In truth, Beethoven needed a champion, for, from the first, a certain originality, a strenuousness, showed itself in his work, which put the art on a new and different footing.  That the young man was reaching out for higher things his public may have been aware of, but only a few, here and there, kindred spirits, cared for this.  The average person was unable to recognize any higher function in music than that of simple enjoyment; anything aside from this was irrelevant, and could but lead to deterioration.  Although at the beginning of his career as composer, he made Mozart and Haydn his models, this originality showed itself, and when it was continued in subsequent works, it awoke the strongest opposition in certain quarters.  The strong partisanship which Krumpholz brought to bear on the situation, was invaluable to the young man, whose views needed confirmation and indorsement.  Krumpholz seems to have had an affinity for discovering talent in others.  He brought Czerny, at the age of ten years, to Beethoven, who immediately recognized his genius, and offered to give him lessons.  That Beethoven deeply felt the loss of his old friend and teacher is evidenced by his writing music to the Song of the monks,

    Rasch tritt der Tod den Menschen an,

from Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, in commemoration of him.

CHAPTER XII

SENSE OF HUMOR

In tristitia hilaris, in hilaritate tristis. 
—­MOTTO OF GIORDANO BRUNO.

Beethoven did not have much in the way of enjoyment, as the word is generally understood, to compensate him for the pain of existence.  The resources vouchsafed others in this respect, family affection, love, friendship, generally failed him when put to the test.  Out of harmony with the general order of things in the material world, the point in which he could best come to an understanding with his fellow-creatures was by the exercise of his sense of humor.  The circumstances of his life tended to make a pessimist of him.  He did not understand the world and was misunderstood in return.  To counteract the tendency toward pessimism, his resource was to develop his sense of humor, to create an atmosphere of gayety, by which he was enabled to meet people on a common plane.  But not only in the ordinary affairs of life does it stand him in good stead, this sense of humor.  It comes out finely in his creative work in the sonatas and the Scherzo movements of his symphonies.  He originated, invented the Scherzo, developing it from the simple minuet of the earlier composers.  The primary object of the Scherzo was recreation pure and simple.  It was introduced with the object of resting the mind.