Ludwig Van Beethoven
(1770-1827)
Early Years
Ludwig Van Beethoven is widely considered to be the greatest composer of all time. He
was born on or about December 16th, 1770, in the city of Bonn, Germany.
Beethoven had two younger brothers who survived into adulthood, Caspar and Johann.
Beethoven's mother, Maria Magdalena van Beethoven, was a kind and gentle woman.
His father, Johann van Beethoven, was a mediocre court singer better known for his
alcoholism than musical ability. However, Beethoven's grandfather, Kapellmeister
Ludwig van Beethoven, was Bonn's most celebrated musician, a source of pride for
young Ludwig.
When Ludwig was just a little boy, his father began teaching him music with a brutality
that affected him for the rest of his life. Neighbors often spoke of the boy weeping while
he played the clavier, his father beating him for each pause or mistake. On almost a
daily basis, Beethoven was hit, locked in the cellar and keep awake for extra hours of
practice late into the night. He studied the violin and clavier with his father as well as
taking music lessons from organists around town.
Hoping that his young son would be a musical prodigy like Mozart, Beethoven's father
arranged his first public performance for March 26th, 1778. Beethoven was described as
a "little son of six years," although he was in fact seven. Meanwhile, the musical prodigy
attended a Latin grade school where he struggled with numbers and spelling and was
thought to have mild dyslexia. In 1781, at the age of 10, Beethoven quit school to study
music full time.
By 1784, his alcoholism worsening and his voice decaying, Beethoven's father was no
longer able to support his family. Beethoven asked to be made the Assistant Court
Organist. Despite his age, he was accepted, and Beethoven was put to work.
In 1787 the court decided to send Beethoven to Vienna to study with Mozart. However,
only a few weeks after he arrived in Vienna, Beethoven learned that his mother had
become very sick, and he immediately rushed home to Bonn. She died several months
later, sending her son into a fit of depression that lasted several years.
When Emperor Joseph II died in 1790, a 19-year-old Beethoven composed a musical
memorial in his honor. More than a century later, Johannes Brahms discovered that
Beethoven had composed this "beautiful and noble" piece of music entitled Cantata on
the Death of Emperor Joseph II. It is now considered his earliest masterpiece.
Composing for Audiences
In 1792, with French revolutionary forces sweeping across the country, Beethoven
decided to leave his hometown for Vienna again. Mozart had passed away a year earlier,
leaving Joseph Haydn as the greatest composer alive. Haydn was living in Vienna at the
time, and Beethoven began to study piano with him.
Beethoven quickly established a reputation as an incredible pianist. He won many fans
among the most wealthy of Vienna, who provided him with a home and money.
Beethoven made a public debut in Vienna on March 29th, 1795. Shortly after, Beethoven
published a series of three piano trios as his "Opus 1," which were an enormous success.
On April 2, 1800, Beethoven debuted his Symphony No. 1 in C major at the Royal
Imperial Theater in Vienna. As the new century progressed, Beethoven composed piece
after piece that marked him as a masterful composer reaching his musical maturity.
Beethoven also composed The Creatures of Prometheus in 1801, a wildly popular ballet.
Around this time Beethoven watched with both awe and terror as Napoleon Bonaparte
proclaimed himself Emperor of France. In 1804, only weeks after Napoleon proclaimed
himself Emperor, Beethoven debuted his Symphony No. 3 in Napoleon's honor, later
renamed the "Eroica Symphony". It was proclaimed to be one of the most original and
profound pieces of music that the world had ever seen.
Losing Hearing
Around this time, Beethoven was struggling to come to terms with a shocking and
terrible fact: He was going deaf. By the turn of the century, Beethoven struggled to
make out words spoken to him in conversation. Beethoven’s deafness caused him to fall
into a deep state of depression and withdraw from the public. Miraculously, despite his
rapidly progressing deafness, Beethoven continued to compose at a furious pace. From
1803-1812, 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 seventytwo songs. The most famous among these were symphonies No. 3-8, the "Moonlight
Sonata," the "Kreutzer" violin sonata and Fidelio, his only opera.
Despite his incredibly 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 fought with all those around him. For a variety of reasons
that included his shyness and physical appearance, Beethoven never married or had
children.
The death of Beethoven's brother Caspar in 1815 started a painful legal battle with his
sister-in-law, Johanna, over the custody of Karl van Beethoven, his nephew and her son.
In the end, Beethoven won the boy's custody, but not his affections.
Somehow, despite his difficult personal life and complete deafness, Beethoven
composed his greatest music — perhaps the greatest music ever composed — near the
end of his life. Beethoven's Ninth and final symphony, completed in 1824, remains the
composer's greatest 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.
Beethoven died on March 26th, 1827 at the age of 56. An autopsy revealed that the
cause of death was cirrhosis of the liver. Thousands of friends and admirers attended his
funeral.
Ludwig van Beethoven is widely considered the greatest composer of all time. He is
considered to be responsible for connecting the Classical and Romantic ages of Western
music. The fact that Beethoven composed some of the greatest music of all time while
deaf shows his almost super-human ability for composition.
Source: "Ludwig van Beethoven Biography." www.Biography.com. A&E Networks, 2012.
Web. 12 Sep 2012. <http://www.biography.com/people/ludwig-van-beethoven>