On March 29, 1827, 1 in 10 Viennese, that is, about 20,000 mourners accompanied the coffin that carried the remains of perhaps the most human of all composers in history: Ludwig van Beethoven. After a long procession and a solemn mass in the Dreifaltigkritskirche, that is to say in the church of the Holy Trinity, his remains were deposited in the Währing Cemetery.
But let’s go back in history 5 days before, that is, March 24, 1827. Beethoven opened a box of wines from his cradle around the Rhine. Such was his condition that he could barely take a few small sips. That day he signed his will giving away everything he owned to his nephew Karl. By the morning of March 26, the teacher’s condition was already very delicate.
His brotherly friend Stephan von Breuning, whose family had unconditionally supported Beethoven from his youth, and his secretary Schindler, went out to find a place to bury the teacher. In the care of the dying Ludwig remained the pianist and great friend Anselm Hüttenbrenner.
It was a tragic day. There were dense clouds in the sky to the point of almost completely darkening it. It was 4 in the afternoon and strong winds were whipping the city in the middle of an unexpected snowstorm. The thunder rattled the wooden floors of the room, paired with the menacing reflections generated by the flashes of lightning reflected off the snow.
At that moment, it is said, Beethoven opened his eyes with a menacing look looking at the sky, and after raising his anguishingly clenched fist, his hand falls to take his last breath. Beethoven was gone. The funeral took place on March 29, 1827. In the courtyard of the building, known as “the house of the black Spaniard” where Beethoven lived, a crowd began to gather. All schools and study centers closed in mourning.
Paradoxically it was a sunny spring day. Already in the cemetery, the actor Heinrich Anschütz read the funeral oration, written by the poet Franz Grillparzer: An instrument now silenced. Let me call it that! Because he was an artist, and what he had, he had only through Art.
The thorns of life had wounded him deeply, and like the shipwrecked man who clings to the shore that saves him, he clung to your arms, Oh, wonderful sister of Good and Truth, You, consolation of the wounded heart, You, Art, born in Heaven…! He clung to You tightly, and even when the gate through which You had approached him and spoke to him was closed, and when his deaf ear blinded his vision of your features, even then he kept Your image within his heart, and when he died she was still resting on his chest.
He was an artist, and who will be able to stand next to him? Because in the same way that a giant advances rejecting with contempt the waves that oppose him, he advanced to the most extreme limits of his art. From the cooing of the doves, to the hoarse trepidation of the thunder; from the most subtle harmonies, woven with the most skilful resources of art, to that terrible point in which that same fabric unravels in the uncontrolled explosion of the forces of nature… he traversed everything, encompassed everything.
The one who follows him cannot simply continue on his way, he will have to start all over again. Because he got to the same place where art ends. By 1888, his remains would be transferred to the Zentralfriedhof or Main Cemetery in Vienna. His body is gone, but his spirit lives on in his music and in the hearts of all of us. In a Sigh…
2023-09-04 07:37:15
#music #breath
