The Rest Is History - 527. Beethoven: Napoleon and the Music of War LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

Ludwig Van Beethoven, like his precursor and possible acquaintance Mozart, is one of the most famous figures in Western musical history. With his wild hair and furrowed brow, his was a genius marked not by flamboyance and flare, but dark, bombastic gravity. Like Mozart, though, his musical talents also emerged at a young age. Born in Bonn, Germany, in 1770, he was initially taught by his father. Finding his home life dysfunctional however, he eventually moved to Vienna at the age of twenty-one. There he would study musical composition under the great composer Haydn, and garnered a reputation for being a talented pianist. By 1800, his symphonies were being performed to much acclaim. But, as music’s first true star and with the world seemingly before his feet, a terrible shadow was hanging over Beethoven - his encroaching deafness, which saw him becoming more and more anti-social. How was it, then, that in spite of this terrible affliction, he came to write some of his best known works during the height of his deafness? And what became of him? Join Tom and Dominic at the Royal Albert Hall, featuring the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and the Philharmonia Chorus, conducted by Oliver Zeffman, as they delve into the life of Beethoven, one of the most venerated figures in the history of music. With his unkempt appearance, ferocious reputation, and famously ill-fated deafness, what was the truth behind the legends of this extraordinary man? And how did he come to write some of the most iconic pieces of classical music of all time?  _______ Academy of St Martin in the Fields Orchestra Philharmonia Chorus Chorus Oliver Zeffman Conductor Stephanie Gonley Leader & Violin Soloist Mishka Rushdie Momen Pianist Nardus Williams Soprano Katie Stevenson Mezzo Andrew Staples Tenor William Thomas Bass _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producers: Tabby Syrett + Anouska Lewis + Aaliyah Akude Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is the restishistory.com. Hello, everyone. Happy New Year, and welcome back to the recording of the live show that Dominic and I did at the Royal Albert Hall on the 18th of October. You should already have heard the episode on Mozart. And now in the second half, we are looking at Beethoven. I hope you enjoy it. The The The So The The The The The The The The The The The The 3Lz 6.60x (-1.00), 3F 5.83x (-1.00), 3S 4.83x (-1.00), LSp4 2.70x (-1.00), LSp4 2.70x (-1.00), LSp4 2.70x (-1.00),

LSp4 2.70x (-1.00), LSp4 2.70x (-1.00), LSp4 2.70x (-1.00), LSp4 2.70x (-1.00), LSp4 2.70x (-1.00), LSp4 2.70x (-1.00), LSp4 2.70x (-1.00), LSp4 2.70x (-1.00), Please welcome back to the stage Tom Holland and Dominic Sambrough. Welcome back everybody.

Always start the second half with a banger they say, and that of course was the banger to end all bangers. The first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony premiered in December 1808 in Vienna, and Dominic, the opening of that movement must be the most famous opening to any piece of music ever written I'd have thought. Absolutely. So we have had Mozart, and the second half is about a very different character. Someone who is brooding, unfriendly, difficult, and... And here he is...

To talk about Ludwig van Beethoven. Dominic, take it away. When I wrote that joke, I knew you would laugh. So Tom, you ended with Mozart's death and funeral in 1791. No great send-off, a slightly lacklustre occasion. And let's start by fast forwarding three decades to March 1827, to the death and funeral of his great successor Ludwig van Beethoven.

And it's a completely different scene. As Beethoven lies dying, also in Vienna, presents, cash, cakes are coming in from all over Europe. Beethoven's last recorded words greet the arrival from mites of a case of his favorite Rhineland wine. And his last words were, pity, pity, too late.

