Anton Schindler

Photograph of Anton Felix Schindler.

Anton Felix Schindler (13 June 1795 – 16 January 1864) was an associate, secretary, and early biographer of Ludwig van Beethoven.[1][2] He was born in Medlov, Moravia, and died in Bockenheim (Frankfurt am Main).

Life

He moved to Vienna in 1813 to study law, and from 1817 to 1822, was a clerk in a law office there. He was a competent violinist, and played in musical ensembles, first meeting Beethoven in 1814. He gave up his law career, becoming in 1822 first violinist at the Theater in der Josefstadt and from 1825, first violinist at the Theater am Kärntnertor. His acquaintance with Beethoven continued, and from 1822, he lived in the composer's house, as his unpaid secretary.[3][4][5]

There was a break in the relationship in 1825, and Karl Holz, a young violinist and friend of Beethoven, became Beethoven's secretary; Schindler managed to make amends with Beethoven and returned in 1826.[3][5]

After Beethoven's death in 1827, Schindler moved to Budapest where he was a music teacher, returning to Vienna in 1829. In 1831, he moved to Münster where he was a musical director; from 1835 he lived in Aachen, where he was municipal music director until 1840. In 1840, his biography of Beethoven was published in Münster. Later editions appeared in 1845, 1860 and 1871.[3][5]

In 1841–42 he visited Paris, and met famous musicians of the day.[3][5]

He possessed a great part of Beethoven's estate, in particular about 400 conversation books (used by people when conversing with Beethoven in his later years). Beethoven's estate, purchased by the Royal Prussian Library in Berlin in 1845, included 136 conversation books, the remainder of which were retained by Schindler; it has been presumed that they were destroyed.[3][5]

Subsequent discredit and recent revival of credibility

Although as early as the 1850s, the inconsistencies of Schindler's account were clear enough to lead Alexander Wheelock Thayer to commence research for his own pioneering biography, it was a series of musicological articles published since the 1970s[6] that essentially destroyed Schindler's reputation of reliability. It was demonstrated that he falsified entries in Beethoven's Conversation Books (into which he inserted many spurious entries after Beethoven's death in 1827)[7] and that he had exaggerated his period of close association with the composer (his claimed '11 or 12 years' was likely no more than five or six). It was also believed that Schindler burned more than half of the conversation books and countless pages from those which survived. The Beethoven Compendium (Cooper 1991, p. 52) goes so far as to say that Schindler's propensity for inaccuracy and fabrication was so great that virtually nothing he has recorded can be relied upon unless it is supported by other evidence. More recently, Theodore Albrecht has re-examined the question of Schindler's reliability, and as to his presumed destruction of a huge number of conversation books, concludes that this widespread belief could not be true.[8]

Although Anton Schindler forged documents and acquired the position of a persecuted music historian, his accounts on Beethoven's style of performing his own piano works are indispensable sources. Dr. George Barth, in his book The Pianist as Orator (Cornell University Press, Ithaca 1992) brings to light an approach to music rhetoric in the Beethoven keyboard literature, based on Schindler and his testimonies, quite different from the Carl Czerny angle on Beethoven the world has grown used to since Schindler's forgeries shadowed his credibility. Discrepancies in metronome markings by Czerny as well as accounts on Beethoven's own rhythm and tempo create a more complete image of Schindler's credibility and his valuable persona in coming to perform a piece by Beethoven.[9]

Works

References

  1. ↑ Alessandra Comini (2008). The Changing Image of Beethoven: A Study in Mythmaking. Sunstone Press. ISBN 978-0-86534-661-1.
  2. ↑ Edmund Morris (2005). Beethoven: the universal composer. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-075974-2.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Paul Nettl, Beethoven Encyclopedia. Philosophical Library, New York, 1956.
  4. ↑ Anton Schindler Beethoven-haus Bonn Digital Archives, accessed 25 April 2014.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Schindler, Anton Felix Deutsche Biographie, accessed 25 April 2014.
  6. ↑ See Stadlen (1977), Goldschmidt (2013, p. 58, n. 138), Herre & Beck (1978), Beck & Herre (1979), Howell (1979), Newman (1984).
  7. ↑ See Tellenbach
  8. ↑ "In any case, it now becomes abundantly clear that Schindler never possessed as many as ca. 400 conversation books, and that he never destroyed roughly five-eighths of that number." (Albrecht 2010)
  9. ↑ George Barth, The Pianist as Orator, Cornell University Press, Ithaca 1992

Sources

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