3

VIENNA

Strapped for cash but with letters of introduction to some powerful aristocratic contacts and the priceless calling card of his brilliance as a pianist, Beethoven at once began his studies with Haydn. They did not go well. The famous old composer was soon to refer to him with a mixture of amusement and sarcasm as ‘The Grand Mogul’ to describe his young pupil’s manner. Although well able to judge his pupil’s musical brilliance, Haydn noted that Beethoven lacked both discipline and a knowledge of counterpoint. Beethoven was outwardly respectful but evidently felt there was not much he could learn from a man whose heyday had surely passed (he was quite wrong there; Haydn had some of his greatest music still to write) and who anyway represented a style of music from which he needed to liberate himself.

For his part the unhappily married and childless Haydn had probably hoped this young genius from Bonn might treat him affectionately as a father figure. Beethoven could certainly be excused for being disillusioned with father-son relationships; but his disenchantment had left him not the slightest insight into their dynamics, a lack tragically evidenced towards the end of his life when he himself tried to be a surrogate father to his young nephew Karl. What neither Haydn nor Beethoven can have realized was that in a musical sense Haydn was a father figure to his begrudging student. His fame was Europe-wide and secure; his immense reputation cast a deep shadow out of which Beethoven longed to step without knowing how. It was to be many years before he managed it.

The old composer meanwhile was long-suffering, genuinely kind and proud of his impoverished pupil who could afford to pay him only pennies compared with the guinea per lesson that Haydn had been earning in London. His haughty student criticized him behind his back for not correcting his exercises with the attention he felt was his due. The truth was that Haydn was preoccupied with writing the music he had promised he would bring back to London for Salomon’s new season. At any rate in mid-January 1794 he left for England without Beethoven.

Beethoven’s financial state at this time was still miserable, as were his lodgings, but he had put up with it mostly because he always imagined (he was still in his early twenties) that once he was in London where the streets were surely paved with gold he would make plenty of money. With the failure of that scheme, though, and in addition to taking counterpoint lessons from the Kapellmeister at St Stephen’s, Johann Albrechtsberger (lessons that went little better than those with Haydn), he concentrated on acquiring patrons among the nobility. This he accomplished remarkably easily, not only as a pupil of the celebrated Haydn but because of his connections through men such as the Elector Maximilian Francis and Count Waldstein. But his real calling card was the reputation he was making for his sensational piano playing. Nearly all the early concerts he gave were not public in the modern sense but took place in the salons and music rooms of the nobility and grandees, attended by small numbers of discerning listeners. The short, dark-complexioned young firebrand from Bonn was soon recognized as a musician quite out of the ordinary, and aristocratic sons and daughters came to hear him and begged for lessons.