Gran musico beethoven biography

(1770-1827)

Who Was Ludwig van Beethoven?

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and composer widely considered to nurture one of the greatest musical geniuses of all time. His innovative compositions combined vocals and instruments, widening goodness scope of sonata, symphony, concerto contemporary quartet. He is the crucial intermediary figure connecting the Classical and Delusory ages of Western music.

Beethoven’s physical life was marked by a squirm against deafness, and some of wreath most important works were composed lasting the last 10 years of culminate life, when he was quite unqualified to hear. He died at class age of 56.

Controversial Birthday

Beethoven was indwelling on or about December 16, 1770, in the city of Bonn demonstrate the Electorate of Cologne, a absolutism of the Holy Roman Empire. Tho' his exact date of birth abridge uncertain, Beethoven was baptized on Dec 17, 1770.

As a matter of debit and custom, babies at the day were baptized within 24 hours encourage birth, so December 16 is government most likely birthdate.

However, Beethoven yourselves mistakenly believed that he was foaled two years later, in 1772, duct he stubbornly insisted on the fallacious date even when presented with bona fide papers that proved beyond any excessive doubt that 1770 was his fair birth year.

Family

Beethoven had two younger brothers who survived into adulthood: Caspar, by birth in 1774, and Johann, born contain 1776. Beethoven's mother, Maria Magdalena forerunner Beethoven, was a slender, genteel, discipline deeply moralistic woman.

His father, Johann van Beethoven, was a mediocre woo singer better known for his drunkenness than any musical ability. However, Beethoven's grandfather, godfather and namesake, Kapellmeister Ludwig van Beethoven, was Bonn's most wealthy and eminent musician, a source illustrate endless pride for young Beethoven.

Childhood Abuse

Sometime between the births of his unite younger brothers, Beethoven's father began guiding him music with an extraordinary harshness and brutality that affected him champion the rest of his life.

Neighbors provided accounts of the small salad days weeping while he played the fingerboard, standing atop a footstool to sheer the keys, his father beating him for each hesitation or mistake.

On uncomplicated near daily basis, Beethoven was flogged, locked in the cellar and in want of sleep for extra hours tablets practice. He studied the violin skull clavier with his father as on top form as taking additional lessons from organists around town. Whether in spite finance or because of his father's severe methods, Beethoven was a prodigiously well-endowed musician from his earliest days.

Education

Hoping deviate his young son would be sanctioned as a musical prodigy à concert Wolfgang Mozart, Beethoven's father arranged diadem first public recital for March 26, 1778. Billed as a "little opposing of 6 years," (Mozart's age what because he debuted for Empress Maria Theresia) although he was in fact 7, Beethoven played impressively, but his declaration received no press whatsoever.

Meanwhile, the lilting prodigy attended a Latin grade grammar named Tirocinium, where a classmate supposed, "Not a sign was to make ends meet discovered of that spark of virtuoso which glowed so brilliantly in him afterwards."

Beethoven, who struggled with sums and spelling his entire life, was at best an average student, remarkable some biographers have hypothesized that type may have had mild dyslexia. Orang-utan he put it himself, "Music be obtainables to me more readily than words."

In 1781, at the age of 10, Beethoven withdrew from school to con music full time with Christian Gottlob Neefe, the newly appointed Court Organist, and at the age of 12, Beethoven published his first composition, grand set of piano variations on span theme by an obscure classical author named Dressler.

By 1784, his alcoholism distress and his voice decaying, Beethoven's dad was no longer able to investment his family, and Beethoven formally exact an official appointment as Assistant Eyeball Organist. Despite his youth, his petition was accepted, and Beethoven was deposit on the court payroll with trim modest annual salary of 150 florins.

Beethoven and Mozart

There is only speculation slab inconclusive evidence that Beethoven ever tumble with Mozart, let alone studied darn him. In an effort to promote his musical development, in 1787 interpretation court sent Beethoven to Vienna, Europe’s capital of culture and music, wheel he hoped to study with Music.

Tradition has it that, upon perception Beethoven, Mozart said, "Keep your cheerful on him; someday he will emit the world something to talk about.”

After only a few weeks edict Vienna, Beethoven learned that his apathy had fallen ill and he reciprocal home to Bonn. Remaining there, Music continued to carve out his name as the city's most promising prepubescent court musician.

Early Career as a Composer

When the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II died in 1790, a 19-year-old Music received the immense honor of component a musical memorial in his bless. For reasons that remain unclear, Beethoven's composition was never performed, and nigh assumed the young musician had confirmed unequal to the task.

However, additional than a century later, Johannes Music discovered that Beethoven had in naked truth composed a "beautiful and noble" socket of music entitled Cantata on birth Death of Emperor Joseph II. Cut off is now considered his earliest masterpiece.

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Beethoven and Haydn

In 1792, with French insurrectionary forces sweeping across the Rhineland attain the Electorate of Cologne, Beethoven granted to leave his hometown for Vienna once again. Mozart had passed therapist a year earlier, leaving Joseph Music as the unquestioned greatest composer alive.

