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Ludwig van Beethoven - Biography

Ludwig van Beethoven Biography

Ludwig van Beethoven (baptized December 17, 1770 – March 26, 1827) was a German composer of Classical music , the predominant musical figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest of composers, and his reputation inspired – and in some cases intimidated – composers, musicians, and audiences who were to come after him.

Life and work

Beethoven was born in Bonn , Germany , to Johann van Beethoven (1740-1792), of Flemish origins, and Magdalena Keverich van Beethoven (1744-1787). Until relatively recently 16 December was shown in many reference works as Beethoven's 'date of birth', since we know he was baptised on 17 December and children at that time were generally baptised the day after their birth. However modern scholarship declines to rely on such assumptions.

Beethoven's first music teacher was his father, who worked as a musician in the Electoral court at Bonn, but was also an alcoholic who beat him and unsuccessfully attempted to exhibit him as a child prodigy . However, Beethoven's talent was soon noticed by others. He was given instruction and employment by Christian Gottlob Neefe , as well as financial sponsorship by the Prince-Elector. Beethoven's mother died when he was 17, and for several years he was responsible for raising his two younger brothers.

Beethoven moved to Vienna in 1792, where he studied with Joseph Haydn and other teachers. He quickly established a reputation as a piano virtuoso , and more slowly as a composer. He settled into the career pattern he would follow for the remainder of his life: rather than working for the church or a noble court (as most composers before him had done), he was a freelancer , supporting himself with public performances, sales of his works, and stipends from noblemen who recognized his ability.

Beethoven's career as a composer is usually divided into Early, Middle, and Late periods.

In the Early period, he is seen as emulating his great predecessors Haydn and Mozart , at the same time exploring new directions and gradually expanding the scope and ambition of his work. Some important pieces from the Early period are the first and second symphonies, the first six string quartets , the first two piano concertos , and about a dozen piano sonatas , including the famous 'Path�tique' .

The Middle period began shortly after Beethoven's personal crisis centering around deafness , and is noted for large-scale works expressing heroism and struggle; these include many of the most famous works of classical music. The Middle period works include six symphonies (Nos. 3 – 8), the last three piano concertos and his only violin concerto , six string quartets (Nos. 7 – 11), many piano sonatas (including the 'Moonlight' , 'Waldstein' , and 'Appassionata' ), and Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio .

Beethoven's Late period began around 1816 and lasted until Beethoven ceased to compose in 1826. The late works are greatly admired for their intellectual depth and their intense, highly personal expression. They include the Ninth Symphony (the 'Choral'), the Missa Solemnis , the last six string quartets and the last five piano sonatas.

Beethoven's personal life was troubled. Around age 28 he started to become deaf, a calamity which led him for some time to contemplate suicide . He was attracted to unattainable (married or aristocratic) women, whom he idealized; he never married. A period of low productivity from about 1812 to 1816 is thought by some scholars to have been the result of depression , resulting from Beethoven's realization that he would never marry. Beethoven quarreled, often bitterly, with his relatives and others, and frequently behaved badly to other people. He moved often from dwelling to dwelling, and had strange personal habits such as wearing filthy clothing while washing compulsively. He often had financial troubles.

It is common for listeners to perceive an echo of Beethoven's life in his music, which often depicts struggle followed by triumph. This description is often applied to Beethoven's creation of masterpieces in the face of his severe personal difficulties.

Beethoven was often in poor health, and in 1826 his health took a drastic turn for the worse. His death in the following year is usually attributed to liver disease.

(See also History of sonata form , Romantic music )

Musical style and innovations

Beethoven is viewed as a transitional figure between the Classical and Romantic eras of musical history. As far as musical form is concerned, he built on the principles of sonata form and motivic development that he had inherited from Haydn and Mozart, but greatly extended them, writing longer and more ambitious movements. The work of Beethoven's Middle period is celebrated for its frequently heroic expression, and the works of his Late period for their intellectual depth.

Personal beliefs and their musical influence

Beethoven was much taken by the ideals of the Enlightenment and by the growing Romanticism in Europe. He initially dedicated his third symphony, the Eroica (Italian for 'heroic'), to Napoleon in the belief that the general would sustain the democratic and republican ideals of the French Revolution , but in 1804 crossed out the dedication as Napoleon's imperial ambitions became clear, replacing it with 'to the memory of a great man'. The fourth movement of his Ninth Symphony features an elaborate choral setting of Schiller 's ode An die Freude ('To Joy'), an optimistic hymn championing the brotherhood of humanity.

Scholars disagree on Beethoven's religious beliefs and the role they played in his work. For discussion, see Beethoven's religious beliefs .

Beethoven the Romantic?

A continuing controversy surrounding Beethoven is whether he was a Romantic composer. As documented elsewhere, since the meanings of the word 'Romantic' and the definition of the period 'Romanticism' both vary by discipline, Beethoven's inclusion as a member of that movement or period must be looked at in context.

If we consider the Romantic movement as an aesthetic epoch in literature and the arts generally, Beethoven sits squarely in the first half, along with literary Romantics such as the German poets Goethe and Schiller (whose texts both he and the much more straightforwardly Romantic Franz Schubert drew on for songs), and the English poet Percy Shelley . He was also called a Romantic by contemporaries such as Spohr and E.T.A. Hoffman . He is often considered the composer of the first Song Cycle , and was influenced by Romantic folk idioms, for example in his use of the work of Robert Burns . He set dozens of such poems (and arranged folk melodies) for voice, piano, and violin.

If on the other hand we consider the context of musicology , where ' Romanticism ' is dated later, the matter is one of considerably greater debate. For some experts Beethoven is not a Romantic, and his being one is 'a myth'; for others he stands as a transitional figure, or an immediate precursor to Romanticism; for others he is the prototypical, or even archetypical, Romantic composer, complete with myth of heroic genius and individuality. The marker buoy of Romanticism has been pushed back and forth several times by scholarship, and remains a subject of intense debate, in no small part because Beethoven is seen as a seminal figure. To those for whom the Enlightenment represents the basis of Modernity , he must therefore be unequivocally a Classicist, while for those who see the Romantic sensibility as a key to later aesthetics (including the aesthetics of our own time), he must be a Romantic. Between these two extremes there are, of course, innumerable gradations.

• Category:Beethoven compositions
• List of works by Beethoven is a listing of most of Beethoven's works, including links to all of the works discussed in their own Wikipedia article.
• Three-key exposition

External links

• Ludwig van Beethoven: A Musical Titan  ( http://www.carolinaclassical.com/articles/beethoven.html )
• Wikiquote - Quotes by and about Ludwig van Beethoven  ( http://wikiquote.org/wiki/Ludwig_van_Beethoven )
• Works of Beethoven (including some sheet music)  ( http://www.gutenberg.net/author/Beethoven,+Ludwig+van ) from Project Gutenberg
• Beethoven's Heiligenstadt Testament  ( http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/beethoven_heiligenstadt.html )
• Ludwig van Beethoven  ( http://klasyka.host.sk/en/kompozytor.php?k=beethoven ) from Encyclopedia of Composers  ( http://klasyka.host.sk/en/ )
• Piano Society.com - Beethoven  ( http://www.pianosociety.com/index.php?id=12 ) (A small biography and various free recordings)
• Beethoven's Sheet Music  ( http://www.mutopiaproject.org/cgibin/make-table.cgi?Composer=BeethovenLv&preview=1 ) by Mutopia Project
• Beethoven Haus Bonn  ( http://www.beethoven-haus-bonn.de ) , contains a large archive of historic and modern documents related to Beethoven
• Article about Beethoven’s study of Bach, as it relates to his music  ( http://www.schillerinstitute.org/fid_97-01/002-3bach_beethoven.html ) (and to this work)
• Beethoven Website  ( http://www.beethoven.ws ) , features Beethoven's biography, timeline and pictures.

Ludwig van Beethoven

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.

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(1770-1827)

Who Was Ludwig van Beethoven?

Controversial birthday, childhood abuse, beethoven and mozart, early career as a composer, beethoven and haydn, debut performance, personal life, was beethoven deaf, heiligenstadt testament, moonlight sonata, beethoven’s music, quick facts.

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.

CreateSpace 'Ludwig van Beethoven: A Life From Beginning to End' by Hourly History

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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!"

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.

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.

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 other composer in history.

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.

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.

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.

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."

FULL NAME: Ludwig van Beethoven BORN: December 1770 BIRTHPLACE: Bonn, Germany DIED: March 26, 1827 DEATHPLACE: Vienna, Austria ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Sagittarius

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• Never shall I forget the time I spent with you. Please continue to be my friend, as you will always find me yours.
• Anyone who tells a lie has not a pure heart and cannot make good soup.
• Love demands all and has a right to all.
• Recommend to your children virtues that alone can make them happy. Not gold.
• I shall seize fate by the throat.
• Music is the mediator between the spiritual and sensual life.
• To play without passion is inexcusable!
• Ever thine, ever mine, ever ours.
• Don't only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets, for it and knowledge can raise men to the divine.
• Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

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Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) was a German composer of Classical and Romantic music ; he is widely regarded as one of the greatest musicians to have ever lived. Most famous for his nine symphonies, piano concertos, piano sonatas, and string quartets, Beethoven was a great innovator and very probably the most influential composer in the history of music.

Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany, on 16 December 1770. His grandfather was the director of music ( Kapellmeister ) to the Archbishop-Elector of Cologne at Bonn and his father, Johann van Beethoven (c. 1740-1792), worked at the same court as both an instrumentalist and tenor singer. Ludwig's mother was a head cook in the palace . Ludwig had only two other surviving siblings, his younger brothers Caspar Anton Carl (b. 1774) and Nikolaus Johann (b. 1776). Ludwig's father was keen for Ludwig to develop his obvious musical skills but went rather overboard so that his eldest son spent so much time practising on the piano he did not have a lot of time left for all the other things children need to learn to become rounded adults. Johann was violent and an alcoholic, so there was not much that could be done against his wishes.

