Still considered “one of the greatest composers of the West European music traditions” (Columbia), Beethoven has influenced the classical world in great manners. The life of Beethoven was a sorrowful one with him becoming “deaf at age 32” (Eckley), being depressed, ill, and constantly falling in love despite never marrying. Bowden adds Beethoven writing a letter to the ’Immortal Beloved’, “a woman whose identity Beethoven careful to conceal” (Bowden). Such problems never stopped his passion for composing. Beethoven broke the classical music traditions of Haydn and Mozart. For example, he composed the wonderful piece “Third Symphony, the Eorcia.” Columbia believes Erocia showed freedom and nobility through its harmonies and orchestration. Other famous pieces include Moonlight Sonata, Kreutzer Sonata for Violin, and 5th Symphony. The pieces showed pain, sorrow, or pure angst which influenced romantic composers and many afterward. …show more content…
His father, a heavy drinker, believed he could make Beethoven the next Mozart. The plan did not work, but Beethoven’s talent was recognized by his teachers (Eckley). Beethoven visited Vienna in 1787, and impressed Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart after playing for him, claims Columbia. He also moved the aristocracy with his own compositions, leading him to Viennese music publishers (Funk & Wagnalls). In 1792, he received piano lessons from Franz Joseph Haydn. However, his lessons were cut short. Beethoven thought Haydn’s “teaching was perfunctory” (Eckley), and Haydn disapproved Beethoven’s, according to Columbia, “unorthodox musical ideas,” says
“Beethoven said that it’s better to hit the wrong note confidentially than hit the right note unconfidently. Never be afraid to be wrong or to embarrass yourself; we are all students in this life, and there is always something more to learn.” – Mike Norton. This quote by Mike Norton hits spot on Beethoven’s character and his person in general. Unlike other musicians of his time, Beethoven had several unique characteristics about his compositions. In his time, he was called a revolutionary. In his later years, Beethoven became deaf and could not always verbally show his emotion, he portrayed his feelings in his music. Although considering the matters of religion and thoroughbass cut and dry, his study of aesthetics was something that he could create something of his own. Throughout several of his Sonata’s and compositions, he holds a darker style of music that shocked and disturbed rather than calmed like the traditional music in the 18th century. Much like his appearance, his contemporaries perceived his compositions as wild, bizarre and crazy. The pieces were more complicated than pieces that were being written in that time period, and Beethoven claimed he was writing them for the future. In one of his final pieces, Piano Sonata, Op. 111, he “shows his radical approach to form and his revolutionary brilliance stands out in every movement of his five Late Quartets, simply the greatest body of music ever composed” (Woods). He went against the grain of the musical society in
had to raise his two brothers because their father wasn’t able to care for them after he became an alcoholic because of the passing of his wife.
Ever since his father began teaching him as a child to play the violin and clavier, any keyboard instrument such as the harpsichord, Ludwig van Beethoven has been amongst the most renowned and influential composers of music. Despite the harsh punishments and mistreatment Beethoven suffered through while practicing with his father, he still managed to become a “prodigy” at a rather young age, having his first public recital at around seven years old. After his first recital role music played in his continued to grow, and soon after dropping out of school to pursue music “full time” he published his first composition.
As a child, Beethoven’s father pushed him past his limits to be a musician. The young boy’s neighbors accounted for hearing “weeping while he played the clavier, standing atop a footstool to reach the keys, his father beating him for each hesitation or mistake” (“Ludwig”). He was “flogged” on a near daily basis and “locked in the cellar and deprived of sleep for extra hours of practice” (“Ludwig”). Due to the inhuman amount of hours he spent playing music, Beethoven began showing “flashes of the creative imagination that would eventually reach farther than any composer's before or since” (“Ludwig”). He composed a piece entitled Cantata on the Death of Emperor Joseph II, which is now considered his earliest masterpiece.
