All language subtitles for Beeeth3

I think it's the beginning of
this incredibly rich, internal,

imaginative life,

so that he starts hearing in ways
that we can't imagine.

CHOIR SINGS GLORIA
FROM MISSA SOLEMNIS

Forget the world, OK?
I can't hear that.

Now I'm going to hear music
from heaven.

# Amen... #

I'm going to hear music from hell.

I'm going to hear music
that no-one else can hear.

# Jesu Christe... #

And then he shares that with us
and this is the revolution for me.

# In excelsis Deo

# Gloria, gloria, in excelsis Deo

# Gloria

# Gloria, gloria
Gloria, gloria

# In excelsis Deo

# Gloria, gloria

# Gloria. #

1817, Beethoven is 46.

He's famous, his music is
played at home and abroad.

METRONOME CLICKS

And he needs indications
for conductors and performers

in the other parts of the world to
play and perform his music.

Suddenly he has this device which
allows him to be the first composer

to indicate exactly how fast and how
slow his pieces should be performed.

THEY SING

"The metronome marks will
follow soon.

"Do not fail to wait for them."

MUSIC CONTINUES

"In our century, things of this
kind are certainly needed.

"Performers must now obey the ideas
of the unfettered genius."

The last decade of his life was
so painful on so many levels.

I mean, besides losing his hearing,
he was embroiled in this

lengthy court battle to take
custody of his nephew.

He was starving, I think,
for connection,

personal connection, physical
connection with other human beings.

METRONOME CLICKS

We might see this also as
the attempt of an ageing composer

to keep control of things.

Control of his music, with
the device of the metronome,

control of his financial situation

because Beethoven couldn't get any
fees any more as a performer.

Control of his personal life.

I think it's the beginning of this
incredibly rich internal

imaginative life so that he starts

hearing in ways that we
can't imagine.

"Forget the world, OK, I can't hear
that. Now I'm going to hear...

"..I'm going to hear music
from heaven.

"I'm going to hear music from hell.

"I'm going to hear music that
no-one else can hear."

And then he shares that with us,
and this is the revolution for me.

Beethoven changes the course of
music for all times.

CLASSICAL MUSIC

His concert in December, 1813,

is one of the big society events of
contemporary Vienna.

First performance of the
Seventh Symphony.

After four years without a new
symphony, this is the time

where the people expecting

the utmost of this great composer.

The concert of December eighth,
1813, remember,

is a benefit for soldiers
wounded in battle.

And the mood of Vienna and Europe
at this point is really kind of

exultant because Napoleon
is going down.

It's clear that he's near the end.

And there's a kind of celebratory
quality to the Seventh Symphony

that absolutely plays into the
spirit of the time.

In that same concert was the
premiere of Wellington's Victory,

which is cashing in on the spirit
of the time!

Probably the most commercial thing
he ever wrote, celebrating

the victory of the Napoleonic wars
over Napoleon.

I always felt that Beethoven,
at the end of that concert,

he made a lot of money.

Pocketed the money with
a kind of grin about how

he had this marvellous success
with a bad piece

and a really nice success with
a good piece.

HE CHUCKLES

This is the moment just after
Wellington's Victory has

become an international hit

and turned Beethoven into not

just a well-regarded composer,
but a local celebrity.

This is Beethoven's most shining
moment in public.

Amid all of the euphoria,
we see that in tandem

with his deafness on the one hand,
his increasing isolation,

that this really just constricts his
world even more.

He goes more inside of himself.

MUFFLED RUMBLE

Beethoven really experiences
two episodes of acute

depression during his lifetime.

Clearly, around the time of the

Heiligenstadt Testament, he suffered

a major depressive crisis.

And then, again, in the 1810s, as
the extent of his hearing loss

and the finality of it
begins to sink in,

he realises now that he may be
becoming completely deaf.

What these episodes have in common
is they shake his sense of who

he is as a musician.

"Can I keep doing this?"

This is when he rewrites Fidelio

and he elaborates even further on
that dungeon scene,

and makes it even more expressive
and intense than it was before.

The beginning of the second act,

the scene opens on the character

of Florestan deep underground,
in a dungeon, in the dark.

TENOR SINGS

TRANSLATION:

His very first words, he says...
HE SPEAKS GERMAN

.."How dark it is here."

But then he goes on to
express the sense

that, in the springtime
of his life, at a time

when he should have been able to
expect happiness and fulfilment,

everything has been taken
away from him.

