Ludwig von Beethoven, considered messy, unconventional, and ugly by his society, is widely respected today by both musicians and nonmusicians. He was a man of magnitude, someone who is, “a definition of greatness,” (Fugard 19). Despite his obstacles, he produced beautiful music and gain a great deal of fame. Beethoven was able to create nine symphonies, five concertos for piano, thirty-two piano sonatas, and sixteen string quartets even though he dealt with his mother’s death and an alcoholic father, was faced with negative remarks from society, and lost his hearing. Beethoven, born in Bonn, Germany, was talented in composition and the keyboard. His strict father wanted him to become like Mozart, a music prodigy, and forced Beethoven to perform at a public concert at age five. Many times, his alcoholic father beaten Beethoven up for refusing to play for his father’s friends, especially early in the morning. Once, his father beat up his mother for protesting about Beethoven’s beatings. …show more content…
He felt social pressure, wondering how he could still compose music for people and mingle. He stopped coming to social events, so people would not notice his deafness. “How can I, a musician, say to people “I am deaf!” (Letters Beethoven Wrote About His Deafness). “Forgive me therefore when you see me withdraw from you with whom I would so gladly mingle. No longer can I enjoy recreation in social intercourse, refined conversation, or mutual outpourings of thought. Completely isolated, I only enter society when compelled to do so. I must live like an exile,” (The Joy of Suffering Overcome: Young Beethoven’s Stirring Letter to His Brothers About the Loneliness of Living with Deafness and How Music Saved His Life). However, Beethoven’s passion for music did not hinder him. He used his “inner ear,” and in 1802, Beethoven's year of crisis, he composed the Eroica
Beethoven’s hearing was getting so bad, he could not hear orchestras in theaters unless he was sitting really close, he struggled with hearing the voices of singers, and he had difficulty hearing the high notes (50). Away from music, Beethoven struggled with hearing people that spoke in low tones and people that spoke very softly (50). Beethoven did not want the word to get out that he was losing his hearing, he believed his music career would be tainted if people knew about his hearing condition. Beethoven was able to hear some music and speech up to about 1812, but at the age of 44 Beethoven had little to no hearing, he could not hear speech or music (51).
When we talk about Beethoven people often recall him as one that was great. When you think of Beethoven you can consider him a transitional composer and that is mainly because he is the crucial transitional figure linking the Classical and Romantic eras of musical history. Beethoven's innovation was the ability to briskly establish imperishability in bringing together different keys and unexpected notes to join them. Beethoven's music was correspondent to the agreement of the music in literature. Most of his music focused on life drama of one or more individuals through hard life circumstances. Beethoven’s role as a transitional composer between the classical and romantic periods took
He was introduced to the right people from friends of friends from his home town and was able to be heard by Prince Karl Lichonwsky. Prince Karl was so taken by his talent that he offered him a home where he lived for several years. Beethoven was said to be somewhat of a hot head and had many outbursts and temper tantrums. Yet, Lichonwsky allowed him to stay and even revered his tempered houseguest. He saw only his gift. It kind of makes me laugh to think of this struggling artist, sleeping on someone’s couch, throwing fits and being arrogant and intolerable. It is pretty spot on with stories you hear today of rock stars and musical geniuses now. In that sense I believe Beethoven’s story is very relatable and relevant to the times
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.
Only a few composers in the history of time have ever successfully left their mark throughout our musical world we live in today. It’s been over two hundred years since the birth of Beethoven and his music still speaks to us today as he originally expressed and composed it. Ludwig Van Beethoven was born in the city of Bonn Germany on December 16th 1770 and has since been one of the most influential composers known to man. A common theme of early age learning and mastering seems to emerge in Beethoven’s life because while living in a musical family as a child, his father taught him how to play the piano, violin and in addition how to compose musical pieces since he was four years of age. A few short years later, he gave his first public piano performance at the age of seven. While Beethoven certainly gained a lot of knowledge from his peers, he also supported his family by giving music lessons and also by playing in the court orchestra. In the year 1792, Beethoven worked under an Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn and by the year 1800, his compositions established him as a strong Mozart successor.
