Juliet Guicciardi: biography and connection with Beethoven

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Juliet Guicciardi is known all over the world as the beloved of Ludwig Beethoven. This young lady is dedicated to one of the greatest musical works of the genius composer - "Moonlight Sonata".

Listening to the penetrating music of the best sonata, you involuntarily understand the feelings of the composer. How did it all happen, and who is Juliet? The one that conquered and severely broke the heart of the great Beethoven.

Biography of Juliet Guicciardi

Juliet was born in 1782 on November 23 in Premsel, in the family of the noble Count Gvichchardi. When she was 17, she moved to Vienna to live with her mother's relatives, the family of the Hungarian counts of Brunswick.

The girl had a beautiful appearance and was very similar to her cousin Josephine. Long dark hair falling to the waist, brown eyes, white skin and a perfectly shaped figure - all this attracted men. Here is a description of Juliet Guicciardi. Beethoven also enjoyed the beauty of the young countess and passionatelydreamed of marrying her.

In 1801, the composer began writing the Moonlight Sonata. He dedicated his piece of music to the young Juliet. But soon Ludwig had a rival - the young Austrian composer Gallenberg.

The Count often traveled to Italy, and Giulietta Guicciardi was seriously interested in him. As a result, in 1803, the girl and Count Gallenberg got married, after which they left Vienna for the home country of her newly made husband.

Soon the countess began a romantic relationship with Prince Pückler-Muskau, but she was not going to part with her husband. In 1821, the countess returned with her husband to Austria. Gallenberg began to experience financial difficulties, and Juliet turned to Beethoven for financial assistance, but the pianist rejected her. The countess died in 1856 on March 22 at the age of 73.

A little bit about Beethoven himself

The great composer was born in 1770 in the German town of Bonn. The father was a rude, tyrannical and drinking man. He regularly drank himself unconscious and raised his hand to his wife, and at times to his son.

Having learned that the boy had musical talent, he began to use it for personal gain, forced him to sit at the harpsichord, violin and piano from morning until late at night.

Father apparently did not believe that Ludwig needed childhood. He wanted to raise a child of a genius, similar to Amadeus Mozart. The slightest infractions were always accompanied by beatings and floggings.

Mother, on the contrary, loved the only surviving child very much, constantly sang songs to him andbrightened up the bleak gray everyday life of Ludwig with all her might.

At the age of 8, the boy had already performed at a public concert, where he earned his first money. By the age of 12, Beethoven was fluent in the violin, piano, and flute. However, along with fame, negative character traits came to him: lack of sociability, isolation, and the need to be alone.

At the same age, a kind and wise mentor appeared in the boy's life - Christian Gottlieb Nefe. He began to teach the future composer a sense of beauty, helped him learn the ability to understand people, life, understand art and native nature.

Thanks to a mentor, Beethoven learned ancient languages, etiquette, history, literature, philosophy. In the future, Ludwig began to adhere to the principles of freedom and equality of all those around him.

In 1787, the young composer left Bonn for Vienna, a city of cathedrals, theatres, window love serenades and street songs. He won the heart of the musician forever. But it was in this city that Beethoven developed hearing problems, and later deafness set in.

At first he heard everything, as if in a muffled voice, constantly asking for phrases and words several times, and then he began to realize that he was finally ceasing to hear. Ludwig once wrote to his friend that he drags out a bitter existence because he is deaf.

When he works, nothing can be worse. He said that if he could cure this disease, he would embrace the whole world. The pianist hid his illness for 10 years. The people around him did not even know that he was deaf, and the answersinappropriate and frequent repeated questions were attributed to inattention and absent-mindedness.

Despite his illness, he was always a welcome guest in aristocratic society, he worked hard on his musical works and was considered a fashionable musician of that time. But Ludwig was disappointed in his life because of his deafness.

Soon, disappointment was replaced by great happiness from meeting the young Countess Giulietta Guicciardi.

First meeting

It all started in Vienna, after the arrival of Juliet to the Brunswicks. Juliet's cousins, Josephine and Therese von Brunswick, took music lessons from Beethoven. Juliet followed them.