He is sat alone,
he is in solitary confinement.

I don't think it's too
much of a stretch to say that

Florestan, in the dungeon, in
solitary confinement,

lamenting his isolation,
his failure to be able to realise

the dreams that he
had as a young man,

this is perhaps the most
autobiographical

moment of all of Beethoven's music.

HE SINGS

MUFFLED RUMBLE

Beethoven is 44.

He's aware of his faculties
going, his most important

faculty of hearing.

And the more he loses control of
that, the more

he tries to go control of anything
else he can get his hands on

and, of course,
the first thing is his family.

As the head of a family,
you never lose that

sense of responsibility
and it continues.

So Beethoven is well established in
Vienna now.

Both of his brothers are living
in the vicinity.

He meddles in Johann's relationships
cos he wants to advise him

who he should marry.

Karl has helped him with getting his
music out, as well,

with his publications,

and Beethoven is paying his
medical costs.

So he's kind of lording it,
in a way.

STRING INSTRUMENTS

In early November, 1815, Beethoven
learns that his brother Karl

is dying of tuberculosis,
which is the choking,

bleeding horror that they
watched their mother die from.

He rushes to Karl's bedside, but
he is already obsessed with the idea

that he must get guardianship and
complete control of their son, Karl.

Beethoven believes the mother,
Johanna, is absolute evil.

He has to get Karl away from her
because she will corrupt him.

When you read the documents of all
this story,

he's not a really nice guy

and he uses a lot of different
names for the mother -

the most used is Queen of the Night.

So he never names her with her name,
but gives her nicknames

and most of them
are rather ugly ones.

"Last night, that Queen of the Night
was at the artists' ball until 3am,

"exposing not only her mantle,
but also her bodily nakedness.

"It was whispered that she was

"willing to sell herself for
20 gulden.

"Oh, horrible. Oh, horrible."

It had something to do with power
and control.

I don't like this wife and she's
not able to raise a child,

but Beethoven wasn't much more able
to raise a child, of course.

In his opinion, he's the only one.
He's always the only one.

It's not very nice, this story.

Beethoven devotes more energy then
one might reasonably

expect to the attempt to gain
custody of Karl.

I suspect that what is going on
during this time is that

Beethoven is seeking to repeat
the pattern that played out

in his own family as a child.

PIANO CONTINUES

His father placed a great deal of
expectation on Ludwig to be

essentially a second Mozart

and Beethoven is perhaps hoping that
Karl can do the same thing.

"You regard Karl as your own child.

"Heed no gossip, no pettiness,
in comparison with this sacred goal.

"He's my son. I am his true father."

DRAMATIC MUSIC

The court that should decide the
question of the guardianship

is the Landrecht

and the Landrecht is a court for
noblemen only.

And at that point the court asks,
"Ludwig, are you a nobleman?"

And Ludwig says,
"Yes, of course I am

"because my name is van Beethoven

"and the van is an indication of
nobility."

In fact, that's not true.

The van is just a part of a typical
name from northern Europe.

Von is an indication of nobility
in Germany and Austria.

Von with an O, not van with an A,

as in Beethoven's name.

And so the court says,
"You are van Beethoven,

"but you are not a nobleman."

"My nature shows that I do not
belong amongst this plebeian mass.

"Since I have raised my nephew
into a higher category,

"neither he nor I belong with
the commoner's court.

"But only innkeepers,

"cobblers and tailors come under
that kind of guardianship."

I mean, his life is a series of not
getting what he wanted.

It starts with not being the
highborn personality that he

wanted himself to be

and he fabricated quite
a lot of bogus round this story.

He had a tendency of wanting to be

bigger, greater,

nobler - bracket - narcissistically
driven - bracket,

um, in all what he did.

The magistrat in Vienna decides to

make Johanna van Beethoven
co-guardian

of her son - Karl van Beethoven Jr.

Ludwig van Beethoven
doesn't like that decision

and he appeals to the next court.

The next higher court decides
that Ludwig gets

guardianship for his nephew,
but not the sole guardianship,

but co-guardianship with
a friend of his.

That's the final decision.

It's an aspect of Beethoven that
I don't like to know about,

but in a way doesn't surprise me
when I think about how he...

He's kind of re-enacting something
that he's familiar with.

It's the one moment in his life

when he thinks everything else
is lost to him.