And then he died. And when he did die on the evening of the 26th of March, it was the news story of the year. So, when they held the funeral three days later, crowds had gathered outside Beethoven's apartment. There was a choir outside to see him off. The schools were all given the day off. On the way to the church and then to the cemetery, the crowds were so thick it took them ages

to pass through. And all the way, some of the best known people in Vienna were holding a kind of torch lit parade, most famously the young composer Franz Schubert. So clearly something had changed since the death of Mozart. And a lot of that has to do with Beethoven himself. So many of you, I guess, will already have an idea of Beethoven in your mind. The wild hair, the ferocious frowning expression,

the unkempt appearance, the papers falling from his pocket, an intellectual, an artist. Mozart is fun, and Beethoven is serious. That's the stereotype. And I think this is really important because I think it is Beethoven, more than anybody else, who invents this idea of the creator, the artistic genius, as a lonely, difficult, unhappy but brilliant man. A bit like Tom. Now, one difference between Beethoven and Mozart obviously is that Beethoven is not Austrian. Beethoven is German. He was born in Bonn in the west of Germany in December 1770. Bonn was a

small town that belonged to the electorate of Cologne. And music was the family business. Beethoven's father was a singer, but his alcoholism stymied his career. Now as with Mozart, his father pushed him ferociously. He started giving him regular keyboard lessons when Ludwig was just five. He would make him practice until he cried. He would make him practice until he cried, he would make him practice until midnight, and he would beat him when Ludwig made a mistake. And did it work?

Did it? No. It didn't. Because although Ludwig was clearly very good, he wasn't a prodigy on the scale of Mozart. When he reached the age of 10, he was still barely known within his own town. Nobody effectively had noticed him on a kind of continental scale.

But then, at the age of 11, he got a new piano teacher, a massively important figure in his life, who rejoiced in the name of Christian Gochlob Nefer. And Nefer was a Protestant, the Beethoven's were Catholics. And Nefer was tied in to the Enlightenment. So he was full of ideas about reason and virtue and reform, full of the writings of Voltaire and Kant, and he passes these on to the young Beethoven. Now through

his Enlightenment's enthusiasm, Nefer is very well connected and one of his friends is a chap called Count Ferdinand Waldstein who lives in Bonn and is very friendly with the elector and it's Waldstein who gets Ludwig a job playing the organ for the elector. They think this is tremendous. They have great ambitions for Ludwig and

in 1787 when he's 16 years old they sent him to the city of music to Vienna. And there, legend tells, he meets the great man. He meets Mozart. And the story runs that Mozart got him to play the piano. Ludwig played, improvising brilliantly. And Mozart stood there impassively and when the last note died away Mozart said nothing he just went into the next room where his friends were sitting and he said to them keep an eye on that young man one day he will give

the world something to talk about. And do you think that actually happened? I think that happened and that's how he spoke. That is just how he spoke. Well, maybe it did happen, maybe it didn't, but the fact the story exists at all... That's the important thing, right? The fact the story exists at all is proof of how desperate people were

to see a connection between them. But that first trip didn't last long. So Beethoven came home after two weeks because his mother was ill. Then in the autumn of 1792, he came back to Vienna for good. Why? Because the French Revolution had broken out. French armies were rampaging across the map of Europe, spreading perturbation and despair. The court fled Bonn. Bonn was no longer safe and Beethoven was sent to Vienna. Now of course by this point Mozart was dead. So Beethoven is going to study with that other great Austrian composer Josef Haydn and before he left Count Waldstein wrote him a note. Mozart he said is dead but Mozart's genius

is still alive and is in mourning. And it is waiting for somebody. It is waiting for you. And from Haydn, you will receive the spirit of Mozart. And so off he goes to Vienna, the city where he will compose his greatest works. And I think what's so interesting about this is that a bit like Mozart, to begin with, he is better known as a player of music rather than as a composer.

And so since he started out on the piano, let's have one of his very greatest piano pieces and we're going to hear the second movement of the fourth piano concerto, which premiered in 1808 at the same evening that saw the Fifth Symphony premiered, and we are going to hear on the piano, Mishka Rushdie-Moaman. Thank you. The The The The The I'm going to be a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a

little bit of a The The I'm sorry. Beautiful. Beautifully played. And on that evening in Vienna when it was premiered, the piano was played by Beethoven itself. And Dominic, we've talked a lot about Vienna over the course of this evening. Shall we just focus in and describe the capital? Sure, yes. So obviously for Beethoven,