The countess was very beautiful. A young, fragile girl with long dark hair and a beautiful languid look. Snow-white skin with a slight blush, as well as charm and love of life, won the heart of the thirty-year-old Beethoven. Unfortunately, not a single photo of Juliet Guicciardi has survived to this day, since the first photograph was taken only in 1826, when the countess was already 44 years old.

He fell in love with her passionately and ardently and was sure that Juliet also loved him, but, unfortunately, this was not the case. No wonder the composer's friends called her "windy coquette".

A couple of months after they met, Beethoven and Juliet Guicciardi started playing the piano for free. Instead of a generous present, the girl presented the composer with several shirts that she embroidered herself.

Ludwig was a very strict teacher. If he didn't like Juliet's playing, he threw notes in annoyance.on the floor and defiantly turned his back to the girl. Juliet silently collected notebooks and continued to play until the composer was satisfied. Thus began the love story of Juliet Guicciardi and Ludwig van Beethoven. But she quickly became bored with the unkempt, deaf, but brilliant musician.

Juliet fell in love with the young count. He seemed to her a genius, which she shared with her teacher. As a result, the love story of Juliet Guicciardi and Beethoven ended. The Countess did not love Ludwig, but only played with his feelings.

She eventually married Gallenberg and went to live with him in Italy. But Juliet Guicciardi's family and children were of little interest. She was most interested in novels. She met Prince Pückler-Muskau. Today, everyone would call him the shameless Zhigalo, who pulled money from the girl. As a result, her husband's financial situation became very deplorable. Everything got to the point that Juliet had to ask Beethoven for money.

How has Beethoven changed since he was with Juliet?

The great composer said that his life became much brighter thanks to Giulietta Guicciardi. He began to visit society more often, communicate with new people. He had bright moments again, and he believed that only marriage could make him even happier.

But the composer's dreams were short-lived. Each meeting with the countess brought him a lot of doubts. But at the same time, he hoped that she would be his forever. What hindered their happiness? The obstacle was the composer's deafness, his financial instability and the aristocratic origin of the girl.

How"Moonlight Sonata" was written?

This musical masterpiece is a reflection of the composer's personal drama. After six months of meeting Juliet Guicciardi, at the peak of his feelings, Beethoven began writing a new sonata. It was dedicated to the countess and began to be created when the pianist was in a state of love and hope to marry a young lady.

But he had to finish the sonata in a rage. He was very offended by the countess. The windy lady preferred the eighteen-year-old Count Robert von Gallenberg, who was also fond of music and already composed good pieces of music, to Beethoven.

Why does the sonata have such a name?

According to some assumptions, Ludwig wrote the sonata in 1801 in the summer in Korompa in one of the pavilions of the park, while on the Bruneviks estate. As a result, during the life of the composer, the sonata was called the “Sonata-Arbor”.

According to other assumptions, Beethoven began working on it in the fall of 1801. As a result, in 1802, a musical masterpiece appeared - "Moonlight Sonata", which was dedicated to Juliet Gvichchardi, a small portrait of which was kept in his desktop until the death of the composer.

This work is a reflection of the soul of the composer himself. It testifies to the impressionability of Beethoven. He took parting with the countess very close to his heart, so the second part of the sonata was written in an angry tone. Because of this, many believe that the title of the work does not match the content.

After listening to the sonata, the composer's friend Ludwig Relshtab, who was also a music critic andcomposer, correlated the work with a night lake with moonlight.

According to the second version, the name came from the fashion of that time for everything connected with the moon. Therefore, for contemporaries, this beautiful epithet fit just perfectly.

Return of Juliet

After a couple of years, Countess Gallenberg returned to Austria and came to Beethoven. She cried, remembered the wonderful time when he was her teacher, complained about poverty, life's difficulties, and asked Beethoven to help with money.

The composer was a kind and noble person. He gave her a small amount of money, but asked her never to visit his house again. Do you think that he is an indifferent and indifferent person? No one knew what was really going on in his soul.

Was Beethoven able to forget Juliet?

