The material collected with such indomitable industry, and edited with such scrupulous regard to accuracy, by Gustave Nottebohm, is more valuable to the student of music than all the biographies, commentaries, and criticisms of the earlier writers put together. For the narratives even of Beethoven's personal friends have proved to be in many cases misleading and fallacious, founded at times on erroneous impressions of what actually took place, and at others on a misconception of artistic aims and purpose which at one time no doubt were new and startling. Thayer, the most uncompromisingly truthful of biographers, did his best in an essay, published eleven years ago, to expose the folly of the extensively-circulated anecdotes, which pictured Beethoven as a kind of ecstatic visionary, whose works were the outcome, not of labour, reflection, and thought, but of a kind of electric mental shock which evolved, by some magic agency known perhaps to the narrators, a symphony or sonata whole and complete at one stroke of the pen.
Unfortunately absurdities of this sort were believed and countenanced, not by ignorant men and silly women only, but by some who should have known better. Popular fallacies as to music, however, are peculiarly inveterate, a result probably of the astonishingly widespread ignorance among educated men of the nature and history of the art. It is still the exception, not the rule, to find among laymen who busy themselves with music, one who knows what a sonata or a symphony actually is, or who can distinguish and appreciate the difference in kind and quality between the music of Chopin and Scarlatti.
So long as this form of ignorance subsists, there will be found people ready to believe that Beethoven was a rhapsodical sentimentalist, whose compositions may be as fitly and justly interpreted by a pianist infant prodigy as by thoughtful artists of mature experience.
Among musicians, Beethoven is the only one who had incessant recourse to note-books, and for his own use carefully treasured their contents. Mozart and Schubert wrote with a facility sometimes dangerous, at others fatal, to the quality of the work produced. In his last years, Schubert, probably influenced (though he did not admit it) by the example of Beethoven, in practice acquiesced in the necessity for a more strict revision of his work. Had he applied a more rigorous self-criticism at an earlier stage of his career, he would have been less open to the criticism of posterity. That criticism neither spares nor amends, and finds in the mass of inspired music a comparatively small number of works which can be regarded as models of artistic workmanship. Mendelssohn, a less richly endowed, but more fastidious musician, revised with minute care, and frequently rewrote and altered the plan of his works. But Mendelssohn's life has not yet been fully written: evidence as to his particular way of working is to be gathered from statements contained in his own letters and from the testimony of friends; and preliminary sketches for his work, if they ever existed, have so far not become public property.
It was well known to Beethoven's friends that he was in the habit of making frequent and copious entries in his note-books, but it is only now when, one after another, these strange storehouses of thought have been explored and their contents arranged, that the full significance of tliese random jottings, and the important bearing they have on the finished compositions, has been fully realised. For the first time the student has the opportunity of seeing the infinite pains and patience of the great musical genius at work, at times recording ideas which come with inconvenient profusion, at others reshaping and altering, and always carefully storing his material for reference and future use. Of the patient laborious industry bestowed in turn on each of the great works which yet retain the air of most perfect spontaneity, and which are flooded with the full light of inspiration, the world had till recently no cognisance. The care taken in the development and modelling of the themes, here adding a note or pause, there taking away,—the indefatigable attention to detail which, but for the sum-total of effect that we know, appears in itself trifling and unimportant, are the most powerful of all protests against hasty, ill-considered work, and that shallow form of conceit which thinks that talent can afford to dispense with honest labour.
The germs from which the thematic material of the Symphonies, Sonatas, and Concertos grew are often, in the first instance, insignificant and unpromising, and rarely take at once the exact shape finally fixed on. In the sketch-books the different stages of development may be clearly traced, and it is curious to see how greatly the general aspect of the themes changes, without their original intrinsic character being departed from. On the contrary, we find that every fresh change and modification adds force, energy, and terseness to the idea as first expressed. For it has to be remembered that Beethoven was not merely casting about for ideas, nor was he coquetting with an unresponsive spirit of inspiration, but earnestly searching for the best possible expression of ideas which clamoured strongly for utterance.
The first of the sketch-books appeared probably in 1865, though the date is not attached to the brochure published under the title 'Ein Skizzenbuch