Ludwig's musical education continued at the Cologne court from 1779 under the tutorship of the organist and composer Christian Neefe (1748-1798). Ludwig impressed, and he was made the assistant court organist in 1781, and the next year, he was appointed the court orchestra's harpsichordist. Already composing his own pieces, Ludwig's work was catalogued by his teacher and a set of keyboard variations was published in 1782. Three of Ludwig's piano sonatas were published in 1783. In a smart move, Ludwig dedicated his sonatas to the Elector, and although he died that year, the next Elector saw fit to keep him on in the court orchestra.

In 1787, Ludwig was all set to go to Vienna where it was arranged he would take lessons from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791). Although he made it to Vienna, when Ludwig's mother became ill, he was obliged to return home after only two weeks. Unfortunately, Ludwig did not manage to return to Bonn before his mother died, likely of tuberculosis. In 1789, Johann van Beethoven had descended deeper into alcoholism and grief so that Ludwig was obliged to take over responsibility for his family's affairs, which included controlling half of his father's salary. A second opportunity to learn from a master came in 1792 when Ludwig was given leave to study under Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), who was also in Vienna. The music of both Mozart and Haydn influenced Beethoven in the first stage of his career as a composer, as did the guidance of another teacher, Johann Georg Albrechtsberger (1736-1809), particularly regarding counterpoint.

Character & Family

Beethoven was "stocky, swarthy, with an ugly, red, pock-marked face – and [with] rather a boorish manner" (Wade-Matthews, 333). The music historian C. Schonberg paints an even grimmer picture of the composer:

Never a beauty, he was called Der Spagnol in his youth because of his swarthiness. He was short, about 5 feet, 4 inches, thickset and broad, with a massive head, a wildly luxuriant crop of hair, protruding teeth, a small rounded nose, and a habit of spitting wherever the notion took him. He was clumsy, and anything he touched was liable to be upset or broken…He was sullen and suspicious, touchy as a misanthropic cobra, believed that everybody was out to cheat him, had none of the social graces , was forgetful, was prone to insensate rages, engaged in some unethical dealings with his publishers. A bachelor, he lived in indescribably messy surroundings, largely because no servant could put up with his tantrums. (109)

Like his father, Beethoven found alcohol difficult to resist. His great passion besides music was nature. As Countess Therese von Brunsvik once wrote in a letter: "He loved to be alone with nature, to make her his only confidante" (Osborne). Beethoven himself once said, "I love a tree more than a man" ( ibid ); he once even refused to rent a house when he found it had no trees in the vicinity.

Beethoven's love interests remain obscure. To name but a few, the composer may have proposed to the singer Magdalena Willmann in the 1790s, to Countess Josephine Deym in 1805, and to Therese Malfatti in 1810, but nothing came of such reckless and socially impossible declarations of love if indeed they were ever made. Beethoven fell in love with a woman he described in a July 1812 letter as Unsterbliche Geliebte ("Immortal Beloved"), although the letter was never sent (after the composer's death , it was found in a secret drawer of his cashbox). The intended recipient may have been the already-married Antonie Brentano, his friend Bettina Brentano's sister-in- law ; another candidate is the pianist Dorothea von Ertmann. The common feature of Beethoven's objects of desire is that they were all utterly unattainable unless the ladies were prepared to ruin themselves, perhaps that was the subconscious and real desire of an impossibly eccentric man who seemed unable to live with anyone, man or woman.

In 1815, Beethoven, after his brother Caspar's untimely death, took on the role of the legal guardian of his nephew Karl, although the pair had a troubled relationship. Beethoven sought to exclude Karl's mother from being Karl's protector – he disapproved of her low education and poor reputation – but he had to engage in a lengthy legal battle to win his case. Karl could not cope with the mood swings of his uncle, and he attempted suicide in August 1826. Managing only to graze his scalp with one of the two shots he fired, Karl survived and left his uncle for good by joining the army.

Move to Vienna

Beethoven arrived in Vienna in 1792, and he would live there for the rest of his life. His father's death in December 1792 may have convinced the composer he had insufficient reasons to ever go back to Bonn. Beethoven quickly established a reputation in what was then the musical capital of Europe for being a superb improviser, frequently performing on piano in the homes of the wealthy. One newspaper reported on Beethoven's piano style in the following terms: "He is greatly admired for the velocity of his playing, and astounds everybody by the way he can master the greatest difficulties with ease" (Wade-Matthews, 333). Beethoven's career was boosted by the patronage of Prince Lichnowsky who even gave the composer use of rooms in his palace. Various other music-loving nobles helped the composer financially throughout his career.

Beethoven's method of writing new music was "strikingly different from that of his predecessors, in that he made a vast amount of rough drafting and sketching for each work. Although many of these sketches were discarded or lost, a large number survive – probably about 10,000 pages altogether, with nearly all his works represented" (Sadie, 164-5). Beethoven may have been slovenly in his personal habits, but he was meticulous when it came to writing his music; he checked all his published works and frequently sent corrections to the publishers, exhorting them to ensure the printers put all the dots in the right places.

On 29 March 1795 in Vienna's Burgtheater, Beethoven gave his first public performance, choosing to highlight a new piano concerto he had composed. More piano works were published over the next few years as Beethoven established himself as a piano virtuoso of distinction. He published works of chamber music for piano, violin, cello, and wind instruments, and embarked on several concert tours that took in major cities like Prague, Dresden, Leipzig, Berlin, and Pressburg (modern Bratislava). From 1799 to 1801, he wrote the Pathétique piano sonata, the Moonlight piano sonata (a name coined after a critic wrote that the music reminded him of moonlight over Lake Lucerne). The Moonlight sonata was dedicated to Countess Giulietta Guicciardi. The 1801 string quartets are considered by many to be Beethoven's finest works of chamber music. It was also in this period that Beethoven turned to a new format for him, the symphony. Music would never be quite the same again.

The Symphonies

Beethoven's First Symphony was completed in 1800, and the Second Symphony was completed in 1802. They displayed the composer's innovative use of musical motifs rather than the more traditional emphasis on lyrical themes, and wind instruments were given a greater role than was traditional. Another innovation, first seen in the Second Symphony, was to replace the third movement "minuet and trio" with a lively scherzo on either side of a slower mid-section. The Second Symphony, which premiered in April 1803, was an altogether grander affair than the First and is surprisingly joyous considering the composer's health problems at the time (see below), but it was ultimately outshone by the Third Symphony, Eroica , which was completed in 1803. Eroica is double the length of a normal symphony. The composer dedicated it to Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), although he later withdrew the dedication when Napoleon took on the title of Emperor of the French in 1804. Regarded by Beethoven himself as his finest symphony besides the Ninth and often cited by music critics as one of the greatest of any symphony by any composer, a highlight is the dramatic Funeral March.

The Fourth Symphony was completed in 1806 and contains what music critic Richard Osborne describes as "the loveliest of the Beethoven symphonic adagios." The Fifth and Sixth Symphonies both received their premieres in December 1808. The Fifth featured the trombone, a first in Beethoven's work, and shows the composer's increasing interest in repeating motifs and blending the different movements into a single narrative whole while also minimising the breaks between the movements. The author E. M. Forster (1879-1970) described in words the music of the Fifth Symphony as "Gusts of splendour, gods and demi-gods contending with vast swords, colour and fragrance broadcast in the field of battle, magnificent victory, magnificent death" (Osborne). The Sixth Symphony is also titled the Pastoral since it contains musical interpretations of birds singing, thunderstorm, and a rural festival. There are unusual instruments to enhance these effects, for example, the alphorn.

The Seventh and Eighth Symphonies were composed in 1811 and 1812, respectively. The second movement of the Seventh Symphony was especially popular with audiences. Fellow composer Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) was enraptured by the Eighth Symphony: "one of those creations for which there is no model and no parallel, something that falls just as it is from heaven into the artist's head…and we are transfixed as we listen to it" (Kunze). Audiences preferred the Seventh Symphony, which slightly annoyed Beethoven since he felt the Eighth was better.

The Ninth Symphony, titled Choral , was completed in 1824 and premiered on 7 May that year at Vienna's Kärntnertor Theatre . Despite being almost totally deaf by then, Beethoven conducted the premiere himself. The symphony's title derives from Beethoven's innovative use of vocals in the finale. The work was inspired by the ode An die Freude ('To Joy') by Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805).

Health Problems

Beethoven was at the peak of his powers and fame when he suffered a cruel blow to his health. The composer realised around 1798 that he was losing his power of hearing. Doctors confirmed Beethoven's fears in 1800, but the cause remains unknown. The composer first lost the ability to hear higher notes, and his hearing deteriorated from there over the following years, although there were brief periods of improvement.

Beethoven expressed the trauma of this discovery in a letter which has become known as the Heiligenstadt Testament , named after the country retreat outside Vienna where the composer often spent time. The letter, written in 1802, was addressed to Beethoven's brothers (but never actually sent) and included such dark thoughts as: "For me there can be no pleasure in human society, no intelligent conversation, no mutual confidences. I must live like an outcast." He contemplated suicide but was driven on by his music: "It seemed impossible to leave the world before I had accomplished all I was destined to do" (Wade-Matthews, 334). Beethoven began to use an ear trumpet, but he could not hear at all by 1818. Fortunately, like many musicians, Beethoven could 'hear' notes pitch perfectly in his head, and so he could continue to compose.

