My Angel Leonora
Beethoven's Love for Antonie Brentano
by
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The Requiem Mass was over. Anton Schindler, who had been Beethoven’s secretary until the end, was on his feet and out of the Cathedral the moment the priest raised his hand to pronounce the dismissal. He forced his way through the crowd that stood in the courtyard between the Cathedral and the Schwarzpanier House until he found the Imperial horses that would draw the bier to Wahrig and the parish cemetery. A procession of royalty and noblemen would follow the bier to witness the priest’s blessing and the lowering of the casket into the earth. His eye was fixed on the dignitaries as they filed out of the church. Rain stood in puddles between the cobblestones and splattered on the lids of barrels from which the horses drank. He took off his glasses to dry them with his handkerchief. If the King and the Archduke went to Wahrig, all was well. But if they returned to the dead man’s flat, all was lost. He would have to hurry. The rain began three days ago when a thunderclap split the ears of those on deathwatch in the flat—that much was true, he thought, because he heard it himself. But what fools they were to believe that God spoke to their great man through thunderclaps. The Master himself was a fool: he danced hatless in the streets during storms like this, and he did things even worse—unspeakable things. If he, Schindler, had done all of that, he would have been carted off to the asylum. Yet they worshipped him.
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About the Book
The great composer Ludwig van Beethoven often disgraced himself in public (he threw a bowl of hot stew at a waiter), was once arrested and charged with dereliction, and was widely believed to be mad. His clothes were so rumpled and dirty that street urchins would mock him. He had trouble holding on to servants, and what few friends he had , when they came to his flat, had to put up with stench from an unemptied chamber pot that he kept beside his piano. He became deaf. Mysterious ailments further isolated him from human society. Loneliness and desperation leap from the pages of his intimate letters and scribbled entries in his notebooks. He contemplated suicide. His relations with women were troubled and short-lived: at age forty he impulsively proposed marriage to a fifteen year old girl—who rejected him. Other liaisons came to naught. He wrote an opera about conjugal love in which the heroine, Leonora, rescues her husband from a dark cell under a fortress: one suspects this choice of subject reflects the composer’s own need to be rescued, the need for such a woman in his own life. But a woman did come into his life—a woman different from all the others. She became his angel Leonora, whose identity he kept a secret from the world. After his death a few friends discovered a small compartment in his writing desk secured by a bent nail. In it was a three part love letter that he wrote to a woman who claimed that she loved him; he called her his “immortal beloved.” We have long wondered who this woman is. We now believe she is Antonie Brentano. What took place between these lovers? Mr. Gregory’s novel explores the fears and doubts that must have afflicted the great composer as the star-crossed lovers come together in a locked embrace.
About the Author
Carter Gregory is a psychotherapist whose work has immersed him in the study of troubled persons, such as Beethoven, whose childhood took a dark and twisted path. Mr. Gregory is also a priest of the Episcopal Church and has lectured on the subject of spirituality and the arts. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and he engages in many musical, religious, and cultural endeavors. The life and music of Beethoven has been the subject of a lifelong study that has led to My Angel Leonora, a fictional presentation of the composer’s relationship with women and the source of his inspiration. Mr. Gregory’s first book, The Fourth Watch of the Night, explores the mystical origins of religion and society.