Beethoven's Empire of the Mind

Beethoven's Empire of the Mind. By John Crabbc. Pp. 135. (Lovell-Baines Print, 60 Penwood Heights, Burghclere, Newbury, Berkshire.) 1982 £5.95.

I read through half of this book without there occurring to me a single thing to say about it, either for or against. I began to think at this point, though, that it was becoming increasingly boring and that I might re-quote the quotation from Beethoven, in his joke to the publisher about the C sharp minor Quartet: "a patchwork of pilferings". Or let us say quotations. There is a noteworthy absence of any original idea, and we arrive after each topic at the most pedestrian possible of conclusions; for example: “'to make his guess and comprehend more or less'—this probably applied to a lot of Beethoven's reading of abstract or allegorical material".

The author has read widely on-the subject and familiarized himself with the history of the period and sets out to survey Beethoven's literary and ideological culture. I might mention on the positive side that Beethoven's interest in Kant is brought into focus here, as a welcome change from Hegel. Kant is a mind very much more akin to Beethoven and more to the point, and we find a relevant quotation from him that begins: 'Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more frequently and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within.'

The italicized phrase was written down by Beethoven as a guiding principle. The book is strewn with a collection of quotations, from Beethoven himself and others, that constitutes the only interesting matter in an otherwise unrelievedly unimaginative and tedious recital. Among these quotations are some that have a bearing on questions touched upon in the preceding review, such as this from Goethe on Beethoven: . .-.it is immaterial whether he speaks from feeling or knowledge, for here the gods are at work strewing seeds for future discernment . . .

Beethoven's discourse to Stumpff, as related by Stumpff: When in the evening I contemplate the sky in wonder at the host of luminous bodies continually revolving in their orbits . . . then my spirit rises beyond these constellations so many millions of miles away to the primeval source from which all creation flows and from which new creations shall flow eternally ...
recalls the phrase from Kant and points to the origins of the ninth Symphony, though Crabbe does not sec that. On the contrary, he repeats once again that inane saw, convenient cover for paucity of understanding and intellectual sterility, "music cannot be about anything" and is "a purely abstract art", and proceeds then to enumerate the subjects "about" which Beethoven .wrote—Prometheus, Coriolanus, etc., etc. In short, a book purporting to be the study of a mind of the order of Beethoven, by one of the order exemplified above.
M.McM.