Beethoven was an isolation expert. He was born 250 years ago, and he died in 1827.  After his death, an unsent letterwas found among his various papers.  Written when he was around thirty years old, Beethoven addressed the letter to his “brothers”, but he wrote to the world and the future.  

Oh you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn, or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me? You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you….  Though born with a fiery, active temperament, even susceptible to the diversions of society, I was soon compelled to withdraw myself, to live life alone. If at times I tried to forget all this, oh how harshly I was I flung back by the doubly sad experience of my bad hearing. Yet it was impossible for me to say to people, "Speak louder, shout, for I am deaf." Ah, how could I possibly admit an infirmity in the one sense which ought to be more perfect in me than others...

My misfortune is doubly painful to me because I am bound to be misunderstood; for me there can be no relaxation with my fellow men, no refined conversations, no mutual exchange of ideas. I must live almost alone, like one who has been banished; I can mix with society only as much as true necessity demands... 

 —Ludwig van Beethoven, Heiligenstadt, October 6th, 1802

Beethoven prevailed over his affliction and lived and worked for nearly three more decades. He composed triumphant music, like his Seventh symphony. He found spiritual gratification in works like his Missa Solemnis. He even composed a musical monument to freedom, joy, togetherness: his ninth symphony. 

He was alone, though. He couldn’t hear a chorus. He couldn’t hear applause.  He never married.  He had just a few loyal friends. He was often sheltered-at-home with difficulty breathing, humiliating gastrointestinal ailments, and gout.  

His deeply personal late period works seem to reflect the isolated universe Beethoven increasingly retreated into. Private essays in sound, his late period sonatas and string quartets are strange, incendiary, obsessive, celestial, and sometimes profoundly sad... He admitted in a letter to a friend that one of these late works, in fact, had the power to move even him, its author, to tears: the “cavatina” of his string quartet no. 13, Opus 130. 

A “cavatina” is a solo song.  And Beethoven’s cavatina unfolds like a solo, with cello, viola, violin-two accompanying a plain, slowly sung, lonely melody in the first violin. The first violin is a solo singer.  

About two-thirds through the cavatina, Beethoven provides an unusual instruction in the quartet’s score: beklemmt. It is not a common music term. Translations include choked, oppressed, tight-chested. The music transforms radically and suddenly. The violin solo, now gaunt, stutters through clipped utterances over a faint pulse.  

Here’s the Miro Quartet playing this moment:

(You can find this music and lots more using your library card to access the Naxos streaming music.)

Coronavirus patients suffer with shallow breath, dry and painful throats, lungs that cannot fill. Beklemmt… This centuries old music is poignant in our time. 

I’ve been meditating on a different moment of this cavatina, though.  About two-and-a-half minutes in, measure 23, violin-two emerges from the accompaniment and offers a tune to the lonely soloist.  “Sotto voce”—hushed—a falling fifth, followed by three patient triplets. Violin-two sings just the beginning of a melody that is then repeated and continued by the solo violin. 

What is this tender, downward melody coming from an inner voice of the quartet? A blurry echo before its sound?  Muffled words you can’t quite hear? 

A cold washcloth gently lowered onto a feverish forehead?  An extended helping hand, reaching down to lift you up? A sympathizing friend, reassuring from a distance? 

Here’s the exchange between the two violins:

(You can find this music and lots more using your library card to access the Naxos streaming music.)

During this 250 birth anniversary year, we have celebrated how Beethoven’s music continues to resonate with democratic revolution, with freedom, and with universal fellowship. We've been recalling what Beethoven was able to accomplish in spite of his affliction.  But at this moment, as we are forced apart by pandemic, let’s celebrate another, more humble aspect of Beethoven’s art.  

Beethoven teaches us to empathize with the isolated.  When we emerge from this shared crisis, we should remember people like Beethoven—people who can’t escape their isolation: disabled people, people suffering through illness, people alienated from our society, people excluded.  

We all now know to some degree what isolation feels like.  Beethoven’s “Cavatina” expresses the pain of isolation and the sweet relief of a comforting companion.      

Watch a gorgeous performance by the Parker Quartet of the entire “Cavatina” (Mvmt. V) from Beethoven’s String Quartet no. 13, Opus 130. 

Listen for Violin-two at minute 2:20. 

Listen for Beklemmt at minute 4:09.