wolfenmann.com

What they call Interests, those have gone;

New ones in their place must be born;

I sit, pensive, pensive ’bout nothing –

Nowhere to go and nothing to sing –

And when I try, ’tis the world’s own discord;

But I can still listen to the Lord.

What they call Passions, those I control;

For if I don’t, they’ll cause misery untold;

I sit motionless, thinking about but nothing –

The heavens to attain if thought but took wing!

But such’s not to try, for it moves of its own accord;

Yet, in such dimness, I can listen to the Lord.

What they call Strength, in me I don’t witness;

Call it or strength, or life, or passion, or finesse;

All’s sapped into but a single thought –

A thought of nothingness, one large Nought;

No Should nor Ought for me now. I can’t afford

Not to keep listening and listening to the Lord.

Beethoven-Lord empowers the survival-will

Of those by Life made miserable-ill;

I go to him who Acts not on Whim;

For dear life now I hang by Him.

Beethoven is the god, and the name is a symbol; the tangible is the music. If I were to have said “this is music,” and generalised it with the sounds we hear, and with other music like pop music, then there would be no Master.

Yes, that is indeed a possibility; it is music for its own sake — and then it would carry infinite potential for degeneration:

Music for its own sake >> Entertainment, for self >> Recreation (which can be useful) >> Fun (where recreation takes on a form where I am the centre) >> The opposite of boredom; a connection with something at all, instead of disconnection from the world including myself, which is death >> Just a means of passing time, where anything else would do and anything really will do to pass the time, because nothing is required >> And therefore, emptiness.

From there, one comes to: If Beethoven indeed is a god, and the symbol of one, and the music is the tangible, can we extend the above idea to our gods, to “God”? The answer is a resounding Yes. Because:

(a) The idea of Beethoven as “God” might be innate to me, but that innate idea of God we all carry; and

(b) When the tangible is music, it blends with the ordinary, the “real,” with what we call life. Music, as has been explored by the intellectuals and as has been experienced every day by the millions, is the bridge between the sensual and the sublime. (That phrase – “the bridge between…” is someone else’s creation; I do not recollect the name.)

Yes, we can extend the idea. But what does that mean? What is it that is useful which emerges from the extension? It is this: To take oneself away from the idea that the symbol is more than the symbol; and hence, to take oneself towards the tangible. That transition is useful.

The example now is Beethoven and the music. When one is stricken by the symbol, one asks: What was that man’s childhood like? Is it a myth that his drunken father forced him into piano lessons, or is it the truth? Was there really a woman whom he called the Immortal Beloved? Did he frequent prostitutes at some stage of his life, or was he celibate to the point of his death? These questions have led to the matter of countless papers and chapters of books, of voluminous speculation, all of which is considerably less constructive than the question of whether one should, or can, or wishes to, consume food of Italian as opposed to Mexican cuisine for lunch.

When one detaches from the symbol, one arrives at the tangible: In this case, the music. After the Appassionata, one hardly needs to question what the man behind the music – two hundred years ago – ate. After the ninth symphony, one does not necessarily wish to know what kind of person the composer was. After op. 131, one scarcely cares whether there was a human responsible for those godly sounds we hear.

So often I have asked people, “Why do you care who the man was? – Why not just listen to the music?” The answer, I suspect, is the all-too-common petty interest in people, which in turn arises from the fact that it is easier to look at a person than to look at a thing. My humble submission is that, were one to genuinely listen to the Mastermusic, one would not care for the human entity behind it. The sublimity is present in the music; no-one need bother about the sublime nature, or otherwise, of the man – and whether this view of the man as Master is valid or not.

Beethoven noted at the brink of the turning point of op. 135 — that turning point which leads to the summary wisdom of not just op. 135 but indirectly of op. 131, and more indirectly of all the five late quartets — “Der schwer gefaßte Entschluß”: “The resolution that is difficult to undertake,” or just “The difficult resolution.”

“What the resolution is” is an idle question. If one listens to the music, the musical answer is obvious, and if one looks for verbal meaning, one is lost — because the music has taken, or should have taken, the listener beyond the question.

The pertinent question here is: Why this statement in the last of the last quartets, the last of the last compositions, the last of the music? Why the statement at the close of the music, as it were? Why at the close of that human lifetime? Why not, say, in the 9th symphony, or in one of the earlier quartets? In fact, why not in the 5th symphony?

The idea-form is certainly one of an ending containing within it the resolve for rebirth. What it was for Beethoven Himself we can never say. For the awestruck listener, that statement — of death and continuity beyond — extends from op. 135 up until wherever he will take it. Perhaps one can take it from there up until one apprehended Beethoven in the first place, thus completing the circle.

The business of life becomes almost unendurably difficult after Beethoven. Someone said very well, “If man’s fate is to suffer in an unfriendly universe, Beethoven’s music motivates the spirit to endure, and even exult in the endurance.” But beyond that “life” which Beethoven grants us the power to endure with impunity is Beethoven Himself: We must endure Him, for Ever.

With this music — Mankind’s highest outward reach into the Beyond — the problems and pitfalls of what we call Life become mere irritants, but along with that, our lofty ideals become simple wishes; our sadnesses are drained of the drama we infuse them with, and become mere memories that will die their natural course; we cannot help comparing our hopes and ambitions with those that the likes of op. 59 and the 9th symphony describe, and they then seem as paltry as the astronomers would have us believe the Earth itself appears when viewed from the expanses of outer space.

In Beethoven our innocence ends. In negative instances, we are shown that we already have all that is needed to stand on our feet. But similarly, in things we call “our own,” we are shown that achievement is a simple matter of work, and no matter of grandeur: How the Hammerklavier moves from desolation to self-sufficiency with no songs sung about the self! How the Appassionata moves from despair to all-destroying victory with nothing to rely on but itself!

There, the casual listener might ask: Is this a self that knows nothing but itself? Does it not acknowledge a higher presence? If it does not, it shall fall some time or the other.

The answer proclaims yet again the ineffability of that universe-in-itself, the meta-phenomenon called Ludwig van Beethoven: The Master does indeed (in the late quartets) see his own limitations. He rises not only above them, He rises not only above the causes of those limitations, He rises not only up until the salvation from those limitations: He rises above the salvation itself. And if more were demanded of a living entity, He demonstrates that there is indeed a Life beyond the salvation — the life that we typically call “everyday life,” and that that life is precious.

Life is worth living despite himself, Beethoven seems to say to himself: To us, we hear in op. 135 that that life is worth living despite Beethoven. The only way to go beyond Beethoven — to survive despite the burden of his legacy — is through Beethoven Himself. The last few messages in opp. 131 and 135 seem to say, “Despite all you have heard, despite all the universes there are to be effortlessly had, despite Me Myself, you must live as though I had never told you anything.” And that we must in any case.