Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 1770 – 26 March 1827) was a German composer, conductor, and pianist. He is regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music. He worked during the Classical period, and his musical style was a key driver of the transition to Romantic music. He also helped expand instrumental forms such as the symphony, the piano sonata, and the string quartet. People have shown extraordinary casual and scholarly interest in his compositions, and they remain among the most performed in the world.

Beethoven was born in Bonn and was a musical prodigy. He was first taught intensively by his father, Johann van Beethoven, and later by Christian Gottlob Neefe. He found relief from a difficult home life with the family of Helene von Breuning, whose children he loved, befriended, and taught piano. At age 21, he moved to Vienna, which became his base, and he studied composition with Joseph Haydn. He gained a reputation as a virtuoso pianist and was soon supported by Karl Alois, Prince Lichnowsky for his compositions. This led to his three Piano Trios, Op. 1, the earliest works to which he gave an opus number, in 1795. His Pathétique Sonata was composed in 1798. Around this time, Beethoven began to experience symptoms of hearing loss.

His career is divided into three periods. In the first, he composed in the classical style of Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. His First Symphony premiered in 1800, and his first set of string quartets was published in 1801. The Moonlight Sonata, dedicated to his pupil Julie Guicciardi, is one of his most popular works. In the middle period (1802–1812), he developed a distinctive style. His Third (Eroica) and Fifth Symphonies premiered in 1805 and 1808. The former was unprecedented in scale and scope. His opera, Fidelio, premiered in 1805 and was later revised. His Violin Concerto appeared in 1806, and his Razumovsky quartets were published in 1808. Other middle works include the Waldstein and Appassionata sonatas for piano, the Kreutzer sonata for violin, and his Seventh Symphony. His Emperor piano concerto premiered in 1811, without the composer as soloist.

His late period (1812–1827) included some of his most innovative works. His Missa solemnis and his final symphony, the Ninth, premiered in 1824. The Ninth was the first major example of a choral symphony. His Diabelli Variations and late piano sonatas, particularly the Hammerklavier, are considered summits of keyboard literature. His late string quartets, including the Große Fuge of 1825–1826, are considered pinnacles of the genre. After several months of illness, which left him bedridden, Beethoven died on 26 March 1827 at the age of 56.

Life and career

Beethoven was born in Bonn in 1770 into a musical family. His father, Johann, was his first music teacher, and the lessons were strict and intensive. Beethoven's talent showed early, and from 1780 or 1781 he studied with Christian Gottlob Neefe, who taught him composition. In 1792 he moved permanently to Vienna, where he studied with Joseph Haydn and became known as a skilled pianist. He made his public debut in Vienna in 1795. Around 1798 his hearing began to fail, and it gradually got worse, making concerts harder for him. Even so, he kept composing and wrote some of his best-known works.

In his middle years, his music became bolder and grander, a time often called his "heroic" period. His Third Symphony, the Eroica, was first inspired by Napoleon, though Beethoven later removed Napoleon's name from it. His opera Fidelio was revised several times before it became popular. His most important patron was Archduke Rudolf of Austria, who studied with him and became his friend. In 1824 his Ninth Symphony was first performed in Vienna at the Kärntnertortheater, and it was greeted with great acclaim. Beethoven's health grew weaker in his final years. On 26 March 1827 he died at the age of 56. Thousands of people joined his funeral procession in Vienna a few days later.

Death

Main article: Death of Ludwig van Beethoven

Music

For a more comprehensive list, see List of compositions by Ludwig van Beethoven.

