Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 8.djvu/177

BEETHOVEN 321 in this period that we must place a well-known anecdote. The young mu- sician, already famous in his own neighborhood, was composing, as his custom was, in the wood outside ihe city, when a funeral cortege passed him. The priest, seeing him, instantly checked the dirge which was being chanted, and the procession passed in solemn silence, " for fear of disturbing him." In the be- ginning of November, 1 792, the young musician left Bonn for Vienna, and, as it happened, he never afterward returned to the familiar scenes of his birthplace. Beethoven was never a very easy man to get on with, and his intercourse with Haydn, who used to call him the " Great Mogul," does not seem to have been the most friendly. He was dissatisfied with the instruction given him, and sus- picions were awakened in his mind that the elder musician was jealous of him, and did not wish him to improve. These thoughts were strengthened by the re- sult of a chance meeting one day, as he was walking home with his portfolio under his arm, with Johann Schenk, a scientific and thoroughly accomplished musician. Beethoven complained to him of the little advance he was making in counterpoint, and that Haydn never corrected his exercises or taught him anything. Schenk asked to look through the portfolio, and see the last work that Haydn had revised, and on examining it he was astonished to find a number of mistakes that had not been pointed out. It is difficult to understand Haydn's conduct in this matter, for the perfidious treatment suspected by Beethoven is quite at variance with the ordinarily accepted character of the old man, and I cannot help fancying that the only foundation for Beethoven's suspicion was that Haydn did not quite understand the erratic genius of the youth till some time afterward. Beethoven dedicated his three pianoforte sonatas, Op. II., to Haydn, and when the latter suggested that he should add on the title page "Pupil of Haydn," the "Great Mogul" refused, bluntly saying "that he had never learnt anything from him." After Haydn, Albrechtsberger and Salieri were for a time his teachers, but Beethoven got on no better with them, and Al- brechtsberger said, " Have nothing to do with him ; he has learnt nothing, and will never do anything in decent style." Perhaps not in your pedant's style, O great contrapuntist ! Beethoven cannot be said to have been unfortunate in his friends. He had many true and faithful ones throughout his life, and though he suffered from pe- cuniary troubles, caused by the conduct of his brothers, he was never in such a state of grinding poverty as some other artists, such as Schubert, have been — never compelled to waste precious years of his life in producing " pot-boilers " — working not for art so much as for mere food and shelter. In 1794 Prince Karl Lichnowski, who had been a pupil of Mozart, and who, as well as his wife Chris- tiane, was fanatico per la musica, proposed that Beethoven should come and live at his palace. They had no children ; a suite of rooms was placed at the musi- cian's disposal ; no terms were proposed ; the offer was the most delicate anc" friendly imaginable, and was accepted by Beethoven in the spirit in which it was made. For ten years he resided with the Lichnowskis, and these were probablv the years of purest happiness in the great composer's life, although early in their 21