He's clearly not
going to find a wife,

he's clearly going to remain
childless

and yet he sees a child left without
a father and feels that

sense of responsibility, that it's
his job to raise that child,

it was his job to father his brother
when their mother died,

and so it seems natural for him
to want to do that.

But the way he goes about it,
by trying to smash

everything around that's been young
Karl's infrastructure up until then.

i think it's a really brutal
trait,

almost, with his inner set-up.

He wants so much to be somebody
different that he doesn't

shrink away from making another
wife's son his son in order

to have at least that,
at least a prodigy for himself.

"You have to be my son,
you have to be a musician,

"you have to follow the line.

"Grandfather, father, me,
the utmost genius, and now you.

"I'm such a genius I can skip
reality

"and make him my son in a real
sense."

And that's the programme.

GENTLE SINGING

His compositions slows down.

He goes into a period of deep
reflection.

And in the year 1817 he composes
nothing at all,

until the final months of the year.

SINGING CONTINUES

One of the first pieces that he
writes, actually,

after this long fallow period, is
this beautiful song, Resignation.

SINGING CONTINUES

The song Resignation is very easily
compared to the entry in his

diary about resignation, about
resigning yourself to your fate.

"Resignation. The most sincere
resignation to your fate.

"Only this can make you capable
of the sacrifices which your duty

"and vocation demands.

"O hard struggle,
thus in spite of it all,

"you must win through by defiance.

"Be absolutely true
to your constant conviction."

In the song, you have this curious
imagery of a light,

a candle, that's being snuffed out,

but it's a soliloquy and speaking
to the candle.

"Candle, you have to snuff out
your light."

SINGING CONTINUES

It's a very, very pessimistic poem,

but what Beethoven does with it
is incredible because he

messes around with the repetitions
of the text.

And the final statement,
"Let out your light,"

Beethoven is saying here, "You have
two let loose of what's been

"holding you back,
but this is OK."

SINGING CONTINUES

"Let me live, even by means of
artificial aids.

"If only such are to be found.

"If possible, develop the ear
instruments then travel.

"This you owe to yourself,
to man and to Him, the Almighty."

SOFT FIZZING

MUFFLED RUMBLE

For the last ten years of his life,
starting in 1818,

we have the so-called conversation
books,

which means that visitors that
come to see him write down whatever

they want to talk with him about

cos his hearing loss was so hard by
the time that he just couldn't

understand any more what they would
say, so they had to write down

all the things they want to
tell him.

And the interesting thing about this
is we see how many different

people come to see him,

and they talk with him about all
sorts of things -

about politics, what's advertised
in town, about music also.

"They drag terribly. In the aria,
I am following the singer,

"the overture to chorus line
confused the violin and cello."

"I still remember the problem you
had with the timpanist

"at the rehearsal of Egmont."

"I think that, when constructing
a sound machine, one must

"consult not merely a musician,
but a well-rounded physicist.

"Therefore, an acoustician."

Unfortunately, we don't have his
answers because he speaks

with them, but still we get a very
strong sense of a man who...

..still in his last year's of
living, is very much tied to

what's on in society.

This is one of the restaurants
Beethoven frequents regularly,

either alone or with friends.

We know of that because he writes
about it in his conversation books.

In his later years, he's 47.
Beethoven is always a writer.

He is a writer of his own ideas,
in little books.

Advertisement in coffee house
in Landstrasse.

"Meals, 60 guldens.
Salary, 25 guldens.

"Wine, 42 guilders.

"All together, 127.

"Yearly, 1,524 florins guldens."

So he writes down his income.

I think this conversation book shows
that even a composer of his standing

had to have a daily life,

and he had to fight for his daily
food,

meals and we can see Beethoven,
here, is a guy who

suffers from his illness,

but who still overcomes it with lots
of energy.

Beethoven says, when he's writing to
the publisher, he says,

"What is difficult is good" -

and I think he means
that on several levels.

He means, what is
difficult for a performer,

what is difficult to compose
and what is difficult in one's life

in terms of challenges and dealing
with sorrow, dealing with suffering.

So, in 1818, Beethoven has
more freedom,

he is getting back into what
we call the final period,

the extraordinary flowering of the
late music.

So, the story of the
Diabelli Variations is that

Diabelli sends out this rather silly

waltz that he composed to

most of the composers of the day,

asking them to contribute one
variation,

and he wanted to publish
the whole set together.

