Cosima's Diaries

Diary Entry of February 15, 1871

Overview

Misunderstandings with Zurich and Richard's illness unsettle the day, while his frustration with the coronation march reveals his need for a dramatic or imaginative vehicle. The musicians arrive, and the household abandons the forbidding Grosse Fuge for another Beethoven quartet, which becomes more instructive than pleasurable because of Richard's condition. Cosima and Richard reflect on Beethoven's organic musical life, where themes bloom from the whole rather than serving as conventional starting points.

Content

Wednesday, February 15:

Hither and thither with Zurich; fears that we have been misunderstood. R. is unwell; he says to me, "Poor woman, you have already suffered much, and I don't deserve that."

Yesterday he showed great displeasure with his march: "I can't do things when I can't imagine something behind it. And if I imagine something, it gets out of hand. A march is an absurdity; the most it can be is a popular song, but it is not meant to be sung, which is nonsensical. I must have some great vehicle on which I can reel off my music; like this I can do nothing."

Around four o'clock our musicians arrive; we start on the so-called Grosse Fuge, respectfully acknowledging that it can be interpreted correctly only by the greatest virtuosos and only after long study, and abandon it, taking up instead the Quartet Opus 130, in B-flat major. We should have enjoyed it greatly, "The first part is our Beethoven, plus Beethoven, one might say, to use a French expression," says R., if Richard had not been unwell, so for me it was a fine lesson, but not a pleasure.

When I tell R. that the scherzoso reminds me of Haydn, the finale of Mozart, he says: "Yes, it is like with children, when we suddenly see unfulfilled volitions planted by Nature in our ancestors putting in an appearance, thus bringing to light the wonderful resemblances between succeeding generations; it is like that here."

I told him that for me the difference between Beethoven's music and that of the others also seemed to me to lie in the fact that his melodies arise out of the whole tonal fabric, in the way that a flower arises out of the whole plant, whereas other composers think up a theme with more or less ease, then append to it their musical work, their fugues, canons, counterthemes, etc.

When yesterday we exclaimed, "Ah, that is Beethoven," I asked myself what we meant by that. With other composers, Mendelssohn, for example, when we say, "That is he," we are defining some routine, an inborn or assumed manner which crops up in unthinking moments; with Beethoven, however, we are recognizing the spirits which he alone can conjure up.