Ludwig van Beethoven (baptized December 17, 1770, Bonn, archbishopric of Cologne

[Germany]—died March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria) was a German composer, the
predominant musical figure in the transitional period between the Classical
and Romantic eras.

Widely regarded as the greatest composer who ever lived, Ludwig van Beethoven
dominates a period of musical history as no one else before or since. Rooted in the
Classical traditions of Joseph Haydn and Mozart, his art reaches out to encompass the
new spirit of humanism and incipient nationalism expressed in the works
of Goethe and Friedrich von Schiller, his elder contemporaries in the world of literature;
the stringently redefined moral imperatives of Kant; and the ideals of the French
Revolution, with its passionate concern for the freedom and dignity of the individual. He
revealed more vividly than any of his predecessors the power of music to convey a
philosophy of life without the aid of a spoken text; and in certain of his compositions is
to be found the strongest assertion of the human will in all music, if not in all art.
Though not himself a Romantic, he became the fountainhead of much that characterized
the work of the Romantics who followed him, especially in his ideal of program or
illustrative music, which he defined in connection with his Sixth (Pastoral)
Symphony as “more an expression of emotion than painting.” In musical form he was a
considerable innovator, widening the scope of sonata, symphony, concerto, and quartet,
while in the Ninth Symphony he combined the worlds of vocal and instrumental music
in a manner never before attempted. His personal life was marked by a heroic struggle
against encroaching 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. In an age that saw
the decline of court and church patronage, he not only maintained himself from the sale
and publication of his works but also was the first musician to receive a salary with no
duties other than to compose how and when he felt inclined.
Life and work

The early years

Ludwig van Beethoven.

Celebrating Beethoven: His life, work, and legacy

Overview of the life and works of Ludwig van Beethoven, featuring examples played by Brant Taylor, a cellist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.(more)
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Beethoven was the eldest surviving child of Johann and Maria Magdalena van
Beethoven. The family was Flemish in origin and can be traced back to Malines. It was
Beethoven’s grandfather who had first settled in Bonn when he became a singer in the
choir of the archbishop-elector of Cologne; he eventually rose to become
Kappellmeister. His son Johann was also a singer in the electoral choir; thus, like most
18th-century musicians, Beethoven was born into the profession. Though at first quite
prosperous, the Beethoven family became steadily poorer with the death of his
grandfather in 1773 and the decline of his father into alcoholism. By age 11 Beethoven
had to leave school; at 18 he was the breadwinner of the family.
Having observed in his eldest son the signs of a talent for the piano, Johann tried to
make Ludwig a child prodigy like Mozart but did not succeed. It was not until his
adolescence that Beethoven began to attract mild attention.

German music throughout history

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When in 1780 Joseph II became sole ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, he appointed his
brother Maximilian Francis as adjutant and successor-designate to the archbishop-
elector of Cologne. Under Maximilian’s rule, Bonn was transformed from a minor
provincial town into a thriving and cultured capital city. A liberal Roman Catholic, he
endowed Bonn with a university, limited the power of his own clergy, and opened the
city to the full tide of the German literary renaissance associated with Gotthold Ephraim
Lessing, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, and the young Goethe and Schiller. A sign of the
times was the nomination as court organist of Christian Gottlob Neefe, a Protestant
from Saxony, who became Beethoven’s teacher. Although somewhat limited as a
musician, Neefe was nonetheless a man of high ideals and wide culture, a man of letters
as well as a composer of songs and light theatrical pieces; and it was to be through Neefe
that Beethoven in 1783 would have his first extant composition (Nine Variations on a
March by Dressler) published at Mannheim. By June 1782 Beethoven had become
Neefe’s assistant as court organist.