PIANO CONTINUES

Beethoven, of course,
refuses to do that,

ends up writing 33 variations
of his own,

and in the process creates perhaps

the greatest piano piece ever
written.

It takes the best part of an hour to
play, there's nowhere it doesn't go,

there's nowhere he doesn't take us,

and it's the most incredible journey
in the entire piano repertoire.

I mean, how many composers would
have thought of turning

the accompaniment, the repeated
chords, at least the top line

of those repeated chords,
into the subject of a fugue,

as he does in the penultimate
variation?

So, in the waltz, you have...

HE PLAYS WALTZ

HE REPEATS NOTE

And, of course, the theme in the
fugue is...

HE REPEATS HIGHER NOTE

But the sheer bloody mindedness of
it, you know, to have this...

HE PLAYS REPEATED NOTE

..as a theme, I can't imagine any
other composer doing that.

I mean, the bloody mindedness of

Beethoven isn't to be
underestimated.

You know, for instance, I'm
thinking of some of the variations

where he leaves you in the most
sublime place...

..and then completely just knocks
everything down,

you know, just destroys everything.

So Variation 20, which is pretty
much the halfway point of the set,

finishes up like this...

HE PLAYS QUIETLY AND SLOWLY

HE PLAYS ENERGETICALLY AND LOUDLY

It's complete insanity.
It's the writing of a madman.

I mean, he's not,
but you could believe that!

MUSIC: The Barber of Seville
by Rossini

In 1822, there is a Rossini craze
going on in Vienna.

Rossini is 30 at this point,
he's the hot young voice in opera.

He is also an admirer of Beethoven,

so he's brought to Beethoven for
a visit.

Beethoven is 51 at this point.

Two things amaze Rossini -

one is the squalor that Beethoven is
living in

and the other is how warm
Beethoven is to him.

So in this period, in 1822,
when the world considers him

half crazy and deaf and finished as
a composer,

and he hasn't written a symphony in
a long time,

he's in the middle of the
Missa Solemnis,

the most ambitious piece of
his life.

With the Missa, he found a new kind

of sacred music that basically
was symphonic.

SINGING

# Kyrie... #

THEY SING

# Kyrie... #

The Missa Solemnis is one of the two
big mass compositions by Beethoven.

The fact is that his patron
and long-time friend

and student, Archduke Rudolph,

is appointed Archbishop of Olomouc.

In January 1819, Beethoven
instantly writes to him.

"The day on which a high mass
composed by myself will be

"performed at the ceremonies
for your Imperial Highness will be

"the greatest day of my life."

Beethoven was convinced that the
afterlife is a place

you can long for, a piece of rest,

a bit of solitude, a piece
you don't have to be scared of.

SINGING CONTINUES

So having the occasion to compose
a religious work was certainly

attached also to the idea that he
can see it is a very good

investment to ensure
a place in heaven.

"My chief aim was to awaken
and permanently instil religious

"feelings, not only into the
singers,

"but also into the listeners."

# Gloria in excelsis Deo

# Gloria in excelsis Deo... #

Apparently, Beethoven is convinced
that between man on Earth

and this transcendence figure
in heaven there is no connection.

So, what he does is he composes
music that symbolises God,

or transcendent,
and then he does very abrupt cuts

and then there is this Earthly
music.

For example, a wonderful sequence is
in the Gloria of the Missa Solemnis.

Right at the beginning, the text is,
"Gloria in excelsis Deo,"

and it goes up and up and up,
and it's rushing up,

and then it goes up
and goes up and goes up,

and it stops abruptly.

# Et in terra... #

And then it's very soft,
very low, pianissimo,

and it says, "Et in terra pax,"
which is "peace on Earth" -

and there is really
no connection in-between.

"I have the more
turned my gaze upwards,

"but for our own sakes,
and for others,

"we are obliged to
turn our attention sometimes

"to lower things. This too is
a part of human destiny."

Around this time, when Beethoven
is working on the Missa Solemnis,

he feels that he's in bad shape
financially.

When he finally is close to
finishing the Missa Solemnis,

he begins to approach publishers

with it and he absolutely promises

a row of publishers this piece
and he begins some double dealings

and triple
and quadruple dealings sometimes.

The seemingly vicious way in which

Beethoven is selling
his Missa Solemnis

has damaged his reputation

as a composer and as a human being.

The problem with Beethoven

is that we have to accept that
nobody

has the monopoly of being
a sacred man.