Vienna is much more foreign than it is for Mozart. It's the capital of the Habsburg dynasty. It is at this point by far the biggest German-speaking city in Europe with about a quarter of a million people So that's twice as big as Berlin. It's a city at war So from 1792 Austria is at war on and off for the next 22 years or so It's twice occupied by the French there are stories about Beethoven literally sheltering under his bedclothes as the shells are kind of raining down overhead and also of course is for for him it's the city of Mozart and when he arrives Mozart has been dead for a year and people are already saying who is going to be the next Mozart. You have a sense I think that if the next Mozart

doesn't exist they're going to invent him anyway. And very soon after Beethoven's arrival, they say, call off the search. We have found him. In fact, after his first year, his teacher, Joseph Haydn, wrote to the Elector of Cologne, and he said, he will be one of the greatest artists in Europe, and I will be proud to call myself his teacher." And the lovely thing is that is exactly what Tom's teachers used to say about James Holland. LAUGHTER APPLAUSE

Sorry, Tom. Sorry. No, I'm used to this guy. I'm used to it. You deserved it after that singing. Four long years. Now he can't just be Mozart because the context has changed. For example, the way you make music is changing. Beethoven literally has different instruments to play with. For example, pianos that have a much greater range and a richer sound.

So if you've wondered why Beethoven might sound different from Mozart, that's one of the reasons. But even more importantly, I think, the way you make money from music has changed. So until this point, as Tom was describing in the first half, most musicians depended on aristocratic household. So Beethoven's teacher, Haydn, depended on the Esterhazy family. He lived at the Esterhazy palace over the border in Hungary. He was dressed in Esterhazy livery as effectively a servant. He was a servant. But Beethoven moves in a new world.

Beethoven is supported by a whole range of different aristocratic patrons, not as a servant, but as a kind of business client. So a good example of this is one of his first great patrons, who is a bloke called Prince Lychnovsky. Who was a patron of Mozart's. And they went on a kind of lads trip to Berlin, and then they kind of had a massive spat over money, as Mozart tended to do by this point.

They did indeed. It's a to do by this point. They did indeed. It's a bit like our Restless History tours. And Lichnowski offered Beethoven an annual allowance plus board and lodging. And Beethoven said, yes, but on the condition that I'm absolutely not coming as a servant. I'm coming as somebody who is almost an equal of yours. In other words, Beethoven is very, very protective

of his status and his independence. There's a very famous episode in 1808. So Napoleon Bonaparte, not a friend of the rest of his history, has set up his brother Jerome as the king of Westphalia. And to bolster his regime, a bit like a kind of Saudi billionaire with a football club, he wants to get a star player. And the star player he has in mind is Beethoven. He offers him a massive salary to come and be his Kapellmeister, his director of music. And Beethoven tells everybody this. In Vienna, of course he does, he wants a counter offer, and he gets one. Three of his patrons, Archduke Rudolf, Prince Kinski and Prince Lobkowicz, club together and they offer Beethoven an amazing deal, 4,000 florins a year for the rest of his life if he stays in Vienna and he doesn't even have to write another note.

The contract says this is in recognition of his extraordinary genius as a musician and a composer. They want to liberate him from the mundane cares of earning a living so that he can get on with writing works that ennoble the arts. Now nobody had ever done this for a composer before, a deal of this magnitude. And it means that Beethoven has more security and more freedom, arguably than any composer who has ever lived to this point. He doesn't have to work to order. And this obviously goes to his head a little bit.

His status, his independence, means so much to him. There are two wonderful stories that illustrate this. So, one in 1806, he goes with his mate, Prince Likhanovsky, for a country weekend. There are a lot of officers staying there as well, and Prince Likhanovsky says to Beethoven, Ludwig, I would like you to play the piano for these guests. That's how Prince Likhanovsky spoke. Beethoven says, I'm not in the mood. I don't want to play. I don't want to play on cue. They have a massive row. And afterwards, Beethoven says to Prince Likhanovsky, listen, yes, you're a prince, but you are a prince because of an accident of birth.

Very figuring. Very figuring. I am who I am because of what I have done. There are thousands of princes and there always will be. But there is and there only ever will be one Beethoven. Then, 1812, it's the kind of thing that I have to put up with from you. 1812, Beethoven and the German writer Goethe are strolling arm in arm through the park. Oh, it's like us, isn't it? Before this. Yeah, lovely. In Kensington Gardens, before this show. Exactly, exactly.

