Le dernier Beethoven

This study is, above all, the outcome of a long-lasting personal concern that goes back to the period of my first music lessons and my attempts to play Beethoven's music on the piano. My passion for certain musical compositions, the care to interpret them in the way, with the sensitivity and in keeping with their creator's intentions might be translated as follows: 1 wish to perform as if he could hear me and could recognize himself in the music I performed. I was fi lied, at a very early age, with the desire to know as much as possible about his personality, his life, the events and the circumstances that led to the birth of his work. It is obvious and easy to prove, based on Beethoven's own notes and the testimonies of those who have written about him for nearly two hundred years, that there were external triggers, such as social and even historical events or happenings, which activated certain musical themes that his genius and sensitivity gave expression in the form known to us today. In this study, I will speak, at the appropriate time, about situations, contexts and events of this kind: family problems, like the affair involving his nephew Karl, or sentimental issues, like the "lmmortal Beloved" (Der Unsterbliche Geliebte), the drama entailed by hearing Joss, the evolution of event on the European stage during the Napoleonic and post­ Napoleonic periods, etc. Second, this study represents a strictly theoretical undertaking. I wish to present, according to my own understanding, the connections formed throughout the nearly three decades of disease between Beethoven's hearing impairment and his musical creation. Beyond the medical situation that he responded to with understandable panic, with a mixture of helplessness, tremor and depression, which brought him close to the brink of suicide in around the year 1803, the Joss of hearing opened an agonizing horizon in the composer's existence, a horizon against which he waged his battle with destiny. This is the theme, his perception, which led him to take on the image and role of a Hero, of a Titan, strained under the bleak attempts of the divine machinations that he met with courage and, sometimes, even with defiance. It was from these strains that some of his most complex, powerful, expressive and innovative works gushed forth, from his Third and Ninth Symphonies to the piano sonatas and several other compositions for strings. Beethoven was, according to Wagner's very suggestive comparison, the equivalent of Tiresias. Thus, shifting between levels of expression, he could hear pure music with an ear that was no longer disturbed or corrupted by outside sounds. The music he heard and transmitted gushed out of himself, from the depths of his being, which was marked by dignity and prophetic drama in equal measure. His internal hearing was already sensitive to the sounds of the World, to the rhythms of Phenomena, to the turmoil and syncopes of Life. Like Tiresias, Beethoven was a prophet who could hear, understand and transmit the mysterious music of the world to the future centuries. He could hear the music of paradise and convey it in the Pastoral Symphony, he could hear the sublime joy of human brotherhood and convey it at the end of the Ninth Symphony, he could hear the sounds of death and hell and convey them in the serious, funeral passages of the Eroica Symphony of the Hammerklavier Sonata. He could hear the ceaseless melody of life's flow through time, he could understand the sonata of nature, the dance of light, the verve of joy, but also the twilight, pain and night, the end. He could hear the music from which this universe of illusory, transient and capricious forms was made, this universe which we call reality. This, I believe, is the "Last" Beethoven.L'étude présente est avant tout le résultat d'une préoccupation personnelle de longue durée, qui commence avec mes premières leçons de piano et mes tentatives de jouer la musique de Beethoven. Le désir de savoir autant que possible sur la personnalité, la vie, les événements et les situations qui ont conduit à la naissance d'une œuvre est apparu très tôt. Il est évident et simple à démontrer, par ses propres notes et les témoignages de ceux qui ont écrit sur lui depuis presque deux cents ans, que Beethoven a eu des circonstances extérieures, des événements et des occurrences sociales, même historiques, qui ont déclenché certains thèmes musicaux, auxquels son propre génie et sa sensibilité ont trouvé la forme d'expression qui nous est connue aujourd'hui. Ensuite, deuxièmement, il s'agit dans cette étude d'un engagement strictement théorique. Je souhaite exposer les liens formés le long des presque trois décennies de maladie, entre la déficience auditive et la création musicale de Beethoven. Au-delà de la situation de nature médicale qu'il a accueillie avec une explicable panique, avec un mélange d'impuissance et de dépression, qui l'ont mené au seuil du suicide, presque, environ l'année 1803, la perte de l'ouïe a ouvert un horizon agonique dans l'existence du compositeur, un horizon qui a marqué sa lutte avec le destin. Celui-ci est le thème, sa perception, qui le déterminera à assumer l'image et le rôle du Héros, du Titan tendu sous les épreuves sombres des machinations divines qu'il accueille avec courage et, des fois, même avec défi. C'est de ces tensions que jaillissent quelques-unes de ses œuvres les plus complexes, puissantes, expressives et novatrices, depuis la Symphonie no.3 et jusqu'à la 9ème, les sonates pour piano et certaines de ses compositions pour cordes. Le modèle héroïque a été sans doute salvateur, une circonstance d'émulation titanique qui a aidé Beethoven à mener si loin, dans le sens créatif, sa lourde et, en quelque sorte, ironique déficience. Il faut admettre, d'autre part, que, en dehors de ce modèle romantique de se rapporter au destin par le recours au Héros et au Titan - figures de la grandiose culture grecque classique - on a du mal à déceler la relation du compositeur avec Dieu dans le sens chrétien, sa manière d'intégrer une vision, un sens de la vie fondé sur celui-ci. Certes, Missa Solemnis en Ré majeur op.123, la Symphonie no.9 et quelques autres ouvrages ou parties d'ouvrages, entretiennent l'avis que Beethoven a composé, tout comme Bach, son modèle et maître favori, de la musique de glorification de Dieu. Et si cela est tout à fait vrai, alors notre mission de comprendre son passage par des modèles culturels et religieux si différents devient encore plus difficile