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In a Major and Minor Mood - Ludwig van Beethoven

© John McManamy

"You will sacrifice your rules to your moods, for you seem to me to be a man of many heads and hearts."

No one had ever heard music anything like it before. It soared, it flew, it triumphed against all natural laws, all while struggling against itself in a way that suggested no possible resolution. On one hand, he remained true to the classicism of Mozart and Haydn, on the other the sheer power and passion of his work broke the mold forever.

Say hello to Ludwig van Beethoven, the most influential composer of all time.

We know him best, of course, by his Choral Symphony, but the Beethoven aficionados have their own favorites: The Seventh Symphony, the Emperor Concerto, the Waldstein Sonata, the later string quartets. There's no right or wrong choice, here. Sometimes, it can be a Beethoven moment as opposed to a whole piece: the coda in the Egmont Overture, the stormy intro to his Eroica Symphony, the trombones barking out their lofty challenge in the last movement of the Fifth Symphony.

His life could fill up a segment on Oprah: an abusive father who tried to exploit him as a child prodigy, an infatuation for women who were totally out of reach, a tragic deafness that defies imagination, the comical frequency in which he shifted residences in Vienna, his disillusionment with Napoleon, his unkempt appearance and lack of personal hygiene, a man with a vision of universal brotherhood increasingly withdrawing into himself.

It's almost tempting to stop right there, as if his tormented life were reason enough to explain his exalted music, but the written record demands a closer look. Beethoven wrote a lot of letters and so did his friends, and in the book, Manic Depression and Creativity (Prometheus Books, 1999), authors D Jablow Hershman and Dr Julian Lieb argue quite convincingly that the great composer was manic depressive:

"I joyfully hasten to meet death," Beethoven wrote as his deafness made itself apparent, "... for will it not deliver me from endless suffering?"

This was no isolated event. An 1801 letter to a friend refers to a two-year-long depression. The next year he is begging Providence for "but one more day of pure joy." In 1813, he may have attempted suicide, disappearing and being found three days later. In 1816, he wrote: "During the last six weeks my health has been so shaky, so that I often think of death, but without fear ..."

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