This year marks the 250th birth anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), one of the greatest exponents of western classical music....
This year marks the 250th birth anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), one of the greatest exponents of western classical music. It also marks the conclusion of the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. However, beyond this insignificant calendrical coincidence, was there any connection between the two? How could there have been? Gandhi, after all, was an ascetic who eulogised and practiced brahmacharya (narrowly understood as a life of celibacy). Beethoven, on the other hand, famously said: “Music, verily, is the mediator between intellectual and sensuous life.”
Yet, Beethoven figures in one of the most fascinating episodes in Gandhi’s life. This connection was personified by the Mahatma’s devoted British-born associate and adopted daughter, Mirabehn, formerly Madeleine Slade (1892-1982). Her poignant life begins with the transformational influence of Beethoven’s music, enters an even more transformational period when she comes to India to live in Gandhi’s ashram, and ends in Beethoven’s spiritual presence, near his grave in the woods of Austria.
‘European Mahatma’
Incidentally, the person who brought Beethoven into Mirabehn’s life – Nobel-winning French writer and European pacifist Romain Rolland (1866-1944) – also introduced Beethoven’s music to the Mahatma. The meeting between Gandhi and Rolland, which took place at the latter’s picturesque villa in the Alps near Geneva in...
