Ludwig van Beethoven - Simple English Wikipedia

# Ludwig van Beethoven

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Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven (born 1770, died March 26, 1827) was a German composer. He was born in Bonn and died in Vienna. He wrote classical music for the piano, groups of instruments and orchestras. His best-known works are his fifth and ninth symphonies and also the piano piece Für Elise. He is considered to be one of the greatest classical composers. When he was a young man, he was a talented pianist, popular with the rich and important people in Vienna, where he lived.

However, around 1801, he began to become deaf. His deafness became worse and in 1817, he was completely deaf. Although he could no longer play in concerts, he continued to compose, and during this time composed some of his greatest works.

He moved to Vienna in 1792 and lived there for the rest of his life. He never married.

## [edit] Early years

We know very little about Beethoven’s childhood. He was baptized on 17 December 1770 so he was probably born a few days before that. His father was a fairly unimportant musician who worked at the court of the Elector of Cologne. This court was in Bonn and it was here that he lived until he was a young man. His father gave him his first lessons in piano and violin. Beethoven was a child prodigy like Mozart, but while Mozart as a little boy was taken all over Europe by his father, Beethoven never travelled until he was 17. By that time his piano teacher was a man called Neefe who himself had learned the piano from Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, who was a son of the great composer Johann Sebastian Bach. Neefe said to the Elector that the young Beethoven should be given the chance to travel, so he was allowed to go to Vienna. There he seems to have had one or two lessons from Mozart, but then Beethoven got a letter saying that his mother was dying, so he hurried back to Bonn. Soon his mother died, and Beethoven had to work hard to earn money to look after her and his two brothers. He played the viola in the orchestra of the Elector, started to compose, and made many friends. Some of these friends were musicians, others were very important people, many of them aristocrats who would be able to help him in his career.

In 1792 the Elector let Beethoven travel to Vienna again. He expected him to return after a while, but Beethoven never left Vienna, staying there for the rest of his life. He would have loved to have had some more composition lessons from Mozart, but Mozart had just died, so he had lessons from Haydn instead. Haydn was a good teacher, but a year later he went off to England, so Beethoven took lessons from a man called Albrechtsberger who was not famous like Haydn, but he was a good teacher and he made him write lots of technical exercises. He showed him how to write advanced counterpoint and fugues. This helped him to be a great composer.

Beethoven wanted to become famous as a pianist and composer, so he started to get to know important, aristocratic people. Some of these people had already heard him in Bonn when they had travelled there, so his name was becoming known in Vienna. It also helped that he could say he was the pupil of the famous Joseph Haydn. There were a lot of aristocratic people in Vienna who like music, and many had their own private orchestras. Some of them started to give Beethoven lodgings when the Elector of Bonn stopped sending him money in 1794. Beethoven started to perform in private houses and he became known for his improvisations. In 1795 he performed one of his piano concertos at a concert. He also had his first publication (his opus 1). This was a group of three Piano Trios. Haydn had heard them at a private concert a year before and had advised Beethoven not to publish the third one. However, he did publish it, and that was the one which became the most successful. His opus 2 was a group of three piano sonatas which he played at the court of his friend Prince Lichnowsky. When he published them he dedicated them to Haydn.

Beethoven was starting to become famous, travelling to places like Prague and Pressburg. He wrote a lot of chamber music. He was, perhaps, a little jealous of the success that Haydn had with his latest symphonies he had written for London. In 1800 he gave his first public concert with his own music. He conducted his First Symphony as well as the Septet. By now several publishers were trying to persuade him to let them publish his new works. Beethoven is one of the best known composers in the world.

## [edit] Middle Period

Beethoven seems to have taken his mind off these terrible thoughts by working very hard. He composed a lot more music, including his Third Symphony, called the Eroica. Originally he gave it the title Bonaparte in honour of Napoleon whom he admired. But when Napoleon crowned himself emperor in 1804 Beethoven realized that he was just a tyrant who wanted lots of power. He went to the table where the score of the symphony was lying and tore up the title page. Beethoven stayed in Vienna that year, working hard at an opera and giving piano lessons to Josephine von Brunsvik to whom he wrote passionate letters. She was a young widow with four children. It is impossible to know quite what her feelings were for Beethoven, but socially she belonged in higher society and probably thought that a wild musician was not a suitable husband. In the end she married a Baron, but this marriage, like her first one, was not happy either.

In 1805 Beethoven wrote his only opera. The next spring it had two performances but was then not performed again for another eight years. Beethoven had made several changes to the opera which became known as Fidelio. The overture that he had written for the 1806 performance is now known as Leonore 3 and is usually performed separately at concerts. The opera is a “rescue” opera, a typical French kind of opera describing a man who is imprisoned and rescued by his lover who disguises herself as a woman and manages to get into the prison. It has very beautiful music.

