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On March 29, 1795, Ludwig van Beethoven had his debut performance as a pianist in Vienna. From the article:
"Ludwig van Beethoven Biography
(c. 1770–1827)
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer whose Symphony 5 is a beloved classic. Some of his greatest works were composed while Beethoven was going deaf.From
Who Was Ludwig van Beethoven?
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German pianist and composer widely considered to be one of the greatest musical geniuses of all time. His innovative compositions combined vocals and instruments, widening the scope of sonata, symphony, concerto and quartet. He is the crucial transitional figure connecting the Classical and Romantic ages of Western music.
Beethoven’s personal life was marked by a struggle against deafness, and some of his most important works were composed during the last 10 years of his life, when he was quite unable to hear. He died at the age of 56.
Controversial Birthday
Beethoven was born on or about December 16, 1770, in the city of Bonn in the Electorate of Cologne, a principality of the Holy Roman Empire. Although his exact date of birth is uncertain, Beethoven was baptized on December 17, 1770.
As a matter of law and custom, babies at the time were baptized within 24 hours of birth, so December 16 is his most likely birthdate.
However, Beethoven himself mistakenly believed that he was born two years later, in 1772, and he stubbornly insisted on the incorrect date even when presented with official papers that proved beyond any reasonable doubt that 1770 was his true birth year.
Family
Beethoven had two younger brothers who survived into adulthood: Caspar, born in 1774, and Johann, born in 1776. Beethoven's mother, Maria Magdalena van Beethoven, was a slender, genteel, and deeply moralistic woman.
His father, Johann van Beethoven, was a mediocre court singer better known for his alcoholism than any musical ability. However, Beethoven's grandfather, godfather and namesake, Kapellmeister Ludwig van Beethoven, was Bonn's most prosperous and eminent musician, a source of endless pride for young Beethoven.
Childhood Abuse
Sometime between the births of his two younger brothers, Beethoven's father began teaching him music with an extraordinary rigor and brutality that affected him for the rest of his life.
Neighbors provided accounts of the small boy weeping while he played the clavier, standing atop a footstool to reach the keys, his father beating him for each hesitation or mistake.
On a near daily basis, Beethoven was flogged, locked in the cellar and deprived of sleep for extra hours of practice. He studied the violin and clavier with his father as well as taking additional lessons from organists around town. Whether in spite of or because of his father's draconian methods, Beethoven was a prodigiously talented musician from his earliest days.
Education
Hoping that his young son would be recognized as a musical prodigy à la Wolfgang Mozart, Beethoven's father arranged his first public recital for March 26, 1778. Billed as a "little son of 6 years," (Mozart's age when he debuted for Empress Maria Theresia) although he was in fact 7, Beethoven played impressively, but his recital received no press whatsoever.
Meanwhile, the musical prodigy attended a Latin grade school named Tirocinium, where a classmate said, "Not a sign was to be discovered of that spark of genius which glowed so brilliantly in him afterwards."
Beethoven, who struggled with sums and spelling his entire life, was at best an average student, and some biographers have hypothesized that he may have had mild dyslexia. As he put it himself, "Music comes to me more readily than words."
In 1781, at the age of 10, Beethoven withdrew from school to study music full time with Christian Gottlob Neefe, the newly appointed Court Organist, and at the age of 12, Beethoven published his first composition, a set of piano variations on a theme by an obscure classical composer named Dressler.
By 1784, his alcoholism worsening and his voice decaying, Beethoven's father was no longer able to support his family, and Beethoven formally requested an official appointment as Assistant Court Organist. Despite his youth, his request was accepted, and Beethoven was put on the court payroll with a modest annual salary of 150 florins.
Beethoven and Mozart
There is only speculation and inconclusive evidence that Beethoven ever met with Mozart, let alone studied with him. In an effort to facilitate his musical development, in 1787 the court sent Beethoven to Vienna, Europe’s capital of culture and music, where he hoped to study with Mozart.
Tradition has it that, upon hearing Beethoven, Mozart said, "Keep your eyes on him; someday he will give the world something to talk about.”
After only a few weeks in Vienna, Beethoven learned that his mother had fallen ill and he returned home to Bonn. Remaining there, Beethoven continued to carve out his reputation as the city's most promising young court musician.
Early Career as a Composer
When the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II died in 1790, a 19-year-old Beethoven received the immense honor of composing a musical memorial in his honor. For reasons that remain unclear, Beethoven's composition was never performed, and most assumed the young musician had proven unequal to the task.
However, more than a century later, Johannes Brahms discovered that Beethoven had in fact composed a "beautiful and noble" piece of music entitled Cantata on the Death of Emperor Joseph II. It is now considered his earliest masterpiece.
Beethoven and Haydn
In 1792, with French revolutionary forces sweeping across the Rhineland into the Electorate of Cologne, Beethoven decided to leave his hometown for Vienna once again. Mozart had passed away a year earlier, leaving Joseph Haydn as the unquestioned greatest composer alive.
Haydn was living in Vienna at the time, and it was with Haydn that the young Beethoven now intended to study. As his friend and patron Count Waldstein wrote in a farewell letter, "Mozart's genius mourns and weeps over the death of his disciple. It found refuge, but no release with the inexhaustible Haydn; through him, now, it seeks to unite with another. By means of assiduous labor you will receive the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Haydn."
In Vienna, Beethoven dedicated himself wholeheartedly to musical study with the most eminent musicians of the age. He studied piano with Haydn, vocal composition with Antonio Salieri and counterpoint with Johann Albrechtsberger. Not yet known as a composer, Beethoven quickly established a reputation as a virtuoso pianist who was especially adept at improvisation.
Debut Performance
Beethoven won many patrons among the leading citizens of the Viennese aristocracy, who provided him with lodging and funds, allowing Beethoven, in 1794, to sever ties with the Electorate of Cologne. Beethoven made his long-awaited public debut in Vienna on March 29, 1795.
Although there is considerable debate over which of his early piano concerti he performed that night, most scholars believe he played what is known as his "first" piano concerto in C Major. Shortly thereafter, Beethoven decided to publish a series of three piano trios as his Opus 1, which were an enormous critical and financial success.
In the first spring of the new century, on April 2, 1800, Beethoven debuted his Symphony No. 1 in C major at the Royal Imperial Theater in Vienna. Although Beethoven would grow to detest the piece — "In those days I did not know how to compose," he later remarked — the graceful and melodious symphony nevertheless established him as one of Europe's most celebrated composers.
As the new century progressed, Beethoven composed piece after piece that marked him as a masterful composer reaching his musical maturity. His Six String Quartets, published in 1801, demonstrate complete mastery of that most difficult and cherished of Viennese forms developed by Mozart and Haydn.
Beethoven also composed The Creatures of Prometheus in 1801, a wildly popular ballet that received 27 performances at the Imperial Court Theater. It was around the same time that Beethoven discovered he was losing his hearing.
Personal Life
For a variety of reasons that included his crippling shyness and unfortunate physical appearance, Beethoven never married or had children. He was, however, desperately in love with a married woman named Antonie Brentano.
Over the course of two days in July of 1812, Beethoven wrote her a long and beautiful love letter that he never sent. Addressed "to you, my Immortal Beloved," the letter said in part, "My heart is full of so many things to say to you — ah — there are moments when I feel that speech amounts to nothing at all — Cheer up — remain my true, my only love, my all as I am yours."
The death of Beethoven's brother Caspar in 1815 sparked one of the great trials of his life, a painful legal battle with his sister-in-law, Johanna, over the custody of Karl van Beethoven, his nephew and her son.
The struggle stretched on for seven years, during which both sides spewed ugly defamations at the other. In the end, Beethoven won the boy's custody, though hardly his affection.
Despite his extraordinary output of beautiful music, Beethoven was lonely and frequently miserable throughout his adult life. Short-tempered, absent-minded, greedy and suspicious to the point of paranoia, Beethoven feuded with his brothers, his publishers, his housekeepers, his pupils and his patrons.
In one illustrative incident, Beethoven attempted to break a chair over the head of Prince Lichnowsky, one of his closest friends and most loyal patrons. Another time he stood in the doorway of Prince Lobkowitz's palace shouting for all to hear, "Lobkowitz is a donkey!"
Was Beethoven Black?
For years, rumors have swirled that Beethoven had some African ancestry. These unfounded tales may be based on Beethoven's dark complexion or the fact that his ancestors came from a region of Europe that had once been invaded by the Spanish, and Moors from northern Africa were part of Spanish culture.
A few scholars have noted that Beethoven seemed to have an innate understanding of the polyrhythmic structures typical to some African music. However, no one during Beethoven's lifetime referred to the composer as Moorish or African, and the rumors that he was black are largely dismissed by historians.
Was Beethoven Deaf?
At the same time as Beethoven was composing some of his most immortal works, he was struggling to come to terms with a shocking and terrible fact, one that he tried desperately to conceal: He was going deaf.
By the turn of the 19th century, Beethoven struggled to make out the words spoken to him in conversation.
Beethoven revealed in a heart-wrenching 1801 letter to his friend Franz Wegeler, "I must confess that I lead a miserable life. For almost two years I have ceased to attend any social functions, just because I find it impossible to say to people: I am deaf. If I had any other profession, I might be able to cope with my infirmity; but in my profession it is a terrible handicap."
Heiligenstadt Testament
At times driven to extremes of melancholy by his affliction, Beethoven described his despair in a long and poignant note that he concealed his entire life.
Dated October 6, 1802, and referred to as "The Heiligenstadt Testament," it reads in part: "O you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you and I would have ended my life — it was only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me."
Almost miraculously, despite his rapidly progressing deafness, Beethoven continued to compose at a furious pace.
Moonlight Sonata
From 1803 to 1812, what is known as his "middle" or "heroic" period, he composed an opera, six symphonies, four solo concerti, five string quartets, six-string sonatas, seven piano sonatas, five sets of piano variations, four overtures, four trios, two sextets and 72 songs.
The most famous among these were the haunting Moonlight Sonata, symphonies No. 3-8, the Kreutzer violin sonata and Fidelio, his only opera.
In terms of the astonishing output of superlatively complex, original and beautiful music, this period in Beethoven's life is unrivaled by any of any other composer in history.
Beethoven’s Music
Some of Beethoven’s best-known compositions include:
Eroica: Symphony No. 3
In 1804, only weeks after Napoleon Bonaparte proclaimed himself Emperor of France, Beethoven debuted his Symphony No. 3 in Napoleon's honor. Beethoven, like all of Europe, watched with a mixture of awe and terror; he admired, abhorred and, to an extent, identified with Napoleon, a man of seemingly superhuman capabilities, only one year older than himself and also of obscure birth.
Later renamed the Eroica Symphony because Beethoven grew disillusioned with Napoleon, it was his grandest and most original work to date.
Because it was so unlike anything heard before it, the musicians could not figure out how to play it through weeks of rehearsal. A prominent reviewer proclaimed "Eroica" as "one of the most original, most sublime, and most profound products that the entire genre of music has ever exhibited."
Symphony No. 5
One of Beethoven’s best-known works among modern audiences, Symphony No. 5 is known for its ominous first four notes.
