the same name as the nephew in which he rented the other car got very sick. Mr. McCall says he became very much concerned and budded was not sold that in the piece but the activity he was preoccupied with and tried to do all kinds of things. But one doesn't find that he's a

musical productivity or his creativity and really definitely being inhibited during that time. But twenty five for the nephew came about in that you wanted to become the mother and I think this is essentially a single book. People bitch when people write about a book they always eliminate this fic or don't mention it that he wanted to become the mother of this. Boy and eliminate the real mother. A very strange thing which is of course is that there are psychological reasons has to do with creativity because in creativity I think the great creative spirits have to do it to a great extent on their own bisexuality and be taught from a good NUMA the great scholar our offbeat often mentioned aunts that it seems to

be the polarity and we think its ability between them meaning it. Masculinity that stirred him up. Cool and. Must behind this demand create the age that you are but when you had to acquire the child you didn't have to produce a love capable of producing. But why should this situation not have arisen earlier in connection with some other youngster or some other relative. In other words why did it happen to be that but peculiar individual which in a sense opened up this aspect of his character. That's very difficult to say. I have tried to learn say it's difficult enough to see why something happened but devise something didn't it.

That's impossible and we don't know. Is there by any chance Mr Stair of a more documentation because of the fact that there are court records about this particular period of Beethoven's life than almost any other period. Yes there is more documentation during that life because of course the discussion of being with his friends about the will. Let me see. Court situation and about all the different letters he wrote to the court and to the lawyer that there is extensive material there. There is also very extensive material during that time in the letters he wrote to the nephew which approve absolutely without any doubt that he had assumed a mother's role towards the child. Like for instance in the letters he said the boy had to have

an operation and he tells him that before he has an operation he should take it back. He tells him that he should change his socks. He tells him what he should be putting on such and such a time of the year and there is no doubt in all of that he was completely assuming a mother role the mother role was all thought proved in another detail. He was very much interested at that time in his household affairs which was of course at the time he was mostly interested in these musical productions he didn't care about but at the time for instance the nephew lived with him. He was controlling the servants. He had indeed never had a servant more than a month. For instance nobody could take him longer than that. He would control

exactly what the servant would buy and how much was paid for it and he would have a woman of whom he asked if friend of his only instead of speke a friend how much food the servant should get at what time of the day the servant should be eat and so on and so forth that it definitely was a proof that at that time he had the whole of it mother and of a woman only interested in her household. For abductions once the nephew recollected one way or another by his natural mother. But moving in advance was trying to fill a vacuum. No he was not legally neglected. In effect the mother was so anxious to see the nephew she made different attempts to see the boy or absorb Beethoven had

completely forbidden to the mother to have any contact with her child at all. And the child for instance twice escape from Beethoven and drained to the marble because he wanted to see her and it is definitely proven that she did not neglect him at all because if she had neglected him at any time the child would not have had such an attachment to her. The child complained bitterly that the Beethoven was excessively strict with him and said he wanted to see his mother which Beethoven for be completely. How old was the child at this particular time. He was at the time Beethoven tried to get position of him when the fight for the nephew started which was not the right the way the court problems which

are also later. The nephew was 90 years old but the brother already was away here for instance which is an interesting fact. None of the biographers would like to accept it. The brother even made it in the civil to his Testament where he said I am particularly anxious for my brother not to be the only one to the care of my son because I knows it would not be good for my son to be completely under the influence of my brother and the mother should be also in the picture and affected the brother that I think. Added that to the state's star meant was it proof that already at that time he knew music

Beethoven was going to take possession of that boy. So it was not something which developed later. I mean Beethoven already at that time had decided to get it tried and he had already decided nobody was going to prevent it for him from it. It might be interesting to read the code you see to the brothers will which he wrote one day before he died. It says codicil to my will. Having learnt that my brother from Beatle desires after my death to take hold of to himself My son Carl and Holder to withdraw him from the supervision and training of his mother and you know as much of the best of harmony doesn't exist between my brother and my wife. I have found it necessary to add to my view that I by no means desire that my son be taken away from his mother

but that he shall always and so long as his future career permits remain with his mother. To reach and to guardianship of him is to be exercised by her as well as by my father only by UNITA can the object which I had in view when appointing my brother guardian of my son be attained. Wherefore for the very felt of my child and I commend compliance to my wife in more more donation to my brother. God permits them to be harmonious for the sake of my child's welfare This is a last wish of the dying husband and brother young that November 14th 1815 coming from Beatles the next the color from Beethoven died. What argument did good big use publicly or in court to get possession as you have said is that she was not a good mother that she was

