When the Missa Solemnis in D major was being composed (1819-1823) by the aged, cantankerous, emotionally tormented and frequently sick composer, as history assures, he was completely deaf. This music, along with its symphonic sibling – The Ninth, remains hypnotically “divine” to listeners, technically so demanding that an almost inhuman virtuosity from the performers is quintessential for the course of the whole Mass. The aficionados and critics were and still are at loss in the quest of a proper analysis and noobs, such as me, need to use vague adjectives like “hypnotic” to describe the music for the utter confusion to understand the reasons my own fascination with it!
Beethoven’s (17 (?) December 1770 – 26 March 1827) was a life that rivals a Nakshi Kantha in its complexity and contrasts. This universally revered and perennially lonely and compulsively misunderstood poor creature generated myths, has been venerated by angels and demons alike for his superhuman ability to compose music without being able to hear. What, however, is intriguing to me is his, dare I say monotonically, increasing mastery of the artistic genius with his steady decline of auditory perceptions. I think, despite the devastating impact on his personal happiness and wellbeing, his troubled childhood and declining hearing has at least was essential for reaching such magnanimous creative heights. I will try to harp this very thesis below – and you are being “warninga solemnis”. Flee my friend, flee holding your own life in your palm, before it gets even more weirder below.
Now that you are here, I will not spare you – exactly like Beethoven who didn’t spare the performers’ physical abilities to execute the atrocious demands of his music. I will, rather ant-comically, bring in conic section in the tragically convoluted sections below!
What are conic section? They are curves generated by the boundary of a slice of a conic by a flat plane surface. It is also somewhat necessary to understand how these curves are categorised a la Descartes . It is done by the ratio of the distance of a moving point P from a fixed point F and from a straight line L, as depicted below. The point F is called the focus and the straight line L is called directrix. This ratio, for some crazy reason, is called the eccentricity e of the curve generated by the motion of point P. The changing positions of point P, AKA locus of the point P, following a constant eccentricity is a conic section. If the eccentricity is unity, it is a parabola,i.e. for a parabola these two distances are always same. If the curve chooses to be less eccentric than that 😉 (i.e. e < 1), we get an ellipse (a circle is also an ellipse! ). However, much more eccentric conic sections (i.e. e > 1) split into two parts – they come from infinity towards each other – but before they could touch each other, they fly off to infinite separation, again! They are hyperbolas. See the picture below and above for more clarity.
People who add values to humanity to make our lives worthy to live, are hyperbolas!
These eccentrics have their spiritual partners – they feel it from the get go. Like a south magnetic pole gets pulled towards a north magnetic pole invariably, these poor souls try to meet their imaginations, inspirations in an inebriated manner – more and more intensely as they come closure and closure as they try harder and harder. But never gets to meet.
Beethoven opened his heart to a little girl called Emilie in a letter : “The true artist is not proud, he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal; and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.”. He was looking for his hyperbolic partner, everyone does. And this exactly where his tremendous misfortunes became boons in disguise of a curse.
You see, we cannot hear when we talk! The process to tuning into that spiritual inspiration is similar. When we get to hear worldly cacophony, we do not perceive the inner-me’s gentle whispers which breathes fire to the mind of a dreamer. When we feel content and accepted, we do not turn to creativity for life-saving comforts. Beethoven was robbed of his childhood and ability to connect to mediocrity – thereby forcing him to find the focus of his existence inside his mind’s imagination. He no longer got distracted by “what cannot be done”s and found “what can be done”. The imagination, though forced and sad for Beethoven’s case, got the free reign precisely due to the fact that he was lonely from the childhood as well. He already had to adapt the art of being inside his mind, to comfort himself with music, and not looking outside due to his horrible childhood. A talentless drunk father, a soft-hearted sickly mother and immense lack of true friends could send a normal child to astray. However, he was different because of his deep resilience which, when the crises came in his adult life, shone through and forged the mighty excalibur! If he did have a loving childhood, would he be so resilient? If he hadn’t loose his hearing, would he be this inventive and enterprising? Who knows? But to me it feels, like the pearl originates in inflammation, like the Diamond carrying Kimberlite is forged in hellish pressure and temperature, Beethoven as we know him was forged out of his crises.
Sounds too absurd? Well, then consider the above as just a hyperbole of a lunatic and wait for me to get a little closure to my Hero, hopefully a few years later!
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