Beethoven began composing the piece in 1804, but its completion was delayed a few times for other projects. It premiered at the same time as Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, in 1808 in Vienna.
Fur Elise
In 1810, Beethoven completed Fur Elise (meaning “For Elise”), although it was not published until 40 years after his death. In 1867, it was discovered by a German music scholar, however Beethoven’s original manuscript has since been lost.
Some scholars have suggested it was dedicated to his friend, student and fellow musician, Therese Malfatti, to whom he allegedly proposed around the time of the song’s composition. Others said it was for the German soprano Elisabeth Rockel, another friend of Beethoven’s.
Symphony No. 7
Premiering in Vienna in 1813 to benefit soldiers wounded in the battle of Hanau, Beethoven began composing this, one of his most energetic and optimistic works, in 1811.
The composer called the piece “his most excellent symphony." The second movement is often performed separately from the rest of the symphony and may have been one of Beethoven’s most popular works.
Missa Solemnis
Debuting in 1824, this Catholic mass is considered among Beethoven’s finest achievements. Just under 90 minutes in length, the rarely-performed piece features a chorus, orchestra and four soloists.
Ode to Joy: Symphony No. 9
Beethoven’s ninth and final symphony, completed in 1824, remains the illustrious composer's most towering achievement. The symphony's famous choral finale, with four vocal soloists and a chorus singing the words of Friedrich Schiller's poem "Ode to Joy," is perhaps the most famous piece of music in history.
While connoisseurs delighted in the symphony's contrapuntal and formal complexity, the masses found inspiration in the anthem-like vigor of the choral finale and the concluding invocation of "all humanity."
String Quartet No. 14
Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14 debuted in 1826. About 40 minutes in length, it contains seven linked movements played without a break.
The work was reportedly one of Beethoven’s favorite later quartets and has been described as one of the composer’s most elusive compositions musically.
Death
Beethoven died on March 26, 1827, at the age of 56, of post-hepatitic cirrhosis of the liver.
The autopsy also provided clues to the origins of his deafness: While his quick temper, chronic diarrhea and deafness are consistent with arterial disease, a competing theory traces Beethoven's deafness to contracting typhus in the summer of 1796.
Scientists analyzing a remaining fragment of Beethoven's skull noticed high levels of lead and hypothesized lead poisoning as a potential cause of death, but that theory has been largely discredited.
Legacy
Beethoven is widely considered one of the greatest, if not the single greatest, composer of all time. Beethoven's body of musical compositions stands with William Shakespeare's plays at the outer limits of human brilliance.
And the fact Beethoven composed his most beautiful and extraordinary music while deaf is an almost superhuman feat of creative genius, perhaps only paralleled in the history of artistic achievement by John Milton writing Paradise Lost while blind.
Summing up his life and imminent death during his last days, Beethoven, who was never as eloquent with words as he was with music, borrowed a tagline that concluded many Latin plays at the time. Plaudite, amici, comoedia finita est, he said. 'Applaud friends, the comedy is over.'"
"Ludwig van Beethoven Biography
(c. 1770–1827)
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer whose Symphony 5 is a beloved classic. Some of his greatest works were composed while Beethoven was going deaf.From
Who Was Ludwig van Beethoven?
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German pianist and composer widely considered to be one of the greatest musical geniuses of all time. His innovative compositions combined vocals and instruments, widening the scope of sonata, symphony, concerto and quartet. He is the crucial transitional figure connecting the Classical and Romantic ages of Western music.
Beethoven’s personal life was marked by a struggle against deafness, and some of his most important works were composed during the last 10 years of his life, when he was quite unable to hear. He died at the age of 56.
Controversial Birthday
Beethoven was born on or about December 16, 1770, in the city of Bonn in the Electorate of Cologne, a principality of the Holy Roman Empire. Although his exact date of birth is uncertain, Beethoven was baptized on December 17, 1770.
As a matter of law and custom, babies at the time were baptized within 24 hours of birth, so December 16 is his most likely birthdate.
However, Beethoven himself mistakenly believed that he was born two years later, in 1772, and he stubbornly insisted on the incorrect date even when presented with official papers that proved beyond any reasonable doubt that 1770 was his true birth year.
Family
Beethoven had two younger brothers who survived into adulthood: Caspar, born in 1774, and Johann, born in 1776. Beethoven's mother, Maria Magdalena van Beethoven, was a slender, genteel, and deeply moralistic woman.
His father, Johann van Beethoven, was a mediocre court singer better known for his alcoholism than any musical ability. However, Beethoven's grandfather, godfather and namesake, Kapellmeister Ludwig van Beethoven, was Bonn's most prosperous and eminent musician, a source of endless pride for young Beethoven.
Childhood Abuse
Sometime between the births of his two younger brothers, Beethoven's father began teaching him music with an extraordinary rigor and brutality that affected him for the rest of his life.
Neighbors provided accounts of the small boy weeping while he played the clavier, standing atop a footstool to reach the keys, his father beating him for each hesitation or mistake.
On a near daily basis, Beethoven was flogged, locked in the cellar and deprived of sleep for extra hours of practice. He studied the violin and clavier with his father as well as taking additional lessons from organists around town. Whether in spite of or because of his father's draconian methods, Beethoven was a prodigiously talented musician from his earliest days.
Education
Hoping that his young son would be recognized as a musical prodigy à la Wolfgang Mozart, Beethoven's father arranged his first public recital for March 26, 1778. Billed as a "little son of 6 years," (Mozart's age when he debuted for Empress Maria Theresia) although he was in fact 7, Beethoven played impressively, but his recital received no press whatsoever.
Meanwhile, the musical prodigy attended a Latin grade school named Tirocinium, where a classmate said, "Not a sign was to be discovered of that spark of genius which glowed so brilliantly in him afterwards."
Beethoven, who struggled with sums and spelling his entire life, was at best an average student, and some biographers have hypothesized that he may have had mild dyslexia. As he put it himself, "Music comes to me more readily than words."
In 1781, at the age of 10, Beethoven withdrew from school to study music full time with Christian Gottlob Neefe, the newly appointed Court Organist, and at the age of 12, Beethoven published his first composition, a set of piano variations on a theme by an obscure classical composer named Dressler.
By 1784, his alcoholism worsening and his voice decaying, Beethoven's father was no longer able to support his family, and Beethoven formally requested an official appointment as Assistant Court Organist. Despite his youth, his request was accepted, and Beethoven was put on the court payroll with a modest annual salary of 150 florins.
Beethoven and Mozart
There is only speculation and inconclusive evidence that Beethoven ever met with Mozart, let alone studied with him. In an effort to facilitate his musical development, in 1787 the court sent Beethoven to Vienna, Europe’s capital of culture and music, where he hoped to study with Mozart.
Tradition has it that, upon hearing Beethoven, Mozart said, "Keep your eyes on him; someday he will give the world something to talk about.”
After only a few weeks in Vienna, Beethoven learned that his mother had fallen ill and he returned home to Bonn. Remaining there, Beethoven continued to carve out his reputation as the city's most promising young court musician.
Early Career as a Composer
When the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II died in 1790, a 19-year-old Beethoven received the immense honor of composing a musical memorial in his honor. For reasons that remain unclear, Beethoven's composition was never performed, and most assumed the young musician had proven unequal to the task.
However, more than a century later, Johannes Brahms discovered that Beethoven had in fact composed a "beautiful and noble" piece of music entitled Cantata on the Death of Emperor Joseph II. It is now considered his earliest masterpiece.
Beethoven and Haydn
In 1792, with French revolutionary forces sweeping across the Rhineland into the Electorate of Cologne, Beethoven decided to leave his hometown for Vienna once again. Mozart had passed away a year earlier, leaving Joseph Haydn as the unquestioned greatest composer alive.
Haydn was living in Vienna at the time, and it was with Haydn that the young Beethoven now intended to study. As his friend and patron Count Waldstein wrote in a farewell letter, "Mozart's genius mourns and weeps over the death of his disciple. It found refuge, but no release with the inexhaustible Haydn; through him, now, it seeks to unite with another. By means of assiduous labor you will receive the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Haydn."
In Vienna, Beethoven dedicated himself wholeheartedly to musical study with the most eminent musicians of the age. He studied piano with Haydn, vocal composition with Antonio Salieri and counterpoint with Johann Albrechtsberger. Not yet known as a composer, Beethoven quickly established a reputation as a virtuoso pianist who was especially adept at improvisation.
Debut Performance
Beethoven won many patrons among the leading citizens of the Viennese aristocracy, who provided him with lodging and funds, allowing Beethoven, in 1794, to sever ties with the Electorate of Cologne. Beethoven made his long-awaited public debut in Vienna on March 29, 1795.
Although there is considerable debate over which of his early piano concerti he performed that night, most scholars believe he played what is known as his "first" piano concerto in C Major. Shortly thereafter, Beethoven decided to publish a series of three piano trios as his Opus 1, which were an enormous critical and financial success.
In the first spring of the new century, on April 2, 1800, Beethoven debuted his Symphony No. 1 in C major at the Royal Imperial Theater in Vienna. Although Beethoven would grow to detest the piece — "In those days I did not know how to compose," he later remarked — the graceful and melodious symphony nevertheless established him as one of Europe's most celebrated composers.
As the new century progressed, Beethoven composed piece after piece that marked him as a masterful composer reaching his musical maturity. His Six String Quartets, published in 1801, demonstrate complete mastery of that most difficult and cherished of Viennese forms developed by Mozart and Haydn.
Beethoven also composed The Creatures of Prometheus in 1801, a wildly popular ballet that received 27 performances at the Imperial Court Theater. It was around the same time that Beethoven discovered he was losing his hearing.
Personal Life
For a variety of reasons that included his crippling shyness and unfortunate physical appearance, Beethoven never married or had children. He was, however, desperately in love with a married woman named Antonie Brentano.
Over the course of two days in July of 1812, Beethoven wrote her a long and beautiful love letter that he never sent. Addressed "to you, my Immortal Beloved," the letter said in part, "My heart is full of so many things to say to you — ah — there are moments when I feel that speech amounts to nothing at all — Cheer up — remain my true, my only love, my all as I am yours."
The death of Beethoven's brother Caspar in 1815 sparked one of the great trials of his life, a painful legal battle with his sister-in-law, Johanna, over the custody of Karl van Beethoven, his nephew and her son.
The struggle stretched on for seven years, during which both sides spewed ugly defamations at the other. In the end, Beethoven won the boy's custody, though hardly his affection.
Despite his extraordinary output of beautiful music, Beethoven was lonely and frequently miserable throughout his adult life. Short-tempered, absent-minded, greedy and suspicious to the point of paranoia, Beethoven feuded with his brothers, his publishers, his housekeepers, his pupils and his patrons.
In one illustrative incident, Beethoven attempted to break a chair over the head of Prince Lichnowsky, one of his closest friends and most loyal patrons. Another time he stood in the doorway of Prince Lobkowitz's palace shouting for all to hear, "Lobkowitz is a donkey!"
Was Beethoven Black?