Other Works

Beethoven wrote a successful ballet in 1801, Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus ( The Creatures of Prometheus ) – the main theme was reused in the composer's Third Symphony. Beethoven wrote his only opera, Fidelio (initially known as Leonore ), in 1805 and then revised it in 1814. Some of the score of Fidelio was recycled by the composer from his 1790 cantata intended to mark the death of Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor (r. 1765-1790). The composer lived in turbulent times. The decade-long French Revolution (1789-1799) rocked Europe, and Austria and France were at war . The story of Fidelio is set in Spain during the 18th century, but the plot, where an innocent man is imprisoned but rescued by his wife, was inspired by a story set during the French Revolution. Unfortunately for Beethoven, his original three-act opera had just two performances at the Theater an der Wien before it was closed down because Napoleon's army took possession of Vienna.

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Beethoven returned to instrumental music with his 1806 Violin Concerto and, in the same year, his "Razumovsky" quartets, named after the Russian Count Andrey Razumovsky, ambassador in Vienna, to whom he dedicated the work. In 1809, Beethoven completed his Fifth Piano Concerto, titled Emperor since it was dedicated to his patron Archduke Rudolph of Austria.

Although financially secure from the middle of his career, Beethoven's descended into odder and odder behaviour as he grew older. By 1820, he was "considered a great composer, but as a man completely eccentric, even mad. Careless of his dress, drinking a bottle of wine at each meal…communicating with his friends by means of conversation books, he seemed almost at the end of his career" (Arnold, 195).

In 1822, Beethoven composed an overture, The Consecration of the House, to mark the grand opening of the Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna. The same year he composed his Missa solemnis, which ended up being premiered at a concert with the Ninth Symphony. Beethoven described the Missa solemnis as his finest work.

Just as Beethoven was obliged to retract from society because of his deafness so his final work became more detached from its audience. His last piano sonatas and string quartets "are introspective works, not intended to be 'understood' or applauded in the conventional sense. They are the work of a man who had withdrawn into an inner life, which could only be expressed through the medium of pure, abstract music" (Wade-Matthews, 337). He continued to innovate; his quartets expand on the usual four movements, for example, and his piano sonatas from this period "upset traditional formal patterns, altering the standard number and order of movements; the thematic material is fragmentary; and fugal writing is given an increasing prominence" (Arnold, 195). And there was still to come the Ninth Symphony in 1824, the work which inspired almost all of the Romantic composers yet to come.

Beethoven's Most Famous Works

Nine Symphonies (1800-1824) Six string quartets Around 90 songs Pathétique piano sonata (1798) Moonlight piano sonata (1801) Kreutzer Sonata for violin and piano (1803) Apassionata piano sonata (1804-5) Fidelio opera (1805 & 1814) Violin Concerto (1806) Razumovsky Quartets (1806) Coriolan overture (1807) Emperor piano concerto (1809) Egmont overture (1809-10) Archduke trio (1811) Diabelli Variations on a Waltz (1823) Missa solemnis (1823)

Death & Legacy

In later years, Beethoven suffered from liver disease, likely a consequence of his heavy drinking, and his health in general suffered from the hit-and-miss medical treatments he was subjected to by his doctors. Ludwig van Beethoven died in Vienna on 26 March 1827. The composer was given a public funeral, and the procession was said to have been watched by a crowd of 10,000 people, some said there was double that figure. For many critics and music lovers, Beethoven's music reflects his life: "What his music does convey is an immense ability to overcome misfortune and suffering and a sense of repose and calm when the struggle is over" (Arnold, 196). The celebrated music historian D. Arnold goes on to summarise the composer's influence on all who followed:

Never has a composer had such an influence on his successors…Many composers followed his example by introducing a chorus into a symphony, basing a symphony on a programme, linking movements thematically, opening a concerto without an orchestral ritornello , expanding the possibilities of key structure within a movement or a work, introducing new instruments into the symphony orchestra, and so on…he lifted music from its role as sheer entertainment and made music not the servant of religious observance, but its object. (196).

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Bibliography

• Arnold, Denis. The New Oxford Companion to Music . Oxford University Press, 1983.
• Kunze, Stefan. "Liner Notes - Beethoven Symphonie No 8." Deutsche Grammophon , 1996.
• Osborne, Richard. "Liner notes - Beethoven 9 Symphonies." Deutsche Grammophon , 1988.
• Sadie, S. et al. Classical Music Encyclopedia& Expanded Edition . Flame Tree Music, 2014.
• Schonberg, Harold. The Lives of the Great Composers. Abacus, 1998.
• Steen, Michael. The Lives and Times of the Great Composers. Oxford University Press, 2004.
• Wade-Matthews, M. et al. The Encyclopedia of Music. Lorenz Books, 2020.

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Ludwig van Beethoven

Introduction.

The composer Ludwig van Beethoven created some of the most influential music in history. He transformed many traditional forms of Western classical music . For example, he set new standards for the symphony, creating longer pieces that expressed important ideas and deep feelings rather than just serving as entertainment. His works include nine symphonies, one opera, and many pieces for small groups and for piano and other solo instruments.

Early Life and Career

In 1787 Beethoven went to Vienna hoping to study with the great composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart . He had to return home right away, however, because his mother was sick. Five years later Beethoven settled in Vienna permanently. By that time Mozart had died, but Beethoven was able to study with Joseph Haydn and other famous composers.

Growing Fame and Deafness

Beethoven became known as a highly skilled piano player. Many of Vienna’s wealthy residents enjoyed his music and gave him money to live on. In 1800 he performed some of his works at a large public concert in Vienna. This event helped him become widely famous.

In the late 1790s Beethoven began to lose his hearing. For some time he continued to compose and perform as before. But by 1819 Beethoven had become totally deaf. From then on he no longer performed much in public, spending most of his energy composing music.

In his last years Beethoven created longer and more complicated pieces. In 1824 he conducted the first performance of his Ninth Symphony with great success despite being unable to hear the music. Beethoven died in Vienna on March 26, 1827. The masterpieces he created continue to be performed nearly two centuries after his death.

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Beethoven 250

Beethoven's life, liberty and pursuit of enlightenment.

Tom Huizenga

A portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven, painted in 1804 by W.J. Mähler. Wikimedia Commons hide caption

A portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven, painted in 1804 by W.J. Mähler.

Two-hundred-fifty years ago, a musical maverick was born. Ludwig van Beethoven charted a powerful new course in music. His ideas may have been rooted in the work of European predecessors Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Josef Haydn , but the iconic German composer became who he was with the help of some familiar American values: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That phrase, from the Declaration of Independence, is right out of the playbook of the Enlightenment, the philosophical movement that shook Europe in the 18th century.

"One way to look at it is what happened after Newton created the scientific revolution: Basically, people, for the first time, developed the idea that through reason and science, we can understand the universe and understand ourselves," says Jan Swafford, the author of Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph , a 1,000-page biography of the composer.

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Swafford says the Enlightenment idea embodied in the Declaration of Independence is that the aim of life is to serve your own needs and your own happiness. "But you can only do that in a free society," he says. "So freedom is the first requirement of happiness."

Other key components of the Enlightenment — including a cult of personal freedom and the importance of heroes — were vibrating in the air in Beethoven's progressive hometown of Bonn when he was an impressionable teenager. "There was discussion of all these ideas in coffeehouses and wine bars and everywhere," Swafford adds. "Beethoven was absorbed into all that and he soaked it up like a sponge."

You can hear ideas from the Enlightenment in Beethoven's Third Symphony, nicknamed "Eroica" — heroic. "There's an amazing place near the end of the first movement of the 'Eroica' where you hear this theme which I think represents the hero," Swafford points out. "It starts playing in a horn, and then it's as if it leads the whole orchestra into a gigantic proclamation, as if that is the hero leading an army into the future."

The hero of the "Eroica" Symphony was originally Napoleon — until Beethoven found out he was just another brutal dictator, and tore up the dedication page of the score. Overall, the hero of much of Beethoven's music is humanity itself.

"He was a humanist, above all," says conductor Marin Alsop, who had planned to mount Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on six continents this year, before the pandemic hit. Beethoven, she says, believed that each of us can surmount any obstacle.

"You can hear his perspective on this new philosophy of the Enlightenment, because it's very personal to Beethoven," Alsop says. "Throughout all of his works, you have this sense of overcoming."

You can hear that journey from darkness to light in pieces like the "Eroica," in the famous Fifth Symphony — and, Alsop says, at the very beginning the groundbreaking Ninth Symphony.

"It opens in the most unexpected way for a piece that's about to make a huge statement," Alsop says. "You can't even tell if it's a major or a minor key. It's kind of fluttering with a tremolo sound in the strings. It's this idea of possibility, an empty slate."

From there, Alsop adds, "Beethoven builds this whole journey of empowerment of unity. There's a lot of unison where the orchestra shouts out as one."

Those unisons are the way Beethoven depicts the connections between people – a pretty important thing for a man who began to go deaf before he was 30. He's a perfect symbol for this era of COVID, Alsop says, because of his severe isolation. That solitude sent the composer out for long walks in the woods outside Vienna.

"Beethoven absolutely loved and cherished nature, and thought of nature as a holy thing," says conductor Roderick Cox, who led performances of Beethoven's Symphony No. 6, the "Pastorale," this fall in Fort Worth, Texas. "Those are some of the principles of Enlightenment, of this music, the liberation of the human mind."

Cox also points to another Beethoven obsession: freedom, which is captured on stage, he says, in the composer's politically fueled opera Fidelio . "It really is the epitome of this Enlightenment spirit: This governmental prisoner, speaking out against the government for individual rights and liberty, has been jailed." In the opera, when the chorus of political prisoners leave their dungeon cells for a momentary breath of fresh air, Beethoven has them sing the word "Freiheit" — freedom.

Two and a half centuries after his birth, Beethoven continues to loom large over today's composers — literally, in some cases. American composer Joan Tower has a picture of Beethoven over her desk, and says he even paid her a ghostly visit once while she was trying to write music.

"He walked into the room right away," Tower says," and I said, 'Listen, could you leave? I'm busy here.' He would not leave. So I said, 'OK, if you're going to stay, then I'm going to use your music.' " And she did, in her piano concerto: Dedicated to Beethoven, the piece borrows fragments from three of his piano sonatas, including his final sonata, No. 32 in C minor.

