At the age of 19, he subscribed to a book of Jacobin poetry by Eulogius Schneider and, in the years that followed, peppered his writings with revolutionary sentiments. As a young man, he was, admittedly, attracted by the ideals of the French Revolution. On closer examination, Beethoven’s relationship with Napoleon appears to have been more subtle than Schindler and Ries suggested. Schindler was, moreover, a known democrat, and – having destroyed or doctored many of Beethoven’s papers after the composer’s death – may well have twisted his tale to make it seem as if Beethoven’s views accorded more with his own. Though Bernadotte had indeed served as the French ambassador to Austria, he had quit his post in disgrace in 1798 and had not been back since. His claim that the idea of naming the symphony after Napoleon had been suggested by Bernadotte is demonstrably false. Schindler’s version is particularly suspect. Although Beethoven’s violent erasure of the original title can still be seen on the manuscript cover, the accounts given by Schindler and Ries are less reliable than they first appear. Thanks to Schindler and Ries, it is often thought that, having once admired Napoleon as the apotheosis of revolutionary principles, the composer, true to his republican beliefs, later reviled him for sacrificing them to his own ambition and, after removing the Third Symphony’s original title, held the name ‘Bonaparte’ in contempt ever after.īut it would be dangerous to accept this unquestioningly. This episode has become the stuff of legend, giving rise to an abiding image of Beethoven as a lover of liberty, an admirer of the French Revolution and – above all – a republican. Thenceforth, the work would be known simply as the Sinfonia Eroica (the ‘Heroic’ Symphony). Flying into a rage, the composer shouted: ‘So he is no more than a common mortal! Now he, too, will tread underfoot all the rights of man indulge only his ambition now he will think himself superior to all men become a tyrant!’ Snatching up a pen, Beethoven then strode over to the score and scribbled out the title so violently that he tore through the paper. Not long after putting the final touches to his symphony, Ries came to him with news that, on, Napoleon had declared himself Emperor of France. As soon as the score was finished, in early 1804, he wrote the Italian words ‘ Sinfonia intitolata Bonaparte’ (‘Symphony entitled Bonaparte’) on the cover and left the manuscript on a table so that all his friends could see.īut Beethoven was in for a nasty surprise. Whatever the case, Beethoven’s enthusiasm for Bonaparte was unflinching. As Ries explained, Beethoven had the ‘highest esteem’ for Napoleon and ‘compared him to the greatest consuls of ancient Rome’. But, according to Beethoven’s pupil Ferdinand Ries, the idea was the composer’s own. According to his biographer and sometime secretary Anton Schindler, it had first been suggested by Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, the French ambassador to Austria. While Beethoven was labouring over the score, he decided to name the symphony after Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul of France. Vast in scope and strikingly original in style, it was bold, daring, even triumphalist. 35), it was unlike anything he had written before.
Though inspired by some of his earlier works, especially the so-called Eroica Variations (Op. Before long, he had the outlines of a completely new symphony – his third – clear in his mind. Wandering through the countryside, sketchbook in hand, he began toying with a theme in E flat major. In the preceding weeks he had been deeply depressed by the realisation that he was going deaf but there, surrounded by nature, he recovered his spirits and found a new sense of musical purpose. In April 1802, Ludwig van Beethoven left Vienna for Heiligenstadt, a village about five miles to the north.
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