Being a normal man with
catastrophes in life,

with bad moments, with...

..with awful behaviour,

then, in the same time,

make the most sublime masterpieces.

But, in my opinion,
it's more than this.

What he wants is to get confirmation

that this is the best work
he ever wrote.

Friends of Beethoven,

they ask one of the most
famous portrait

painters of the time,
Karl Joseph Stieler,

to paint a portrait of Beethoven
and Beethoven hates being painted.

Beethoven decides that he wants
to have a music

manuscript on the portrait
and not any music manuscript,

but his most important work,
the Missa Solemnis.

This is not to present him
in the real way he looked,

but in the way of genius,

so we have this red scarf
on his neck

and we have trees in the background.

This is a very romantic,
English way of seeing a genius.

And we have this look to the sky,

where...the genius comes from.

He has some split in his
personality, in his inner feeling,

in the way he thinks of himself,
really a split.

One side is dealing with the world
and doing his art and being a genius

and everything, and the other part
is not dealing with the reality.

I mean, really not dealing.

I think this brutality and
materialistic approach to a human

being, like in this long going story
with the nephew, does shed

a light on how he deals with people.

As Karl gets older,
the relationship deteriorates.

They begin, basically, to
drive each other crazy.

Karl is torn between Beethoven's
sometimes smothering affection

and episodes of just total neglect.

Beethoven hits him, ridicules him,
condemns him and then smothers him.

The letter of September 14th, 1825.

"This Sunday, you need not come,

"for, with your behaviour,
we shall never establish

"true agreement and harmony.

"Farewell, he who, it is true,
did not give you life,

"but certainly maintained it
and undertook the education

"of your mind paternally,
more than paternally,

"now implores you to keep to
the only true way of goodness

"and righteousness.

"Farewell."

He simply feels the boy is slipping
away from him,

slipping out of his control,
and slipping into

what he fears is the immorality

and the fundamental evil
of his mother.

That he's falling into her orbit and
becoming her son rather than his.

Beethoven writes to Karl...

"God as my witness. I dream only
of one thing - to be entirely rid

"of you and this wretched brother
of mine and this abominable family,

"which has been foisted upon me.

"May God grant my wishes, for
never again shall I be capable

"of suffering on your account.

"Unfortunately, your father -
or rather not your father."

The point is that Karl at this
point is in his late teens.

He's a young man, he is behaving
like a teenager.

He's doing what boys do.

Maybe he's drinking too much
sometimes.

Maybe he's gambling a little bit.

He's not a bad kid at all,

but Beethoven simply can't handle
it because... I think it's partly

that Beethoven is a man who is
used - as an artist -

used to having everything absolutely
under his control.

He has absolute control of the page

and now he wants to have absolute
control of Karl because he doesn't

understand the independence
of other people.

This complicated story with
the nephew and his lifestyle,

which is so wide and problematic
and...disgusting in a way,

probably I would run away,
be scared of him.

As a person, I find Beethoven
strange and scary and...

Yes, I feel sorry for him,

but the music is a huge
gift to humanity.

What he did, he gave us
a fantastic present.

In the spring of 1825,
Beethoven is very ill.

He's very aware of his mortality

and his doctors recommend

that he goes to the spa resort

of Baden to recover.

He writes this letter
to his doctor and invents

a little fictional dialogue.

"Doctor: How are you, patient?

"Patient: We are not in a
good state.

"Still very weak. Belching, etc.

"My catarrhal condition
has the following symptoms here...

"I cough up rather a lot of blood,

"probably only from the windpipe,

"but it does flow out of my nose
more often.

"As far as I know, my
constitution - I should say

"my faculties - will scarcely
recover unaided."

In the Thanksgiving movement,
we get a sense of Beethoven's

insignificance, and also the fact
that he wishes for a release

from his own preoccupations,
whether they be the failure

of his body or the failure
of his relationship

with his nephew, Karl.

In the sketchbook, he jots
down an idea for new strength

and that becomes the form for this
extraordinary slow movement,

the Heiliger Dankgesang.

It's very interesting because that's

a specific autobiographical link

between Beethoven's life situation

and the music that he writes.

I think the late quartets
are...they're transcendental.

It's really music as a
philosophy of life.

It's beyond music.

This blew me away, and that
combined, I think, especially

with the silences in the
late quartets,

they're so breathtaking

and so risky

that it's just, it's beyond belief.

