Why Is Beethoven Considered A Transitional Composer?

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.

“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

Beethoven contributed one of the most significant musical developments through his fifth and ninth symphonies. He used a musical motive as the basic of his entire piece. (Beethoven described the motive as “Fate knocks at the door”.) It was the first time in history that anyone had done such a thing for a multi-movement piece. Beethoven’s contribution has become a norm in the music world, even to this day.

For someone that has competed in classical music memory in school and that uses classical piano music for my soothing “study music” I have heard Beethoven's 5th many times, although not quite ever like this. I have always heard the more sophisticated and precise version of the symphony, whether it may be for recreational listening or building up the intensity in movie scenes.

In this essay, I will discuss two specific symphonies, Symphony No.3 and Symphony No.5, which are composed by Ludwig van Beethoven. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827) was a German composer that stood out as one of the most famous and influential composers, in both Classical era and in the entire history of music. Beethoven was born in a family of talented musicians, both of his father and grandfather. He composed nine symphonies, thirty-five piano sonatas, in which thirty-two are numbered, ten violin sonatas, sixteen string quartets, an opera and two mass. From all of his works, nine of his symphonies are greatly known by people, and each of them all masterpieces.

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).

Life as it was for Beethoven had many varying elements, and this research paper will be revealing a lot of what he went through as a young boy all the way to the end of his life and career as the world renowned Ludwig van Beethoven. The basis for this paper is to express and expound on the life and career of Beethoven, and why he was seen as part of the pivotal transition between the Classical and Romantic eras. The topics that will be discussed will be the revelation of Beethoven’s childhood and how he was raised, an expository of his early schooling and composer days, the account of his many composed symphonies, the occurrences during his composition years, and the final tale of his death.

A major historical event was well underway when Beethoven was born. The Age of Enlightenment was upon the world. The peak of the period was happening right as Beethoven was born. Philosophy, science, and politics were changed. Many believe this helped the Romantic period also (Enlightenment). During Beethoven’s early life, music was mainly classical. However, Beethoven was the main ingredient on changing his era of music. Beethoven studied under Haydn and Mozart, but they were not valuable relationships to him. Beethoven was mostly known for his great piano work. After branching out from more than the piano, Beethoven’s work took on a more Romantic feel. He put more emotion and expression in his work than he, or most artists, did previously. This grasp between stages was very productive for Beethoven; most of his best work was completed during this time (Brief).

Most of Beethoven 's contemporaries were amazed into silence — or have been silenced by the judgement of history: the outstanding exception is Schubert, who discovered a symphonic mastery all his own in his ‘Unfinished’ (1822) and ‘Great C major '(1825). For those who came after, Beethoven was the single, unavoidable and awesome model, to which they could respond with either a new classicism or a wild Romantic leap: on the one hand

Beethoven is regarded internationally as one of the world’s best classical composers for his amazing works in his pieces such as symphony 3 and Fur Elise.

Ludwig van Beethoven was a composer from Germany. This essay is going to teach readers about Beethoven’s biography, musical career, and musical influence. Beethoven is one of the world’s most well-known composers because he was the bridge between the classical and romantic music eras.

Ludwig van Beethoven is considered by many to be the best and most influential composer of all time. His imminence as a composer becomes even more remarkable when one considers the fact that he suffered severe hearing loss for much of his life and was totally deaf for the last decade of his life; the same time that he was composing some of his best-known and most highly regarded works. In order to understand how a man who could not hear the music he was creating became one of the best composers of all time, it is important to study Beethoven's life.

All throughout music history lived many composers that have impacted not only the societies in which they have lived in, but modern-day society as well. These particular composers have given many societies the chance to listen, feel and express themselves through music and instruments that were invented centuries ago that still remain essential components of music today. One example of a composer that changed the music world drastically was a man by the name of Ludwig van Beethoven. Beethoven was born the year of 1770 in Bonn, Germany and lived during the end of the Classical period and the beginning of the Romantic period of Western art as a famous composer and pianist. As a creator of many symphonies, sonatas, and even an opera, Beethoven proved himself to be a musical genius that still is considered one of the most influential musical composers of all time.

Ludwig van Beethoven being famous composer. He loved Classical and romantic. Classical is the relating to the ancient Greeks and Romans. The romantic times was known as the artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and was at its peak in from 1800 to 1850. Beethoven was a German composer and a pianist. He will remain as one of the most famous and influential of the composers from all the times. He was on December 17, 1770 in Bonn, the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of the Holy Roman Empire. And he died March 26, 1827 in Vienna. He displayed his musical talents at an early age. He was taught by Johann van Beethoven which is his father and also by Christian Gottlob Neefe. His

In 1798 Beethoven noticed that he had started to become deaf. He would spend the following thirty years writing and composing music with major hearing loss. From his mid-twenties to about three months before his death, Beethoven did not stop composing and writing music. Beethoven drew his musical inspiration from many sources. Beethoven also created the bridge between the classical and romantic periods. Most of his work didn’t completely fit into any one period’s characteristics. If you listen to Beethoven’s compositions as he progressed as a composer, they could be divided into three periods. The first is commonly known as his imitation period, the period when he took the styles, mechanics, and techniques of other composers. He mimicked; Bach, Haden, as well as Mozart. Next, he had the period of externalization, a time when he developed his own style and reveled in it. Thirdly he