"The thing I relate to is the struggle, because I struggle the way he does," Tower adds. "He was slow, and I'm slow. So there are certain connections that I'm so happy to have with him."

Everyone can connect to Beethoven, according to Alsop. "This is art that defies time, that defies culture, that defies partisanship, that unifies. And it can speak to each individual differently, but it speaks loudly to each of us," she says.

It's music that speaks to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — things we're all yearning for right now.

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Ludwig van Beethoven: Life and Works Essay (Biography)

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Analysis of the specific work, analysis of the ninth symphony (choral work), works cited.

Ludwig van Beethoven was born on December 17 th , 1770 in a place called Bonn (“Life of Beethoven- ‘Childhood’ ” par. 1). He was the first born son and his father was so determined to mold him into a musician. His father used to give him violin and piano classes when he was a child.

At eight years of age, he learned theory and keyboard under the instruction of van den Eeden who was the former chapel organizer (par. 2-3). He also received piano lessons from Tobias Friedrich Pfeiffer while Franz Rovantini gave him violin and viola lessons (Schindler p. 40).

Equipped with the basics, his father forced him to stage a public performance at only twelve years of age (“Life of Beethoven- ‘Childhood’” par. 3). During his teenage years, Beethoven concentrated more on performances than composition (“Life of Beethoven- ‘Youth’ ” par. 1). In 1787, Beethoven visited Vienna and it is believed that he may have attended some classes with Mozart, a famous symphony composer at the time.

His visit was, however, cut short by the news of his ailing mother who later died in July the same year (par. 4-5). His father was so much affected by the loss that he resorted to heavy drinking leaving Beethoven with no option, but to assume the role of the family head. Beethoven even sort court proceedings to allow him to receive a portion of his father’s salary to take care of the family.

Having assured the welfare of his younger siblings, Beethoven eventually moved permanently to Vienna in 1792 (Schindler p. 48). While there he studied courses like choral fugues, double fugue and canon. In his adult years, he concentrated more on music composition and composed many symphonies.

In the year 1800, he made a performance of his first symphony (Schindler p. 54). Between the year 1801 and 1806, he composed his 2 nd 3 rd and 4 th symphonies making him a successful composer with the best symphonies in the industry. Beethoven excelled in his career as a symphony composer until his death on 26 March, 1827 in Vienna.

A symphony is an extended musical composition in the western classical music (“Symphony” par. 1). It contains both instrumental passages and overtures or interludes. The usage of the word symphony dates back to the 17 th century tracing its origin from Greek word συμφωνία meaning agreement or concord of sound.

Symphonies written in the past had three movements namely; quick-slow-quick. They were mainly used as overtures to introduce a stage work (“Symphony” par. 1). A piece originally written as an overture could be used as a symphony and a symphony could also be used as an overture.

The three movements in the 17 th century symphony were later replaced by four movements in the 18 th and 19 th centuries. The change from three to four movements originated from German composers especially Haydn and Mozart. The four movements were: the opening, slow movement, a minute with trio, and an allegro (“Symphony” par. 6). There were, however, variations in this layout in terms of style and content.

In the 19 th century, symphonies became very popular among the music fans. Beethoven expanded symphony very fast with his compositions. His ninth symphony was the best ever composed making a summary of the previous eight. By the end of the 19 th century, instruments that allowed an orchestral approach to symphonies were introduced by French organizers.

In the 20 th century, symphony experienced further diversification in style and content, but still mentioned the old format. Symphonies still remained to be orchestral works even with diversification of style and content. However, most symphonies composed in the 20 th century had variations distinguishing them from the earlier genre.

Beethoven composed a total of nine symphonies commonly classified as No. 1-9, though they had names as we will see below. His first and second symphonies were a continuation of Haydn’s and Mozart’s work (Comini p. 124, 130). His third symphony was called ‘Eroica’, which was a romantic symphony. It marked the start of his best compositions.

In his fourth symphony, he featured strong programmatic background. This symphony also marked the start of the fading away of the classical symphony. His fifth symphony was unique. This is so because of its sonata that made it stand out from his previous compositions.

The sixth symphony called the pastoral is a series of symphonic poems interconnected through related melodic motifs (Comini p. 135). The seventh and the eighth symphonies has new element of aesthetics. The ninth symphony is in the form of a choral. It represents the summit of the Beethoven Symphony (Cook p. 64).

It also represents all the musical means of expression utilized by himself up to that point of his composition (Cook p. 64). Beethoven once said that symphonies were a true representation of him. Through them you would get to know his likes and dislikes. Beethoven is the best known composer in the world both during his time and in the current world.

His compositions were a great breakthrough for this genre of music. They were all unique from the other artists’ compositions. Each prepared a way for the next. They were like a continuation of each other. Some of his best compositions were symphony No. 3, 5 and 9. They were the most popular and the most listened to during his time. Beethoven’s compositions are known to many in the history of this genre of music.

Composed in the early 19 th Century, Symphony No. 9 is the summary of all Beethoven’s symphonies (Comini p. 138). This composition includes all his previous eight compositions. It has all the ideas of the previous symphonies summarized into one composition. Its tone is that of happiness hence considered by many as the symphony of joy (Cook p. 67).

Part one of this symphony has an everlasting moment in the creation of the composition and Beethoven is viewed as a genius for this. Its content presents the horrors of war in the world at that time. The music background is composed of violins and the cellos. The first theme is introduced with much effort contrasting with the secondary themes and motives (p. 65).

Part two of the symphony is joyful. It has great intense and depth, which often made the crowd happy and cheerful during performance. Part three creates a different atmosphere altogether. It is like the beginning of a new cycle (p. 70). There are movements of lyrics allowing for dancing during the performance. Finally, part four is the summary of the whole symphony (p. 72). It creates the most memorable page in the book of universal culture.

Comini, Alessandara. The Changing Image of Beethoven: A Study in Mythmaking . New Mexico: Sunstone Press, 2008. Print.

Cook, Nicholas. Beethoven Symphony, Issue 9. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Print.

“Life of Beethoven.” All About Beethoven.com . Web. < http://www.all-about-beethoven.com/beethovenlife.html >.

Schindler, Anton. Beethoven as I knew him: A Biography . Canada: General Publications Co. 1996. Print.

“Symphony.” Oxford Grove Music Encyclopedia . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Web.

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Ludwig van Beethoven summary

Know about the life of ludwig van beethoven and some of his famous compositions.

Ludwig van Beethoven , (baptized Dec. 17, 1770, Bonn, archbishopric of Cologne—died March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria), German composer. Born to a musical family, he was a precociously gifted pianist and violist. After nine years as a court musician in Bonn, he moved to Vienna to study with Joseph Haydn and remained there for the rest of his life. He was soon well known as both a virtuoso and a composer, and he became the first important composer to earn a successful living while forsaking employment in the church or court. He uniquely straddled the Classical and Romantic eras. Rooted in the traditions of Haydn and Mozart, his art also encompassed the new spirit of humanism expressed in the works of German Romantic writers as well as in the ideals of the French Revolution, with its passionate concern for the freedom and dignity of the individual. His astonishing Third ( Eroica ) Symphony (1804) was the thunderclap that announced the Romantic century, and it embodies the titanic but rigorously controlled energy that was the hallmark of his style. He began to lose his hearing from c. 1795; by c. 1819 he was totally deaf. For his last 15 years he was unrivaled as the world’s most famous composer. In musical form he was a considerable innovator, widening the scope of sonata , symphony , concerto , and string quartet. His greatest achievement was to raise instrumental music, hitherto considered inferior to vocal, to the highest plane of art. His works include the celebrated 9 symphonies; 16 string quartets; 32 piano sonatas; the opera Fidelio (1805, rev. 1814); 2 masses, including the Missa Solemnis (1823); 5 piano concertos; a violin concerto (1806); 6 piano trios; 10 violin sonatas; 5 cello sonatas; and several concert overtures.

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Beethoven Poem Analysis

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‘Beethoven, A Life’ assesses the composer’s enduring legacy

Ludwig van Beethoven

Belgian musicologist and conductor Jan Caeyers took a break from his duties in 2004 to write a “short article” or “manifest” on Ludwig van Beethoven — the composer whose music he had spent so much time studying and performing. “Writing a big biography on Beethoven was never a long-cherished dream or a mission for me,” he said. ’

Just such a tome, however, is what he wound up producing. What began as an essay morphed over several years into a full-fledged look at Beethoven’s life and music — a book that was finally published in 2009 in Dutch. The English translation, Beethoven, A Life , was released 11 years later, logging in at 680 pages.

As music director Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra continue their 2021-22 exploration of Beethoven’s symphonies with Jan. 13 and 15 performances of the No. 5 and 8 and the Coriolan Overture, Caeyers discusses his biography and his longtime relationship with Beethoven’s music:

Why another Beethoven biography?

Because I’m a conductor, I have a specific approach, which is different from a normal Beethoven scholar. When making this music, when you are thinking about how to find an interpretation of this music, there is a different entry to the music and to the circumstances in which Beethoven developed his musical ideas. When I was working for Claudio Abbado [as an assistant], I did many new pieces, and you see the very complicated, psychological process of a composer.

There are a lot of parallels between, say,  and Beethoven. I did, for example, the first rehearsal of [György] Kurtág’s Stele , Op. 33, which was premiered by the Berlin Philharmonic [in 1994]. You could say that the whole process for Kurtág was very equivalent to what happened to Beethoven, and this helped to me to understand the process and mechanism of Beethoven’s composing. It’s totally different when you are a scholar and only studying the sketches.

How else does your biography differ from previous ones?

