The world celebrates Ludwig von Beethoven today, 250 years from the likely date of his birth in 1770. Much will be written about him today, his larger than life genius, passion, ambition, angst and his unknown “Immortal Beloved.”
Life is often filled with ironies and Beethoven’s certainly qualified. For one so tuned to sound to turn deaf, ranks among fate’s harshest cruelties. He said he noticed the loss beginning in his late 20s, which is now speculated to have been due to otosclerosis, a softening of bones in the inner ear. By 1812, he was deaf to all but the lowest tones and to sharp, loud sounds.
At some point in the same frame of time, Beethoven met Therese Malfatti, whom some speculate to have been his Immortal Beloved,” though she married another, becoming a baroness. We do know that a particular piece by Beethoven, inscribed “Fur Elise on April 27 (1810),” was found in her papers upon her death, long after his passing. There are other stories, based on speculation, as to the purpose of this bagatelle, but I prefer the one below, which is my way to honor him today, in what music there may be in prose.
For Therese
“Blindness separates us from things; deafness separates us from people.”
Helen Keller
Well into Fur Elise there is a grace note, during the second playing of the theme and before the bridge, that you barely hear and that almost seems a mistake, except it is there again in the second verse, and one last time as the piece begins to close. Two octaves and change above middle C, that faint E belongs in its A minor key, but seems – if you hear it at all – an afterthought, a garnish left upon a plate.
The story is told that Beethoven wrote this bagatelle planning to play it that very night for a young Therese Malfatti and then to propose, but – perhaps besotted with more than love – he ended up doing neither. I doubt that, by the time Beethoven wrote the piece, he could still hear a note quite that high, as nearly deaf as he had grown.
Fur Elise was found, upon her death, in Therese’s papers – a love note with one note she alone could hear.