seducing the son that she had once a police. Punishment she had house arrest for a month because she had stolen some money from her own husband and the police that yes she should stay home for a month and to use that in order to demonstrate that your boss is unfit to fulfill the duties of a mother which he was much more fit than a mother. For those who don't happen to know what the outcome of this was what decision was made and on what grounds. You know Beethoven pretended the divorce of nobility because of the ban than the and which came from a Dutch family of 18 that

means the brain the Vet. the an is used before a locality. It is not nobility. So he was Ludwig van Beethoven which means from the beat beat feet. It will turn if you and but he pretended when it came to Vienna that he was of nobility and therefore had access to the high nobility and to the corps that wants a special court only for the nobility. They were not judged by the same judges but the common people and he had existences. Delia made a slip of the town. Namely he said if I only wear of nobility and betrayed and then a do you have the papers of your nobility and said we have none and then he was dismissed from this court

and he lost the son because the whole case was of delegated to the magistrate court which was different from the common people. When he wasn't terribly upset he didn't pursue it in that and I'm more lost than a few for a while but then he appealed and you had tremendous the influential people behind him namely the arch took the Rudolph who was his pupil and gave him a stipend. About a year and can't live off ski. Kinski Well I'm not going to explain slop covets and they all put on my show you know how it is. They had enough boys that you got him back at the next court the appellate court and in disarray he are you here again the next year but regionally he was not even entitled to half the court which first gave him a trial. Did he was the

nephew consulted in any of this did he express his own personal opinion as yes in trial knowing that there would be more procedure. He was asked what he thought about the Holocaust treated by the by their uncle. And it doesn't come out very very dry. It's not to be too harsh. But he was physically punished by him. He was neglected and particularly that constantly made invectives against the mother visit. He called to the Queen of the night because she was once on the ball or something that night and later on she had an illegitimate child which was quite calm at that time was not six. Nothing special. And but they too often used all of that in order to demonstrate to the court that she was absolutely unfit to be his mother which the Court of the commoners did not

agree with. Because she appeared in court and made a very very decent impression and appeared to be a monomaniac about his nephew and therefore the court decided this is not his unfit to be the educator for what then eventually happens to young girls. Young Carl all of us put into institutions first. But the uncle was never satisfied because a song as he developed an emotional attachment to the people he got jealous and took him out. And finally he begins a study came with an agent studied in reverse 17 he was 18. He finally gotten to touch this despair that he tried to commit suicide and shot himself with a pistol in the head

but was not killed. What's three weeks in the hospital and survived. And this deed liberated him from the influence of their own. From then on down to couldn't get a team anymore and torturing animals and this was the end of fate or if you meant monthly data from the now most dramatic to you this story about how it drove him to suicide. Did the nephew ever. Feel prompted to write this story for his own attitude toward himself. Know him. The nephew save you only one thing which was how should the U.S. kept for prosperity. He was found by a man who was going through there

where he had attempted to kill himself and Main who came to the general forced people of Vienna into you know at that time it was like that. If you committed or you attempted to commit suicide and you survived. The result was an investigation by the court because you were not permitted to do that it was conceded that Elmer under against you were safe. So the nephew was asked why he had done it and he said because my uncle pestered me so much that I couldn't take it anymore and be too violent then to use his influence to get the less fuel out of the court saw that no court action would have taken against him.

And the nephew decided to enter the army. After he had made that attempt to kill himself to be out of the influence of the hunter and how fire for instance or influence of that uncle went before Beethoven nephew tried to commit suicide. I would only like to tell you one example. The nephew wanted to attend a dance and try to find out when the dame Suarez and claimed to attend himself in order to supervise a nephew said he could not then sit with the girl or have any opportunity to have any friendship even with young people. He was so strict about their dead nephew before he committed suicide the headed friend

of whom Beethoven didn't approve at all for being too was all the time writing he molesters. I know that there is a friend you want to see and he's no good and he's going to seduce you to do things you should not. Be doing it and I want you to come to me constantly either nephew or head for instance to purchase things for the Ark indeed was really impossible for that nephew to spend any decent time to study because it was pestering him constantly he would write him a letter every d with orders. The nephew had to fulfill because at that time for instance Beethoven was in the country he was living in a suburb of Vienna and nephew was in Vienna supposedly to attend college which he

couldn't do because of the uncle kept him going all the time so finally came to the point where the nephew couldn't take that pestering anymore and felt the only thing for him was to commit suicide to get out of that situation. Just Evan I just wanted to quote one is that your old school this friend Nimitz what's his name thinking from the Xperia. It's almost the only time they find a hostile expression against something he writes. I had to write in such great detail it already fucked her feel of being discovered by the old fool that you don't give him enough to be give us. He was really like a generous mother who doesn't tell me any relationship outside outside he said.

