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Ludwig van Beethoven, one of the greatest
masters of music, is particularly admired for his instrumental
works, including symphonies, concertos, sonatas, and chamber
music.
EARLY LIFE
Beethoven was born in the provincial court city of Bonn, Germany,
probably on Dec. 16, 1770. His grandfather, also Ludwig, and
his father, Johann, were both musicians in the service of,
successively, the prince electors Max Friedrich and Max Franz.
Beethoven's own talent was such that at the age of 12 he was
already an assistant to the organist Christian Gottlob Neefe,
with whom he studied. Attempts to establish him as a prodigy
in the mold of MOZART had little success, however.
In 1787 Beethoven was sent to Vienna, but his mother fell
ill, and he had to return to Bonn almost immediately. She
died a few months later, and in 1789 Beethoven himself requested
that his alcoholic father be retired, a move that left him
responsible for his younger brothers Caspar Carl and Nikolaus
Johann. Beethoven left Bonn for Vienna a second time in November
of 1792, in order to study with Franz Josef HAYDN.
In 1794 French forces occupied the Rhineland; consequently,
Beethoven's ties with and support from the Bonn court came
to an end. His father had died a month after his departure
from Bonn, and in 1794 and 1795 his two brothers joined him
in Vienna. He remained there the rest of his life, leaving
only for long summer holidays in the surrounding countryside
and, in his early years, for occasional concerts in nearby
cities. His only extended journey was to Prague, Dresden,
and Berlin in 1796.
Beethoven never held an official position in Vienna. He supported
himself by giving concerts, by teaching piano, and increasingly
through the sale of his compositions. Members of the Viennese
aristocracy were his steady patrons, and in 1809 three of
them--Prince Kinsky, Prince Lobkowitz, and the Archduke Rudolph--even
guaranteed him a yearly income with the sole condition that
he remain in Vienna.
VIENNESE CAREER
The last 30 years of Beethoven's life were shaped by a series
of personal crises, the first of which was the onset of deafness.
The early symptoms, noticeable to the composer already before
1800, affected him socially more than musically. His reactions--despair,
resignation, and defiance--are conveyed in letters to two
friends in 1801 and in a document--half letter and half will--addressed
to his brothers in late 1802 and now known as the "Heiligenstadt
testament." Resolving finally to "seize fate by
the throat," he emerged from the crisis with a series
of triumphant works that mark the beginning of a new period
in his stylistic development.
A second crisis a decade later was the breaking off of a relationship
with an unnamed lady (probably Antonie Brentano, the wife
of a friend) known to us as the "Immortal Beloved,"
as Beethoven addressed her in a series of letters in July
1812. This was apparently the most serious of several such
relationships with women who were in some way out of his reach,
and its traumatic conclusion was followed by a lengthy period
of resignation and reduced musical activity.
During this time Beethoven's deafness advanced to the stage
that he could no longer perform publicly, and he required
a slate or little notebooks (now known as "conversation
books") to communicate with visitors. The death of his
brother Caspar Carl in 1815 led to a 5-year legal struggle
for custody of Caspar's son Karl, then 9 years old, in whom
Beethoven saw a last chance for the domestic life that had
otherwise eluded him. His possessiveness of Karl provoked
a final crisis in the summer of 1826, when the young man attempted
suicide. Shortly thereafter, Beethoven's health began to fail,
and he died on Mar. 26, 1827 in Vienna.
BEETHOVEN'S MUSIC
Traditionally Beethoven's works are grouped into early, middle,
and late periods. The early works, up to about 1802, show
a progressive mastery of the high classical style of Haydn
and Mozart. Beethoven's formal studies in counterpoint (with
Haydn and Johann ALBRECHTSBERGER), beginning in 1792, and
his private study of the best new music of the time, particularly
Haydn's symphonies, improved his treatment of both form and
texture. During this period he wrote primarily for the PIANO
and for chamber ensembles dominated by the piano. He approached
the less familiar genres of quartet, symphony, oratorio, and
opera with great caution, perhaps fearing comparison with
Haydn and Mozart in these areas. His first six string quartets,
op. 18, date from 1798-1800, the first symphony from 1800
and the second from 1801-02. He wrote a ballet, The Creatures
of Prometheus, in 1800-01 and an oratorio, Christ on the Mount
of Olives, in 1802-03.