For years, rumors have swirled that Beethoven had some African ancestry. These unfounded tales may be based on Beethoven's dark complexion or the fact that his ancestors came from a region of Europe that had once been invaded by the Spanish, and Moors from northern Africa were part of Spanish culture.
A few scholars have noted that Beethoven seemed to have an innate understanding of the polyrhythmic structures typical to some African music. However, no one during Beethoven's lifetime referred to the composer as Moorish or African, and the rumors that he was black are largely dismissed by historians.
Was Beethoven Deaf?
At the same time as Beethoven was composing some of his most immortal works, he was struggling to come to terms with a shocking and terrible fact, one that he tried desperately to conceal: He was going deaf.
By the turn of the 19th century, Beethoven struggled to make out the words spoken to him in conversation.
Beethoven revealed in a heart-wrenching 1801 letter to his friend Franz Wegeler, "I must confess that I lead a miserable life. For almost two years I have ceased to attend any social functions, just because I find it impossible to say to people: I am deaf. If I had any other profession, I might be able to cope with my infirmity; but in my profession it is a terrible handicap."
Heiligenstadt Testament
At times driven to extremes of melancholy by his affliction, Beethoven described his despair in a long and poignant note that he concealed his entire life.
Dated October 6, 1802, and referred to as "The Heiligenstadt Testament," it reads in part: "O you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you and I would have ended my life — it was only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me."
Almost miraculously, despite his rapidly progressing deafness, Beethoven continued to compose at a furious pace.
Moonlight Sonata
From 1803 to 1812, what is known as his "middle" or "heroic" period, he composed an opera, six symphonies, four solo concerti, five string quartets, six-string sonatas, seven piano sonatas, five sets of piano variations, four overtures, four trios, two sextets and 72 songs.
The most famous among these were the haunting Moonlight Sonata, symphonies No. 3-8, the Kreutzer violin sonata and Fidelio, his only opera.
In terms of the astonishing output of superlatively complex, original and beautiful music, this period in Beethoven's life is unrivaled by any of any other composer in history.
Beethoven’s Music
Some of Beethoven’s best-known compositions include:
Eroica: Symphony No. 3
In 1804, only weeks after Napoleon Bonaparte proclaimed himself Emperor of France, Beethoven debuted his Symphony No. 3 in Napoleon's honor. Beethoven, like all of Europe, watched with a mixture of awe and terror; he admired, abhorred and, to an extent, identified with Napoleon, a man of seemingly superhuman capabilities, only one year older than himself and also of obscure birth.
Later renamed the Eroica Symphony because Beethoven grew disillusioned with Napoleon, it was his grandest and most original work to date.
Because it was so unlike anything heard before it, the musicians could not figure out how to play it through weeks of rehearsal. A prominent reviewer proclaimed "Eroica" as "one of the most original, most sublime, and most profound products that the entire genre of music has ever exhibited."
Symphony No. 5
One of Beethoven’s best-known works among modern audiences, Symphony No. 5 is known for its ominous first four notes.
Beethoven began composing the piece in 1804, but its completion was delayed a few times for other projects. It premiered at the same time as Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, in 1808 in Vienna.
Fur Elise
In 1810, Beethoven completed Fur Elise (meaning “For Elise”), although it was not published until 40 years after his death. In 1867, it was discovered by a German music scholar, however Beethoven’s original manuscript has since been lost.
Some scholars have suggested it was dedicated to his friend, student and fellow musician, Therese Malfatti, to whom he allegedly proposed around the time of the song’s composition. Others said it was for the German soprano Elisabeth Rockel, another friend of Beethoven’s.
Symphony No. 7
Premiering in Vienna in 1813 to benefit soldiers wounded in the battle of Hanau, Beethoven began composing this, one of his most energetic and optimistic works, in 1811.
The composer called the piece “his most excellent symphony." The second movement is often performed separately from the rest of the symphony and may have been one of Beethoven’s most popular works.
Missa Solemnis
Debuting in 1824, this Catholic mass is considered among Beethoven’s finest achievements. Just under 90 minutes in length, the rarely-performed piece features a chorus, orchestra and four soloists.
Ode to Joy: Symphony No. 9
Beethoven’s ninth and final symphony, completed in 1824, remains the illustrious composer's most towering achievement. The symphony's famous choral finale, with four vocal soloists and a chorus singing the words of Friedrich Schiller's poem "Ode to Joy," is perhaps the most famous piece of music in history.
While connoisseurs delighted in the symphony's contrapuntal and formal complexity, the masses found inspiration in the anthem-like vigor of the choral finale and the concluding invocation of "all humanity."
String Quartet No. 14
Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14 debuted in 1826. About 40 minutes in length, it contains seven linked movements played without a break.
The work was reportedly one of Beethoven’s favorite later quartets and has been described as one of the composer’s most elusive compositions musically.
Death
Beethoven died on March 26, 1827, at the age of 56, of post-hepatitic cirrhosis of the liver.
The autopsy also provided clues to the origins of his deafness: While his quick temper, chronic diarrhea and deafness are consistent with arterial disease, a competing theory traces Beethoven's deafness to contracting typhus in the summer of 1796.
Scientists analyzing a remaining fragment of Beethoven's skull noticed high levels of lead and hypothesized lead poisoning as a potential cause of death, but that theory has been largely discredited.
Legacy
Beethoven is widely considered one of the greatest, if not the single greatest, composer of all time. Beethoven's body of musical compositions stands with William Shakespeare's plays at the outer limits of human brilliance.
And the fact Beethoven composed his most beautiful and extraordinary music while deaf is an almost superhuman feat of creative genius, perhaps only paralleled in the history of artistic achievement by John Milton writing Paradise Lost while blind.
Summing up his life and imminent death during his last days, Beethoven, who was never as eloquent with words as he was with music, borrowed a tagline that concluded many Latin plays at the time. Plaudite, amici, comoedia finita est, he said. 'Applaud friends, the comedy is over.'"
Ludwig van Beethoven
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Beethoven Documentary - The Genius of Beethoven 1/3 "The Rebel"
Amazing BBC documentary about the musical genius Ludwig Van Beethoven! A powerful, moving and accurate documentary based on the life of Ludwig van Beethoven ...
Thank you, my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us aware that on March 29, 1795, Ludwig van Beethoven had his debut performance as a pianist in Vienna.
Beethoven Documentary - The Genius of Beethoven 1/3 "The Rebel"
"Amazing BBC documentary about the musical genius Ludwig Van Beethoven!
A powerful, moving and accurate documentary based on the life of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827). Paul Rhys's masterful portrayal of Beethoven is particularly noteworthy, doing well to vividly convey the isolation and despair Beethoven experienced throughout his life, while insightful narration from the popular conductor, composer and presenter Charles Hazlewood does well to add a sophisticated educational dimension to the series.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YueD9vB51hk
Images:
1. A portrait of Beethoven, painted in 1805.
2. Portrait of Beethoven shows how he appeared in 1801 by Carl Traugott Riedel. Just over thirty years old
3. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), German composer and pianist. color lithograph by Artist S Yakovlev
4. Ludwig van Beethoven himself complimented August von Klober on getting his hair
Biographies
1. biography.com/musician/ludwig-van-Beethoven
2. classical.net/music/comp.lst/beethoven.php
1. Background from biography.com/musician/ludwig-van-Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven Biography
(c. 1770–1827)
UPDATED: AUG 29, 2019
ORIGINAL: APR 27, 2017
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer whose Symphony 5 is a beloved classic. Some of his greatest works were composed while Beethoven was going deaf.
Who Was Ludwig van Beethoven?
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German pianist and composer widely considered to be one of the greatest musical geniuses of all time. His innovative compositions combined vocals and instruments, widening the scope of sonata, symphony, concerto and quartet. He is the crucial transitional figure connecting the Classical and Romantic ages of Western music.
Beethoven’s personal life was marked by a struggle against deafness, and some of his most important works were composed during the last 10 years of his life, when he was quite unable to hear. He died at the age of 56.
Controversial Birthday
Beethoven was born on or about December 16, 1770, in the city of Bonn in the Electorate of Cologne, a principality of the Holy Roman Empire. Although his exact date of birth is uncertain, Beethoven was baptized on December 17, 1770.
As a matter of law and custom, babies at the time were baptized within 24 hours of birth, so December 16 is his most likely birthdate.
However, Beethoven himself mistakenly believed that he was born two years later, in 1772, and he stubbornly insisted on the incorrect date even when presented with official papers that proved beyond any reasonable doubt that 1770 was his true birth year.
Family
Beethoven had two younger brothers who survived into adulthood: Caspar, born in 1774, and Johann, born in 1776. Beethoven's mother, Maria Magdalena van Beethoven, was a slender, genteel, and deeply moralistic woman.
His father, Johann van Beethoven, was a mediocre court singer better known for his alcoholism than any musical ability. However, Beethoven's grandfather, godfather and namesake, Kapellmeister Ludwig van Beethoven, was Bonn's most prosperous and eminent musician, a source of endless pride for young Beethoven.
Childhood Abuse
Sometime between the births of his two younger brothers, Beethoven's father began teaching him music with an extraordinary rigor and brutality that affected him for the rest of his life.
Neighbors provided accounts of the small boy weeping while he played the clavier, standing atop a footstool to reach the keys, his father beating him for each hesitation or mistake.
On a near daily basis, Beethoven was flogged, locked in the cellar and deprived of sleep for extra hours of practice. He studied the violin and clavier with his father as well as taking additional lessons from organists around town. Whether in spite of or because of his father's draconian methods, Beethoven was a prodigiously talented musician from his earliest days.
Education
Hoping that his young son would be recognized as a musical prodigy à la Wolfgang Mozart, Beethoven's father arranged his first public recital for March 26, 1778. Billed as a "little son of 6 years," (Mozart's age when he debuted for Empress Maria Theresia) although he was in fact 7, Beethoven played impressively, but his recital received no press whatsoever.
Meanwhile, the musical prodigy attended a Latin grade school named Tirocinium, where a classmate said, "Not a sign was to be discovered of that spark of genius which glowed so brilliantly in him afterwards."
Beethoven, who struggled with sums and spelling his entire life, was at best an average student, and some biographers have hypothesized that he may have had mild dyslexia. As he put it himself, "Music comes to me more readily than words."
In 1781, at the age of 10, Beethoven withdrew from school to study music full time with Christian Gottlob Neefe, the newly appointed Court Organist, and at the age of 12, Beethoven published his first composition, a set of piano variations on a theme by an obscure classical composer named Dressler.
By 1784, his alcoholism worsening and his voice decaying, Beethoven's father was no longer able to support his family, and Beethoven formally requested an official appointment as Assistant Court Organist. Despite his youth, his request was accepted, and Beethoven was put on the court payroll with a modest annual salary of 150 florins.
Beethoven and Mozart
There is only speculation and inconclusive evidence that Beethoven ever met with Mozart, let alone studied with him. In an effort to facilitate his musical development, in 1787 the court sent Beethoven to Vienna, Europe’s capital of culture and music, where he hoped to study with Mozart.
Tradition has it that, upon hearing Beethoven, Mozart said, "Keep your eyes on him; someday he will give the world something to talk about.”