And they see coming towards them the Emperor Francis I and his son the Archduke. And Goethe goes to get out of the way and to bow. And Beethoven supposedly says to him, What are you doing? We don't make room for them. They will make room for us. And whether or not these stories are true doesn't really matter because what they tell you is about the image of Beethoven and the conception of him, his

own conception of himself, not as a servant but as a star. I think he's probably the first composer who genuinely believes that every note that he writes will be played for as long as people are making music. So every work really matters. These are not throwaway commissions. They're expressions of his soul, his intellect, his genius. You look at the number of symphonies he wrote. Mozart wrote 41. Haydn wrote 104.

Beethoven wrote just nine. Because to him, this wasn't just entertainment. It wasn't just entertainment. It wasn't something that you listened to while people were playing cards. This was art. This was serious. And the work that sums that up

is his Eroica Symphony, number three. So it was first performed in 1804. It's twice as long as any of Mozart's symphonies. Everybody agreed that it was extraordinary, a work of genius. But people also said, many of them, that it was too long. Like our series on General Custer. Like the General Custer series. Exactly.

Tom, there were mugs then and they're mugs now. But they all recognised it was a work of genius. That's what matters. But they all recognised it was a work of genius, right? Exactly. That's what matters. And people said of the Third Symphony, this is so radical, so glaring. It is a work of anarchy. And of course this has a political dimension because at the time the Austrians are fighting against people that they believe represent the forces of anarchy.

And so does this mean that Beethoven is on the side of the revolution? That's what I had always assumed, but I know your ways. Yeah, it's a little bit more complicated. Is it? It is. It always is. It always is.

That's astonishing. So at first, Beethoven was sympathetic to the ideals of the French Revolution. And he was fascinated by the figure of Napoleon, a self-made man who blazed like a comet across the sky of Europe. And originally, a very famous story, he was going to dedicate this third symphony, the Eroica to Napoleon. But then, in December 1804, he heard that Napoleon had crowned himself emperor. And he said, what? He's just another politician. He will sacrifice the rights of man

on the altar of his ambition. He will become a tyrant. He wasn't wrong, Tom. And he rips the manuscript in two, and he scratches out the dedication to Bonaparte on the first page. So no dedication to Napoleon. But good news.

Tom, we are and we always have been a patriotic podcast. And I'm very pleased to say that Beethoven never wrote a piece called Napoleon, but he did write one about the Duke of Wellington. And this is famously terrible, isn't it? Well, I mean, patriotic, but you've got to be honest. Why does he hate Britain? This was called Wellington's Sieg, Wellington's Victory.

He wrote it in 1813 to celebrate our brave boys' victories in the Peninsular War. Tom, you'll be pleased to hear that it incorporates both Rule Britannia and God Save the King. So the EU went for Beethoven's Ninth when they could have had that. Absolutely madness. How different history should have been. You don't hear this or the rest is politics. Um. Anyway, the following year, 1814,

Napoleon is temporarily booted out to Elba. Vienna explodes in celebrations and festivities. There are balls, there are receptions. This is Beethoven's most successful year. It's the year in which he makes most money. It is the year in which his pieces are performed more than any other. And it is now that he stages the final version of his one and only opera, which is called Fidelio.

Brilliant. Well, let's hear a bit of Fidelio. It's the prisoner's chorus, and the two soloists are Andrew Staples and William Thomas. I'm sorry. The O, be you, O, what you do, what you do, what you do, The Lord is the Lord Wir kennen keine Gruft, keine Gruft. In front of the moon, in autumn lights, O'er him, O'er him, O'er him is the moon.

O'er him, O'er him, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear his scream, O hear, O hear, O hear his name. O hear the rustle, the rustle of the wind. We all trust in God's help. The the the No, we find peace. Freedom is ours! Speak quietly! Quiet!

