Biography Of Ludwig Van Beethoven

Birth: 1770 in Bonn, Germany

Death: 1827 in Vienna, Austria

Nationality: German

Occupation: composer

Source: Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998.

Updated: 05/18/2006

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BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

The instrumental music of the German composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) forms a peak in the development of tonal music and is one of the crucial evolutionary developments in the history of music as a whole.

The early compositions of Ludwig van Beethoven marked the culmination of the 18th-century traditions for which Haydn and Mozart had established the great classical models, and his middle-period and late works developed so far beyond these traditions that they anticipated some of the major musical trends of the late 19th century. This is especially evident in his symphonies, string quartets, and piano sonatas.

In each of these three genres Beethoven began by mastering the existing formal and esthetic conventions of the late 18th century while joining to these conventions signs of unusual originality and power. In his middle period (from about 1803, the year of the Eroica Symphony, to about 1814, the year of his opera Fidelio in its revised form) he proceeded to develop methods of elaboration of musical ideas that required such enlargement and alteration in perception of formal design as to render it clear that the conventions associated with the genres inherited from the 18th century were for him the merest scaffolding for works of the highest individuality and cogency.

If Beethoven's contemporaries were able to follow him with admiration in his middle-period works, they were left far behind by the major compositions of his last years, especially the last three Piano Sonatas, Op. 109, 110, and 111; the Missa solemnis; the Ninth Symphony; and the last six String Quartets, Op. 127, 130, 131, 132, 133, and 135. These works required more than a generation after Beethoven's death to be received at all by concert audiences and were at first the preserve of a few perceptive musicians. Composers as different in viewpoint from one another as Brahms and Wagner took Beethoven equally as their major predecessor; Wagner indeed regarded his own music dramas as the legitimate continuation of the Beethoven tradition, which in his view had exhausted the possibilities of purely instrumental music. Beethoven's last works continue in the 20th century to pose the deepest challenges to musical perception.

Years in Bonn

Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, the Rhineland seat of an electoral court. His ancestors were Flemish (the "van" was no indication of any claim to nobility but merely part of the name). His father, a tenor in the electoral musical establishment, harbored ambitions to create in his second son a prodigy like Mozart. As Beethoven developed, it became increasingly clear that to reach artistic maturity he would have to leave provincial Bonn for a major musical center. At the age of 12 he was a promising keyboard virtuoso and a talented pupil in composition of the court musician C. G. Neefe.

In 1783 Beethoven's first published work, a set of keyboard variations, appeared, and in the 1780s he produced the seeds of a number of later works. But he was already looking toward Vienna: in 1787 he traveled there, apparently to seek out Mozart as a teacher, but was forced to return owing to his mother's illness. In 1790, when the eminent composer Joseph Haydn passed through Bonn, Beethoven was probably introduced to him as a potential pupil.

Years in Vienna

In 1792 Beethoven went to Vienna to study with Haydn, helped on his way by his friend Count Ferdinand von Waldstein, who wrote prophetically in the 22-year-old Beethoven's album that he was going to Vienna "to receive the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Haydn." What he actually received from Haydn in lessons was little enough, and Beethoven turned to others of lesser talent in Vienna for help with counterpoint, including the contrapuntal theorist J. G. Albrechtsberger.

Beethoven rapidly proceeded to make his mark as a brilliant keyboard performer and improviser and as a gifted young composer with a number of works to his credit and powerful ambitions. He won entry into the musical circles of the Viennese titled upper classes and gained a number of lifelong friends and admirers among them. In 1795 his first mature published works appeared--the three Piano Trios, Op. 1--and his career was in effect officially launched. From then until the end of his life Beethoven was essentially able to publish his works at approximately the rate at which he could compose them, if he wished to; in consequence the opus numbers of his major works are, with a few trivial exceptions, the true chronological order of his output. No such publication opportunities had existed for Haydn or Mozart, and least of all for Schubert, who spent his entire life in Vienna (1797-1828) in Beethoven's shadow, from the publication standpoint.

From 1792 to his death in 1827 at the age of 57 Beethoven lived in Vienna, essentially as a private person, unmarried, amid a circle of friends, independent of any kind of official position or private service. He rarely traveled, apart from summers in the countryside. In 1796 he made a trip to northern Germany, perhaps to look over the possibilities for a post; his schedule included a visit to the Berlin court of King Frederick William of Prussia, an amateur cellist, and the Op. 5 Violoncello Sonatas appear to date from this trip. Later Beethoven made several trips to Budapest and to spas in Bohemia.

In 1808 Beethoven received an invitation to become music director at Kassel. This alarmed several of his wealthy Viennese friends into unprecedented generosity; three of them (Princes Lichnowsky and Kinsky and Archduke Rudolph) formed a group of backers and agreed to guarantee Beethoven an annual salary of 1,400 florins on condition that he remain in Vienna. He thus became, in principle, one of the first musicians in history to be freed form menial service and to be enabled potentially to live as an independent artist-although, as it happened,