How black was Beethoven
Why BeethovenThe issue of the composer’s mixed ancestry is no longer denied It has become a question of degree.
From my essay today in the Sunday Times:
…. What if we are ignoring physical evidence that stares us in the face? Two portraits of Beethoven, drawn in 1801 and 1814, show a man with a dark complexion. A bust by Franz Klein in 1812, taken from a plaster cast, confirms that he looks nothing like a fair-skinned north German of Netherlandish extraction. In Vienna they called him “the Spaniard”. He could be Mediterranean, even north African.
Scholars have known for about a century that his paternal grandmother, María Josefa Poll, belonged to a family that fled north during the 1700s War of Spanish Succession. Recent research locates her in Moorish eastern Spain. Beethoven knew his origins. He felt a deep affinity with Spain, setting his only opera, Fidelio, in the country and cheering Britain’s defeat of Napoleon’s peninsular army.
And that’s just his mother’s side. Take another look at the portraits and you will find that they differ in almost every feature from those of his two brothers.…
Read on here.
And in Why Beethoven, out next week.
Comments