We will resume our visit with Dr. and Mrs. Debra after a brief musical interlude during which we will hear a performance by one of the foremost contemporary interpreters of the works of Beethoven pianist Rudolf Serkin. A close personal friend of the star bus when I perform the final movement Rondo Allegro Scott Sandow from the Beethoven concerto for piano in C Major Eugene Ormandy conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra. And now to return to our interview with Dr. Mr. Starbuck. You

probably don't touch on this in your book but what effect do you believe if any this conflict the whole period of the court case and so forth had upon Beethoven's following creativity upon his music. Or was he able simply to put that aside and go on when the time came. This is one of the greatest anybody how we could divide the great music at that time. The last one last got that's the last piano sonata. So not a hundred nine hundred ten hundred eleven the Glenside hundred and twenty seven percent and twenty seven hundred thirty two and that it was 33 and 35 feet and shortly before his death in which I doesn't know you wouldn't assume from the music that he was such a tormented soul. At the same time except the

music itself because I'm emotionally moved moving and the Great this. Team of music said love and love it but and you guys working on the ninth symphony at the same time and that the music solemnities through the great works came after the cup complete causation of the next few but was constantly talked to by a dissertation ship because he was so terribly jealous and didn't and you know this possessiveness that you experience that than if you couldn't have anything but teen like some of these jealous mothers particularly Jewish mothers when no one would be able to create such good feelings in their sons if they have outside interests. Do you think the turmoil within him what you have mentioned it's not an anti-Semitic remark now it's an observation from a

clinical experience with the turmoil existing within Beethoven as a result of all of this had perhaps some influence on the actual techniques which he was using in his last works which were in a sense departures from the earlier works. These are all possible I suppose your answer because there are Guess where you have or very very good friend who is one of the greatest the top went up and does well of sucking. And he told us you have only bitten the first part of the book. That has to be a second name is a violation of this to the music. And we are not capable of doing. You have to have an extensive knowledge of musicology and of devote your time completely to this but I think it's a basis for the study.

Yes but somebody else will have to. What does this relationship with a nephew say to you about Beethoven's overall relationship with women and the fact that he did not marry. Is there a connection. Yes there is a definite connection. I don't think we don't think that Beethoven had to really and he consummated love relationship with them. There are these famous letters to their unknown beloved. But if you read it and we analyze them very carefully and it's really a denunciation you couldn't go through with it and progressively in these three letters which he never sent back away after and kind of experience whole file and went we don't know it was too far for him and then you know he had to withdraw. And later on when

he acquired that relationship with the nephew he had no relationship to any of them anymore except of the maternal friend somebody who could who could advise him how they had to buy things for the household. How do treats his friends. What how many inbounds to give up for breakfast and so on compilation to them and stopped at this point. He became the mother of the woman in the relationship. Do than do you think at the beginning that he was afraid of women or afraid of a marriage situation and which he would not have the complete opportunity to express express themselves through his music that there might be some interference from the family. This certainly users and biographers use that but it's a rationalization. I mean doing

being married doesn't prevent people from producing look only at you and Sebastian Bach who was married to rice and I think the thing to them. And other composers great composers were strappings given Steve Voisin for words seems rather happily married and it doesn't prevent his productivity but he used it as a good as a ship as a rationalization. And that mad woman told us it is music but I think it was a deep inhibition of some kind. Was he a man of his time but particularly Was there something in the atmosphere of Vienna which led him to be the kind of person he was could he have succeeded as well as he did or in the same way if he were in

a different atmosphere than the Vienna of those days. I don't know there's a device specific Vienna of course the end of the underbelly musical city they're looking live. He had some listeners was high and was Mozart and the horn and the nobility of us extremely interested in music and it was effective grant for the music from a former creative musician. However what I think and what fascinates me so much that the spirit of the time namely the evolutionary movement which goes on till into our time vast definitely expressed in his music and gave the music has tremendous impact which it still has

because it expressed so much of the spirit of the time. This spirit however was in his case not against a certain class of people like that ability because obviously he was trying to become one of them. As you stated he wanted to be part of that scene as we would say today. However he was not very positive about them. He he is two faced in this respect. He will to most devote letters when he cancels his lessons with or with the Archduke. But then he writes in and out of this miserable obstinate tied down for him and this because it was one of the reasons why she wanted to destroy so many conversation books because there were so many invectives against the others to conceive and particularly against the