After only a few weeks in Vienna, Beethoven learned that his mother had fallen ill and he returned home to Bonn. Remaining there, Beethoven continued to carve out his reputation as the city's most promising young court musician.
Early Career as a Composer
When the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II died in 1790, a 19-year-old Beethoven received the immense honor of composing a musical memorial in his honor. For reasons that remain unclear, Beethoven's composition was never performed, and most assumed the young musician had proven unequal to the task.
However, more than a century later, Johannes Brahms discovered that Beethoven had in fact composed a "beautiful and noble" piece of music entitled Cantata on the Death of Emperor Joseph II. It is now considered his earliest masterpiece.
Beethoven and Haydn
In 1792, with French revolutionary forces sweeping across the Rhineland into the Electorate of Cologne, Beethoven decided to leave his hometown for Vienna once again. Mozart had passed away a year earlier, leaving Joseph Haydn as the unquestioned greatest composer alive.
Haydn was living in Vienna at the time, and it was with Haydn that the young Beethoven now intended to study. As his friend and patron Count Waldstein wrote in a farewell letter, "Mozart's genius mourns and weeps over the death of his disciple. It found refuge, but no release with the inexhaustible Haydn; through him, now, it seeks to unite with another. By means of assiduous labor you will receive the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Haydn."
In Vienna, Beethoven dedicated himself wholeheartedly to musical study with the most eminent musicians of the age. He studied piano with Haydn, vocal composition with Antonio Salieri and counterpoint with Johann Albrechtsberger. Not yet known as a composer, Beethoven quickly established a reputation as a virtuoso pianist who was especially adept at improvisation.
Debut Performance
Beethoven won many patrons among the leading citizens of the Viennese aristocracy, who provided him with lodging and funds, allowing Beethoven, in 1794, to sever ties with the Electorate of Cologne. Beethoven made his long-awaited public debut in Vienna on March 29, 1795.
Although there is considerable debate over which of his early piano concerti he performed that night, most scholars believe he played what is known as his "first" piano concerto in C Major. Shortly thereafter, Beethoven decided to publish a series of three piano trios as his Opus 1, which were an enormous critical and financial success.
In the first spring of the new century, on April 2, 1800, Beethoven debuted his Symphony No. 1 in C major at the Royal Imperial Theater in Vienna. Although Beethoven would grow to detest the piece — "In those days I did not know how to compose," he later remarked — the graceful and melodious symphony nevertheless established him as one of Europe's most celebrated composers.
As the new century progressed, Beethoven composed piece after piece that marked him as a masterful composer reaching his musical maturity. His Six String Quartets, published in 1801, demonstrate complete mastery of that most difficult and cherished of Viennese forms developed by
Mozart and Haydn.
Beethoven also composed The Creatures of Prometheus in 1801, a wildly popular ballet that received 27 performances at the Imperial Court Theater. It was around the same time that Beethoven discovered he was losing his hearing.
Personal Life
For a variety of reasons that included his crippling shyness and unfortunate physical appearance, Beethoven never married or had children. He was, however, desperately in love with a married woman named Antonie Brentano.
Over the course of two days in July of 1812, Beethoven wrote her a long and beautiful love letter that he never sent. Addressed "to you, my Immortal Beloved," the letter said in part, "My heart is full of so many things to say to you — ah — there are moments when I feel that speech amounts to nothing at all — Cheer up — remain my true, my only love, my all as I am yours."
The death of Beethoven's brother Caspar in 1815 sparked one of the great trials of his life, a painful legal battle with his sister-in-law, Johanna, over the custody of Karl van Beethoven, his nephew and her son.
The struggle stretched on for seven years, during which both sides spewed ugly defamations at the other. In the end, Beethoven won the boy's custody, though hardly his affection.
Despite his extraordinary output of beautiful music, Beethoven was lonely and frequently miserable throughout his adult life. Short-tempered, absent-minded, greedy and suspicious to the point of paranoia, Beethoven feuded with his brothers, his publishers, his housekeepers, his pupils and his patrons.
In one illustrative incident, Beethoven attempted to break a chair over the head of Prince Lichnowsky, one of his closest friends and most loyal patrons. Another time he stood in the doorway of Prince Lobkowitz's palace shouting for all to hear, "Lobkowitz is a donkey!"
Was Beethoven Black?
For years, rumors have swirled that Beethoven had some African ancestry. These unfounded tales may be based on Beethoven's dark complexion or the fact that his ancestors came from a region of Europe that had once been invaded by the Spanish, and Moors from northern Africa were part of Spanish culture.
A few scholars have noted that Beethoven seemed to have an innate understanding of the polyrhythmic structures typical to some African music. However, no one during Beethoven's lifetime referred to the composer as Moorish or African, and the rumors that he was black are largely dismissed by historians.
Was Beethoven Deaf?
At the same time as Beethoven was composing some of his most immortal works, he was struggling to come to terms with a shocking and terrible fact, one that he tried desperately to conceal: He was going deaf.
By the turn of the 19th century, Beethoven struggled to make out the words spoken to him in conversation.
Beethoven revealed in a heart-wrenching 1801 letter to his friend Franz Wegeler, "I must confess that I lead a miserable life. For almost two years I have ceased to attend any social functions, just because I find it impossible to say to people: I am deaf. If I had any other profession, I might be able to cope with my infirmity; but in my profession it is a terrible handicap."
At times driven to extremes of melancholy by his affliction, Beethoven described his despair in a long and poignant note that he concealed his entire life.
Dated October 6, 1802, and referred to as "The Heiligenstadt Testament," it reads in part: "O you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you and I would have ended my life — it was only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me."
Almost miraculously, despite his rapidly progressing deafness, Beethoven continued to compose at a furious pace.
Moonlight Sonata
From 1803 to 1812, what is known as his "middle" or "heroic" period, he composed an opera, six symphonies, four solo concerti, five string quartets, six-string sonatas, seven piano sonatas, five sets of piano variations, four overtures, four trios, two sextets and 72 songs.
The most famous among these were the haunting Moonlight Sonata, symphonies No. 3-8, the Kreutzer violin sonata and Fidelio, his only opera.
In terms of the astonishing output of superlatively complex, original and beautiful music, this period in Beethoven's life is unrivaled by any of any other composer in history.
Beethoven’s Music
Some of Beethoven’s best-known compositions include:
Eroica: Symphony No. 3
In 1804, only weeks after Napoleon Bonaparte proclaimed himself Emperor of France, Beethoven debuted his Symphony No. 3 in Napoleon's honor. Beethoven, like all of Europe, watched with a mixture of awe and terror; he admired, abhorred and, to an extent, identified with Napoleon, a man of seemingly superhuman capabilities, only one year older than himself and also of obscure birth.
Later renamed the Eroica Symphony because Beethoven grew disillusioned with Napoleon, it was his grandest and most original work to date.
Because it was so unlike anything heard before it, the musicians could not figure out how to play it through weeks of rehearsal. A prominent reviewer proclaimed "Eroica" as "one of the most original, most sublime, and most profound products that the entire genre of music has ever exhibited."
Symphony No. 5
One of Beethoven’s best-known works among modern audiences, Symphony No. 5 is known for its ominous first four notes.
Beethoven began composing the piece in 1804, but its completion was delayed a few times for other projects. It premiered at the same time as Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, in 1808 in Vienna.
Fur Elise
In 1810, Beethoven completed Fur Elise (meaning “For Elise”), although it was not published until 40 years after his death. In 1867, it was discovered by a German music scholar, however Beethoven’s original manuscript has since been lost.
Some scholars have suggested it was dedicated to his friend, student and fellow musician, Therese Malfatti, to whom he allegedly proposed around the time of the song’s composition. Others said it was for the German soprano Elisabeth Rockel, another friend of Beethoven’s.
Symphony No. 7
Premiering in Vienna in 1813 to benefit soldiers wounded in the battle of Hanau, Beethoven began composing this, one of his most energetic and optimistic works, in 1811.
The composer called the piece “his most excellent symphony." The second movement is often performed separately from the rest of the symphony and may have been one of Beethoven’s most popular works.
Missa Solemnis
Debuting in 1824, this Catholic mass is considered among Beethoven’s finest achievements. Just under 90 minutes in length, the rarely-performed piece features a chorus, orchestra and four soloists.
Ode to Joy: Symphony No. 9
Beethoven’s ninth and final symphony, completed in 1824, remains the illustrious composer's most towering achievement. The symphony's famous choral finale, with four vocal soloists and a chorus singing the words of Friedrich Schiller's poem "Ode to Joy," is perhaps the most famous piece of music in history.
While connoisseurs delighted in the symphony's contrapuntal and formal complexity, the masses found inspiration in the anthem-like vigor of the choral finale and the concluding invocation of "all humanity."
String Quartet No. 14
Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14 debuted in 1826. About 40 minutes in length, it contains seven linked movements played without a break.
The work was reportedly one of Beethoven’s favorite later quartets and has been described as one of the composer’s most elusive compositions musically.
Death
Beethoven died on March 26, 1827, at the age of 56, of post-hepatitic cirrhosis of the liver.
The autopsy also provided clues to the origins of his deafness: While his quick temper, chronic diarrhea and deafness are consistent with arterial disease, a competing theory traces Beethoven's deafness to contracting typhus in the summer of 1796.
Scientists analyzing a remaining fragment of Beethoven's skull noticed high levels of lead and hypothesized lead poisoning as a potential cause of death, but that theory has been largely discredited.
Legacy
Beethoven is widely considered one of the greatest, if not the single greatest, composer of all time. Beethoven's body of musical compositions stands with William Shakespeare's plays at the outer limits of human brilliance.
And the fact Beethoven composed his most beautiful and extraordinary music while deaf is an almost superhuman feat of creative genius, perhaps only paralleled in the history of artistic achievement by John Milton writing Paradise Lost while blind.
Summing up his life and imminent death during his last days, Beethoven, who was never as eloquent with words as he was with music, borrowed a tagline that concluded many Latin plays at the time. Plaudite, amici, comoedia finita est, he said. "Applaud friends, the comedy is over."
2. background from [http://classical.net/music/comp.lst/beethoven.php]
"Ludwig van Beethoven (December 16, 1770 – March 26, 1827) was a German composer born in Bonn who spent his musical career in Vienna. A pivotal figure in the development of the Romantic style, he is one of the most respected and influential composers of all time. In a career that spanned the transition from the Classical period to the Romantic period, Beethoven made his mark in every major instrumental genre of his day, including the symphony, the string quartet, the piano sonata, and the concerto. Beethoven's name is synonymous with Classical music: it is his name which invariably first comes to mind when people are asked to name the archetypal composer. The reason for this is his unique combination of innovative genius, moral rectitude and high seriousness.
Beethoven was born into a Bonn family of Flemish descent. Both his father Johann and his grandfather Ludwig were musicians at the Court of the Elector of Cologne which was based in Bonn. His father, a severe man who turned to drink as his career failed to blossom, married Maria Magdalena Keverich in 1767 and Ludwig was the first of their children to survive infancy.
