Life of Beethoven: Including His Correspondence with His Friends, Numerous Characteristic Traits, and Remarks on His Musical Works

“I am that which is.”

— Anton Schindler

“Handel is the unequalled master of all masters! Go, turn to him, and learn, with few means, how to produce such effects.””

— Anton Schindler

“BEETHOVEN should by no means be offered as a model for directors of orchestras. The performers under him were obliged cautiously to avoid being led astray by their conductor, who thought only of his composition, and constantly laboured to depict the exact expression required by the most varied gesticulations. Thus, when the passage was loud, he often beat time downwards, when his hand should have been up. A diminuendo he was in the habit of making by contracting his person, making himself smaller and smaller; and when a pianissimo occurred, he seemed to slink, if the word is allowable, beneath the conductor's desk. As the sounds increased in loudness, so did he gradually rise up, as if out of an abyss; and when the full force of the united instruments broke upon the ear, raising himself on tiptoe, he looked of gigantic stature, and, with both his arms floating about in undulating motion, seemed as if he would soar to the clouds. He was all motion, no part of him remained inactive, and the entire man could only be compared to a perpetuum mobile. When his deafness increased, it was productive of frequent mischief, for the maestro's hand went up when it ought to have descended. He contrived to set himself right again most easily in the piano passages, but of the most powerful fortes he could make nothing. In many cases, however, his eye afforded him assistance, for he watched the movements of the bows, and, thus discovering what was going on, soon corrected himself.””

— Anton Schindler

“Beethoven was most awkward and helpless, and his every movement completely void of grace. He seldom laid his hand upon anything without breaking it: thus he several times emptied the contents of the inkstand into the neighbouring piano. No one piece of furniture was safe with him, and least of all a costly one: he used either to upset, stain, or destroy it. How he ever managed to learn the art of shaving himself still remains a riddle, leaving the frequent cuts visible in his face quite out of the question. He never could learn to dance in time.””

— Anton Schindler

“Beethoven esteemed Mozart and Handel most of all composers, and next to them S. Bach.””

— Anton Schindler

“Fortune's wheel is round, and does not always halt before the best and noblest.””

— Anton Schindler

“I now sometimes write three or four things at the same time.””

— Anton Schindler

“and I may say I feel stronger and better”

— Anton Schindler

“To perform Beethoven's music, without regard to meaning and clearness, is hunting to death the ideas of the immortal composer. This mode of performance naturally arises out of the manifest ignorance of the sublime spirit of those works.””

— Anton Schindler