The idea that Beethoven was a normal human being struggling day by day to find his way in life. In my opinion, there is no romantic dimension of Beethoven’s life. You have this myth of the great Beethoven, elected by God to write exceptional music and lead an exceptional life. No, he had a very ordinary life, struggling with problems.

For example, Beethoven never or almost never wrote a piece out the blue. There was always a very practical reason why he wrote a piece. There was a command or there was an invitation or he had an opportunity to earn money or there was a publisher asking something. Normally, we think, he got up in the morning and had a wonderful musical idea and for many weeks he wrote. No, there was always a pragmatic dimension to the things he did.

What was the biggest surprise for you during the research and writing of this biography?

I was very grateful for the fact that the field of Beethoven’s activities was very broad. He composed music in almost every form, every discipline you could imagine in his time. And nearly always at a high level. What is very interesting when you are writing a biography of Beethoven is that you can write a kind of history of the music of his time. Compare him with, say, [Johann Sebastian] Bach. Imagine that you should write a book about Bach, and then you have to speak about 200 cantatas or the 30 Mozart operas [in the case of a Mozart book]. A book on Beethoven’s music can evolve effortlessly into a general textbook on musical genre.

What was the most difficult part of the project? The writing? The research? The traveling?

The most important problem was to find a structure for the story. You have two dimensions. You have the normal, historical way. But then to find a method to speak about some details, for example, the development of the construction of pianos. How can you integrate that aspect in the book? Because there is a direct link between Beethoven’s development as a composer and the development of piano building in his time.

To make a comparison with [Lewis] Lockwood, who is one of the most important scholars of Beethoven, his method was very clear. There are four periods in Beethoven’s life. Every period is one part of the book. Every period starts with general outline of the time. Then you tell the vital details and then you speak about the music, starting with the most important music. All four parts of the book are constructed in the same way. I refused to do that.

I wanted a very flexible way of thinking about the structure of my book, although it is a chronological book. So you have this horizontal dimension, the chronology and sometimes you have these vertical moments, where now I’m speaking about the development of the piano, where I’m speaking about opera in Beethoven’s time. This dichotomy was most the important exercise and challenge in writing this biography.

What is the most underestimated aspect of Beethoven’s music?

Without any doubt, his vocal music. The fact is Beethoven was an instrumental composer, who wrote very, very important symphonies, piano concertos and so on, and who transformed the music of the whole 19th century. From the beginning to the end of the century, Beethoven symphonies are the most important things in music, together with opera. Before, symphonies were second class. Beethoven was the founder of the Romantic symphony.

But in my opinion, he was [also] a brilliant composer in the vocal field. I really like the Mass in C Major, a wonderful, modern piece — underestimated. I like the two first versions of his Leonore opera. I like his songs. There are many songs 20 years before Schubert that sound like Schubert. Beethoven was able to write wonderful, good-sounding and good-singing Italian-like melodies. In the end, his most important work, in my opinion, is not the Ninth Symphony but the Missa solemnis . There, you have a kind of synthesis of all his music and intellectual capacities.

Why is Beethoven’s music still so powerful and appealing to audiences?

Because generally speaking, you have two parameters that exclude each other. One side is an intellectual dimension of music — rationality — and on the other hand is the emotional dimension. You’ll see in a piece, one is more important than the other. You can nearly say they exclude each other. The more a piece is emotional, the less it’s intellectual. That’s a general rule. A beautiful example are the Verdi operas, which are very emotional.

On the other hand, you have composers who are more intellectual. With Beethoven, you have extreme emotional dimensions and at the same time, in the same piece, you have an incredible structure and intellectual charge for the listener. The Appassionata [Sonata] is an extremely emotional piece, but you can trust that there will be a logical ending. We have the feeling that Beethoven will always bring us back home. I think this combination is unique in the history of music.

Jan Caeyers was appointed a full-time professor of musicology at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, in 1985, becoming part-time in 2001 and retiring last year. In 1993-1997, he served as assistant to famed conductor Claudio Abbado at the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra. He has led major orchestras across Europe and conducted such choral ensembles as the Arnold Schoenberg Chor in Vienna and Nederlands Kamerkoor. In 2010, he founded Le Concert Olympique, a 45-member European orchestra devoted to the music of Beethoven and continues to serve as its artistic director and conductor.

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The former classical music critic of the Denver Post, Kyle MacMillan is a Chicago-based arts journalist.

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• > Beethoven's Lives
• > Exploring Beethoven’s Life and Work: Three Sample Years

Book contents

• Frontmatter
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviation
• 1 The Earliest Biographer
• 2 Beethoven Biography, 1840–c. 1875
• 3 The Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
• 4 Beethoven Biography and European Politics, 1933–77
• 5 The Modern Era
• 6 Exploring Beethoven’s Life and Work: Three Sample Years
• 7 Reminiscences and Reflections
• Bibliography

6 - Exploring Beethoven’s Life and Work: Three Sample Years

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 September 2020

IN THIS CHAPTER I want to look again, now more narrowly, at the relationship of Beethoven's life and his work; how best to comprehend these two dimensions, which in some way we know must be two aspects of one. The focus here will be on three widely separated segments of his life: the years 1787, 1809, and 1826. Of course this problem in biography looks quite different in each of these periods, by virtue of Beethoven's age, his stage of development as man and musician, and all other relevant conditions.

A year in the life of a great artist can be a long time. This is especially true for one like Beethoven whose compositional styles changed so drastically across nearly five decades, from the earliest piano sonatas, written in his childhood, all the way to the late quartets. My hope is that narrowing the focus to three separate years may furnish insights that can be applied to his longer artistic career and its context. Comparable studies in literary biography are found in two books by the Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro – one on 1599 and its importance for Shakespeare's work, the other on 1606, the year of King Lear. In Beethoven scholarship I pointed out earlier the value of studies that dig deep into shorter periods, in particular Martin Cooper's book on the last ten years and Mark Ferraguto on Beethoven in 1806. Studies like these can be of value in something like the sense that analyses of individual works can shed light on ways of thought that have wider implications. They can bring us down to ground level as we try to see how Beethoven's situation in a particular year may have influenced the works he was producing at the time. Further, research on what Beethoven did and wrote in a single year may broaden modern understanding of the factual landscape by bringing attention to details.

How outer and inner aspects of an artistic life relate to one another is the underlying question of artistic biography. We might see them as frameworks superimposed on one another, or as modes of experience that we feel must be perpetually connected but are sometimes apart, sometimes intertwined, like strands of a cable.

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• Exploring Beethoven’s Life and Work: Three Sample Years
• Lewis Lockwood
• Book: Beethoven's Lives
• Online publication: 11 September 2020
• Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781787448292.007

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• Symphony No. 1 in C, Op. 21 (1800)
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• Symphony No. 6 in F, Op. 68 “Pastoral” (1808)
• Symphony No. 7 in A, Op. 92 (1812)
• Symphony No. 8 in F, Op. 93 (1813)
• Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 “Choral” (1824)

Beethoven Symphony Basics at ESM

“Beethoven in his turn brought a new freedom, not by discarding an artistic convention, but by bringing within its scope a new range of human experiences.”   Wilfrid Dunwell, “The Age of Goethe and Beethoven,” in Hays, ed., Twentieth-century Views of Music History (New York: C. Scribner & Sons, 1972), 297-98.

Through his symphonies and other works, Beethoven built a musical bridge from the Classical past to the Romantic future. Even in his own time this was recognized in Beethoven’s music, especially in his symphonies. Count Ferdinand von Waldstein , one of Beethoven’s earliest and most devoted admirers, sent the young composer off to Vienna in 1792 with a letter that stated Beethoven would “receive Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands.” (See essay “Significance and Structure” on Symphony No. 1 in C, Op. 21 page.) In 1810, after Beethoven had completed his first six symphonies, the Allgemeine musikalisches Zeitung published the famous essay “Beethoven’s Instrumental Music” by prominent Romantic author and critic E. T. A. Hoffmann, which placed Beethoven on the peak of the “Romantics” mountain, reached by climbing through Haydn and Mozart.  (See essay “Others’ Words” on the Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 page.) Recent historical assessments have continued to acknowledge the pivotal stylistic role Beethoven played.  Elaine Sisman addressed the matter by asking (and later answering) some questions regarding such historicization and the Western music canon:

Open any textbook in music history or music appreciation and the problem of Beethoven’s relation to music historiography becomes immediately apparent: is he Classical or Romantic or both or neither? Is he part of the Canonical Three of the Viennese Classical Style—Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven—or is he a chapter unto himself, as the One destined to inherit and transform, even liberate, the achievements of the Classical Duo?  (“ The Spirit of Mozart from Haydn’s Hands,” The Cambridge Companion to Beethoven , 45.)

Wilfrid Dunwell’s assessment of the matter, efficiently summarized in the quote that begins the essay, assents to the Beethoven bridge based on the recognition of three factors: 1) an artistic freedom that emerged in the early years of the nineteenth century, 2) expressed using existing music conventions , 3) but reconsidered in order to illuminate a developing outlook of the human condition .  Both past and present commentaries on Beethoven and his music, especially his symphonies, agree that the foundation of his transitional status is his mastery of the expressive capabilities of the Classical symphonic language and practices he inherited (summarized in the essays on the preceding page “ Beethoven’s Classical Inheritance: The Symphony and the Orchestra ”), and that by recasting and reconsidering elements of rhythm and melody with motivic implications, tonal and harmonic relationships, dynamics and the use of silence, instrumental treatment, and structural boundaries and expectations, he propelled the symphony towards a new Romantic direction, inspired in part by the emerging “Heroic” impulse and sublime aesthetic, with each moment packed with teleological (end-aimed) musical and dramatic implications.

