l
person who is acquainted with Beethoven, or ever heard his compositions,
maintain the contrary. Whoever is capable of feeling how powerfully the
pure flame of love operates upon the imagination, more especially of the
sensitive and highly endowed artist, and how in all his productions it
goes before him like a light sent down from Heaven to guide him, will
take it for granted without any evidence that Beethoven was susceptible
of the purest love, and that he was conducted by it. What genius could
have composed the Fantasia in C, commonly called the "Moonlight or the
Moonshine Sonata," without such a passion? It was love, for Bettine, to
whom that imaginative composition is dedicated, (and to whom I shall
again have occasion to allude,) which inspired him while engaged upon
it. This piece will now be performed, and judge for yourselves whether
I have said too much in its praise:--

[Fantasia in C., commonly called the "Moonlight Sonata," to
designate this enthusiastic period of Beethoven's passion.]

In the year 1800, we find Beethoven engaged in the composition of his
"Christ on the Mount of Olives." He wrote this work during his summer
residence at Hetzendorf, a pleasant village, closely contiguous to the
gardens of the imperial palace of Shoenbrunn, where he passed several
summers of his life in profound seclusion. A circumstance connected with
this great work, and of which Beethoven many years afterwards still
retained a lively recollection, was that he composed it in the thickest
part of the wood, in the park of Shoenbrunn, seated between the two stems
of an oak, which shot out from the main trunk at the height of about two
feet from the ground.

About this period Beethoven endured much family annoyance and domestic
trouble. His brothers who had some years previously followed him to
Vienna, began to govern him and to make him suspicious of his sincerest
friends and adherents, from wrong notions or even from jealousy.
Surrounded by friends who loved and esteemed him--his fame already
established--with an ample income, he ought to have been completely
happy; and he certainly would have been but for an infirmity which began
to afflict him, and the persecution of his brothers. His misery both of
mind and body, I can best describe by reading a portion of his
extraordinary will, which he at this time executed, and having that song
sung which he at the same time composed, with special reference to the
tortur