The young Ludwig was taught music by his father but by the age of nine he had already outstripped his father's musical knowledge and was taken under the wing of Christian Neefe, organist at the Bonn Court, who gave him a conservative but thorough musical training. In 1783 Neefe became director of both sacred and secular music at Court and Ludwig was appointed cembalist-in-orchestra, an unpaid post which gave him responsibility for rehearsing and conducting the opera band. The death of the Elector Max Friedrich in 1784 led to a thorough reappraisal of the Elector's establishment by his successor, Max Franz, and Beethoven received a small stipend for his work (together with his father, who was still in the choir), while Neefe's salary was halved.
Beethoven was already composing small works and beginning to come to terms with the demands of writing music. In 1787 he made a short trip to Vienna, probably at the invitation of one of the nobles who admired Beethoven's work and who had good connections in the Austrian capital, for while there Beethoven not only met and played for Wolfgang Mozart, but also for Emperor Joseph II. Whether Mozart uttered the famous phrase: "Pay attention to him: he will make a noise in the world some day or other", it is now impossible to say, but it is likely that the 16-year-old Beethoven made a considerable impression as Franz Joseph Haydn refers to a "Ludwig" in a letter to a friend in Vienna in June 1787 asking him what all the fuss was about.
But 1787 was memorable for Ludwig in more chilling ways: in July his much-loved mother died of consumption, the illness accelerated by her escalating alcoholism. In November of the same year his young sister died. During the following two years Ludwig broadened his circle of friends to include Count Waldstein, a music-loving nobleman eager to help the young composer financially and spiritually, and the Countess of Hatzfield, the recipient of Ludwig's dedication in his variations on Vincenzo Righini's Venni Amore. In 1788 the Elector Max Franz reorganized his musical establishment, appointing Anton Reicha as its director and moving Neefe to the position of pianist and stage manager. Beethoven played second violin as well as keeping up his duties as organist. The new company performed most of the best operas of the day, including Mozart's. Son now overtook father both within the family and the Court: with Johann now an alcoholic and his singing voice gone, the family was so poverty-stricken that the Elector decided to pay the greater part of Johann's salary to young Ludwig, thus ensuring that the family would at least eat and be clothed. At the age of 17 Ludwig had become the sole reliable source of income for the Beethoven family. The only other event of note between then and Beethoven's departure for Vienna in 1792 was a visit by Haydn on his return from London, during which Ludwig presented his Funeral Cantata, which was duly praised by the great man.
In 1792, for reasons which remain obscure, the Elector decided to finance Beethoven's removal to Vienna, there to study at Bonn's expense. By this time Beethoven had a group of nobles convinced of his musical worth, (including Count Waldstein) who – perhaps encouraged by Haydn's praise – had helped inform the Elector's decision. In November Beethoven departed for the Austrian capital, speeded on his journey by the entry by Waldstein in his Leaving Album: "Dear Beethoven, you are traveling to Vienna in fulfillment of your long-standing wish… Labor assiduously and receive Mozart's spirit from the hands of Haydn". Within weeks of his arrival, his father died, and Beethoven, his roots in Bonn withering, brought his younger brothers to Vienna to join him.
Beethoven took regular lessons from Haydn, even accompanying him to Eisenstadt in 1793, but was clearly dissatisfied with Haydn's level of involvement, and when the composer left for London in 1794, Ludwig transferred to Albrechtsberger who, though diligent in his teaching, thought Beethoven a hopeless case: "He has learnt nothing, and will never do anything in decent style", he commented to a colleague. Beethoven also took lessons on operatic points from Antonio Salieri. In the month that Haydn went to London, however, the Elector of Bonn visited Vienna, and two months later, Beethoven's small allowance was stopped. He was on his own.
Due to the relative frequency with which Beethoven was engaged by the nobility to give recitals in their houses, this situation did not prove as taxing as it might have done. Prince Lichnowksy and his wife, both former pupils of Mozart, invited him to live at their Viennese house; it is a measure of Beethoven's rapid acceptance in Viennese aristocratic circles that such an offer was made to a young man with much still to prove. For the next few years he made his way by his skill as a performer and by the strength of his personality, a magnetic and charismatic one whose brutal side had quite as compelling a quality as did its philosophical and charming one. In 1796 his First Piano Concerto appeared, and in 1797, with Napoleon on the rampage through Europe, Beethoven produced one of his first thoroughly original works, Sonata for Piano in E Flat major, Op. 7. Between then and spring 1800 Beethoven's most impressive music was written for the piano, his Op. 10 and Op. 14 sonatas being outstanding, while the Op. 12 sonatas for violin and piano showed his mastery of composition for both instruments. A major step into more adventurous composition came in 1800 with his First Symphony receiving publication, together with the septet and the first six string quartets (Op. 18). Later the same year his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No.3 appeared. Beethoven now turned from performance to concentrate on composition. He moved from Prince Lichnowsky's and took his first summer holiday in the country – a practice which was to become increasingly important to him in the future.
The next five years contained the most extraordinary outpouring of masterpieces: his Second Symphony was published in 1804, but by then the Eroica was well under way (he had been mulling it over since 1798), while his ballet Prometheus and the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives had been premiered in 1801 and 1803 respectively. By this time Beethoven had also experienced the vicissitudes of getting his music published in an accurate and acceptable form: his rages, brought on by the number of mistakes he found at proofing stage, became legendary, particularly when, in 1803, he found that one Zurich publisher had not only amended idiosyncrasies in one of his piano sonatas, but had had the effrontery to add four bars to make one passage more palatable to a conservative ear. One later printed work that Beethoven corrected received this tirade: "I have passed the whole morning today – and yesterday afternoon – in correcting these two pieces, and am quite hoarse with stamping and swearing".
In early 1804 the Third Symphony was being prepared for publication. It had always privately been known as the "Napoleon Bonaparte" symphony – Beethoven saw the great Corsican as a force for freedom and the emancipation of the common man – but in May news filtered through to Vienna of Bonaparte's coronation as Emperor. Disgusted beyond measure, Beethoven tore the title-page from his fair copy and substituted instead Sinfonia eroica per festeggiore il souvenire d'un gran uomo. Prince Lobkowitz having received the dedication and exclusive rights to its use, Symphony No.3, Op. 55 ("Eroica") was to remain unpublished until 1806.
It was characteristic of Beethoven to be engaged upon more than one composition at a time. His restless creative energy would continually spill from one idea to another, one form of expression to another, so it is no surprise to find him working next on the opera Fidelio and its possible production (1806, but destined to be shelved for the best part of a decade) as well as the beautiful Fourth Piano Concerto, the Violin Concerto, the Fourth Symphony and the beginning of the Fifth Symphony. Yet all this was only the beginning of his ascendancy in the world of Classical music, for there was much to come of equal merit.
By this time Beethoven was already aware of the distressing rate at which his hearing was deteriorating. In 1802 he wrote a statement – later dubbed the Heiligenstadt Testament – to his two brothers, Karl and Johann, in which he detailed his physical frailty and his attitude towards the death which he saw as alarmingly close, although in reality he still had 25 years to live. His hearing was long thought to be a casualty of hereditary syphilis, but more recent research has come down on the side of other non-venereal diseases of which Beethoven himself had no knowledge and over which he had no control. By 1807, when in one concert he premiered Symphonies 1, 2, 3 and 4, (the program lasted over two and a half hours), Beethoven had difficulty in hearing the music. The following year's concert in Vienna premiered the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the Choral Fantasia, plus the last-minute addition of Concerto for Piano No.4, and a couple of arias. Beethoven himself was at the piano, but his deafness had reached the point where he could no longer properly follow the orchestra's tempo. The concert was given in December, the hall was bitterly cold and the performance so ragged as to be almost bizarre in places. Yet his will prevailed: all the music was played, and he remained at the keyboard throughout.
In 1809, with Austrian exertions against Napoleon at a fever-pitch, Beethoven intimated that he would leave Vienna for better-paid work elsewhere. The general consternation caused Archduke Rudolph, Prince Lobkowitz and Prince Kinsky to club together to pay Beethoven a small but helpful annuity. Though the composer made it clear that he would have preferred to have been made imperial Kapellmeister, he remained in Vienna. He not only stayed, but when the French bombarded the city in the autumn, he completed the composition of his Fifth and last piano concerto, the Emperor. He also wrote a piano sonata which he named Les Adieux when Archduke Rudolf (a close friend as well as a patron) left the besieged capital.
The disastrous effect of the Napoleonic wars on the Austrian economy meant that by the end of 1810 the true value of Beethoven's annuity had shrunk to a tenth of its value. A reorganization of the Austrian currency only made the position worse, but Archduke Rudolf continued to support Beethoven, as did Lobkowitz. But with Kinsky he was less fortunate: the Prince had removed to Prague, dying in 1812 before making arrangements for Beethoven's revised payments. Undeterred, Beethoven sued Kinsky's heirs, and after three years of dogged legal action, secured not only a proper restitution of his annuity, but also payment in arrears. This success followed a year of triumphs, for 1814 had been in many ways a public culmination of Beethoven's career: Fidelio finally saw the light of day, his Seventh Symphony was premiered, and he was commissioned to write new music and mount concerts for the Congress of Vienna. Two concerts were held, and Beethoven was presented by the Archduke to all the visiting royalty and potentates, including the Empress of Russia.
From this point on Beethoven's problems multiplied. A confirmed bachelor and a difficult man – who frequently fell out with friends and patrons – he nevertheless retained strong family feelings. When his brother Karl died in 1815, leaving his nine-year-old son (also named Karl) in Ludwig's care, the composer entered into a long and vexatious dispute with the boy's mother, whom he detested. Unfortunately, the boy held his mother in too great esteem to ever permanently take sides with Beethoven. Uncle Ludwig spent the best part of three years in suits and counter-suits and in making arrangements for the education of the child – who proved a very ordinary boy – and it is no surprise that the sum total of his compositions during this period of stress was the three piano sonatas, Op. 106, Op. 109 and Op. 110, plus a number of songs and arrangements. His finances strained (Prince Lobkowitz's share of his annuity had ceased with the Prince's death in 1816), his nerves in tatters, Beethoven was prematurely aged by the exigencies of these years.
Nonetheless, by 1819 he had completed a commission to supply a Mass for the installation of Archduke Rudolf as Archbishop of Olmutz: this was his great Missa Solemnis. In the next few years he took up the task of completing a symphony in D minor which he had actually started in 1812: as late as 1822 he finally came up with the idea of including Schiller's Ode to Joy in a choral final movement. His Ninth Symphony, Choral was at last taking on its final shape, and was completed in the summer of 1823. Beethoven had originally planned to premiere it in Berlin, but disgusted by the lack of interest in his new music occasioned by the "Rossini-fever" then sweeping Austria, premiered it instead in Vienna. It was sufficiently successful to produce a second concert, but neither made a great deal of money after the substantial costs had been defrayed. Beethoven was now anxious to make more money on account of the needs of his nephew, and his anxiety to take his fair share, or perhaps more than his fair share, led to conflicts with his erstwhile friends.