In 1783 he was also appointed continuo player to the Bonn opera. By 1787 he had made
such progress that Maximilian Francis, archbishop-elector since 1784, was persuaded to
send him to Vienna to study with Mozart. The visit was cut short when, after a short
time, Beethoven received the news of his mother’s death. According to tradition, Mozart
was highly impressed with Beethoven’s powers of improvisation and told some friends
that “this young man will make a great name for himself in the world”; no reliable
account of Beethoven’s first trip to Vienna survives, however.
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For the next five years, Beethoven remained at Bonn. To his other court duties was
added that of playing viola in the theatre orchestra; and, although the archbishop for the
time being showed him no further mark of special favour, he was beginning to make
valuable acquaintances. Sometime previously he had come to know the widow of the
chancellor, Joseph von Breuning, and she engaged him as music teacher to two of her
four children. From then on, the Breunings’ house became for him a second home, far
more congenial than his own. Through Mme von Breuning, Beethoven acquired a
number of wealthy pupils. His most useful social contact came in 1788 with the arrival
in Bonn of Ferdinand, Graf (count) von Waldstein, a member of the highest
Viennese aristocracy and a music lover. Waldstein became a member of the Breuning
circle, where he heard Beethoven play and at once became his devoted admirer. At a
fancy dress ball given in 1790, the ballet music, according to the Almanach de Gotha (a
journal chronicling the social activities of the aristocracy), had been composed by the
count, but it was generally known that Beethoven had written it for him. The same year
saw the death of the emperor Joseph II. Through Waldstein again, Beethoven was
invited to compose a funeral ode for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, but the scheduled
performance was canceled because the wind players found certain passages too difficult.
He then added to it a complementary piece celebrating the accession of Joseph’s
brother Leopold II. There is no record that either was ever performed until the end of
the 19th century, when the manuscripts were rediscovered in Vienna and pronounced
authentic by Johannes Brahms. But in 1790 another great composer had seen and
admired them: that year Haydn, passing through Bonn on his way to London, was feted
by the elector and his musical establishment; when shown Beethoven’s score, he was
sufficiently impressed by it to offer to take Beethoven as a pupil when he returned from
London. Beethoven accepted Haydn’s offer and in the autumn of 1792, while the armies
of the French Revolution were storming into the Rhineland provinces, Beethoven left
Bonn, never to return. The album that he took with him (preserved in the Beethoven-
Haus in Bonn) indicates the wide circle of his acquaintances and friends in Bonn. The
most prophetic of the entries, written shortly after Mozart’s death, runs:

The spirit of Mozart is mourning and weeping over the death of her beloved. With the
inexhaustible Haydn she found repose but no occupation. With the help of unremitting labour
you shall receive Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands. (Waldstein)

The compositions belonging to the years at Bonn—excluding those probably begun at

Bonn but revised and completed in Vienna—are of more interest to the Beethoven
student than to the ordinary music lover. They show the influences in which his art was
rooted as well as the natural difficulties that he had to overcome and that his early
training was inadequate to remedy. Three piano sonatas written in 1783 demonstrate
that, musically, Bonn was an outpost of Mannheim, the cradle of the modern orchestra
in Germany, and the nursery of a musical style that was to make a vital contribution to
the classical symphony. But, at the time of Beethoven’s childhood, the Mannheim
school was already in decline. The once famous orchestra was, in effect, dissolved after
the war of 1778 between Austria and Prussia. The Mannheim style had degenerated into
mannerism; this particular influence is reflected in a preoccupation with extremes of
piano (soft) and forte (loud), often deployed in contradiction to the musical phrasing,
that may be found in Beethoven’s early sonatas and in much else written by him at that
time—which is not surprising, since the symphonies of later Mannheim composers
formed the staple fare of the Bonn court orchestra. But what was only an occasional
effect for Mozart and others influenced by the Mannheim composers was to remain a
fundamental element for Beethoven. The sudden pianos, the unexpected outbursts, the
wide leaping arpeggio figures with concluding explosive effects (known as “Mannheim
rockets”)—all these are central to Beethoven’s musical personality and were to help him
toward the liberation of instrumental music from its dependence on vocal style.
Beethoven may indeed be described as the last and finest flower on the Mannheim tree.