Ludwig has parted with his dreams and hopes before, but this time the tragedy has become deeper. The genius was 30 years old, and his personal life was unsettled. Due to deafness, he could be left all alone. And only thanks to creativity, he continued to believe in himself.

Juliet disappointed him, left him, but at the end of his life he wrote these lines: “I was very loved by her and more than ever was her husband…”.

He tried to erase her from his heart forever, met other women, confessed his love, but was always rejected.

He spoke words of love to Josephine Brunswick, cousin of Juliette Guicciardi, but received a polite and unequivocal refusal from her. They said that it was forbidden by the parentsfurther relationship with the pianist, since he did not have an aristocratic title and could not be a candidate for a wife.

In desperation, the composer proposed to Teresa Malfatti, Josephine's older sister, but she also refused him, inventing an incredible tale about the impossibility of living together with Beethoven. As a result, he writes his next musical masterpiece "Fur Elise". After the failures, Beethoven decided for himself to spend the rest of his life in splendid isolation.

Women humiliated the composer more than once. A young singer from the Viennese theater once taunted him after he asked her to meet. She said that Beethoven was so outwardly ugly, and also strange, that there could be no talk of any meetings.

Yes, the composer actually didn't take good care of his appearance. And he was never independent. He needed constant female care. When he was Juliet's teacher, the girl noticed that the maestro's bow was not tied that way. She bandaged it, and the composer did not change or take off this accessory for several weeks after that, until his acquaintances hinted that his suit looked very untidy and stale.

Composer's disease

The story of Juliet Guicciardi and Beethoven is as dramatic as the fate of the composer. He had serious he alth problems due to inflammation of the ear nerve. Due to illness, the composer completely lost his hearing. But that hasn't stopped him from creating amazing musical masterpieces.

It became more and more difficult for him to write, but he accurately selected the right notes,musical nuances and tonality. If hope is heard at the beginning of the Moonlight Sonata, then at the end there is a rebellious impulse that cannot find a way out.

Of course, this is connected not only with the physical condition of the composer, but also with his mental state. Juliet is gone, and with her his happiness. The composer even thought of committing suicide. He said: "The world eludes me." But the world would lose a lot more if Ludwig left it.

From 1813 to 1815, he did not write so many pieces of music, because he finally lost his hearing. To "hear" the sound, he used a thin wooden stick or pencil. The maid constantly caught the pianist in this form. He clamped one end of the pencil with his teeth, and leaned the other against the body of the instrument. He tried to feel the sound through the vibration.

The works of this difficult period for a pianist are filled with depth and tragedy.

In the autumn of 1826, Ludwig fell seriously ill. He underwent heavy therapy and three very difficult operations, but he could not get back on his feet. Lying all winter in his bed, sick and deaf, he suffered terrible torments from the fact that he could no longer write. In 1827, on March 26, the composer died.

Letter to Juliet

After the composer died, a letter was found in his box with the inscription "To the immortal lover." It spoke of falling in love with a woman he missed madly and couldn't understand why they couldn't be together.

Many are still arguing who exactly the letter was addressed to. But there is a small indisputable fact: next to the note was a small portrait of Juliet Guicciardi, which was painted by an unknown master. Therefore, everyone believes that he dedicated his dying love lines to her.

The image of Juliet Guicciardi in art

• In 1994, Bernard Rose made a biopic called Immortal Beloved. Valeria Golino played the role of Juliet Guicciardi, and you can see the photo of the actress below. The director perfectly chose the actress, who looked so much like a countess in her youth.
• In 2005, the television series "The Genius of Beethoven" was released on TV screens, in which Alice Eve played Countess Guicciardi.
• Beethoven wrote Moonlight Sonata in honor of Juliet Guicciardi.
• Also, almost 200 years later (in 1993), Viktor Ekimovsky, a Russian composer, dedicated his "Moonlight Sonata" to this girl.

Ludwig Beethoven was a prominent representative of romanticism in music. "Moonlight Sonata" - his most famous piece of music - was dedicated to the only woman he loved in his life: Giulietta Guicciardi.

Perhaps it was the love for the young countess that helped write the most ingenious compositions that are still performed on the main stages around the world.