Mats Norrman, in response to me:

>>However, when rereading Beethoven's remarks on God and rereading some
>>digressions on Spinoza it also came to my mind that there's something
>>very Spinozian in his view on God. Coincidence? The sign of the times?
>>According to my encyclopedia on philosophy there was some kind of
>>Spinoza revival during Beethoven's lifetime.
>
>Fun that you felt this too. Well, it is always possible that Beethoven came
>to a similar conclusion to that of Spinoza, himself, without facit
>knowledge of Spinoza. If there was some kind of Spinoza revival in that
>time, as you suggest, Beethoven might well have senced it as tendence.

Important writers/philosophers like Klopstock, Lessing and Goethe showed
interest in Spinoza.  Since these authors were on Beethoven's list of
favorites, it's not unlikely that in this way Spinozian ideas entered
had Beethoven's mind.

>Besides that information the biographies provide; Read the text to the
>'Choral' symphony, the 'Ode an die Freude'! For me the line "Ahnest du den
>Schoepfer, Welt?", indicates a wiew of God that says he is not a
>puppetmaster, he doesn't break into the individuals lives, but he can be
>'senced' in other, more sublime, ways.

But this view doesn't fit to Beethoven's prayers for help, directly asked
from God, whom he called "his rock." See his diary.  We should not overlook
that the line is not Beethoven's, but Schiller's.  True, Beethoven never
would have used the line if he had strongly disagreed.  However, there's
room for a lot of vagueness between strong disagreement and strong
agreement.

>Als U langzaam spreekt, versteht ik U. Maar, Joyce, ik vindt het erg
>prettig!:-)

Not a bad attempt, Mats.  Allow me to show some pedantry: it's not
"versteht" but "versta" and "vindt" should be "vind."

>I haven't the proper knowledge about Beethovens own writings and speeches
>about his ideas beside the artistic work itself, to be able to judge.

It's somewhat embarrassing, but though Beethoven was intelligent man
with a hunger for more knowledge, it's also a fact that his psychological,
philosophical and political insights were not impressive, probably due
to his bad education.  Reading his letters I always get a bit annoyed,
sometimes even angry.  It's only Me, Me and Me once more and My Feelings,
My Achievements, My Needs et cetera.  Hardly a word about his fellow-men
and what happened to them.  Only sometimes digressions on the culture of
his times and every now and then angry outbursts about politics, which was
quite compresensible in those days of revolution and war.  In his diary he
shows a bit more interest in not-temporarily philosophical and
philosophically-related matters.  There the reader meets the thinker
Beethoven.

>But on the other hand there is significant indications from letters that
>Schubert had very lofty philosophical ideas as background for several of
>his works, so why not Beethoven?

Maybe.  I really don't know.  It's not easy to meet the real Beethoven.
I've been studying the man, his life and his music for more than 30 years
now and often he's still some kind of a sphinx to me.  The problem is
that he was such a man of extremes, often unfriendly, rude, intolerant,
arrogant, egocentric and sometimes an almost banal, maybe even vulgar
bastard.  On the other hand he had a heart of gold and (of course, who
would doubt that?) he was a man of great spirit.

Joyce Maier
www.ademu.com/Beethoven