Beethoven
by H. L. Mencken...Well what sort of man emerges from these almost endless pages of fact and surmise, gossip and tradition? In brief, a man who somehow lives up to his music — a man who, in spite of his puns, his lawsuits, his braggadocio, this dirty cuffs, his grotesque amours, his feuds with publishers and his moods of almost operatic despair, was obviously and unquestionably great.
Surrounded all his life long by men of his own craft, and some of them the first talents of the time, he differed from them enormously, not only in degree but also in kind. The mind that he brought to the problems of his art was different in every way from their minds. He saw music differently: he sensed possibilities in it that they were entirely unaware of; he began his study of it where even the best of them left off. And the feelings that he put into tone, once he had conquered the old technic and invented his own super-technic, were infinitely nobler than the feelings of any of those men, and infinitely more subtle and profound.
It was a bizarre jest of the gods to pit Beethoven, in his first days in Vienna, against Papa Haydn. Haydn was undeniably a genius of the first water, and after Mozart's death, had no apparent reason to fear a rival. If he did not actually create the symphony as we know it today, then he at least enriched the form with its first genuine masterpieces — and not with a scant few, but literally with dozens.
Tunes of the utmost loveliness gushed from him like oil from a well. More, he knew how to manage them; he was a master of musical architectonics. If his music is sniffed at today, then it is only by fools; there are at least six of his symphonies that are each worth all the cacophony hatched by a whole herd of Strawinkis and Eric Saties, with a couple of Tchaikovskys thrown in to flavor the pot.
But when Beethoven stepped in, then poor old Papa had to step down. It was like pitting a gazelle against an aurochs. One colossal bellow, and the combat is over. Musicians are apt to look at it as a mere contest of technicians. They point to the vastly greater skill and ingenuity of Beethoven — his firmer grasp upon his materials, his greater daring and resourcefulness, his far better understanding of dynamics, rhythms and clang-tints — in brief, his tremendously superior musicianship.
But that was not what made him so much better than Haydn — for Haydn, too, had his superiorities; for example, his far readier inventiveness, his capacity for making better tunes. What lifted Beethoven above the old master, and above all other men of music save perhaps Bach and Brahms, was simply his greater dignity as a man.
The feelings that Haydn put into tone were the feelings of a country pastor, a rather civilized stockbroker, a viola player gently mellowed by Kulmacher. When he wept it was the tears of a woman who has discovered another wrinkle; when he rejoiced it was with the joy of a child on Christmas morning.
But the feelings that Beethoven put into his music were the feelings of a god. There was something Olympian in his snarls and rages, and there was a touch of hellfire in his mirth.
Most political pundits on the national scene today are timid and superficial. Their political correctness and the manors they own in Fairfax, Virginia hold them back from being honest. But H. L. Mencken was a true pundit of the people who told it like it is -- and in an engaging, plain English style that brims with intelligence and is often hilarious.
Several compilations of H. L. Mencken's writings are out there. The Impossible H. L. Mencken is certainly one of the best.
Edited and annotated by Mencken scholar, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, the book shows the broad range of Mencken's writing on subjects like journalists, presidential conventions, congressmen, food, music, and the American language.&nsbp; I own the thick paperback edition which is printed in a larger found and is very easy to pick up and read.