Heroic Narrative and the Sublime

As the Enlightenment came to a close, there was a growing interest in heroic stories and ideals. The turn of the century saw the re-emergence of the Medieval Bildungsroman , or developmental novel, as a popular genre. This was due in large part to the German authors of the counter-Enlightenment Sturm und Drang movement such as Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , whose tales focused on Romantic heroes, aware of themselves and of the outside forces of society acting against them, particularly concerning how their morals often contradicted societal values. Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther , published in 1774, exemplified this genre.  This discrepancy of inner and outer worlds meant the hero’s plight was wrought with instability, often leading to isolation, unfulfilled desires, and subsequent brooding. (Garber, “Self, Society, Value, and the Romantic Hero,” 322.)  In many tales, the struggles served to shape the hero into something greater than could have been imagined at the beginning, thus generating a narrative of personal development and overcoming: Per ardua (or aspera ) ad astra— “Through struggle, to the stars.”  To make vivid this focus on the internal and emotional aspects of the human condition, and the struggle with external forces that threatened to destroy the hero, Sturm und Drang authors called upon the sublime topic—terror, fear, storminess, pondering the un-understandable and unknowable—with new emphasis.  This may have been one of the leading factors in the popularity of these tales. In 1757 Edmund Burke, in his influential  A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful , commented on the effectiveness of sublime on raising the interest of “the common sort” as well as those with education and “taste”:

It is our ignorance of things that causes all our admiration, and chiefly excites our passions. . . . It is this with the vulgar, and all men are as the vulgar in what they do not understand.  The [sublime] ideas of eternity and infinity are among the most affecting we have, and yet perhaps there is nothing of which we really understand so little, as of infinity and eternity. (Part Two, Section IV.)

Other common themes in these heroic tales included an innocence and naïveté at the beginning of the journey, struggles with the inner self and external pressures, perhaps love and loss, repose in a rural, natural setting where the hero can be isolated and contemplative, and most fully “human” in his attachment to Nature, and finally a resolve that leads to a victorious outcome of some sort, completing and fulfilling the hero.

Such stories were not confined to fiction. When Beethoven arrived in Vienna in 1792, Napoleon Bonaparte was embarking on his rise through the ranks of the army of the infant First Republic of France, and by the time Beethoven’s First Symphony was completed in 1800, Napoleon had seized power and was beginning his conquest of Europe. Napoleon’s quick rise from an unknown to First Consul of France during the 1790s, finally being crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 1804 with ambitions to lead all of Europe, made him a living image of the Romantic hero.  Beethoven, too, saw himself in this heroic “overcoming” role, particularly related to his hearing loss, which he realized was occurring as early as 1800.  His Heiligenstadt Testament , a letter written to his brothers in October 1802 “to be delivered upon my death,” conveys Beethoven’s utter frustration with his malady, and its effect on his social function.  Resolved to rise above, Beethoven accepts his burden, and overcomes through creating art: “. . . a little more of that and I would have ended my life—it was only my art that held me back. . . . It seemed impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me.” (See “Beethoven’s Words” essay on the Symphony No. 2 in D, Op. 36 page for more details.) 

Beethoven’s “Heroic” (Middle) Style Period

Even during Beethoven’s lifetime, critics began to identify distinct compositional style periods in his music, which would eventually be labelled Early (up to 1802), Middle (1802-16), and Late (1817-27). Beethoven’s friend and student Carl Czerny reported that just months before writing the Heiligenstadt Testament, Beethoven remarked to his friend Wenzel Krumpholz , “I am far from satisfied with my past works: from today on I shall take a new way.” (Downs, “Beethoven’s ‘New Way’ and the Eroica ,” 585.) These statements suggest that Beethoven himself recognized a departure from one stylistic approach into another.  The “new way” of his Middle Period compositions shows the influence of the heroic narrative on Beethoven’s compositional planning, and thus his Middle Period has also been labeled his “Heroic” Period.  Symphonies Nos. 2 through 8, written during these years, all show the heroic influence in different ways, and even Symphony No. 9, although composed during his Late style period, is in many ways a culmination of the heroic style.  Furthermore, the literary works for which Beethoven composed accompanying music during this time are decidedly heroic in nature: his only opera Fidelio was begun in 1804 and had its final revision for a Congress of Vienna performance in 1815, and Beethoven composed overtures and incidental music for Goethe’s play Egmont (1810), August von Kotzebue’s King Stephen (1811) and The Ruins of Athens (1811), and a concert overture inspired by Heinrich Joseph von Collins’s play Coriolanus (1807). 

But what makes these symphonies, of themselves, “heroic?” Broadly defined, the same characteristics found in the Bildungsroman and heroic tales of the Sturm und Drang , and in Napoleon’s and Beethoven’s own heroic struggles, particularly the Per ardua ad astra victorious overcoming, are conveyed through instrumental music. Scott Burnham argues that it is Beethoven’s “internalization of classical formal procedure” that allows for the narratives present in his Heroic style to also carry a sense of universality. ( Beethoven Hero, 62). To a degree greater than those before him, Beethoven found the symphonic language he inherited to be up to such a task. (See essay “ Beethoven’s Classical Inheritance: The Symphony and the Orchestra ” for details.) It provided both the intellectual scaffolding—structural, formal, instrumental conventions—and the capabilities for dramatic vividness—conventions of topically-related gestures ( topoi )—that Beethoven could shape and mold into his heroic new way. In this age of Napoleon, Beethoven also called upon the tools of French Revolutionary music, particularly wind-band marches, and the beautiful melodies and large choral/instrumental forces of French opera (especially that of Luigi Cherubini , who Beethoven regarded as the greatest among his contemporary composers) and fête music , to create his narrative.  (See Michael Broyles, The Emergence and Evolution of Beethoven’s Heroic Style , 116-26.)  Emphasis of the ardua —the struggle—was achieved by introducing thematic material in a most basic way that allow, even require, expansion or completion, and the listener’s own disquietude was established and sustained by more prominent and prolonged use of the sublime aesthetic, characterized by insistence of the minor mode, strong dissonances and sudden dynamic changes, rhythmic instability, and other such obscuring and threatening gestures. The disquietude might be interrupted by battlefield exploits (battle topos ) and repose in the country (pastoral topos ), but these proved temporary. Only a final defeat and overcoming of the struggles—a victorious ending characterized by an overwhelming move to and maintaining of the major mode, full, bright orchestration, and affirming, unrelenting cadential formulae—would signal the final, full, complete ending, taking the listener ad astra .  Elements throughout the work pointed to the victorious ending, and are constantly reconsidered according to this goal, thus rooted in a teleological planning of Beethoven’s careful formal design.

While all of Beethoven’s Heroic Period symphonies contain these characteristics, and take the listener on such a journey, each is unique in its approach.  For example, the “Eroica” Symphony, the first to be composed after the writing of the Heiligenstadt Testament (he was finishing Symphony No. 2 when he wrote the letter), treats the heroic idea as a series of four distinct tableaux:  the first movement focuses on the colossal and arduous, with themes being presented vaguely at first but building throughout, even changing their endings in order to defeat melodic and harmonic dissonances; the second movement, Marcia funebre , depicts a funeral procession—Beethoven’s most direct reference to an actual narrative story; in the third movement scherzo, horn calls and shepherd tunes in the winds paint pictures of soldierly and pastoral liveliness; and the finale theme-and-variations depicts its own heroic narrative, with the simple bass-line harmonic outline presented st the beginning developing into a bona fide melody, which itself, through struggles and trials, becomes more and more complete, rushing to the end in a final burst of confident energy.  The Fifth Symphony, on the other hand, presents a single line of struggle, building over the entire work and finally triumphing at the end. The C-minor angst and simple short—short—short—long motive introduced in its opening bars continues all the way through the third movement, despite a interruptive pastoral respite with some militaristic gestures in the second movement, until finally, without pause, a glorious C-major march tune, enhanced by added instruments, pushes the C-minor third movement materials aside for good (or so we think), and builds energy to the end of its long coda. Arguably, this overall narrative approach most closely relates to the Bildungsroman. In this symphony, and in its twin the “Pastoral” Symphony No. 6, Beethoven’s music impresses us as coming from a quite personal place, expressing personal feelings and emotions in a universal way, which becomes a staple of the Romantic symphony. (John Culshaw, A Century of Music , 17.) The Ninth Symphony, while not composed within the time span of the “Heroic” Period, is in many ways the culmination of Beethoven’s symphonic Heroic narrative.  All things lead to the introduction of human voices expressing joy and “brotherhood” in the grand finale movement, revealing the true, perfect hero as humanity itself, striving for perfection and ultimate joy by recognizing its duty to itself, and to its Creator who dwells above the stars ( super-astra !). While these four symphonies most directly and clearly relate to the heroic narrative, all of the symphonies of Beethoven’s Heroic Period address the topic in some obvious and some more subtle ways. 

Specific Compositional Trends

Beethoven’s broad heroic narrative goals led to some specific musical characteristics that one can observe in his Heroic Period works. Some of these characteristics are introduced below, and are treated with more detail in the essays for each symphony that appear on the subsequent pages of this website. (It is suggested that the reader consult those pages for details, and to hear excerpts discussed below.) 

Motivic Aspects of Melody and Rhythm . The concept of telos in Beethoven’s symphonic repertoire greatly relies on thematic development.  Beethoven’s approach to melody is often recognized as being largely driven by the establishment of motives— short and distinct melodic-rhythmic gestures that can be developed over time in many different guises, and can reappear as a common thread throughout a work, in all movements (referred to as motivic integration ). Motivic focus is most clearly evident in the last movement of the “Eroica” Symphony, where a silly little four-note motive at the beginning serves as the simplest starting point for grand development and expansion.  The Fifth Symphony is perhaps the most famous motivically-integrated work in the symphonic repertoire, with the four-note short—short—short—long motive of the opening pervading the entire piece, serving as the kernel of nearly all of the most prominent themes in all of the movements. Symphony No. 7, too, is known for its motivic gestures which give it a unique rhythmic vitality and energy; Richard Wagner’s recognition of the centrality of the motivic-rhythmic qualities led him to label it “the apotheosis of dance.” 

