[Sidenote: A HAPPY PERIOD IN THE COMPOSER'S LIFE]
Whether so or not, and notwithstanding the prolonged uncertainty of his future prospects and the occasional characteristic complaints in his letters, still these three years--1807-8-9--were unquestionably the happiest in the last half of his life. That it was a period of extraordinary activity and productiveness, of a corresponding augmentation and extension of his fame, of animated and joyous social intercourse, and was brightly tinted with so much of the romance of love as a man of middle-age is apt to indulge in--all this the reader knows.
The coming of Reichardt to Vienna and the recording of his observations on the musical life of the Austrian capital in his book entitled "Confidential Letters, etc.," were fortunate incidents for the lovers of Beethoven. Reichardt's was one of the great names in music. He stood in the front rank both as composer and writer on the art. His personal character was unspotted; his intellectual powers great and highly cultivated in other fields than music; nor had his dismissal from his position of Royal Chapelmaster by Frederick William II been founded upon reasons which injured his reputation abroad. He therefore found all, even the highest, musical salons of Vienna open to him, and he received attention which under the circumstances was doubly grateful. A colossal self-esteem, a vanity almost boundless alone could have sent such pages as his "Letters" to the press without a more thorough expurgation. But this is nothing to the present generation, which owes him a large debt of gratitude for the most lively and complete picture existing of the musical life at Vienna at that period, and especially for his notices of Beethoven, the date of which (winter of 1808-09) adds doubly to their value. They should be read in connection with this biography.[76]
And here a word upon the compositions of these years. The notion, that the beauties of the opera "Leonore" were in great measure the offspring of an old, unfortunate affection for Fräulein von Breuning and of a still more unlucky recent passion for Julia Guicciardi, was treated in its place as unworthy of serious refutation; but nowhere in this work has anything been said affirming or implying that the moral and mental condition of the ~man~ Beethoven would not produce its natural and legitimate effect upon Beethoven the composer. Now, examine the lists of compositions which terminate the preceding chapters, and say whether any but a strong, healthy, sound, elastic mind could have produced them? To specify only the very greatest; there are in the last months of 1806, after the visit to the Brunswicks, the placid and serene Fourth Symphony--the most perfect in form of them all--and the noble Violin Concerto; in 1807, the Mass in C and the C minor Symphony; in 1808, the "Pastoral" Symphony and the Choral Fantasia; and in 1809, the conception and partial execution of the Seventh, perhaps also the Eighth, Symphony and the glorious "Egmont" music.