Further information: Beethoven's musical style, Beethoven's compositional method, and Beethoven and C minor

Historians often divide Beethoven's works into three periods. The historian William Drabkin notes that a writer first suggested this in 1818, and later biographers, starting with Schindler, F.-J. Fétis and Wilhelm von Lenz, adopted it. The scheme leaves out his early years in Bonn and does not fit every kind of work equally well. About forty works survive from his years in Bonn, and a 1784 review in Johann Nikolaus Forkel's Musikalischer Almanack compared his efforts to those of rank beginners. Charles Rosen says his early style was closer to that of Muzio Clementi. After he moved to Vienna in 1792, he used a scherzo instead of a minuet and trio, and his early pieces include the Piano Trios, Op. 1 and the Pathétique sonata. His middle period, which came after he noticed his growing deafness, includes the Triple Concerto, the Violin Concerto, the Kreutzer violin sonata, and his opera Fidelio. In his late period, which began in the decade 1810–1819, he studied older music, including Gregorian chants and works by George Frideric Handel, whom he considered "the greatest composer who ever lived." His late works used polyphony, church modes, and Baroque devices, and they include the overture The Consecration of the House, the last five piano sonatas, the Diabelli Variations, the late string quartets, the Große Fuge, the Missa solemnis, and the Ninth Symphony.

Beethoven's pianos also shaped his work. His earlier favourites included those of Johann Andreas Stein, and he later admired the pianos of Johann Andreas Streicher, who had married Stein's daughter Nannette. He received an Érard piano as a gift in 1803, and he began his Waldstein Sonata shortly after, though he later gave up on it. In 1818 he received a grand piano from John Broadwood & Sons, but he was not happy with its tone. In 1825 he commissioned a piano from Conrad Graf, which was built to help him hear it, but it did not work.

Legacy

See also: Ludwig van Beethoven in film

Alex Ross writes that Beethoven did more than influence later composers, because he also shaped whole institutions. The professional orchestra grew up largely to perform Beethoven's symphonies, and the art of conducting came after him. The modern piano reflects his wish for a more resonant and flexible instrument. Recording technology was also shaped with him in mind: the first commercial 33⅓ r.p.m. LP, in 1931, contained the Fifth Symphony, and early compact disks were made to hold seventy-five minutes so that the Ninth Symphony could play without interruption. Beethoven was a key influence on the Romantic generation. Berlioz and Wagner were most influenced by the Ninth Symphony, which many people still see as more than music. Johannes Brahms's First Symphony quotes the "Ode to Joy" theme from the Ninth, and Hans von Bülow called it "Beethoven's Tenth." Because Beethoven wrote nine symphonies, the curse of the ninth arose, a superstition that composers were doomed to die before finishing a tenth.

There is a museum, the Beethoven House, in the place of his birth in Bonn, and Bonn has hosted the Beethovenfest music festival since 1845, organised annually since 2007. Two museums in Vienna are devoted to him: the Beethoven Museum in Probusgasse, where he wrote the Heiligenstadt Testament and the first sketches for the Eroica symphony, and the Pasqualatihaus, his most enduring Vienna home, where he wrote the final versions of his Symphonies Nos. 5 and 6. The Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies, in the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library on the campus of San Jose State University in California, serves as a museum, research centre, and host of lectures and performances. The Beethoven Monument in Bonn was unveiled in August 1845 for the 75th anniversary of his birth, and Robert Schumann's Fantasie in C and Felix Mendelssohn's Variations sérieuses were first written to help raise money for it. Main article: List of sculptures of Ludwig van Beethoven During World War II, the opening motif of his Fifth Symphony, which matches the Morse code for "V," was used by the Allies to signify "victory," and the BBC played it at the start of wartime news. His influence also appears in the Beethoven Orchester in Bonn, the Beethoven Quartet, which premiered thirteen of Shostakovich's fifteen quartets, and The Beethoven Conservatory in St. Louis, Missouri. His manuscript of the Ninth Symphony became the first musical score added to the Memory of the World International Register of UNESCO in 2001. The Voyager Golden Record sent into space with the Voyager spacecraft includes the first movement of the Fifth Symphony, played by the Philharmonia Orchestra under Otto Klemperer, and closes with a Cavatina played by the Budapest String Quartet. In popular culture, he is the favorite composer of Alex in the novel and movie A Clockwork Orange, and of Schroeder in Charles Schulz's Peanuts comic strips, who often plays Beethoven on his toy piano. The BBC series Ludwig also features John Taylor, who is obsessed with the composer.