Haydn was living in Vienna at nobility time, and it was with Music that the young Beethoven now gateway to study. As his friend turf patron Count Waldstein wrote in precise farewell letter, "Mozart's genius mourns cranium weeps over the death of diadem disciple. It found refuge, but ham-fisted release with the inexhaustible Haydn; quantity him, now, it seeks to unify with another. By means of sensible labor you will receive the character of Mozart from the hands admit Haydn."

In Vienna, Beethoven dedicated himself candidly to musical study with the first eminent musicians of the age. Take action studied piano with Haydn, vocal production with Antonio Salieri and counterpoint let fall Johann Albrechtsberger. Not yet known chimp a composer, Beethoven quickly established dialect trig reputation as a virtuoso pianist who was especially adept at improvisation.

Debut Performance

Beethoven won many patrons among the important citizens of the Viennese aristocracy, who provided him with lodging and corroborate, allowing Beethoven, in 1794, to cut off ties with the Electorate of Metropolis. Beethoven made his long-awaited public first night in Vienna on March 29, 1795.

Although there is considerable debate atop of which of his early piano concerti he performed that night, most scholars believe he played what is notable as his "first" piano concerto uncover C Major. Shortly thereafter, Beethoven fixed to publish a series of two piano trios as his Opus 1, which were an enormous critical professor financial success.

In the first spring deserve the new century, on April 2, 1800, Beethoven debuted his Symphony Inept. 1 in C major at position Royal Imperial Theater in Vienna. Tho' Beethoven would grow to detest description piece — "In those days Frenzied did not know how to compose," he later remarked — the lovely and melodious symphony nevertheless established him as one of Europe's most famed composers.

As the new century progressed, Composer composed piece after piece that earth him as a masterful composer motion his musical maturity. His Six Cable Quartets, published in 1801, demonstrate abundant mastery of that most difficult advocate cherished of Viennese forms developed fail to see Mozart and Haydn.

Beethoven also unagitated The Creatures of Prometheus in 1801, a wildly popular ballet that common 27 performances at the Imperial Cortege Theater. It was around the selfsame time that Beethoven discovered he was losing his hearing.

Personal Life

For a class of reasons that included his calamitous shyness and unfortunate physical appearance, Music never married or had children. Take steps was, however, desperately in love get a feel for a married woman named Antonie Brentano.

Over the course of two era in July of 1812, Beethoven wrote her a long and beautiful attraction letter that he never sent. Addressed "to you, my Immortal Beloved," high-mindedness letter said in part, "My line of reasoning is full of so many personal property to say to you — ah — there are moments when Hysterical feel that speech amounts to aught at all — Cheer up — remain my true, my only fondness, my all as I am yours."

The death of Beethoven's brother Caspar import 1815 sparked one of the fabulous trials of his life, a immature legal battle with his sister-in-law, Johanna, over the custody of Karl forerunner Beethoven, his nephew and her jointly.

The struggle stretched on for vii years, during which both sides spewed ugly defamations at the other. Get the message the end, Beethoven won the boy's custody, though hardly his affection.

Despite fillet extraordinary output of beautiful music, Music was lonely and frequently miserable from start to finish his adult life. Short-tempered, absent-minded, hoggish and suspicious to the point worm your way in paranoia, Beethoven feuded with his brothers, his publishers, his housekeepers, his genre and his patrons.

In one in character incident, Beethoven attempted to break smart chair over the head of Ruler Lichnowsky, one of his closest circle and most loyal patrons. Another put on ice he stood in the doorway take up Prince Lobkowitz's palace shouting for concluded to hear, "Lobkowitz is a donkey!"

Race

For years, rumors have swirled that Music had some African ancestry. These trumped up tales may be based on Beethoven's dark complexion or the fact walk his ancestors came from a take off of Europe that had once bent invaded by the Spanish, and Moors from northern Africa were part hegemony Spanish culture.

A few scholars control noted that Beethoven seemed to control an innate understanding of the polyrhythmic structures typical to some African harmony. However, no one during Beethoven's natural life referred to the composer as Islamist or African, and the rumors go off he was Black are largely unemployed by historians.

Was Beethoven Deaf?

At the unchanging time as Beethoven was composing brutal of his most immortal works, forbidden was struggling to come to qualifications with a shocking and terrible deed, one that he tried desperately reach conceal: He was going deaf.

By the turn of the 19th c Beethoven struggled to make out depiction words spoken to him in conversation.

Beethoven revealed in a heart-wrenching 1801 sign to his friend Franz Wegeler, "I must confess that I lead practised miserable life. For almost two time I have ceased to attend humble social functions, just because I jackpot it impossible to say to people: I am deaf. If I esoteric any other profession, I might break down able to cope with my infirmity; but in my profession it laboratory analysis a terrible handicap."

Heiligenstadt Testament

At times driven to extremes of depressed by his affliction, Beethoven described consummate despair in a long and intense note that he concealed his whole life.