That this anxiety was well-founded was borne out by the series of disasters perpetrated by nephew Karl: in late 1824 he joined Vienna University, but soon dropped out and moved to a polytechnic with the intention of learning a trade. By the end of 1825 this idea had also foundered and, seemingly without a path to tread, the young man tried to shoot himself. He even failed to do this properly, and was arrested by the police as an attempted suicide. Within a few days he had been ordered out of Vienna, joining the army soon after. He spent the latter part of 1826 with his Uncle Ludwig at the house of Uncle Johann, but this broke up in a series of ugly scenes and in December Ludwig and Karl returned to Vienna. The journey was made in haste in the freezing cold and precipitated Beethoven's final illness. He languished for four months, scarcely aided by the attentions of one of the few doctors in Vienna still prepared to visit the rude and grumpy old man.
Composing was now beyond him, and although in 1824-25 he had written the last three string quartets – the famous Op. 127, Op. 130, Op. 132 and Grosse Fuge, Op. 133 – and had sketched out, in his mind at least, his Tenth Symphony (requested by the Philharmonic Society of London), there was to be no more music from his pen. On his death-bed just days before the end, a particularly offensive acquaintance told him: "Your new quartet did not please". By now resigned to approaching death, Beethoven replied "It will please them some day."
FYI Maj Robert Thornton SFC (Join to see) SGT Steve McFarland MSG Andrew White Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. MSG (Join to see)
COL Mikel J. Burroughs SMSgt Lawrence McCarterLTC Greg Henning SGT Gregory Lawritson SP5 Mark Kuzinski SGT (Join to see) CWO3 (Join to see) PO1 William "Chip" Nagel 1sg-dan-capriSSgt Boyd Herrst Col Carl Whicker SPC Margaret HigginsTSgt David L.
Beethoven Documentary - The Genius of Beethoven 1/3 "The Rebel"
"Amazing BBC documentary about the musical genius Ludwig Van Beethoven!
A powerful, moving and accurate documentary based on the life of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827). Paul Rhys's masterful portrayal of Beethoven is particularly noteworthy, doing well to vividly convey the isolation and despair Beethoven experienced throughout his life, while insightful narration from the popular conductor, composer and presenter Charles Hazlewood does well to add a sophisticated educational dimension to the series.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YueD9vB51hk
Images:
1. A portrait of Beethoven, painted in 1805.
2. Portrait of Beethoven shows how he appeared in 1801 by Carl Traugott Riedel. Just over thirty years old
3. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), German composer and pianist. color lithograph by Artist S Yakovlev
4. Ludwig van Beethoven himself complimented August von Klober on getting his hair
Biographies
1. biography.com/musician/ludwig-van-Beethoven
2. classical.net/music/comp.lst/beethoven.php
1. Background from biography.com/musician/ludwig-van-Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven Biography
(c. 1770–1827)
UPDATED: AUG 29, 2019
ORIGINAL: APR 27, 2017
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer whose Symphony 5 is a beloved classic. Some of his greatest works were composed while Beethoven was going deaf.
Who Was Ludwig van Beethoven?
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German pianist and composer widely considered to be one of the greatest musical geniuses of all time. His innovative compositions combined vocals and instruments, widening the scope of sonata, symphony, concerto and quartet. He is the crucial transitional figure connecting the Classical and Romantic ages of Western music.
Beethoven’s personal life was marked by a struggle against deafness, and some of his most important works were composed during the last 10 years of his life, when he was quite unable to hear. He died at the age of 56.
Controversial Birthday
Beethoven was born on or about December 16, 1770, in the city of Bonn in the Electorate of Cologne, a principality of the Holy Roman Empire. Although his exact date of birth is uncertain, Beethoven was baptized on December 17, 1770.
As a matter of law and custom, babies at the time were baptized within 24 hours of birth, so December 16 is his most likely birthdate.
However, Beethoven himself mistakenly believed that he was born two years later, in 1772, and he stubbornly insisted on the incorrect date even when presented with official papers that proved beyond any reasonable doubt that 1770 was his true birth year.
Family
Beethoven had two younger brothers who survived into adulthood: Caspar, born in 1774, and Johann, born in 1776. Beethoven's mother, Maria Magdalena van Beethoven, was a slender, genteel, and deeply moralistic woman.
His father, Johann van Beethoven, was a mediocre court singer better known for his alcoholism than any musical ability. However, Beethoven's grandfather, godfather and namesake, Kapellmeister Ludwig van Beethoven, was Bonn's most prosperous and eminent musician, a source of endless pride for young Beethoven.
Childhood Abuse
Sometime between the births of his two younger brothers, Beethoven's father began teaching him music with an extraordinary rigor and brutality that affected him for the rest of his life.
Neighbors provided accounts of the small boy weeping while he played the clavier, standing atop a footstool to reach the keys, his father beating him for each hesitation or mistake.
On a near daily basis, Beethoven was flogged, locked in the cellar and deprived of sleep for extra hours of practice. He studied the violin and clavier with his father as well as taking additional lessons from organists around town. Whether in spite of or because of his father's draconian methods, Beethoven was a prodigiously talented musician from his earliest days.
Education
Hoping that his young son would be recognized as a musical prodigy à la Wolfgang Mozart, Beethoven's father arranged his first public recital for March 26, 1778. Billed as a "little son of 6 years," (Mozart's age when he debuted for Empress Maria Theresia) although he was in fact 7, Beethoven played impressively, but his recital received no press whatsoever.
Meanwhile, the musical prodigy attended a Latin grade school named Tirocinium, where a classmate said, "Not a sign was to be discovered of that spark of genius which glowed so brilliantly in him afterwards."
Beethoven, who struggled with sums and spelling his entire life, was at best an average student, and some biographers have hypothesized that he may have had mild dyslexia. As he put it himself, "Music comes to me more readily than words."
In 1781, at the age of 10, Beethoven withdrew from school to study music full time with Christian Gottlob Neefe, the newly appointed Court Organist, and at the age of 12, Beethoven published his first composition, a set of piano variations on a theme by an obscure classical composer named Dressler.
By 1784, his alcoholism worsening and his voice decaying, Beethoven's father was no longer able to support his family, and Beethoven formally requested an official appointment as Assistant Court Organist. Despite his youth, his request was accepted, and Beethoven was put on the court payroll with a modest annual salary of 150 florins.
Beethoven and Mozart
There is only speculation and inconclusive evidence that Beethoven ever met with Mozart, let alone studied with him. In an effort to facilitate his musical development, in 1787 the court sent Beethoven to Vienna, Europe’s capital of culture and music, where he hoped to study with Mozart.
Tradition has it that, upon hearing Beethoven, Mozart said, "Keep your eyes on him; someday he will give the world something to talk about.”
After only a few weeks in Vienna, Beethoven learned that his mother had fallen ill and he returned home to Bonn. Remaining there, Beethoven continued to carve out his reputation as the city's most promising young court musician.
Early Career as a Composer
When the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II died in 1790, a 19-year-old Beethoven received the immense honor of composing a musical memorial in his honor. For reasons that remain unclear, Beethoven's composition was never performed, and most assumed the young musician had proven unequal to the task.
However, more than a century later, Johannes Brahms discovered that Beethoven had in fact composed a "beautiful and noble" piece of music entitled Cantata on the Death of Emperor Joseph II. It is now considered his earliest masterpiece.
Beethoven and Haydn
In 1792, with French revolutionary forces sweeping across the Rhineland into the Electorate of Cologne, Beethoven decided to leave his hometown for Vienna once again. Mozart had passed away a year earlier, leaving Joseph Haydn as the unquestioned greatest composer alive.
Haydn was living in Vienna at the time, and it was with Haydn that the young Beethoven now intended to study. As his friend and patron Count Waldstein wrote in a farewell letter, "Mozart's genius mourns and weeps over the death of his disciple. It found refuge, but no release with the inexhaustible Haydn; through him, now, it seeks to unite with another. By means of assiduous labor you will receive the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Haydn."
In Vienna, Beethoven dedicated himself wholeheartedly to musical study with the most eminent musicians of the age. He studied piano with Haydn, vocal composition with Antonio Salieri and counterpoint with Johann Albrechtsberger. Not yet known as a composer, Beethoven quickly established a reputation as a virtuoso pianist who was especially adept at improvisation.
Debut Performance
Beethoven won many patrons among the leading citizens of the Viennese aristocracy, who provided him with lodging and funds, allowing Beethoven, in 1794, to sever ties with the Electorate of Cologne. Beethoven made his long-awaited public debut in Vienna on March 29, 1795.
Although there is considerable debate over which of his early piano concerti he performed that night, most scholars believe he played what is known as his "first" piano concerto in C Major. Shortly thereafter, Beethoven decided to publish a series of three piano trios as his Opus 1, which were an enormous critical and financial success.
In the first spring of the new century, on April 2, 1800, Beethoven debuted his Symphony No. 1 in C major at the Royal Imperial Theater in Vienna. Although Beethoven would grow to detest the piece — "In those days I did not know how to compose," he later remarked — the graceful and melodious symphony nevertheless established him as one of Europe's most celebrated composers.
As the new century progressed, Beethoven composed piece after piece that marked him as a masterful composer reaching his musical maturity. His Six String Quartets, published in 1801, demonstrate complete mastery of that most difficult and cherished of Viennese forms developed by
Mozart and Haydn.
Beethoven also composed The Creatures of Prometheus in 1801, a wildly popular ballet that received 27 performances at the Imperial Court Theater. It was around the same time that Beethoven discovered he was losing his hearing.
Personal Life
For a variety of reasons that included his crippling shyness and unfortunate physical appearance, Beethoven never married or had children. He was, however, desperately in love with a married woman named Antonie Brentano.
Over the course of two days in July of 1812, Beethoven wrote her a long and beautiful love letter that he never sent. Addressed "to you, my Immortal Beloved," the letter said in part, "My heart is full of so many things to say to you — ah — there are moments when I feel that speech amounts to nothing at all — Cheer up — remain my true, my only love, my all as I am yours."
The death of Beethoven's brother Caspar in 1815 sparked one of the great trials of his life, a painful legal battle with his sister-in-law, Johanna, over the custody of Karl van Beethoven, his nephew and her son.
The struggle stretched on for seven years, during which both sides spewed ugly defamations at the other. In the end, Beethoven won the boy's custody, though hardly his affection.
Despite his extraordinary output of beautiful music, Beethoven was lonely and frequently miserable throughout his adult life. Short-tempered, absent-minded, greedy and suspicious to the point of paranoia, Beethoven feuded with his brothers, his publishers, his housekeepers, his pupils and his patrons.
In one illustrative incident, Beethoven attempted to break a chair over the head of Prince Lichnowsky, one of his closest friends and most loyal patrons. Another time he stood in the doorway of Prince Lobkowitz's palace shouting for all to hear, "Lobkowitz is a donkey!"
Was Beethoven Black?
For years, rumors have swirled that Beethoven had some African ancestry. These unfounded tales may be based on Beethoven's dark complexion or the fact that his ancestors came from a region of Europe that had once been invaded by the Spanish, and Moors from northern Africa were part of Spanish culture.
A few scholars have noted that Beethoven seemed to have an innate understanding of the polyrhythmic structures typical to some African music. However, no one during Beethoven's lifetime referred to the composer as Moorish or African, and the rumors that he was black are largely dismissed by historians.
Was Beethoven Deaf?
