Schindler's house where he remained asleep all the night and the following morning, fully dressed, neither eating nor drinking. The triumph was only fleeting, however, and the concert brought in nothing for Beethoven. His material circumstances of life were not changed by it. He found himself poor, ill,[1] alone but a conqueror[2]: conqueror of the mediocrity of mankind, conqueror of his destiny, conqueror of his suffering. "Sacrifice, always sacrifice the trifles of life to art! God is over all!"
He had then completed the object of his whole life. He had tasted perfect Joy. Would he be able to rest on this triumph of the soul which ruled the tempest? Certainly he ought to feel the relief from the days of his past anguish. Indeed his last quartets are full of strange forebodings. But it seems that the victory of the Ninth Symphony had left its glorious traces in its nature. The plans which he had for the future:[3] the Tenth
- ↑ In August, 1824, he was haunted with the fear of sudden death "like my grandfather to whom I bear so much resemblance," he wrote on August 16th, 1824, to Dr. Bach.
- ↑ The Ninth Symphony was given for the first time in Germany at Frankfurt on April 1st, 1825; in London on March 25th, 1825; in Paris at the Conservatoire on March 27th, 1831. Mendelssohn, then aged seventeen, gave a performance of it on the piano at the Jaegerhalle in Berlin on November 14th, 1826. Wagner, a student at Leipzig, re-copied it entirely by hand; and in a letter, dated October 6th, 1830, to the publisher, Schott, offered him a reduction of the Symphony for pianoforte duet. One can say that the Ninth Symphony decided Wagner's career.
- ↑ "Apollo and his Muses would not wish to deliver me up to death yet, for I still owe them so much. Before I go to the