A general growth in the proportions and rhetorical power of
Beethoven's works in the period 1798-1802 culminates in the
highly dramatic compositions that mark the beginning of the
middle period in 1803. The earliest of these--the Third Symphony
(Eroica, 1803), the opera Fidelio (1803-05), and the Waldstein
(1804) and Appassionata (1804) sonatas--have a heroic cast
that seems to respond to the initial fears provoked by Beethoven's
deafness. In the works composed from about 1806 until 1812,
this heroic character alternates with an Olympian serenity.
The characteristic symphonic and chamber works from this period
are the Fourth (1806), Fifth (1805-07), and Sixth (1807-08)
symphonies; the Fourth (1805-06) and Fifth (Emperor, 1809)
piano concertos; the Violin Concerto
(1806); the Rasumovsky quartets (1806); the piano trios, op.
70 (1808) and op. 97 (Archduke, 1811); the Coriolanus Overture
(1807); and the incidental music for Goethe's drama Egmont
(1810).
This monumental middle-period style began to lose its attraction
for Beethoven after 1812, the year of the Seventh and Eighth
symphonies. The years 1813 and 1814 are not rich in impressive
new works, and beginning in 1815 his music became generally
less dramatic and more introspective. The first group of works
in this new, late-period style includes the song cycle An
die ferne Geliebte, op. 98 (To the Distant Beloved, 1816);
the piano sonata, op. 101 (1816); and the two sonatas for
cello and piano, op. 102 (1815). In these works (1820-22),
and string quartets, op. 127, 130, 131, 132, and 135 (1824-26),
Beethoven relied less on the classical three- or four-movement
format, dominated by a dramatic first movement in sonata form,
and more on the juxtaposition of movements (from two to seven)
of widely differing style and character. In particular, he
favored variation and fugal procedures in which the hidden
implications of his themes emerge gradually. Occasionally
he reverted to elements of the heroic middle-period style,
as, for example, in the Hammerklavier Sonata, op. 106 (1817-18);
the Missa Solemnis (1818-23); and the Ninth (Choral) Symphony
(completed 1823). Even these works, however, are colored by
a new immediacy of expression.
As Beethoven grew more isolated, from both his physical surroundings
and the popular stylistic tendencies of the day, his music
tended increasingly to expressive extremes. Passages of sublime
contemplation join with simple folk melodies, impassioned
recitatives, and abstract archaisms in a wholly personal synthesis.
BEETHOVEN'S IMPORTANCE
Beethoven's music has never lost its central place in the
concert repertory. Some works had an immediate and specific
impact on the next generation of composers. The influence
of the popular Seventh Symphony, for example, can be heard
in SCHUBERT's "Great" Symphony in C Major, MENDELSSOHN's
"Italian" Symphony, BERLIOZ's Harold in Italy, and
WAGNER's Symphony in C. The influence of the Ninth Symphony
was even more far-reaching; its special character had a profound
effect on BRUCKNER and BRAHMS, and its combination of instrumental
and choral forces prompted a series of hybrid symphonic works,
from Berlioz to MAHLER. The highly expressive quality of all
Beethoven's music inspired poetic interpretations and encouraged
a century of romantic instrumental works with programmatic
overtones.
Beethoven himself became a powerful symbol, the prototype
of the modern artist-hero as opposed to the artist-craftsman
of the preerevolutionary Europe. His fierce independence and
his painfully achieved artistic triumph over personal adversity,
especially in the dramatically conceived works of the middle
period, made him a model for those later composers such as
Wagner who sought to teach or preach through art. At the same
time, his fidelity to classical principles of composition,
that is, his use of large-scale structure rather than local
thematic events to achieve his most profound effects, has
made his works the single most important source for the various
systems of analysis developed by modern theorists and pedagogues.
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