At the same time as Beethoven was composing some of his most immortal works, he was struggling to come to terms with a shocking and terrible fact, one that he tried desperately to conceal: He was going deaf.
By the turn of the 19th century, Beethoven struggled to make out the words spoken to him in conversation.
Beethoven revealed in a heart-wrenching 1801 letter to his friend Franz Wegeler, "I must confess that I lead a miserable life. For almost two years I have ceased to attend any social functions, just because I find it impossible to say to people: I am deaf. If I had any other profession, I might be able to cope with my infirmity; but in my profession it is a terrible handicap."
At times driven to extremes of melancholy by his affliction, Beethoven described his despair in a long and poignant note that he concealed his entire life.
Dated October 6, 1802, and referred to as "The Heiligenstadt Testament," it reads in part: "O you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you and I would have ended my life — it was only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me."
Almost miraculously, despite his rapidly progressing deafness, Beethoven continued to compose at a furious pace.
Moonlight Sonata
From 1803 to 1812, what is known as his "middle" or "heroic" period, he composed an opera, six symphonies, four solo concerti, five string quartets, six-string sonatas, seven piano sonatas, five sets of piano variations, four overtures, four trios, two sextets and 72 songs.
The most famous among these were the haunting Moonlight Sonata, symphonies No. 3-8, the Kreutzer violin sonata and Fidelio, his only opera.
In terms of the astonishing output of superlatively complex, original and beautiful music, this period in Beethoven's life is unrivaled by any of any other composer in history.
Beethoven’s Music
Some of Beethoven’s best-known compositions include:
Eroica: Symphony No. 3
In 1804, only weeks after Napoleon Bonaparte proclaimed himself Emperor of France, Beethoven debuted his Symphony No. 3 in Napoleon's honor. Beethoven, like all of Europe, watched with a mixture of awe and terror; he admired, abhorred and, to an extent, identified with Napoleon, a man of seemingly superhuman capabilities, only one year older than himself and also of obscure birth.
Later renamed the Eroica Symphony because Beethoven grew disillusioned with Napoleon, it was his grandest and most original work to date.
Because it was so unlike anything heard before it, the musicians could not figure out how to play it through weeks of rehearsal. A prominent reviewer proclaimed "Eroica" as "one of the most original, most sublime, and most profound products that the entire genre of music has ever exhibited."
Symphony No. 5
One of Beethoven’s best-known works among modern audiences, Symphony No. 5 is known for its ominous first four notes.
Beethoven began composing the piece in 1804, but its completion was delayed a few times for other projects. It premiered at the same time as Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, in 1808 in Vienna.
Fur Elise
In 1810, Beethoven completed Fur Elise (meaning “For Elise”), although it was not published until 40 years after his death. In 1867, it was discovered by a German music scholar, however Beethoven’s original manuscript has since been lost.
Some scholars have suggested it was dedicated to his friend, student and fellow musician, Therese Malfatti, to whom he allegedly proposed around the time of the song’s composition. Others said it was for the German soprano Elisabeth Rockel, another friend of Beethoven’s.
Symphony No. 7
Premiering in Vienna in 1813 to benefit soldiers wounded in the battle of Hanau, Beethoven began composing this, one of his most energetic and optimistic works, in 1811.
The composer called the piece “his most excellent symphony." The second movement is often performed separately from the rest of the symphony and may have been one of Beethoven’s most popular works.
Missa Solemnis
Debuting in 1824, this Catholic mass is considered among Beethoven’s finest achievements. Just under 90 minutes in length, the rarely-performed piece features a chorus, orchestra and four soloists.
Ode to Joy: Symphony No. 9
Beethoven’s ninth and final symphony, completed in 1824, remains the illustrious composer's most towering achievement. The symphony's famous choral finale, with four vocal soloists and a chorus singing the words of Friedrich Schiller's poem "Ode to Joy," is perhaps the most famous piece of music in history.
While connoisseurs delighted in the symphony's contrapuntal and formal complexity, the masses found inspiration in the anthem-like vigor of the choral finale and the concluding invocation of "all humanity."
String Quartet No. 14
Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14 debuted in 1826. About 40 minutes in length, it contains seven linked movements played without a break.
The work was reportedly one of Beethoven’s favorite later quartets and has been described as one of the composer’s most elusive compositions musically.
Death
Beethoven died on March 26, 1827, at the age of 56, of post-hepatitic cirrhosis of the liver.
The autopsy also provided clues to the origins of his deafness: While his quick temper, chronic diarrhea and deafness are consistent with arterial disease, a competing theory traces Beethoven's deafness to contracting typhus in the summer of 1796.
Scientists analyzing a remaining fragment of Beethoven's skull noticed high levels of lead and hypothesized lead poisoning as a potential cause of death, but that theory has been largely discredited.
Legacy
Beethoven is widely considered one of the greatest, if not the single greatest, composer of all time. Beethoven's body of musical compositions stands with William Shakespeare's plays at the outer limits of human brilliance.
And the fact Beethoven composed his most beautiful and extraordinary music while deaf is an almost superhuman feat of creative genius, perhaps only paralleled in the history of artistic achievement by John Milton writing Paradise Lost while blind.
Summing up his life and imminent death during his last days, Beethoven, who was never as eloquent with words as he was with music, borrowed a tagline that concluded many Latin plays at the time. Plaudite, amici, comoedia finita est, he said. "Applaud friends, the comedy is over."
2. background from [http://classical.net/music/comp.lst/beethoven.php]
"Ludwig van Beethoven (December 16, 1770 – March 26, 1827) was a German composer born in Bonn who spent his musical career in Vienna. A pivotal figure in the development of the Romantic style, he is one of the most respected and influential composers of all time. In a career that spanned the transition from the Classical period to the Romantic period, Beethoven made his mark in every major instrumental genre of his day, including the symphony, the string quartet, the piano sonata, and the concerto. Beethoven's name is synonymous with Classical music: it is his name which invariably first comes to mind when people are asked to name the archetypal composer. The reason for this is his unique combination of innovative genius, moral rectitude and high seriousness.
Beethoven was born into a Bonn family of Flemish descent. Both his father Johann and his grandfather Ludwig were musicians at the Court of the Elector of Cologne which was based in Bonn. His father, a severe man who turned to drink as his career failed to blossom, married Maria Magdalena Keverich in 1767 and Ludwig was the first of their children to survive infancy.
The young Ludwig was taught music by his father but by the age of nine he had already outstripped his father's musical knowledge and was taken under the wing of Christian Neefe, organist at the Bonn Court, who gave him a conservative but thorough musical training. In 1783 Neefe became director of both sacred and secular music at Court and Ludwig was appointed cembalist-in-orchestra, an unpaid post which gave him responsibility for rehearsing and conducting the opera band. The death of the Elector Max Friedrich in 1784 led to a thorough reappraisal of the Elector's establishment by his successor, Max Franz, and Beethoven received a small stipend for his work (together with his father, who was still in the choir), while Neefe's salary was halved.
Beethoven was already composing small works and beginning to come to terms with the demands of writing music. In 1787 he made a short trip to Vienna, probably at the invitation of one of the nobles who admired Beethoven's work and who had good connections in the Austrian capital, for while there Beethoven not only met and played for Wolfgang Mozart, but also for Emperor Joseph II. Whether Mozart uttered the famous phrase: "Pay attention to him: he will make a noise in the world some day or other", it is now impossible to say, but it is likely that the 16-year-old Beethoven made a considerable impression as Franz Joseph Haydn refers to a "Ludwig" in a letter to a friend in Vienna in June 1787 asking him what all the fuss was about.
But 1787 was memorable for Ludwig in more chilling ways: in July his much-loved mother died of consumption, the illness accelerated by her escalating alcoholism. In November of the same year his young sister died. During the following two years Ludwig broadened his circle of friends to include Count Waldstein, a music-loving nobleman eager to help the young composer financially and spiritually, and the Countess of Hatzfield, the recipient of Ludwig's dedication in his variations on Vincenzo Righini's Venni Amore. In 1788 the Elector Max Franz reorganized his musical establishment, appointing Anton Reicha as its director and moving Neefe to the position of pianist and stage manager. Beethoven played second violin as well as keeping up his duties as organist. The new company performed most of the best operas of the day, including Mozart's. Son now overtook father both within the family and the Court: with Johann now an alcoholic and his singing voice gone, the family was so poverty-stricken that the Elector decided to pay the greater part of Johann's salary to young Ludwig, thus ensuring that the family would at least eat and be clothed. At the age of 17 Ludwig had become the sole reliable source of income for the Beethoven family. The only other event of note between then and Beethoven's departure for Vienna in 1792 was a visit by Haydn on his return from London, during which Ludwig presented his Funeral Cantata, which was duly praised by the great man.
In 1792, for reasons which remain obscure, the Elector decided to finance Beethoven's removal to Vienna, there to study at Bonn's expense. By this time Beethoven had a group of nobles convinced of his musical worth, (including Count Waldstein) who – perhaps encouraged by Haydn's praise – had helped inform the Elector's decision. In November Beethoven departed for the Austrian capital, speeded on his journey by the entry by Waldstein in his Leaving Album: "Dear Beethoven, you are traveling to Vienna in fulfillment of your long-standing wish… Labor assiduously and receive Mozart's spirit from the hands of Haydn". Within weeks of his arrival, his father died, and Beethoven, his roots in Bonn withering, brought his younger brothers to Vienna to join him.
Beethoven took regular lessons from Haydn, even accompanying him to Eisenstadt in 1793, but was clearly dissatisfied with Haydn's level of involvement, and when the composer left for London in 1794, Ludwig transferred to Albrechtsberger who, though diligent in his teaching, thought Beethoven a hopeless case: "He has learnt nothing, and will never do anything in decent style", he commented to a colleague. Beethoven also took lessons on operatic points from Antonio Salieri. In the month that Haydn went to London, however, the Elector of Bonn visited Vienna, and two months later, Beethoven's small allowance was stopped. He was on his own.
Due to the relative frequency with which Beethoven was engaged by the nobility to give recitals in their houses, this situation did not prove as taxing as it might have done. Prince Lichnowksy and his wife, both former pupils of Mozart, invited him to live at their Viennese house; it is a measure of Beethoven's rapid acceptance in Viennese aristocratic circles that such an offer was made to a young man with much still to prove. For the next few years he made his way by his skill as a performer and by the strength of his personality, a magnetic and charismatic one whose brutal side had quite as compelling a quality as did its philosophical and charming one. In 1796 his First Piano Concerto appeared, and in 1797, with Napoleon on the rampage through Europe, Beethoven produced one of his first thoroughly original works, Sonata for Piano in E Flat major, Op. 7. Between then and spring 1800 Beethoven's most impressive music was written for the piano, his Op. 10 and Op. 14 sonatas being outstanding, while the Op. 12 sonatas for violin and piano showed his mastery of composition for both instruments. A major step into more adventurous composition came in 1800 with his First Symphony receiving publication, together with the septet and the first six string quartets (Op. 18). Later the same year his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No.3 appeared. Beethoven now turned from performance to concentrate on composition. He moved from Prince Lichnowsky's and took his first summer holiday in the country – a practice which was to become increasingly important to him in the future.