Beethoven continued to write compositions: a Violin Concerto, symphonies, piano concertos, string quartets and chamber music. He earned money by pleasing the aristocrats, dedicating works to them in return for fees, and by selling his music to publishers. Occasionally he earned money from concerts. It was not a regular income. He would have like the job of Kapellmeister to the emperor. He was not able to get this, but in 1809 three rich aristocrats: the Archduke Rodolph, Prince Lobkowitz and Prince Kinsky gave him an income for the rest of his life on condition that he stayed in Vienna. This meant that Beethoven did not have to worry so much about money. He was asked to write music for Egmont, a play by Goethe. The overture is very often performed as a concert piece. Beethoven very much wanted to meet Goethe. The two great men eventually met in Teplitz. Goethe later described Beethoven as a rather wild-mannered man who made life difficult for himself by his cross attitude to the world. Beethoven admired several women, including one to whom he wrote a passionate letter. She is known as the “Immortal Beloved”, but no one knows who she was. Beethoven seems to have become deeply depressed because he never found true happiness in love.

## [edit] Later life

By 1814 Beethoven had reached the height of his fame. He was thought of as the greatest composer by the Viennese people and he was frequently invited by royal people to their palaces. It was the year in which he played his famous Piano Trio op 97 The Archduke. That was the last time he played the piano in public. His deafness was making it impossible to continue.

Beethoven had many problems when his brother Caspar Carl died, leaving a 9 year-old son. The boy’s mother may have been incapable of looking after him, but Beethoven had to prove this in a court of law. For several years Beethoven looked after his nephew, but it was a difficult relationship, and it involved a lot of legal letters and quarrels with people. In 1826 Karl tried to shoot himself. He survived, but people persuaded Beethoven to stop being his guardian. Karl went into the army.

The last years were unhappy years for Beethoven. For some time he composed very little. Then, in 1817, he recovered and wrote his last two symphonies, a mass called Missa Solemnis, his last five piano sonatas, and a group of string quartets which were so modern and difficult that very few people at the time understood the music. Nowadays we think they are the greatest works ever written for string quartet.

His Ninth Symphony is called the Choral Symphony because there is a choir and soloists in the last movement. At the time people did not understand this either, because a symphony is normally a work for orchestra, not a work with singers. Beethoven chose the words of a poem by the German poet Friedrich Schiller: An die Freude (Ode to Joy). It is all about living together in peace and harmony, so that it sends an important message to people. This is why it has been chosen in recent years as the National Anthem for the European Union. The Ninth Symphony was performed at a concert on 7 May 1824. After the scherzo movement the audience applauded enthusiastically, but Beethoven could not hear the applause and one of the singers had to turn him round so that he could see that people were clapping.

Beethoven died on 23 March 1827. About 10.000 people came onto the streets for his funeral. The famous poet Franz Grillparzer wrote the funeral speech. One of the torchbearers was Franz Schubert. Schubert died the next year. In 1888 Beethoven’s and Schubert’s remains were moved to another cemetery in Vienna and were placed side by side.

## [edit] Deafness

In a letter dated 29 June 1801 Beethoven told a friend in Bonn about a terrible secret he had for some time. He knew that he was becoming deaf. For some time he had spells of fever and stomach pains. A young man does not expect to become deaf, but now he was starting to admit it to himself. He was finding it hard to hear what people were saying. Just at the moment when he was starting to become known as one of the greatest of all composers, it was a terrible blow to realize that he was losing his hearing. In 1802 he stayed for a time in Heiligenstadt which is now a suburb of Vienna but at that time it was outside the city. There he wrote a famous letter which is known as the Heiligenstadt Testament. It is dated 6 October and describes his increasing frustration at his deafness. He asks people to forgive him if he cannot hear what they are saying. He said that he had often thought of suicide, but that he had so much music in his head which had to be written down that he decided to continue his life. This very emotional letter was found amongst his papers after his death. It was never sent to anyone.

## [edit] How He is Remembered

Beethoven’s music is usually divided into three periods: Early, Middle and Late. Most composers who live a long time develop as they get older and change their way of composing. Beethoven was like this: he was always trying out new ideas. Of course, these changes in style are not sudden, but they are quite a good way of understanding the different periods of his composing life.

His first period includes the works he wrote in his youth in Bonn, and his early days in Vienna up to about 1803. His middle period starts with the Eroica Symphony and includes most of his orchestral works. His last period includes the Ninth Symphony and the late string quartets.

Beethoven is probably the most famous of all composers, and the most written about. He had a wild personality and this was something that the Romantics in the 19th century always expected from great artists. The Romantics thought that the artist was somehow a person with exaggerated qualities who was not like normal people. Beethoven had a very strong personality. He lived in the time of the French Revolution and had strong views on independence and ways of living free from tyranny. This made him a hero in many people’s eyes.

His music was so famous that many composers in the 19th century found it quite hard to compose because they thought they would be compared to him. Johannes Brahms, for example, took a long time to write his First Symphony. He thought that everyone was expecting him to be the next Beethoven. It was only towards the end of the 19th century that Gustav Mahler wrote several symphonies which include singing, although he does this very differently to Beethoven.

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Categories: Composers | German people | 1770 births | 1827 deaths | Child prodigies

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