Hold back! We are deafened with ear and sight. Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! Halt! The O, help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us, O help us O The The the the the the the Now, as you've been listening to this episode, you might have noticed that this episode had something a little extra special, didn't it, Tom? It absolutely did. And that's because every piece of music you've heard during this podcast has been performed live by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. And if you were there, you will remember how absolutely extraordinary their performance was.

We are thrilled to have them featured on this episode. And frankly, we're even more thrilled to be able to make that recording of that event open and free to everybody in the podcast who wasn't able to attend in person. The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields is one of the most recorded orchestras of all time, giving more than 80 concerts a year across the world, including a stunning series in London at the historic Church of St. Martin in the Fields. The Academy of St.

Martin in the Fields is offering an exclusive, complimentary Friends membership to all listeners of The Rest is History. You can attend open rehearsals, enjoy pre-concert talks and meet and greets with soloists, access exclusive digital downloads and, crucially, receive 25% off tickets to their London concerts. To claim your complimentary Friends membership and explore all these incredible opportunities, just go to asmf.org forward slash history. So don't miss out.

Visit asmf.org forward slash history and sign up today. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] today. That is a passage of music that historians have always been fascinated by because it's conventionally seen as providing the kind of the soundtrack to an age of revolution, isn't it? And just for those not familiar with the opera, to give a bit of context, it's set in Spain in the 16th century in a prison. And what you've just heard is prisoners emerging from their cells, coming blinking into the sunlight, singing of the delight they feel at their liberation.

And so it's always kind of associated with the fall of the Bastille, the overthrowing of monarchical despotism. But Dominic, I mean, as I said, I am familiar with your methods, and I kind of have a hunch that you're gonna tell me it's more complicated than that. Surprise, surprise, it's more complicated than that. So Beethoven had been working on Fidelio for years,

and he got the idea from a French play about a bloke who's rescued from prison by his wife, but it seems pretty likely that the French play is actually set during the terror, and this bloke may be an aristocrat. And I think the politics of Fidelio may be a little bit more complicated, more conservative maybe than people think. So remember this is taking place this premiere in Vienna in 1814 in an atmosphere of conservatism, of reaction. The old order has won and at the end of Fidelio when the hero gets his freedom he doesn't get it because the

mob has stormed the prison, not at all. He gets it because of the intervention of the kind-hearted, benevolent governor, effectively the emperor. In other words, this is a victory for the old order. It's the old order that has prevailed. And the freedom that the opera is celebrating, Tom, in 1814, those first audiences in Vienna, to them it's freedom from the war,

freedom from the tyranny of Napoleon, freedom from the despotism of the French from the despotism of the French. The despotism of the French. We know all about that, don't we? Because Theo, our beloved producer, is of course, well, purports to be French. Yes. Exactly, exactly.

But I think there's another aspect of Fidelio that is actually more interesting. Some of Beethoven's biographers suggest that this picture of this bloke who's locked up in a prison, cut off from the outside world, is a kind of nightmarish self-portrait. Because as many of you all know, at the time that Fidelio goes on stage,

Beethoven has been going deaf for probably at least 12 years. The cruelest punishment possible for a composer. Now his death was probably started at the end of the 1790s when he's in his late 20s. We don't know really what caused it. We do know that in the summer of 1802, he went to a place called Heiligenstadt for the summer and he wrote a letter to his brothers

explaining, apologizing for his horrendous form in recent months. And he said, listen, the truth is I'm losing my hearing and that one day I will be cut off from the outside world. I'll have to live like an exile in my own head. And he says, I've thought about ending it all, about ending this wretched existence. But it was my art that held me back. It seemed impossible to me to leave this world until I'd written all the works that I was capable of. And that brings us back to something that's been running through this story from the very beginning of the show, which is the idea of art as something special and something sacred, dare I say sacral, Tom. Go for it. It is art that saves us, that gives our lives meaning. And this, of course,

becomes one of the foundational ideas of romanticism, the idea that art is the supreme good, the summit of human existence, that it is art that makes life worth living. Now, of course, that's not much consolation to Paul Beethoven who is losing his hearing. His hearing, in fact, gets worse and worse. By 1814, the year of Fidelio, if you sit down and listen to something, and it's Ludwig van Beethoven playing the piano, you know you're not in for a brilliant evening, because he can't tell if it's been tuned properly, and he also can't tell if he's making mistakes. So actually at the end of the year,

he gives up playing in public, and at this point he starts carrying these conversation books. So when he meets you in the street and you're talking to him, you have to write down in the book what you're saying. So sad to say, by the mid-1810s, Beethoven has, to some extent, ended up in that dungeon. Now, he had a very unhappy and lonely love life. Some of you may know that he wrote a letter to a woman that he called his immortal beloved.