One of the things that's the most
moving to me about the late quartets

is that here is a guy who's
extraordinarily isolated

in his own life, his own social
life, from his deafness,

from his inability really to
maintain relationships,

creating this ideal series of
conversations between four players.

So he is creating the circumstances
by which we can have wonderful

relationships within a string
quartet, those very relationships

that he himself doesn't have.

There's a kind of unpleasant irony
here that a lot of people have noted

that, at the same time Beethoven
as writing this sublime music,

he is not doing the potentially
sublime job of fathering Karl.

He is largely ignoring Karl.

MUSIC: Grosse Fuge In B Flat Major,
Op.133 by Beethoven

Karl, I think, reaches the point
in 1826 where he decides

he cannot go on in this manner.
Something has to change.

Karl climbs up to Castle Waldstein,
near where I am standing.

It's a rather arduous climb,

he clearly had to nerve himself
up to making this,

and he pulls out a pistol.

Attempts to shoot himself
in the head.

The first time, he misses entirely.

The second time, he grazes his skull
and inflicts a wound.

"Most honoured Dr Smetana,

"a great calamity has occurred,

"accidentally inflicted
by Karl upon himself.

"There is hope that he may
be saved, especially by you,

"if only you'll come soon.

"Karl has a bullet in his head.

"How, you will learn in time.

"Only hurry.
For God's sake, hurry."

It's clear Karl is trying
to send a distress signal.

He's not so much trying to kill
himself as just trying to indicate,

"I don't know what else to do
with my life right now.

"This is hopeless."

He did certainly succeed in sending
that message - whether Beethoven

was capable of receiving it or not
is another question.

In late September, 1826, Beethoven
arrives here in Gneixendorf

with his nephew, with Karl,

for what he thinks
will be a short stay.

His main purpose is to convince his
brother to leave his considerable

estate to Karl rather than
to his wife, Johann's wife,

whom Beethoven hates.

He ends up staying here three months
because it also turns out

that it's a way for Karl
to get away from Vienna,

where he could be arrested
for trying to kill himself,

and a chance for his wound to heal.

And Beethoven simply starts
composing at this table,

in this music room.

At this point, his body
is falling apart.

His world is falling apart.

He's losing his nephew
by his own ideals.

He's fighting with his brother.

And here he completes the
F minor quartet,

his last string quartet
completed, Opus 135.

Whenever we play the slow movement
of this piece,

it's on my mind that that's the
backdrop to the writing

of 135 - Beethoven and his
relationship with Karl.

There's a tremendous darkness,
particularly in the middle section,

where time seems to stop
and you can really sort of feel

Beethoven just in a state
of numb shock.

Early December, in effect,
his rage, his temper

is finally going to prove
the end of him.

He has another fight
with his brother Johann.

He does not really want to be here,

he does not really want to deal
with his brother

and his brother's hated wife at all.

He says, "I'm leaving."

And Johann says, "Look, the only way
you're going to get back to Vienna

"at this point is an open cart."

And Beethoven in a fury
says, "That's what I'll do,"

and that was the end of him.

It was two days' travel in the
middle of winter in an open cart.

And this begins his decline.

He's feeling so unwell he
takes to his bed straight away,

summons the doctor and some
friends come round.

And this is when he composes
his last completed composition.

It's a little canon, which says,

"Wir irren allesamt
nur jeder irret anders."

And that means, "We all make
mistakes, but everyone makes them
quite differently,"

which is very appropriate, really.

"I still adhere to the motto,
'Not a day without a line.'

"And if I let the muse sleep, it
is only so that she may be all the

"stronger when she awakes.

"I hope to give birth to a
few more great works

"and then to conclude my Earthly
course among good people,

"like a child grown old in years."

Beethoven is in his death bed,

though it takes a long time for
death to get him.

Karl leaves for the military
in January,

they have a chilly farewell,
and Karl never sees him again.

It's all just wretched.

The last things that we know of that
Beethoven said - he's lying

in his death bed in a coma
most of the time...

He's asked at some point for
Rhine wine and it was not coming,

it was not coming, and finally
it arrives. The bottles

are sitting on the table next
to his bed and he opens up

and they say, "Look, the wine
finally came!"

And he says, "Pity. Too late."

And then lapses back into a
coma and never wakes up.

METRONOME CLICKS

PIANO MUSIC PLAYS

Just before 6pm, March 26th,
1827, Beethoven dies.

