Beethoven was totally devastated by secret son’s harsh existence

A SCRUFFY, humorous rebel who craved love, was crushed by his secret son’s harsh life, but who knew his genius music would still be loved centuries later.

Ludwig van Beethoven, who was born in Germany in 1770 and died in 1827, was not the sort of person you probably thought he was — he may even have enjoyed a bit of Chuck Berry!

Susan Lund, a Hull-born, London-based 72-year-old, has penned a series of books on the man who is many classical fans’ greatest idol.

But when she came to the conclusion about his son, and then looked again at how this part of Beethoven’s life had shaped his music, Susan discovered a whole new side to him.

“It’s clear he loved a woman called Antonie Brentano, an aristocrat who had been married at 17 to a man she didn’t love,” says Susan. “I’m convinced her son, Karl Josef, was Beethoven’s child.”

Born in 1813, but never seen by Beethoven, illness struck the lad in childhood, severely limiting his movement and his mental capacity.

For Susan, this marked the beginning of Beethoven’s barren years, where he wrote nothing and later came up with some very dark, doom-laden pieces.

If things had been different, she reckons, we’d still enjoy his music today, but it would be much lighter.

“Antonie Brentano has been a question raging since Beethoven’s lifetime,” Susan admits. “Those were different times, and she was married to someone else. She was a noblewoman, a real aristocrat.

“Destined for the convent, she was brought up by nuns after her mother died when she was eight. Her father married her off to a rich merchant twice her age, a man she hardly knew.

“Beethoven got to know the family, visiting regularly.

“When she was unhappy, Antonie would stay in bed and couldn’t be roused.

“But Beethoven played piano for her, and this brought her back to life.

“Their relationship developed,” adds Susan.

“He had been messed around by women, and she had been married off. Her husband was a good man, but she hadn’t chosen him.

“When she had their son, this would affect Beethoven’s later music.

“This is the problem, you see — people who don’t know about Karl Josef don’t understand what effect it had on Beethoven.”

As Susan explains, Beethoven was a far more complex character than many of us realised.

“Beethoven knew he was a genius, but he didn’t need to go around being the big hero,” she points out.

“They called him ‘Our Beethoven’, like we English say ‘Our Shakespeare’.

“Politically, these days, he would be seen as very rebellious, and there were times when his only opera, Fidelio, was played, and that cry of ‘Freedom!’ provoked people.

“He had thought that Napoleon was going to free Europe and make it the sort of Europe people wanted.

“But then Napoleon went and declared himself Emperor.

“Beethoven had dedicated Eroica, Symphony No 3, to Napoleon, but when he had announced himself as Emperor, Beethoven scratched out the dedication. This wasn’t what he’d wanted at all.

“He’d thought Napoleon would be this great force for good and freedom across Europe, but he turned out not to be that.

“He literally crowned himself, and Beethoven was not best pleased at all.”

It’s thought that Beethoven’s deafness started after he went into a furious rage about being interrupted during his work.

He fell over, and was deaf when he stood up again.

Some reckon tinnitus, even typhus or other disorders contributed.

Others, however, have blamed his deafness on the habit of immersing his head in freezing water to stay awake and compose through the night. Susan, however, says this is a myth.

“I don’t think it’s true,” she says. “The story goes that Maximiliane, Antonie’s 10-year-old daughter, was the only child Beethoven ever gave a piece of music to. It was a little one-movement piano trio, written just for her.

“Once, he was playing the piano for the family and Maxi thought he was getting hot-headed, so she poured iced water over him!

“That’s where it comes from, and he obviously didn’t take offence as he wrote the piece for her!”

What would this great man have made of The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, jazz, or today’s technology in which any kid in a back room can have a virtual symphony orchestra on his computer?

“He would have liked it all and used it,” Susan says.

“Chuck Berry’s Roll Over Beethoven, for instance, is actually a good piece of music that is lively and it works — if Beethoven was alive today, he would do variations on it, I’m sure.

“As for the modern technology, he wouldn’t think it was cheating to have orchestral samples. He would have loved to have an iPad to help him with his writing.

“He would be writing out his thoughts and then experimenting with different instruments and arrangements.

“For instance, how would it sound when played in a certain setting?

“Being Beethoven, he wouldn’t need the iPad to trigger the original idea, of course, but he would have used it to help him, especially after he was deaf. Of course, modern technology might have helped with the deafness, too.”

Susan believes the reason we imagine Beethoven as constantly unhappy-looking, and indeed wrote some very dark music, was down to sadness about his lack of love and his son.

However, she points out that he didn’t have a permanent cloud over him and he had a more relaxed side to him, too.

“On the cover of my latest book, I have him walking in the country,” Susan says.

“Also, Beethoven loved puns, he was always making them, and he did have a sense of humour.

“Bear in mind, he was never wealthy until he turned 40 and got his annuity.

“In those days, a man couldn’t find a wife if he was not wealthy, and Beethoven was not a wealthy man. He was never ‘loaded’.”

He could also come out with some controversial opinions on religion, at a time when that was definitely not a wise idea, especially when you were not Catholic but were paid to write Masses.

It would have been intriguing to see how we took to him in this country, if he had ever visited — apparently, he almost did, but never quite got round to setting foot on British shores.

“He almost came here several times,” Susan reveals. “The Ninth Symphony was actually commissioned by the Philharmonic Society of London, for I think 50 pounds or 50 guineas.”

We’ll never know what the great man would have made of our islands — but he wouldn’t have to walk far today before he heard his music being played somewhere.

Beethoven: Life Of An Artist, by Susan Lund, is out now.