The next five years contained the most extraordinary outpouring of masterpieces: his Second Symphony was published in 1804, but by then the Eroica was well under way (he had been mulling it over since 1798), while his ballet Prometheus and the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives had been premiered in 1801 and 1803 respectively. By this time Beethoven had also experienced the vicissitudes of getting his music published in an accurate and acceptable form: his rages, brought on by the number of mistakes he found at proofing stage, became legendary, particularly when, in 1803, he found that one Zurich publisher had not only amended idiosyncrasies in one of his piano sonatas, but had had the effrontery to add four bars to make one passage more palatable to a conservative ear. One later printed work that Beethoven corrected received this tirade: "I have passed the whole morning today – and yesterday afternoon – in correcting these two pieces, and am quite hoarse with stamping and swearing".
In early 1804 the Third Symphony was being prepared for publication. It had always privately been known as the "Napoleon Bonaparte" symphony – Beethoven saw the great Corsican as a force for freedom and the emancipation of the common man – but in May news filtered through to Vienna of Bonaparte's coronation as Emperor. Disgusted beyond measure, Beethoven tore the title-page from his fair copy and substituted instead Sinfonia eroica per festeggiore il souvenire d'un gran uomo. Prince Lobkowitz having received the dedication and exclusive rights to its use, Symphony No.3, Op. 55 ("Eroica") was to remain unpublished until 1806.
It was characteristic of Beethoven to be engaged upon more than one composition at a time. His restless creative energy would continually spill from one idea to another, one form of expression to another, so it is no surprise to find him working next on the opera Fidelio and its possible production (1806, but destined to be shelved for the best part of a decade) as well as the beautiful Fourth Piano Concerto, the Violin Concerto, the Fourth Symphony and the beginning of the Fifth Symphony. Yet all this was only the beginning of his ascendancy in the world of Classical music, for there was much to come of equal merit.
By this time Beethoven was already aware of the distressing rate at which his hearing was deteriorating. In 1802 he wrote a statement – later dubbed the Heiligenstadt Testament – to his two brothers, Karl and Johann, in which he detailed his physical frailty and his attitude towards the death which he saw as alarmingly close, although in reality he still had 25 years to live. His hearing was long thought to be a casualty of hereditary syphilis, but more recent research has come down on the side of other non-venereal diseases of which Beethoven himself had no knowledge and over which he had no control. By 1807, when in one concert he premiered Symphonies 1, 2, 3 and 4, (the program lasted over two and a half hours), Beethoven had difficulty in hearing the music. The following year's concert in Vienna premiered the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the Choral Fantasia, plus the last-minute addition of Concerto for Piano No.4, and a couple of arias. Beethoven himself was at the piano, but his deafness had reached the point where he could no longer properly follow the orchestra's tempo. The concert was given in December, the hall was bitterly cold and the performance so ragged as to be almost bizarre in places. Yet his will prevailed: all the music was played, and he remained at the keyboard throughout.
In 1809, with Austrian exertions against Napoleon at a fever-pitch, Beethoven intimated that he would leave Vienna for better-paid work elsewhere. The general consternation caused Archduke Rudolph, Prince Lobkowitz and Prince Kinsky to club together to pay Beethoven a small but helpful annuity. Though the composer made it clear that he would have preferred to have been made imperial Kapellmeister, he remained in Vienna. He not only stayed, but when the French bombarded the city in the autumn, he completed the composition of his Fifth and last piano concerto, the Emperor. He also wrote a piano sonata which he named Les Adieux when Archduke Rudolf (a close friend as well as a patron) left the besieged capital.
The disastrous effect of the Napoleonic wars on the Austrian economy meant that by the end of 1810 the true value of Beethoven's annuity had shrunk to a tenth of its value. A reorganization of the Austrian currency only made the position worse, but Archduke Rudolf continued to support Beethoven, as did Lobkowitz. But with Kinsky he was less fortunate: the Prince had removed to Prague, dying in 1812 before making arrangements for Beethoven's revised payments. Undeterred, Beethoven sued Kinsky's heirs, and after three years of dogged legal action, secured not only a proper restitution of his annuity, but also payment in arrears. This success followed a year of triumphs, for 1814 had been in many ways a public culmination of Beethoven's career: Fidelio finally saw the light of day, his Seventh Symphony was premiered, and he was commissioned to write new music and mount concerts for the Congress of Vienna. Two concerts were held, and Beethoven was presented by the Archduke to all the visiting royalty and potentates, including the Empress of Russia.
From this point on Beethoven's problems multiplied. A confirmed bachelor and a difficult man – who frequently fell out with friends and patrons – he nevertheless retained strong family feelings. When his brother Karl died in 1815, leaving his nine-year-old son (also named Karl) in Ludwig's care, the composer entered into a long and vexatious dispute with the boy's mother, whom he detested. Unfortunately, the boy held his mother in too great esteem to ever permanently take sides with Beethoven. Uncle Ludwig spent the best part of three years in suits and counter-suits and in making arrangements for the education of the child – who proved a very ordinary boy – and it is no surprise that the sum total of his compositions during this period of stress was the three piano sonatas, Op. 106, Op. 109 and Op. 110, plus a number of songs and arrangements. His finances strained (Prince Lobkowitz's share of his annuity had ceased with the Prince's death in 1816), his nerves in tatters, Beethoven was prematurely aged by the exigencies of these years.
Nonetheless, by 1819 he had completed a commission to supply a Mass for the installation of Archduke Rudolf as Archbishop of Olmutz: this was his great Missa Solemnis. In the next few years he took up the task of completing a symphony in D minor which he had actually started in 1812: as late as 1822 he finally came up with the idea of including Schiller's Ode to Joy in a choral final movement. His Ninth Symphony, Choral was at last taking on its final shape, and was completed in the summer of 1823. Beethoven had originally planned to premiere it in Berlin, but disgusted by the lack of interest in his new music occasioned by the "Rossini-fever" then sweeping Austria, premiered it instead in Vienna. It was sufficiently successful to produce a second concert, but neither made a great deal of money after the substantial costs had been defrayed. Beethoven was now anxious to make more money on account of the needs of his nephew, and his anxiety to take his fair share, or perhaps more than his fair share, led to conflicts with his erstwhile friends.
That this anxiety was well-founded was borne out by the series of disasters perpetrated by nephew Karl: in late 1824 he joined Vienna University, but soon dropped out and moved to a polytechnic with the intention of learning a trade. By the end of 1825 this idea had also foundered and, seemingly without a path to tread, the young man tried to shoot himself. He even failed to do this properly, and was arrested by the police as an attempted suicide. Within a few days he had been ordered out of Vienna, joining the army soon after. He spent the latter part of 1826 with his Uncle Ludwig at the house of Uncle Johann, but this broke up in a series of ugly scenes and in December Ludwig and Karl returned to Vienna. The journey was made in haste in the freezing cold and precipitated Beethoven's final illness. He languished for four months, scarcely aided by the attentions of one of the few doctors in Vienna still prepared to visit the rude and grumpy old man.
Composing was now beyond him, and although in 1824-25 he had written the last three string quartets – the famous Op. 127, Op. 130, Op. 132 and Grosse Fuge, Op. 133 – and had sketched out, in his mind at least, his Tenth Symphony (requested by the Philharmonic Society of London), there was to be no more music from his pen. On his death-bed just days before the end, a particularly offensive acquaintance told him: "Your new quartet did not please". By now resigned to approaching death, Beethoven replied "It will please them some day."
FYI Maj Robert Thornton SFC (Join to see) SGT Steve McFarland MSG Andrew White Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. MSG (Join to see)
COL Mikel J. Burroughs SMSgt Lawrence McCarterLTC Greg Henning SGT Gregory Lawritson SP5 Mark Kuzinski SGT (Join to see) CWO3 (Join to see) PO1 William "Chip" Nagel 1sg-dan-capriSSgt Boyd Herrst Col Carl Whicker SPC Margaret HigginsTSgt David L.
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BBC The Genius of Beethoven - Faith and Fury (Part 3/3)
A BBC documentary based on the life of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827). Episode 3: Faith & Fury (2005)
BBC The Genius of Beethoven - Faith and Fury (Part 3/3)
"A BBC documentary based on the life of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827).
Episode 3: Faith & Fury (2005)"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHdyfuNnaOM
FYI Cpl James R. " Jim" Gossett JrSP5 Jeannie CarleSPC Chris Bayner-Cwik PO1 Robert GeorgeSSG Robert Mark Odom LTC Jeff Shearer SGT Philip RoncariCWO3 Dennis M. SFC William Farrell SGT (Join to see)PO3 Bob McCord Cynthia Croft SSG Donald H "Don" Bates SSG William JonesSP5 Jesse EngelSPC Matthew LambSSG Robert "Rob" WentworthCapt Rich BuckleyCW4 G.L. SmithSPC Russ Bolton
"A BBC documentary based on the life of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827).
Episode 3: Faith & Fury (2005)"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHdyfuNnaOM
FYI Cpl James R. " Jim" Gossett JrSP5 Jeannie CarleSPC Chris Bayner-Cwik PO1 Robert GeorgeSSG Robert Mark Odom LTC Jeff Shearer SGT Philip RoncariCWO3 Dennis M. SFC William Farrell SGT (Join to see)PO3 Bob McCord Cynthia Croft SSG Donald H "Don" Bates SSG William JonesSP5 Jesse EngelSPC Matthew LambSSG Robert "Rob" WentworthCapt Rich BuckleyCW4 G.L. SmithSPC Russ Bolton
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LTC Stephen F.
BBC The Genius of Beethoven - Faith and Fury (Part 3/3)
A BBC documentary based on the life of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827). Episode 3: Faith & Fury (2005)
BBC The Genius of Beethoven - Faith and Fury (Part 3/3)
"A BBC documentary based on the life of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827).
Episode 3: Faith & Fury (2005)"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHdyfuNnaOM
SFC Terry WilcoxPO2 Roger LafarletteSPC Nancy GreeneSSG Franklin Briant1stsgt Glenn Brackin Sgt Kelli Mays Lt Col Charlie Brown Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen SPC Douglas Bolton CPT Paul WhitmerSSG Samuel KermonSP5 Geoffrey VannersonCol Casey "Radio" G.
SFC John LichSgt Jackie JuliusSFC Richard WilliamsonSPC Randy ZimmermanSPC Richard (Rick) Henry
SSG Pete FishLCDR Clark Paton
"A BBC documentary based on the life of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827).
Episode 3: Faith & Fury (2005)"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHdyfuNnaOM
SFC Terry WilcoxPO2 Roger LafarletteSPC Nancy GreeneSSG Franklin Briant1stsgt Glenn Brackin Sgt Kelli Mays Lt Col Charlie Brown Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen SPC Douglas Bolton CPT Paul WhitmerSSG Samuel KermonSP5 Geoffrey VannersonCol Casey "Radio" G.
SFC John LichSgt Jackie JuliusSFC Richard WilliamsonSPC Randy ZimmermanSPC Richard (Rick) Henry
SSG Pete FishLCDR Clark Paton
(4)
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