court. So he was not a very pleasant guy but he wasn't a political activist as we would think of it today in taking strong public stance on issues or on either social or political issues he expressed these almost entirely through his music. Yes he was not politically active or anything but he was the police who was watching him to some extent because he but you must consider that evolutionarily. And he was not much favored by that and done by the court and not because of us or evolutionary. That's a famous scene described by you know when our own army. When he was in that depletes was good and the court at the end because without the takes the boss and the cane and cute

emitted well and good and marched through them and didn't greet them and that to be told this is the way you have to get some of them I said don't respect you and at once came out of PAs and Beetle marched and to the end but I had to step into the grass to make a way to him and then purchase that I have to be such people also. He wants consider that I have a look but only bestial a special chapter under-handed Badal that I believe that he is tired and expects to express this through his music and not in any other way. Calling his letters and the letters in the length of the soul and when he writes. You kept you can only have contempt for people and I only have contempt for people and I only use them for what they can do for me. But other virus

writers find him despicable. What would have happened. Let's just say my Landa who are all to be embraced the millions in the Ninth Symphony this kiss to the whole world yawn and Regency coffin that call it part of the last movement of the Ninth Symphony. So that is such a discrepancy between the idea which Music Express and his behavior the discordance which is cries to heaven. I think what you believe might have happened to her sister but if she had married if you had had a family do you think it would have affected what he did anyway. Would it have created greater complex and I don't think he would have been able to do that. First of all because from the beginning on one could see how much he was against marriage for

instance and many here heard that he is of the Purana your house was going to get married but on the leave not in Vienna. But I had a drugstore in limpets a little town in Austria he went to that town to try to have a vet. Why if all of the presumptuous wife of his brother thrown out off said a little city because he. News that his brother wanted to marry her. So you can see that already. At that time way Aaron there was no question of adoption of the nephew for instance and where the not yet have the frame the mother always to want to marry you already at that time he was so much against marriage so that he even wanted the brother not believing in the same town he

was to be prevented from getting married which is a proof. However he never was in favor and he never could have been able to stand a marriage trouble even if he did not say on at least one occasion to a friend how pleased he was that he was getting married that it was a it was a state which generally approved of or that is strange. He certainly didn't do that with his brother Carl the father of the narrative in that particular instance when this. No because his brother your honeyed later but. He lived with his brother Khalid in the you'll let me out on the beam which is still existing and which then double click the Magic Flute was first performed. He lived there in this building with his brother but when brother got interested in a woman named Mary the mother of the late the mother of the nephew Johann of the name

he severed the connections with his brother and didn't see him for two years because he was so much against the marriage of his brother he wanted to possess abundance to himself. But you don't think that in essence as a generalization he approved of marriage. But he simply felt that it wasn't right for him and perhaps felt guilty that it wasn't right for him but it was all right for the next person. You know the feeling of guilt is very rare in him and I wouldn't rely too much his conscience was not too much developed his conscience was absorbed by. He's responding immediately to what is music. He was extremely careful in the notation of his music and so on. And in collecting and improving it and so on.

And if the whole force of his conscience was absorbed by the of us but responsibility do create the music as perfect as possible that nothing was left to his behavior so the controller's period. I'd like to ask one more question which I'm sure is the most unfair of our questions. But let's suppose that Dr Freud had been alive in Vienna time. Beethoven had gone to see him as a patient. What might this have done for him and his music would it have changed him in any way. No I don't think it would have changed the meaning anyway because I think first of all he would never have down there that he would have gone to somebody and secondly at that time to consider emotional problems was not possible at all and nobody did.

And it proved for that that one could get out of problems without any help at that time for instance is the nephew who was a bird to deal with what he had to go through himself very well because the nephew got an excellent record when he was in the Army and was an excellent officer may have retained the family and everything which was known about him sure said he was able to digest what had been done to him very well. But as far as Peter Morgan goes he was too much of a reverend to ever go to anybody to admit that. And he had problems. We've been talking with doctors Richard and Edith are step by co authors of Beethoven and his nephew hope to appear in paperback published by Shaka and all thanks to them for their perceptive insight into the emotional life of the big five Beethoven. It's been another in a series commemorating the 209 of bursary of the Firth of Beethoven in

1770 exploring the political social and musical climate of Europe during the lifetime of the man who freed us. I did listen again next week at the same time for another program in this series at Burroughs speaking this is that I shall educational radio network this program was originally produced in 1970 by the University of Michigan Broadcasting Service and is currently being distributed by NPR National Public Radio.