But it is an unfair or at least an incomplete assessment to say that Beethoven’s melodies were all based on simple motivic gestures.  He composed some fine, vocally-modeled lyrical tunes, particularly in slow movements. Notable are the lovely, yearning themes in the slow movements of his Second, Fourth, and Sixth (“Pastoral”) symphonies, establishing some most intimate and “personal” feelings and settings, often with pastoral topical implications. The second movement of Symphony No. 2 begins with an intimate serenade melody passed from the string quartet to a small wind ensemble, and a singing, aria-like tune in the slow movement of Symphony No. 4, introduced by the violins and taken up by the winds, moves from foreground to background in a fight against a strong rhythmic motive, creating a sense of melancholy and reminiscence that is most intimately conveyed when solo clarinet sings the lyrical melody.  Longer and more lyric vocal-modeled tunes also play prominantly in Beethoven’s expression of folk and rustic topics, as in the third movements of the Third (“Eroica”), Sixth (“Pastoral”), and Eighth Symphonies. Usually played by the woodwinds in imitation of shepherd pipe calls and country bands, his folk tunes transort the listener into pastoral joie de vivre .  The third-movement trio of the Eighth Symphony, with a horn duet conversing with a solo clarinet, is an especially touching folk-melodic treatment.

Expanding Dynamics and Silence as a Dramatic Gesture .  Sudden and gradual dynamic changes are important considerations in Beethoven’s musical language, and show expansion throughout is Heroic Period works.  Beethoven took great care and exactitude in his dynamic planning and effects, and this dynamic planning is enhanced by an equally compelling control of instrumental forces. The soft solo clarinet melody in the second movement of Symphony No. 4 described above is a wonderful example of such careful dynamic and instrumental control. In Symphony No. 8, Beethoven stretches the dynamic indications from ppp to—for the first time in his symphonic repertoire— fff , as he adamantly shouts out the return of the first theme following the development section. To be sure, the loud dynamics coupled with full orchestral forces powerfully dramatize struggle using the sublime aesthetic, but as stunning as these overwhelming sounds is his clever and most effective use of disruptive silences.  These “loud silences” often occur in the most unexpected places, and continue longer than anticipated, and so take us to the sublime realms of obscurity and disruption.  Disruptive silences are features of the first and last movements of Symphony No. 2, and the silences that break into pieces the funeral march melody at the end of the “Eroica” second movement seem to compel the listener to gasp for breath, along with the last gasps of the dying hero.

  Expanding Tonal Relationships . The previous essay Beethoven’s Classical Inheritance: The Symphony and the Orchestra discusses the typical key relationships of the Classical style, which emphasize either changes in mode, such as the parallel and relative major-minor relationships, and keys immediately next to each other on the Circle of Keys—the subdominant and dominant keys—whose keynotes are a fifth apart.  Structural conventions typically relied on these tonal relationships.  Beethoven stretched tonal relationships into new areas, and so regularly generated a larger number of possible tonal directions.  Secondary themes in first movements will often first appear in a “wrong” key before being corrected to the “right” key—the dominant—thereby suggesting a new tonal relationship in the exposition which is mirrored in the recapitulation (“wrong” key to tonic at that point). This, of course, generates a narrative problem of keys that must be struggled with and overcome, but it also serves to highlight interesting and subtle ways of managing tonal relationships that effectively expand the tonal palette.  In the Symphony No. 8 in F, for example, the second theme first appears in D major, and is subsequently correctly played in the dominant key C major. Another notable tonal “problem” occurs in the development of the first movement of the “Eroica” Symphony, when a new melody is introduced in the key of E minor, a pitch collection that has very little in common with the tonic E-flat major.  Beethoven has to “solve” this problem before returning to the E-flat tonic for the recapitulation; he does so by restating the new theme in E-flat minor, leading back to the tonic. Similar ½-step tonal misplacements and corrections are prominent in the finale of Symphony No 8.  Beethoven also makes more and more use of keys that are separated by a third—called a “mediant” or “submediant” relationship—rather than a fifth (dominant or subdominant relationship).  Symphonies Nos. 6 and 7 are fine examples.  In the “Pastoral” Symphony, sudden unprepared shifts to keys a third away feature prominently in the first movement’s development, giving the impression of rays of light beaming down.  The first and last movements of the Seventh Symphony are in the tonic A major, and the second movement in the parallel A minor.  But the third movement, rather than appearing in the expected A major, begins in F major, a third away from A major (submediant relationship), and the trio is in D major, a third below F major (another juxtaposed submediant relationship, although D is the subdominant of the overall A major). 

New Approaches to the Orchestra. Perhaps the most immediate impression of the Beethoven style is his treatment of instrumentation. The influence if the French musical style, particularly wind-band marches and the monumental combined sounds of fête music, is evident in his concept of orchestral sound. As early as Beethoven’s First Symphony, the preponderance of wind material drew the criticism of having “too much of Harmonie music” (see “Others’ Words” essay on the Symphony No. 1 in C, Op. 21 page), and his more prominent use of the winds in ensemble and as soloists as compared to his predecessors remained a staple of his orchestral music. This includes melodic material for the “natural” horns and trumpets—the instruments of the rustic hunt and heroic battle topics—such as the main theme of the “Eroica” first movement.  Even timpani are given a melodic role, notably in the Fourth and Eighth Symphonies. With the opening massive sound of the finale of Symphony No. 5, Beethoven would be the first to use a choir of three trombones in a symphonic work; he also added piccolo and contrabassoon at that moment. He would include these instruments in the Ninth Symphony as well, along with Janissary percussion.

Other than the amount of wind music, Beethoven’s orchestral concept also effectively featured thunderous orchestral unisons, extremes of register (screaming high horns in the Seventh Symphony, clarinet in its low register with low strings a the opening of the Fifth Symphony), and what is sometimes described as a “dropping of the center of orchestral gravity,” achieved by assigning melodic material to instruments of the middle and lower registers.  The “Eroica” Symphony cello melody at the beginning of the first movement is a good example of this, as are the opening passages of the second and third movements of the Fifth Symphony, where violas, cellos, and basses alone introduce the main thematic material. While Beethoven was not the first to use such orchestral techniques, they became more prominent in his works. This resulted in a larger set of instrumental choices, alone and in combination, that could effectively convey Beethoven’s desired narrative, and brought about an even a greater appreciation for the instrument sounds themselves outside of topical labels, all of which became part of the Romantic symphonic language. See the orchestra portion of the “ Beethoven’s Classical Inheritance: The Symphony and the Orchestra ” essay for more details, as well as the individual symphony pages.   

Challenging Conventions of Structure: Clouding Boundaries and Reconsidering Formal Function.  Beethoven’s bridge from a Classical to a Romantic symphonic style is most crucially built by his challenging and bending of the Classical conventions of symphonic structure. Each symphony in its own way, achieving its own narrative goals and representing its own journey’s points of interest, stretches, bends, and in other ways reconsiders expectations regarding structural order and formal function, yet does so while still maintaining, even strengthening, the structural integrity of the symphonic form. In most of Beethoven’s symphonies, these twists serve to shift the balance of compositional weight towards the last two movements by increasing their interest and dramatic impact, thereby emphasizing the victorious ending ad astra.  As with many of the compositional trends discussed above, Beethoven may not have “invented” some of these, but his more consistent use of them, and his genius in having them serve his narrative desires, make Beethoven deserving of recognition for their innovation.  

There are far too many creative formal and structural twists to discuss here, but a list and brief description of some of the macro- and micro-level structural qualities would help in understanding Beethoven’s compositional logic, with specific symphonies/movements where they are used identified in parentheses. (Details of these and others appear in the individual symphony pages):

• Connection of movements without pause— attacca —thus lengthening the time of continuous music, and creating immediate juxtapositions of dramatic difference. (Symphony No. 5/iii-iv, Symphony No. 6/iii-iv-v.)
• Changing the third movement minuet-trio into a scherzo by making it too fast, disrupting the meter and expectations of phrase length, thus adding intensity and often sublimely unexpected materials. This increases its dramatic weight. (All of the symphonies.)
• Switching expected movement order in the internal movements, with the scherzo coming second and slow movement coming third. (Symphony No. 9/ii & iii.)
• Recalling large portions of material from previous movements at the end, thereby emphasizing the teleological planning of the symphonic cycle. (Symphony No. 5/iv, Symphony No. 9/iv.)
• Lengthening and dramatically enhancing codas, particularly in first and finale movements, by beginning it with developmental materials, as if it is a second development section, and finally resolving to a solid conclusion, often accompanied by an increase in tempo that drives to the end. (Symphony No. 3/1 & iv, Symphony No. 5/i & iv, Symphony No. 8/iv, Symphony No. 9/iv.)
• Adding length and impact of the developmental sections of sonata-form movements—introductions, developments, and codas—thereby adding more time and weight to the “struggling” destabilizing function of developmental procedures that serves the dramatic narrative, and changes the balance of stable (exposition and recapitulation) vs. unstable (development and coda) musical sections. (Symphony No. 2/i, Symphony No. 3/i, Symphony No. 5/i, Symphony No. 7/i & iv, Symphony No. 8/i & iv.)
• Related to the expansion of developmental sections: challenging expectations of materials, such as sections and themes, in their “stabilizing” or “destabilizing” functions. For example, themes are typically stabilizing in that they emphasize the key and main ideas, but Beethoven would compose themes in such a way that they could and would continue to develop, as a hero develops in a Bildungsroman . In the “Eroica” first movement, the main theme is presented in a basic way first by the cellos, then by the winds, then finally with full orchestral forces including trumpets and horns playing the melody. Thus the theme is not stable but is itself constantly developing in new ways, and is therefore unstable. (A similar treatment occurs in the first theme of Symphony No. 6/i.)  Furthermore, the “Eroica” first theme ending changes in the development, removing dissonances and rising up to a more complete, victorious effect, which is reiterated and insisted upon in the coda. A destabilizing change in thematic material also occurs in the first movement of Symphony No. 8: the recapitulation begins with the first theme missing four internal bars, and over an unstable chord (tonic chord in second inversion), thus pushing the tonal resolution that should have occurred at the entrance of the theme to the cadence of the theme. The other side of the stability-instability function is demonstrated in many development sections, which are designed to be unstable, yet Beethoven introduced new themes—stabilizing material—in developments to offer a brief sense of stability, yet usually in  unusual keys. (Symphony No. 3/i, Symphony No. 4/i.)  Symphony No. 8 is full of ways stable and unstable functions are challenged, giving it a scherzo-like character throughout, and Symphony No. 9 pushes formal and gestural instability to new and confounding heights, making the introduction of the “Joy” theme in the finale, and the adding of human voices and text, all the more satisfying and uplifting.