It's a great film. Gary Oldman. Which he made into a Gary Oldman film, exactly, in which he said, you know, you're the love of my life, but we can never be together. And we don't really know, again, who that was. His family life was a nightmare. For a lot of the 1810s, he's locked in this dreadful custody battle over his nephew, Carl. In 1820, he turned 50. And by this point, I think he's a very disconsolate figure, Beethoven. When he goes out, he's very scruffy and distracted. At one point, the Viennese police arrested him for being a tramp.

And part of the problem, of course, is they're talking to him and he can't hear what they're saying. It's a bit of a problem. But the weird thing is that all this is actually great news for the Beethoven brand. Because it perfectly captures the ethos of the Romantic Age, the idea of a lonely hero who is battling with his demons in a kind of spiritual exile. Now, all the time, Beethoven is still making music. He is making music that is more demanding, more challenging than ever before. Some people say it's too challenging.

So you have a sense of an emerging breach between the masses who like the kind of fun, easy operas that are coming from Italy, and the connoisseurs who think that if it's difficult, that means it must be profound. And Beethoven himself was in no doubt about who he was writing for. He said, I don't write for the masses. I write for people who are cultured, like you. But even though people find his stuff very difficult, they never doubt that Beethoven is a star. And by the 1820s, he really does have a brand. People are painting his portrait, they're making busts of him. Images of Beethoven are going all over Europe

and they're appealing to people who had never really existed before in the history of classical music. They're not admirers, they're not supporters, they're not patrons, they are fans. And that word is coming from fanatics, isn't it? They're fanatics. Fanatics for Beethoven. Yeah, absolutely. And I think part of the reason for this

is that Beethoven's image perfectly fits the demands of the times. This is a conservative age, an age of reaction. So people love the idea of tradition. They love the idea of Beethoven as the culmination of a tradition that began with Mozart and Haydn. But what's more, his German-ness is really important. The French Revolution was a foundational moment in the history of German-ness. That moment when French troops cross the Rhine is when modern German identity is born.

So people are looking for a German hero and Beethoven perfectly fits the bill. But all the time his health is getting worse. By the end of 1826 he's got pneumonia, he's got jaundice, he's got liver issues and of course he can barely hear anything at all. But apart from that he's doing fine. Yeah. Apart from that, he's in great form. Now, we described his final days earlier, the presents and the wine and whatnot. But sad to say, on the 26th of March, 1827, in the middle of a tremendous thunderstorm, he takes his final breath. And it is said that at the very end, he opens his eyes, he lifts his right hand to heaven,

he clenches his fist, and then he collapses. The artist defiant to the end. So a sad, I want to say a tragic moment, and to mark it, let's now hear perhaps the most celebrated thunderstorm in the entire history of classical music, and it comes from the Sixth Symphony, the Pastoral and we are going to hear the fourth movement which gives us a thunderstorm

and then right at the end the hint of a rainbow. The The The The The The The The The The So Dominic, we began this half with the funeral of Beethoven, and lo and behold, we've come full circle. Exactly, Tom. It's almost as if we'd scripted it. And as we said before, his death was an extraordinary public occasion. People were literally queuing up to take snippets of hair from his head to wear in lockets around their necks like religious relics. Now, there was a very revealing eulogy at the cemetery gates and it was made by Vienna's greatest playwright, a man called Franz Grillparzer. Tom, are you familiar with his work? I'll be honest, it sounds like an American steak restaurant rather

than a great writer. It doesn't encourage me to want to read it, I have to say. Well, Grillpartzer in the eulogy did not mention God at all. Extraordinary. He mentioned only the gods of music and art. He was an artist, he said of Beethoven. That's how he spoke again. That's how all Germans speak when they're talking about art, Tom. And all that was his was his through art alone. He was an artist, and who shall arise to stand beside him? Who, indeed? And this, I think, was Beethoven's greatest legacy.