In Bonn, on December of 1770, a child was born to a lower middle class Finnish couple; Johann and Maria. Given the name Ludwig after his grandfather, a choirmaster, this child would grow to continue the name of the musically inclined Beethoven family, and eventually supersede its reputation with his own genius. As a deaf composer and musician, Ludwig von Beethoven is one of the greatest paradoxes in the realm of music. From his upbringing, his triumph over his disability, and his world renowned success in music, it is still proclaimed that he is one of the most influential and well known classical musicians in the world.
Ludwig Van Beethoven was known for his famous music and compositions. As a kid his father forced him to play the piano, but it was worth it. By age eight, he was performing for kings and had tours. Unfortunately for this music legend, hearing started to become a problem and by age forty-five he was completely deaf. This didn’t stop him from composing music though. He was not a people person, as a result, he always wanted to be alone. For a lot of his life he had stomach problems which included diarrhea and vomiting.
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 many personal crises in his life, Beethoven's music reflects his mood. His masterpiece represented struggle followed by triumph. Later, his influence has been worked by the ideals of the Enlightenment, which led him to dedicate the symphony "Erotica" Napoleon. Symphony "Ode to Joy" was estimated at about the brotherhood of humanity. His works are admired for their intellectual depth, intense expression, and experimental forms. It is considered one of the greatest minds of humanity. His work was ambitious head of the transition between eras of classical and romantic music led Beethoven's life of a child to an adult. A overcame alcoholic father; the death of his mother did not, and has provided a way to support his family. He carried through personal crises, including the loss of his hearing and earned him critical acclaim in social circles. His
Regrettably, though in the late 1790s Beethoven began to lose his hearing. Then at the start of the 1800s Beethoven changed the way he created music and his personality because of the increasing deafness. Prior to the increasing loss of hearing Beethoven had been full of pride and independent, though a little odd. When his hearing started to go he changed, he became more apprehensive and ill tempered. Despite becoming absolutely deaf by the end of his life Beethoven’s works were still brilliant. It was on March 26, 1827 when Beethoven died, the cause was a simple cold that turned into pneumonia and then later dropsy.
Furthermore, in the late 1700s, Beethoven also began to face obstacles from his own health. He had severe, persistent pain in his abdomen and was beginning to lose his hearing. Despite these challenges, however, Beethoven became one of the most celebrated composers of his time (Sirs Discoverer). Musical historians have divided Beethoven’s compositions into three distinct periods.
Beethoven’s childhood was arguably one of the most fascinating and influential periods of his life. Young Ludwig was raised by an abusive alcoholic father and a neglectful mother. His father, Johan Van Beethoven, was also his musical mentor, and never actualized Beethoven’s potential as a musician (1). His mother, Maria Magdalena Kerevich, often sent him to school looking so disheveled that classmates assumed he had no mother (Suchet pg. 21). Despite her neglect, Beethoven spoke very highly of his mother, and said that she taught him to give back to the world despite what it may have neglected to give him (1).
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).
Music was his life and he was deeply depressed and angry at the thought of being deaf. He even became suicidal. His relationship to his music was very serious, and though he continued to compose music, he never performed again following a failure to perform his Piano Concerto No. 5 "Emperor" in 1811.
This is also the time when the middle period starts. From now up until 1813, Beethoven develops and enhances the high classical style into a more dynamic and individualistic style. It is now that he writes symphonies Nr. 3 - 8, piano consert Nr. 5 and a lot of chamber music. But as he learns to control his craft and develop the music into new undiscovered grounds, he also suffers from reminders of the pains of real life. He has early in life discovered that his hearing wasn't what it should be, and the disorder gets worse as time goes by. It gets to the point where Beethoven is thinking of ending his life as he sees no way out of his despair. That fact is documented in the letter he wrote to his brothers in 1802, the so called . This hearing disorder seems to have affected his social life to a great extent. He became difficult to handle in social interactions and could suddenly burst into outbreaks of anger and show bad temper where he usually insulted someone. If that is the reason for his troubles with women, or if their is something traumatic hidden in his childhood, I don't know, but the fact is that he never got involved with a woman in a normal relation. Beethoven seems to have been attracted to women he couldn't get, or at least was hard to get. An example is Antoine Brentano, with whom he had a relationship, but who broke up with him to marry a friend. It is