He's been lying there for weeks,
turning into a legend and a myth,

and that myth and legend, a romantic
myth, is overtaking the reality

of his life as a man and a musician.

The stories about his death are two.

One is his brother Johann
said, "He died in my arms."

The other is that there was
a storm raging outside

and there was a huge clap
of thunder,

and Beethoven sat bolt upright
from his coma, shook his fist

at the sky and sat back dead.

That is the ultimate romantic
genius death.

And who knows?
It could even have happened.

So, when he's finally left us,

the autopsy takes place and it
comes as no surprise, really,

that the insides of his body

is pretty much devastated.

He suffered from stomach problems
throughout his life

and they found that the insides
of his ears were just decimated.

But the main cause of his death was
the cirrhosis of the liver.

MUSIC: 3. Adagio

So the funeral is fixed for
three days later,

that's the 29th of March.

And an enormous number of people
turn out.

It was estimated that 18,000
people are there,

coming to follow
the funeral procession.

To have a procession like that,
you might expect that for an emperor

or a king, but for a commoner
like Beethoven - as he was -

is quite extraordinary,
so he's really regarded

as the equivalent of
a king of music.

Beethoven is buried like
an aristocrat, which he had always

claimed to be in a moral
and ethical way.

The funeral oration is given
to Franz Grillparzer, the leading

Austrian playwright of his
generation, and he wants

to capture something for the ages

and, in his oration, he does.

"We stand weeping beside the
tattered strings of the
silent instrument.

"Art - great sister of both
goodness and truth,

"consoler of the suffering -
he held fast to thee.

"Because he shut himself
off from the world,

"they called him malevolent.

"And because he avoided sentiment,
they called him unfeeling.

"He withdrew from men after he had
given everything

"and received nothing in return.

"He was alone because he could
find no second self."

Grillparzer, in effect,
sends Beethoven off into eternity

bearing the burden
of his achievement,

bearing the burden of his myth

that fuels the 19th century
in so many ways

and stands as a beacon and a threat

and a challenge to everybody
who followed him.

The contradictions in his life
are enfolded in his music in a way

that is unique to him, that he seems
to speak for all of us.

And he is speaking for our highs
and our lows

and our joys and our sorrows,
and all those sorts of things

that art is supposed to do.

He does in such a powerful and
overwhelming way because he felt

it all, and he felt it in his life
and he felt it in his work.

He's one of the first
who has displayed his full life

and feelings through his music.

Life was not just a straight road
from...you take your lessons, you

go through this, that and the other.
His was all over the place,

but his humanity came even
more to the forefront.

And we have seen all sides
of a man,

a person, a life,
in all its brutal honesty.

Beethoven comes
into the Napoleonic age.

He has to deal with not only
the social disruptions but also

the personal disruptions
that come with every life.

So he is the bourgeois individual
that becomes a genius, and he fits

in with everything that is put
into that pot of being a genius.

Being able to live the genius
part of yourself

and not to repress it
has a high cost.

You really make yourself free,

but not because you want to -
but because you have to.

And Beethoven is so fascinating

because nobody else did it
in such a radical way.

# Freude
# Freude

# Freude, schoner Gotterfunken,
Tochter... #

"Vienna, December 20th, 1822."

"My dear Ries, I have been
so overburdened

"with work that I am only now
able to reply to your letter.

"I accept with pleasure the proposal
to write a new symphony

"for the Philharmonic Society
of London.

"For Beethoven, thank God,
can write,

"if he can do nothing in
the world besides."

# Deine Zauber binden wieder

# Was die Mode streng geteilt

# Alle Menschen werden Bruder

# Wo dein sanfter Flugel weilt... #

I remember, when I was young,
I wanted to change the world,

and Beethoven is somebody
who managed to change the world.

By the 9 Symphony,

Beethoven comes to the point
where he needs something

more radical, more drastic.

He wants the human voice
to enter the symphony.

He lets singers to suddenly
infiltrate the orchestra

and turns the form of a symphony
upside down

by adding chorals and soloists
to it.

He actually, with this simple break,

throwing away the symphony
as a form

and entering a simple,
almost pop melody,

as the great moment of a symphony

created democracy itself.

And this is your melody,
and all of us take part

in the choral symphony.
We all jump up and sing.

Beethoven is the composer
of the human soul.

Beethoven is our composer.

APPLAUSE