Reception and the Heroic “New Way” Opening the Door to Romanticism

The compositional characteristics of Beethoven’s heroic style discussed above only scratch the surface of how he pushed the symphonic genre in a new direction. It is important to reiterate that each symphony Beethoven composed is a work unto itself, containing its own struggles and solutions for overcoming those struggles, and its own journey. Such careful treatment of each as its own suggests that Beethoven’s views of his art included the expectation that each could eventually be judged an artistic masterpiece, thus putting musical works on equal artistic footing with other art forms. Critical reception, then, also became a consideration in developing and recognizing this new way.

Contemporary critical reception of the works that infused personal biography and programmatic content to the symphonies enhanced their heroic aura.  These elements are all related by the emerging Romantic aesthetic at the turn of the nineteenth century, including the need felt by critics to “approach works of imagination with imagination” (Burnham, Beethoven Hero , 8).  The idea of associating the life events of composers with their work, too, became a common trope in the Romantic era, particularly when those composers had to overcome significant struggle (in Beethoven’s case deafness and social isolation).  Later critics such as Richard Wagner proposed programs for the symphonies in which Beethoven himself was the hero.

The prominence of the sublime aesthetic weighed heavily in such critical analysis.  E. T. A. Hoffman’s 1810 essay “Beethoven’s Instrumental Music” argues that it is Beethoven’s emphasis of the sublime that makes him most purely Romantic. It suggests “indefinite emotions” and the “stir[ring of] the mists of fear, of horror, of terror, of grief, [it] awakens that endless longing which is the very essence of romanticism.” (Locke and Hoffmann, “Beethoven’s Instrumental Music,” 128.) Mark Evan Bonds assessment of Hoffmann’s essay affirms the “progression from the beautiful . . . to the sublime,” and credits this progression as one of the factors that moved the relationship of the audience to the music and its composer toward a more Romantic model: 

We also find here progressions from innocence to wisdom and from the earthly (Haydn) . . . to the divine (Beethoven). . . . Mozart [like Haydn] “ leads us .” In both instances, the composer bears the burden of intelligibility.  Beethoven, on the other hand, . . . “ opens up to us” the “realm of the monstrous and the immeasurable.”. . . Listening to Beethoven’s music, we become aware of a higher reality. The music is a source of a light that illuminates the transcendent figures whose shadows we can only dimly perceive here on earth. Beethoven’s music, in short, is a source of Truth. (Bonds, “Rhetoric vs. Truth: Listening to Haydn in the Age of Beethoven,” 122-23.)

Heroic transcendence . . . leading to a higher reality . . . illumination . . . TRUTH.  These are the emerging hallmarks of the Romantic generation of artists and philosophers at the dawn of the nineteenth century.  There are myriad ways in which Beethoven transformed Classical style, moving it towards the Romantic aesthetic, without rejecting it. It is important to note that these are not arbitrary transformations. Beethoven’s compositions do not randomly reprioritize Mozart’s and Haydn’s symphonic values, arriving at a variant merely for difference’s sake. On the contrary, whether consciously or not, Beethoven’s transformations of Classical style point in a consistent, specific direction. In particular, his engagement with form, rhetoric, and orchestration became the cornerstones of a pivot to a more heroic and therefore Romantic aesthetic. Dunwell writes that “Beethoven found in the sonata a living organism, not a stereotyped form” ( “The Age of Goethe and Beethoven,” 297), and this is exactly the transformation enacted in Beethoven’s heroic style—the use of musical development to capture and effectively express to humankind the emotion, conflict, and individualized nature of human experience, and perhaps ultimately, freedom.

— Contributors :  CH, EH, LB, MC, YS, MER

Topics and sources for further inquiry

The Heroic and Romanticism Garber, Frederick. “Self, Society, Value, and the Romantic Hero.” Comparative Literature 19/ 4 (1967): 321–333. JStor link .

Beethoven and the Heroic Burnham, Scott. Beethoven Hero. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.

Broyles, Michael. The Emergence and Evolution of Beethoven’s Heroic Style. New York, Excelsior Music Publishing Co., 1987. 

Downs, Philip G. “Beethoven’s ‘New Way’ and the Eroica .” Musical Quarterly 56 (1970): 585-604. JStor link .

The Sublime Bonds, Mark Evan. Music as Thought: Listening to the Symphony in the Age of Beethoven. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006.  ProQuest Ebook Central.

_______ “Rhetoric vs. Truth: Listening to Haydn in the Age of Beethoven.” In Tom Beghin and Sander M. Goldberg, editors, Haydn and the Performance of Rhetoric , 109-28. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Burke, Edmond.  A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful , 4 th edition. London, 1764 (1 st edition 1757).   Link . 

Doran, Robert. The Theory of Sublime, from Longinus to Kant. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Orchestration Botstein, Leon.  “Sound and structure in Beethoven’s orchestral music.”  In The Cambridge Companion to Beethoven , edited by Glenn Stanley, 165-85. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Cambridge University Press link . 

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Ludwig van Beethoven: A Very Short Introduction

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Ludvig van Beethoven: A Very Short Introduction examines Beethoven’s consistent attitude towards his art which is remarkable considering the difficulties he faced in life. This inner consistency provides the key to understanding the composer’s life and works more than 250 years after his birth in 1770. Beethoven approached music as he approached life, weighing from a variety of perspectives whatever occupied him: a melodic idea, a musical genre, a word or phrase, a friend, a lover, a patron, money, politics, religion. His ability to recognize and unlock so many possibilities from each helps explain the emotional breadth and richness of his output as a whole. Beethoven’s works are a series of variations on his life. The iconic scowl so familiar from later images of the composer is but one of many attitudes he could assume and project through his music. The supposedly characteristic frown and furrowed brow, moreover, came only after his time.

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Beethoven: A Guide to Primary and Secondary Resources at the Library of Congress

Beethoven literature.

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The Music Division's collections include a great deal of scholarship and literature on Beethoven and related subjects. The sections on this page highlight the materials available for use both on-site in the Performing Arts Reading Room and elsewhere.

Books about Beethoven are usually classified under ML, Music Literature, in the Library of Congress Classification Schedule . Find them by searching the Library of Congress Online Catalog .

Print Scholarship Sponsored by the Music Division

The Music Division has supported scholarship on Beethoven. Much of this research has been shared and made available on the Library's website. These materials include short articles in the Digital Collection of the Moldenhauer Archives , focused on manuscripts held by the Music Division:

• A Sketch Leaf from Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Sonata, Op.28
• A Beethoven Sketch for the Puzzle Canon "Das Schweigen," WoO 168

See the "Lectures, Interviews, & Concerts" page of this research guide for recordings of additional scholarship on Beethoven presented by the Music Division.

19th-Century Books on Beethoven

Biographical interest in Beethoven and his music sparked soon after his death in 1827. These books are usually classified under ML, Music Literature, in the Library of Congress Classification Schedule . The following titles are some of the earliest biographies of his life and link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog . Several of these titles have also been scanned and are available online through HathiTrust. Links to additional online content are included when available.

Bibliographic Sources for Beethoven

Bibliographic interest in documenting primary resources in Beethoven research has continued to garner new insights, even in the twenty-first century. The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog . Links to additional online content are included when available.

21st-Century Beethoven Scholarship

Beethoven scholarship continues to offer new insights into the composer and his works. The following titles offer a representative sample and link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog . Links to additional online content are included when available.

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• Last Updated: Jul 3, 2024 11:51 AM
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Beethoven essays

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Altoona English professor’s poems and essay featured in 'Just YA' anthology

Erin Murphy, professor of English at Penn State Altoona, has three original works published in a new anthology of contemporary literature for young adults. “Just YA: Short Poems, Stories, and Essays,” edited by Sarah Donovan, is designed for teachers of grades 7 through 12. The book includes a teacher’s guide and is organized around the themes of identity, love, place, justice, and the future.   Credit: Penn State . Creative Commons

September 24, 2024

ALTOONA, Pa. — Erin Murphy, professor of English at Penn State Altoona, has three original works published in a new anthology of contemporary literature for young adults.

“Just YA: Short Poems, Stories, and Essays,” edited by Sarah Donovan, is designed for teachers of grades seven through 12. The book includes a teacher’s guide and is organized around the themes of identity, love, place, justice and the future.

Murphy’s featured works include “Erased,” an erasure poem about climate change; “Illuminated,” a poem about social media; and “Slow Burn,” a creative nonfiction essay about family and mental health.

“Just YA” is published as an open-access book, which means that all content is free of charge and available online. Interested teachers and readers may download the anthology from the anthology website .

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Murphy is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, chapbooks and anthologies, with two additional books forthcoming from Salmon Poetry and Wesleyan University Press. She is the Poet Laureate of Blair County and is currently serving as Penn State’s inaugural Mellon Academic Leadership Fellow for the Big Ten Academic Alliance. You can read more about her work on the author's website .

Marissa Carney

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