** Beethoven lives!

Beethoven Basics

Born in Bonn, Germany, in 1770, Ludwig van Beethoven became one of the greatest composers in the history of western music--despite being deaf for at least the last decade of his career.

Bonn Boy

Like most 18th-century composers, Beethoven was born into a musical family. When he was still little, his father tried to turn him into a popular child prodigy, as Mozart had been. Ludwig didn't exactly become a big child star, but by age 12 he had become a working musician.

By 1787, he had impressed the local socialites enough that they sent him to Vienna to study with Mozart. But that potentially momentous musical matriculation came to naught when Beethoven's mother died two months later. Beethoven returned home, took charge of the family (his father was an alcoholic), and became both a court musician and music tutor to the children of Bonn's social elite.

Then, in 1790, another famous composer--Joseph Haydn-- "rediscovered" Beethoven. In 1792, Beethoven left Bonn and went to study with Haydn in Vienna. Almost as soon as he arrived, Vienna was abuzz with rumors of the virtuoso from Bonn--a musician with the chops to rival even the recently deceased master Mozart.

Vienna Virtuoso

At the time, Viennese society was high on music, and Beethoven's performances became de rigueur. Aristocrats rushed to hear the impetuous pianist, who accrued enough fame and fortune to live as a freelance musician, beyond the system of aristocratic patronage his predecessors needed. But even as he reached new heights of popularity, Beethoven realized that he was going deaf.

Famed for his fiery demeanor, the composer complained in an 1802 letter to his brothers that those who thought him "malevolent, stubborn, or misanthropic" were mistaking a malady for misanthropy:

It was impossible for me to say to people, "Speak louder, shout, for I am deaf." Ah, how could I possibly admit an infirmity in the one sense which ought to be more perfect in me than others, a sense which I once possessed in the highest perfection, a perfection such as few in my profession enjoy or ever have enjoyed.--Oh I cannot do it.

Of course, he had already been composing for years by then. But as his hearing--and hence his performing career--deteriorated, Beethoven's compositions became increasingly important. They also became increasingly brilliant.

Masterpiece Maker

Around the time he first realized he was going deaf, Beethoven moved from what historians call his first or early period--during which his compositions were heavily indebted to Mozart and Haydn--to his second or "heroic" period. On the cusp of that transition came his famous Piano Sonata No. 14 in C Sharp Minor, later mercifully nicknamed the "Moonlight Sonata." (You're probably familiar with the first part, but have you heard the ferocious third movement?)

A few years later, Beethoven composed his Fifth Symphony, perhaps the world's most recognizable piece of music. (You're probably humming the first four notes to yourself already--three short Gs and a long E-flat.) Still, many would argue that Beethoven's most remarkable accomplishment was the Ninth Symphony, composed during his third and final period--and after he was completely deaf.

The Ninth Symphony incorporates parts of a poem--Friedrich Schiller's ode "To Joy"--sung by a chorus. No major composer had ever used a chorus in a symphony before, and the Ninth has since become known as the "choral" symphony. Tradition says Beethoven couldn't hear the audience applauding after its first performance--a musician on stage had to prompt him to turn around to see the cheering crowd. It was Beethoven's final symphony. He died in 1827, after a bout with pneumonia.

Steve Sampson
October 21, 2005

~Knowledge News Magazine.