The Boy Who Snipped the Lock

Beethoven's Hair: An Extraordinary Historical Odyssey and a Scientific Mystery Solved
by Russell Martin

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It was not until 1871 that Kapellmeister Ferdinand Hiller, the corpulent dean of music in the Rhine-side city of Cologne, first described for fascinated German readers what it had been like to meet Ludwig van Beethoven and what, in fact, the circumstances of the master composer's final days had been. "I can scarcely blame myself, much as I regret it, for not taking down more extended notes than I did," sixty-year-old Hiller wrote. "Indeed, I rejoice that a lad of fifteen years who found himself in a great city for the first time was self-possessed enough to regard any details. [But] I can vouch with the best conscience for the perfect accuracy of all that I am able to repeat."

Ferdinand Hiller had made the snow-slowed journey from Weimar to musical, magical Vienna with his piano and composition instructor, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, in the early spring of 1827 because Hummel had heard the now far-flung news that his old friend and musical rival was dying. He had wanted to see and embrace Beethoven again before he was gone, and too, he had hoped his talented protege might be inspired by at least a few minutes spent in the company of incontestable greatness. Beethoven had received the two men warmly on March 8 and had satisfied them that their company would be efficacious in fact; they stayed with him for hours that day, then returned three more times during the succeeding fortnight before Beethoven finally succumbed to a diseased liver and a life of relentless pain. Yet on that first day, Hiller remembered, the dying man still had seemed very much alive:

Through a spacious anteroom in which high cabinets were piled with thick, tied-up parcels of music, we reached - how my heart beat! - Beethoven's living-room, and were not a little astonished to find the master sitting in apparent comfort at the window. He wore a long, gray sleeping-robe and high boots reaching to his knees. Emaciated by long and severe illness, he seemed to me, when he arose, of tall stature; he was unshaven, his thick, half-gray hair fell in disorder over his temples. The expression of his features heightened when he caught sight of Hummel, and he seemed to be extraordinarily glad to see him. The two men embraced each other most cordially. Hummel introduced me. Beethoven showed himself extremely kind and I was permitted to sit opposite him at the window....

[In order for him to carry on a conversation,] thick sheets of ordinary writing paper in quarto form and lead pencils lay near him at all times. How painful it must have been for the animated, easily impatient man to be obliged to wait for every answer, to make a pause in every moment of conversation, during which, as it were, thought was condemned to come to a standstill! He always followed the hand of the writer with hungry eyes and comprehended what was written at a glance instead of reading it.... The conversation at first turned, as usual, on domestic affairs - the journey and sojourn, my relations with Hummel, and matters of that kind. Beethoven asked about Goethe's health with extraordinary solicitude and we were able to make the best of reports, since only a few days before the great poet had written in my album.

Concerning his own poor state, poor Beethoven complained much. "Here I have been lying for four months," he cried out, "one must at last lose patience!" Other things in Vienna did not seem to be to his liking and he spoke with the utmost severity of "the present taste in art" and "the dilettantism that is ruining everything." Nor did he spare the government, up to the highest levels.... "Little thieves are hanged, but big ones are allowed to go free!" he exclaimed in ill humor. He asked about my studies and, encouraging me, said, "art must be propagated ceaselessly," and when I spoke of the exclusive interest in Italian opera that then prevailed in Vienna, he gave utterance to the memorable words, "It is said vox populi, vox dei. I never believed it."

On March 13, Hummel took me with him a second time to Beethoven. We found his condition to be materially worse. He lay in bed, seemed to suffer great pains, and at intervals groaned deeply despite the fact that he spoke much and animatedly.... He also begged of Hummel to bring his wife to see him; she had not come with us, for she had not been able to persuade herself to see in his present state the man whom she had known at the zenith of his powers. A short time before, he had received a present of a picture of the house in which Haydn was born. He kept it close at hand and showed it to us. "It gives me a childish pleasure," he said, "the cradle of so great a man!"

Shortly after our second visit, the report spread throughout Vienna that the Philharmonic Society of London had sent Beethoven L100 in order to ease his sickbed. It was added that this surprise had made so great an impression on the poor man that it had also brought physical relief. When we stood again at his bedside on the 20th, we could deduce from his utterances how greatly he had been rejoiced by this altruism, but he was very weak and spoke only in faint and disconnected phrases. "I shall, no doubt, soon be going above," he whispered after our greeting. Similar remarks recurred frequently. In the intervals, however, he spoke of projects and hopes that were destined not to be realized. Speaking of the noble conduct of the Philharmonic Society and in praise of the English people, he expressed the intention, as soon as matters were better with him, to undertake the journey to London. "I will compose a grand overture for them, and a symphony." Then too, he told Frau Hummel, who had joined her husband that day, that he would visit her and go to I do not know how many places. His eyes, which were still lively when we saw him on our previous visit, were closed now, and it was difficult from time to time for him to raise himself. It was no longer possible to deceive one's self - the worst was to be feared.

Hopeless was the picture presented by the extraordinary man when we saw him again on March 23rd. It was to be the last time. He lay, weak and miserable, sighing deeply at intervals. Not a word fell from his lips; sweat stood out on his forehead. His handkerchief not being conveniently at hand, Hummel's wife took her fine cambric handkerchief and dried his face again and again. Never shall I forget the grateful glance with which his broken eyes looked upon her.

On a Monday evening three days hence, Hiller and both Hummels were dining at the home of friends when additional guests arrived with the woeful news that Beethoven had died in the midst of the sudden afternoon storm. When Hummel and the boy returned to the lodging called the Scbwarzspanierhaus, the "Black Spaniard's House," on Tuesday to pay their final respects, the face of the man whom Hummel loved and young Hiller newly was in awe of appeared strangely changed. Beethoven's body still lay in his bedroom, but now had been placed in an oak coffin that stood on a brass bier, his head resting on a white silk pillow. His long hair had been combed and was crowned with a wreath of white roses, but his grizzled visage had gone blue and the sides of his face were oddly sunken because at autopsy that morning the temporal bones surrounding his ears - as well as small bones of the ears themselves - had been removed for future study.

Copyright © 2001 by Russell Martin.

About the Author

Russell Martin is a lifelong resident of Colorado. He graduated in 1974 from The Colorado College in Colorado Springs, where he returns once each year to teach a course in creative nonfiction. He spent a postgraduate year on a Thomas Watson Foundation fellowship in Britain and Guatemala, then worked as a newspaper reporter in Telluride, Colorado for a number of years before becoming a freelance writer.