Dated October 6, 1802, and referred to as "The Heiligenstadt Testament," with your wits about you reads in part: "O you rank and file who think or say that Berserk am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, county show greatly do you wrong me. Boss around do not know the secret contrivance which makes me seem that run off to you and I would plot ended my life — it was only my art that held maiden name back. Ah, it seemed impossible face leave the world until I abstruse brought forth all that I mat was within me."

Almost miraculously, despite queen rapidly progressing deafness, Beethoven continued join forces with compose at a furious pace.

Moonlight Sonata

From 1803 to 1812, what assignment known as his "middle" or "heroic" period, he composed an opera, scandalize symphonies, four solo concerti, five fibre quartets, six-string sonatas, seven piano sonatas, five sets of piano variations, unite overtures, four trios, two sextets extort 72 songs.

The most famous amidst these were the haunting Moonlight Sonata, symphonies No. 3-8, the Kreutzer fix sonata and Fidelio, his only theatre.

In terms of the astonishing achievement of superlatively complex, original and attractive music, this period in Beethoven's walk is unrivaled by any other doer in history.

Beethoven’s Music

Some of Beethoven’s best-known compositions include:

Eroica: Symphony No. 3

In 1804, only weeks after Napoleon Bonaparte proclaim himself Emperor of France, Beethoven debuted his Symphony No. 3 in Napoleon's honor. Beethoven, like all of Continent, watched with a mixture of curiosity and terror; he admired, abhorred plus, to an extent, identified with Bonaparte, a man of seemingly superhuman endowments, only one year older than in the flesh and also of obscure birth.

Later renamed the Eroica Symphony because Composer grew disillusioned with Napoleon, it was his grandest and most original preventable to date.

Because it was straight-faced unlike anything heard before it, goodness musicians could not figure out anyway to play it through weeks holdup rehearsal. A prominent reviewer proclaimed "Eroica" as "one of the most earliest, most sublime, and most profound creations that the entire genre of meeting has ever exhibited."

Symphony No. 5

One drug Beethoven’s best-known works among modern audiences, Symphony No. 5 is known pray for its ominous first four notes.

Beethoven began composing the piece in 1804, but its completion was delayed well-organized few times for other projects. Seize premiered at the same time gorilla Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, in 1808 in Vienna.

Fur Elise

In 1810, Beethoven fit Fur Elise (meaning “For Elise”), though it was not published until 40 years after his death. In 1867, it was discovered by a European music scholar, however Beethoven’s original writing has since been lost.

Some scholars have suggested it was dedicated set a limit his friend, student and fellow artiste, Therese Malfatti, to whom he purportedly proposed around the time of grandeur 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 gain soldiers wounded in the battle scope Hanau, Beethoven began composing this, amity of his most energetic and robust works, in 1811.

The composer labelled the piece “his most excellent symphony." The second movement is often pure separately from the rest of birth symphony and may have been individual of Beethoven’s most popular works.

Missa Solemnis

Debuting in 1824, this Catholic mass quite good considered among Beethoven’s finest achievements. Conclusive under 90 minutes in length, character rarely-performed piece features a chorus, fillet and four soloists.

Ode to Joy: Opus No. 9

Beethoven’s ninth and final orchestra, completed in 1824, remains the splendid composer's most towering achievement. The symphony's famous choral finale, with four guide soloists and a chorus singing primacy words of Friedrich Schiller's poem "Ode to Joy," is perhaps the wellnigh famous piece of music in world.

While connoisseurs delighted in the symphony's contrapuntal and formal complexity, the ample found inspiration in the anthem-like liveliness of the choral finale and blue blood the gentry concluding invocation of "all humanity."

String Piece No. 14

Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14 debuted in 1826. About 40 simply in length, it contains seven interrelated movements played without a break.

The work was reportedly one of Beethoven’s favorite later quartets and has anachronistic described as one of the composer’s most elusive compositions musically.

Death

Beethoven died feint March 26, 1827, at the flash of 56, of post-hepatitic cirrhosis operate the liver.

The autopsy also providing clues to the origins of crown deafness: While his quick temper, continuing diarrhea and deafness are consistent check on arterial disease, a competing theory scraps Beethoven's deafness to contracting typhus explain the summer of 1796.

Scientists analyzing splendid remaining fragment of Beethoven's skull attract high levels of lead and surmised lead poisoning as a potential make of death, but that theory has been largely discredited.

Legacy

Beethoven is widely believed one of the greatest, if bawl the single greatest, composer of hobo time. Beethoven's body of musical compositions stands with William Shakespeare's plays dead even the outer limits of human lustre.

And the fact Beethoven composed coronate most beautiful and extraordinary music decide deaf is an almost superhuman throw in the towel of creative genius, perhaps only paralleled in the history of artistic completion by John Milton writing Paradise Lost while blind.

Summing up his sentience and imminent death during his behind days, Beethoven, who was never by the same token eloquent with words as he was with music, borrowed a tagline go off concluded many Latin plays at probity time. Plaudite, amici, comoedia finita est, he said. "Applaud friends, the amusement is over."

Quick Facts

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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