You talked about Mozart as a genius. I think what Mozart, what Beethoven, rather, creates is the idea of the artist with a capital A. The individual who suffers and overcomes. The martyr, the man who stands alone from the masses. Somebody whose work, like mine, is long and difficult and therefore profound. Tom, he can see things and hear things that you and I can't. Well, he can't actually hear them, can he?

I mean, that's the whole point. No, that's true. We'll always have that over Beethoven, won't we? So let us end with the passage that for many people represents the climax of Beethoven's genius. Beethoven began his Ninth Symphony in 1822, and at its heart is Friedrich Schiller's Ode to Joy, which he'd first written in 1785,

a kind of hymn to enlightenment values. As always, it's a complicated story. Wow. Schiller was horrified by the excesses of the French Revolution. He was horrified by the execution of the king and the terror, and he actually toned down his original Ode to Joy to make it less radical, to make it more conservative.

And this is the version that Beethoven used. But my favourite story about the Ode to Joy and about the Ninth Symphony is one that many of you will know. Lots of you who know the story of Beethoven will know this story. Because when the symphony was first performed in 1824, Beethoven stood at the front waving his arms next to the conductor, even though he could not hear a note. And when it was all over,

he couldn't hear the applause behind him. And very gently, the singer Carolina Unger turned him round so that he could see, but not hear, the standing ovation. Brilliant, Dominic, thank you. And we have some ovations of our own to give. An ovation to the Royal Albert Hall for hosting us, to the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, wonderful, wonderful orchestra,

to the Philharmonia Chorus, its chorus master Gavin Carr, to our wonderful soloists Nardis Williams, Katie Stevenson, Andrew Staples, William Thomas, Mishka Rashdi Moeman. But I think above all we owe a debt of thanks to the great guiding spirit behind this entire evening, the man whose idea it was, the wonderful Oliver Zephman. APPLAUSE And Tom, let's be honest, it's hard to admit it, but we would be nothing without our own aristocratic sponsors. So a huge thank you to Tony Pasta and Jack Davenport, the Habsburg emperors of our hearts. Thank you to our Viennese aristocratic patrons, the brilliant Tabby

Cyrett and Anoushka Lewis and to our Parisian friend the peerless Theo Young Smith and all of their colleagues a Goalhanger podcast. And of course a huge huge thank you to all of you for coming and for your encouragement with this. I think it's been an amazing evening. It's been a privilege to be sat up here listening to this incredible music, so thank you. APPLAUSE

And now, to play us out, it's over to Oliver and to Ludwig. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Thank you. In the treetop fire-cruiser, In the shirtline high-roof, Final summer in the river, Must be more extreme than today. The hallowed mansion, With the greener, The cool and soft, The greener, the white.

Final summer in the river, Must be more extreme than today. The Zeit und Stunde, Millionen, diesen Kuss der ganzen Welt. Thee we praise, thee we praise, Thee we praise, thee we praise, The Vater Wangen! Rede! Rede! Spermelswelt! Ust uns, mein Kiemen! Vater Wangen! In heaven, God help our family. O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, O come, Du bist nur der Schöpfe, Welt, The stars are shining, we are shining from heaven. The Lord is risen. So let us all sing. We will fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight on, fight The The The The Friede! Friede! The The The and heaven, or my soul, to the free heart.

Give it to the Prince of the Fiend, and he'll rest it on his grave. The Oh, thy smile! The night of the blessed night. I'm We're the champions of the world! We're the champions of the world! We're the champions of the world! We're the champions of the world! We're the champions of the world! We're the champions of the world! We're the champions of the world! We're the champions of the world! We're the champions of the world!

We're the champions of the world! We're the champions of the world! We're the champions of the world! We're the champions of the world! We're the champions of the world! The The land that our forefathers built, The land that our forefathers built, And the champiment and the series coming out next Monday will be on the Nazi's Road to War. Goodbye.