Classic talk: A dishevelled Beethoven finds himself behind bars

‘Don’t you know who I am?’ cut no ice with officers when the composer got lost after a woodland stroll

Ludwig van Beethoven in later life

George Hamilton

January 22 2022 05:00 AM

Unrivalled as a creator of matchless music, peerless as a performer, a gilded star of the Viennese musical scene.... and yet life for Ludwig van Beethoven was by no means plain sailing.

Most obvious was the deafness that began to afflict him in his twenties and left him completely without hearing by the time of death in 1827 aged 56. It is almost inconceivable that he was able to compose his ninth symphony, one of the most significant works in the classical canon, without being able to register a single note.

It became clear while he was working on this, in failing health in the final years of his life, that he was also in dire financial straits. His domestic circumstances had become chaotic, and he no longer took care of his appearance.

He desperately needed somebody to buy his latest completed composition, his Missa solemnis mass. “My low salary and my illness,” he wrote to one of his contacts in the music business, “demand efforts to make a better fortune.”

That illness had encouraged him to spend time at the spa resort of Baden in the heart of the Vienna woods. There he could lose himself in the outdoors. He never lost the love of nature that inspired his great Pastoral Symphony, his sixth.

So, in September on a fine day — it must have been, as he chose not to wear a hat — he put on an old jacket and set off from Baden to enjoy a good walk, an extended spell in the open air, an opportunity to give his thoughts free rein. This was his favoured form of recreation. The landscape pleased him. He got lost in his reverie.

He was out for hours. Shadows lengthened. Daylight turned to dusk. He hadn’t eaten. He was looking particularly dishevelled. He was lost.

He kept going until he reached the next town. There he was spotted peering in windows, looking for clues. Somebody called the constabulary, concerned he might be up to no good.
The law duly arrived and didn’t like what they saw. The clincher was that the unkempt figure was bareheaded. Only a vagrant would be out without a hat. “Don’t you know who I am?” cut no ice. Beethoven doesn’t look like this, he was told. You’re a tramp. You’re under arrest.

So the great man was marched off to the local nick and told he’d be dealt with the following morning. Railing against the injustice of it all, Beethoven was making quite the nuisance of himself. He was roaring and shouting from his cell. Where am I? Somebody here will know me.

When they told him he was in Wiener Neustadt (his walk had taken him almost 20 miles), he demanded they call Anton Herzog. He was the principal of the district school, and also an organist, which was how Beethoven knew him. Herzog was roused from his slumber to come and identify the tramp, which he duly did. And all was well.

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Beethoven spent the night as Herzog’s guest, and the following morning, by way of apology, the Wiener Neustadt mayor sent his official carriage to take Beethoven back to Baden. Clothes maketh the man? Or not, as the case may be.

George Hamilton presents ‘The Hamilton Scores’ on RTÉ lyric fm from 10am each Saturday and Sunday.