After learning to live with his disability, Beethoven continued rising to fame, becoming an exceptional musician and composer. His fame started in 1776 at the youthful age of seven. His father, hoping to have Beethoven’s musical talents acknowledged, arranged Beethoven’s first public recital. Although Beethoven played exquisitely well, he did not receive much praise. He worked even harder, looking to gain affection and reverence from his father. Several years later at age nineteen, after his first few compositions, Beethoven was requested to compose a memorial piece for the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph the second, who had recently perished. Fourteen years later, in 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte declared himself Emperor of France. Beethoven, seeing
In 1795 Beethoven was pleased with his brother's decision to take up residency in Vienna. Also in this year, Beethoven began to play in public concerts. This concert was organized by his mentor Haydn. His music selections included Mozart, Haydn, as well as his own. Amazingly, Ludwig was not keen on performing publicly. As a matter of fact, Beethoven only gave one more public appearance in the "early" period and declined numerous other offers to share with the audience his musical skills. It has been postulated that the composer may have already suffered minor hearing loss, as well as having an "overly suspicious" personality that caused him to hide from the public eye. (Stanley 17) Beethoven's "early"
As the son of “Maria Magdalena van Beethoven” and “Johann van Beethoven,” (Biography.com), Ludwig van Beethoven had started out his music career at a very young age. It was known that Beethoven’s grandfather “Kapellmeister Ludwig van Beethoven” (Biography.com) was “a source of endless pride for young Ludwig” (Biography.com). Although, “his first years…was not happy for him” (Masha). By seeing that Ludwig was an “extensive musical talent…his father, a music enthusiast, but an extremely crude and violent person, wanted to make him a next Mozart” (Masha). Even if Ludwig was musically talented at such a young age, being forced into becoming the “next Mozart,” (Masha) must have been such a big burden. Ludwig may have as well been stripped off of his childhood and was not able to experience what kids of his age should have. He should have been playing outside with his friends, making a mess and playing in the dirt, breaking things intentionally, making his mother worry if he will come back in time for supper. If any other kids of his age were to experience that, it would have been a pathway leading to hate music in their adolescent years, but on the contrary, Ludwig “did not come to hate music” (Masha). Despite “on a nearly basis” of being “locked in the cellar and deprived of
From the time Ludwig van Beethoven was a young child, everyone around him could see that he was extremely talented. His name is known all around the world and when people think classical music, Beethoven is one of the first names that pop up. Long after his death in 1827, his music is still listened to. Soon to be mothers are sometimes told to allow the baby to listen to classical music, especially by Beethoven, to help with brain development. College and high school students are told we can benefit by listening to Beethoven when studying. Even in some modern songs, you can hear Beethoven’s legacy living on. Beethoven was an excellent composer and wrote pieces that defied the norm of the Romantic Era. Many artists today may not realize that
After this piano sonata, he innovated the basic norms of symphonies. There are evidences that reveal how Beethoven was inspired by courageous political acts by Napoleon Bonaparte that lead him to compose “Eroica” or symphonies that expresses his new heroic styles. Although he had been a successful composer, his progressive hearing loss tortured Beethoven. Researches demonstrate how his illness had effected his career. Unfortunately,
Beethoven is perhaps the most famous musician of all time. His influence on later composers was extremely huge, to the extent where many composers were intimidated by his music. Ludwig van Beethoven was born in 1770 into a family of musicians. His father and grandfather were both musicians at the court of Elector in the German town of Bonn. His grandfather was very respected, but his dad not so much given that he was an alcoholic. At a young age, Beethoven was put in charge of his family’s finances and started a job at the court. He composed music and helped look after the instrumentation. Around the same time, he began to write music. In 1790, an important visitor passed through Bonn: this was Franz Joseph Haydn. He was on his way to London for a visit when he stopped to meet Beethoven and agreed to take him on as a student when he came back from London to Vienna. In 1792, Beethoven moved to Vienna to study with Hayden. Apparently, it did not go as planned. Hayden was old fashion and a little overbearing, while Beethoven was rebellious and headstrong. Beethoven found support among the rich arts who lived in Vienna. Prince Lichnowsky gave him board and lodging at his place for in return, Beethoven would compose music and preform at evening parties.
He attended the Latin grade school Tirocinium, but in 1781, at the age of 10, Beethoven withdrew from the school to study full-time under the Court Organist, Christian Gottlob Neefe. Under Neefe’s instruction, Beethoven was introduced to Johann Sebastian Bach. At the age of 12, Beethoven published his first composition, piano variations based on a theme by composer and music theorist Gallus Dressler. Beethoven was later officially appointed as Assistant Court Organist, and in 1787, the court sent him to study with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Vienna, Austria. During his audition, Mozart commented on the young Beethoven’s performance, “Keep your eyes on him; some day he will give the world something to talk about.” But his time under Mozart’s tutelage was cut short when Beethoven returned only a few weeks later to Bonn after learning that his mother was desperately ill. Her death a few months later sent Beethoven into a fit of depression that would last for years (Biography.com).
If you are great at something, like especially talented, it is a difficult life and this can lead to mental health and addiction issues. I agree that if you are really talented on something, it will be more easier to lead to a difficult life and mental illness. In my opinion, this would not be bad at all. Instead it is a way to push you forward and provide more inspiration to creativity. It is like a sort of test you must experienced in order to get into another level.
Ludwig Van Beethoven was one of the most influential composers of his time. The decades around the 1800’s were years of many changes and Beethoven’s new approach to music was something that reflected that. “His symphonies, concertos, string quartets and piano sonatas are central to the repertory of classical music.” This essay will focus on the historical and theoretical aspects of the third movement of Sonata Op. 28 No. 15.
The early piano sonatas of Beethoven deserve special mention. Although his first published examples of concertos and trios and the first two symphonies are beneath the masterpieces of Mozart and Haydn, the piano sonatas bear an unmistakably Beethovian stamp: grandiose in scope and length, and innovative in their range of expression. The sonatas were able to move expression from terrible rage to peals of laughter to deep depression so suddenly. Capturing this unpredictable style in his music, a new freedom of expression which broke the bounds of Classical ideals, was to position Beethoven as a disturbed man in the minds of some of his contemporaries. Furthermore, he was to be seen as the father of Romanticism and the single most important innovator of music in the minds of those after him. (Bookspan 27).
Beethoven returned to Vienna in 1972 to continue his musical education. Beethoven never returned to his hometown and stayed in Vienna for a while. The in Vienna, Beethoven had valuable lessons from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Joseph Hayden, Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, Antonio Salieri, and Aloys Forster. Each of them had taught Beethoven something special. Beethoven quickly adopted a reputation as a great pianist, a child prodigy. Everyone in the music industry has learned to admire Beethoven and his talent.