A vida de oração do Beethoven segundo a mística Adrienne Von Speyr

BEETHOVEN (1770–1827)

He is quite mercurial. His piety is not at all regular. He has periods of ascesis, of deep
prayer, of love for prayer, which are almost perfect; he longs for genuine surrender; he
wants to give himself over; he would be ready to give up both himself and his work, if
only God’s grace were assured to him. And then, mostly for some random external
reason, he grows lukewarm once again; doubts assail him; he becomes unhappy; he
loses himself and his line; he becomes skeptical toward the faith. To be sure, he is not
capable of letting this faith go completely, but it nevertheless turns into a “concept” for
him; he makes faith and God’s justice and love into an idea. Then the storms of faith
and humility return, followed however once again by rejection and pride. When he
experiences external humiliations or notices that his energy is diminishing, he becomes
humble again, but then he rebels once more. And the same back and forth vacillation
gets transposed to another level, that of his work. His sudden doubting and his sudden
surrender are reflected again in his work, and they thus allow the equilibrium of
genuine, natural faith to disappear. It is not as if the things that spring from his deepest
piety, that toss him about and come to expression, fell out of the picture. But it is
precisely the picture that is missing, the picture that only daily prayer would be able to
provide, the domestication of the temperament through the consciousness of God’s
presence, the elimination of success as much as the humiliations in the knowledge of
providence.

The most extravagant things that he composes or plays, the things that echo in his ears,
make him happy, of course; nevertheless, he is also the first person who understands
that an ultimate consistency is missing from his work and that this lack of consistency
has its basis in his personal character flaws.

Even in his great Masses he recognizes the weaknesses that arise from himself. And yet
it is precisely this work that brings God’s presence to him very often, that brings many
thoughts about surrender, about the Lord’s presence, about transformation, about
sacrifice. If he himself had to talk about his work, he would point out both the high
points and the weak points and would explain the latter in relation to the halfheartedness
of his faith. Even when the great Mass arises wholly from a period of seeking, of
resoluteness, of being surrendered, the inspiration does not hold out sufficiently,
because even the Masses, as much as the rest of his work, reflect the life he leads and
whose pendulum swing they reveal all too clearly. He recognizes the decisive aspect of
his energy in certain smaller parts. A part of his doubting, in fact, springs precisely from
this knowledge about his own weakness and his personal inadequacy. Then, indeed, he
forms a prayer from this doubt, but the totality of his prayer reflects both the doubting
and halfheartedness, on the one hand, and the highest moments of inspiration, on the
other.