Ludwig van Beethoven
- “But about those great waves of music that interest me – I had the impression they must be located well above the world of thought....
It's not exactly like geography, you know!
But anyway, it's right on the border of the higher hemisphere.... It's the first expression of Consciousness as joy. I remember finding that same vibration of joy in Beethoven and Bach (in Mozart also, but to a lesser degree). The first time I heard Beethoven's concerto in D – in D major, for violin and orchestra ... suddenly the violin starts up (it's not right at the beginning – first there's an orchestral passage and then the violin takes it up), and with the first notes of the violin (Ysaÿe was playing, what a musician!), with the very first notes my head suddenly seemed to burst open, and I was cast into such splendor.... Oh, it was absolutely wonderful! For more than an hour I was in a state of bliss. Ysaÿe was a true musician!”[1]
“I explained to you the other day that before leaving the physical body, the psychic being decides most often what its next rebirth will be, the environment in which it will take birth and what its occupation will be, because it needs a certain field for its experience. So it may happen that very big writers and very big musicians take birth another time in somebody quite imbecile. And you say: “What! it is not possible!” Naturally it does not always happen like that, but it may. There was a case in which the contrary happened: it was a violin player, the most wonderful of the century.... (Mother tries to remember.) Just wait, I knew his name and it is gone — it came back and is gone again. What was his name?... Ysaÿe! he was a Belgian and a violinist, truly the most wonderful violinist
of the epoch. Well, that man had most certainly in him a reincarnation of Beethoven. Not perhaps a reincarnation of his entire psychic being, but in any case, that of his musical capacity. He had the appearance, the head of Beethoven, I saw him, I heard him (I did not know him, I knew nothing, I was at a concert in Paris and they were giving the concerto in D major), I saw him coming on the stage to play and I said: “Strange! How much this man looks like Beethoven, he is the very portrait of Beethoven!” Then it just started with a stroke of the bow, three, four notes.... Everything changed, the atmosphere was changed. All became absolutely wonderful. Three notes started off with such power, such grandeur, so wonderful it was, nothing stirred, all waited. And he played that from beginning to end in an absolutely unique manner with an understanding I have not met with in any other executant. And then I saw that the musical genius of Beethoven was in him.... But perhaps Beethoven’s psychic being had taken body in a shoemaker or anybody else, one does not know! It wanted to have another kind of experience.
For what I saw in this man was a formation belonging to an earthly plane, it was mental-vital; and as Beethoven had disciplined his whole mental, vital and physical being around his musical capacity, that had remained in form, it was a living thing, and had incarnated in that man, just as it was, but not necessarily Beethoven’s psychic being. In his former life it was the psychic being of Beethoven that had shaped all those other beings, the psychic being that had disciplined them around musical creation; but after his death, it cannot at all be said whether the psychic being remained there; it must have returned to the psychic world as is the usual rule. That however had been formed, had its own life, independent and existing in itself. It was formed for a certain manifestation and it remained to manifest itself. And as soon as it found a fit instrument, it entered there to manifest itself.”[2]
“Among the great modern musicians there have been several whose consciousness, when they created, came into touch with a higher consciousness. […] Beethoven, when he composed the Ninth Symphony, had the vision of an opening into a higher world and of the descent of a higher world into this earthly plane.”[3]
“There can be no doubt that Beethoven’s music was often from another world; so it is quite possible for it to give the key to an inwardly sensitive hearer or to one who is seeking or ready for the connection to be made. But I think it is very few who get beyond being aesthetically moved by a sense of greater things; to lay the hand on the key and use it is rare.”[4]
- ↑ Agenda, 27 October 1962
- ↑ Questions and Answers 1953, p.262
- ↑ Questions and Answers 1929-1931, p.111
- ↑ Letters on Poetry and Art, p.533
See also
External links
- Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D Major, performed by Stanisław Moniuszko School of Music, Poland (YouTube, 44:59)
- Eugène Ysaÿe on Wikipedia
- Ode to Joy (Beethoven's 9th) flashmob advertisement (YouTube, 5:40)