Was Beethoven a child prodigy? Did he show special talents in his tender age? Is he comparable to the child Mozart wonder? In this article we find the answers.
We tend to believe that geniuses are easy to spot in their earliest age, but a closer look will lead us to a different conclusion. Most often adult masterminds are underperforming in school, late in maturing and show no signs at all of the later brilliance.
Yes, there was Mozart a true prodigy, whose talent was so evident in his earliest days that he is probably one of a kind! Beethoven, on the other hand, definitely did not show any comparable performance in his tender days. What we know as fact, that very early he was forced to practice the clavier on daily basis, often into the late night hours. One witness, Cecilia Fischer, made the following account: “still see him, a tiny boy, standing on a little footstool in front of the clavier to which the implacable severity of his father had so early condemned him”.
What was early, we cannot be sure. The boy Beethoven says, “Music became my first youthful pursuit in my fourth year,”, which age, given his father’s attempt to sell his boy younger than he actually was, more realistically was 6 or 7. At any rate, the boy acquired so considerable experience on the clavier that he was able to perform at the Court at age 6, as the following advertisement will tell us from 1778:
“To-day, March 26, 1778, in the musical concert-room in the Sternengasse the Electoral Court Tenorist, Beethoven, will have the honor to produce two of his scholars, namely, Mlle. Averdonck, Court Contraltist, and his little son of six years. (…)”
He also practiced the violin and viola at his early age, with little success. Later Schindler records Beethoven’s view on his own playing, saying “it was more to be expected that everything would have fled from my scraping, even flies and spiders.”
|Related: What instruments did Beethoven play?
At school, Beethoven did not make unprecedented impressions, either. He started primary school close to his home, Bonngasse, but we cannot say at what age. A schoolmate called Wurzer, who later became Electoral Councillor, recalls his memories about the young boy:
“One of my schoolmates under Krengel was Luis van Beethoven, whose father held an appointment as court singer under the Elector. Apparently his mother was already dead at the time, for Luis v. B. was distinguished by uncleanliness, negligence, etc. Not a sign was to be discovered in him of that spark of genius which glowed so brilliantly in him afterwards. I imagine that he was kept down to his musical studies from an early age by his father.”
Approximately at the age of 10 he was withdrawn from school and focused only on his musical development. The lack of proper education is painfully obvious in Beethoven’s letters throughout his life. Multiplications and divisions were something never fully understood by him, thus never practiced them. Still, he was able to use French and Latin in his life, was open to philosophy and often read poetry, books.
|Related: Where did Beethoven go to school?
In conclusion it is safe to say Beethoven was not a prodigy and had shown no special abilities or intelligence in his childhood. Even later, when he moved to Vienna he had a late start, no report from his early days mentioning him as unique talent or a possible successor of Mozart, Haydn.
Yet, it was only the question of time, before he changed the world of music forever!
