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Correction: Beethoven titled his 3rd Symphony "Bonaparte" - but he later brutally erased the dedication
Photo: Fotogeca Gilardi / akg images
It is one of the most popular anecdotes about the headstrong, otherwise rather apolitical classic: When Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 to 1827) wanted to compose his 3rd symphony, the "Eroica" ("Heroic"), in Vienna in 1802/03 he dedicated it to Bonaparte, the first consul of the French, out of admiration.
He was enthusiastic about the revolutionary will for freedom of the French;
He had often used as many martial brass instruments and drums in his works as his colleagues in Paris.
But in 1804 the Corsican made himself emperor.
Thereupon, it is said, Beethoven, full of anger, tore up the title page of the manuscript, on which it already read “Buonaparte”, and cursed: “He's nothing different from an ordinary person!
Now he will trample all human rights underfoot, only indulge his ambition;
he will now place himself higher than all the others, become a tyrant! "
The story, which has only been widespread since 1838, has hardly happened.
But it has a real core.
Because the copy of the symphony checked by Beethoven has been preserved.
Originally the title was "Sinfonia grande intitulata (titled) Bonaparte".
Then the line with the name was so brutally erased - probably by Beethoven himself - that a hole was made in the paper.
Ultimately, the celebrated composer dedicated the work to one of his patrons, Prince Franz Joseph Maximilian von Lobkowitz.
But he himself wrote on the battered cover sheet at the bottom in pencil that the work was "written in Bonaparte", and he also explained to his Leipzig publisher with typical spelling nonchalance that "the Simphonie is actually called Ponaparte".
When French troops first besieged Vienna in 1805 and then conquered it, when countless soldiers and civilians perished in the wars, when the Danube floodplains north of Vienna became a blood-soaked battlefield in 1809 and soon after the walls of the city had to be blown up on French orders, there was sympathy for the attacker hardly to think about.
Beethoven, however, remained pragmatic despite the horrors of war.
After all, at the beginning of 1809 he was already determined to go to Kassel as a well-paid conductor to the court of Jérôme Bonaparte.
But then rich friends got together and gave him a higher pension, and he stayed in Vienna.
The composer later did not speak out clearly for or against Napoleon.
After all, he called the sole ruler who had returned from Elba in 1815, shortly before the final battle of Waterloo, in a letter a "usurper".
On the other hand, interlocutors and contemporary witnesses have repeatedly said that Beethoven did not want to doubt the “greatness” of the Corsican and that he later spoke of him with respect - on a titan level, so to speak.
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