Germany). His mother
was Magdalena Keverich
and his father was
Johann Beethoven. They
named their son after
his grandfather.
Beethoven's musical
talent manifested itself
early, and his father
attempted,
unsuccessfully, to
exploit the boy as a
prodigy.
Beethoven moved to
Vienna when he was
22, where he studied
under
Joseph Haydn. In
Vienna he earned a
reputation as a
piano virtuoso and
improviser, and began
publishing his own
compositions soon after.
By 1800, he was
considered one of the
most important of a
generation of young
composers who followed
after Haydn and
Mozart. By the early
1800s he had
established his
reputation as a great
and daring composer,
enshrined by
E. T. A. Hoffman as
one of the three great
"Romantic" composers in
a review from 1810,
which called the
Fifth Symphony, in
the key of C minor, "one
of the most important
works of the age".
Beethoven began to
lose his hearing by 1801
at the latest. There was
an increasing "roar" in
his ears. This severe
form of
tinnitus would
result, after a short
time, in his being
unable to appreciate
music, or even converse
with others. The cause
of his deafness is not
known for certain, but
has been variously
attributed to
syphilis,
lead poisoning, a
chill he caught in 1796
which led to a disease
believed to be
typhus, or possibly
even his habit of
immersing his head in
cold water to stay
awake. Over time, he
came to be able to hear
little or nothing
through it. In 1802, he
became depressed, and
considered committing
suicide - he left Vienna
for a time, but while in
a small German town, he
wrote the "Heiligenstadt
Testament", where he
resolved to continue
living through his art.
He continued composing,
even as his ability to
hear deteriorated. After
a failed attempt to
perform his own Piano
Concerto No. 5 in E flat
- called "The Emperor" -
he never performed in
public again as a
musician.
His medical
condition, however, has
indirectly provided a
unique historical
record, because he kept
conversation books
discussing music and
other issues, and giving
an insight into his
thought. Even today, the
conversation books form
the basis for
investigation into how
he felt his music should
be performed, and his
relationship to art -
which he took very
seriously.
Despite his deafness,
beginning in 1803 he
declared that "I am but
lately little satisfied
with my works, I shall
take a new way." The
first major work of this
new way was the
"Eroica" Symphony,
in E flat. While other
composers had written
symphonies with implied
programs, or stories,
this symphony was also
longer and larger in
scope than any other
written. It made huge
demands on the players,
because at that time
there were few
orchestras devoted to
concert music that were
independent of royal or
aristocratic patrons,
and hence playing
standards at concerts
were often haphazard.
But it was a success.
Over the following
decade, his compositions
included five string
quartets, five
symphonies, the opera
Fidelio, three
piano trios, a series of
piano sonatas, and music
written for home
musicians, from which he
made much of his income.
However, around 1814,
Beethoven experienced a
period of crisis in his
personal life, and quite
possibly in his artistic
life as well. One critic
wrote "the composing of
great works seems behind
him", and other people
lamented that he was no
longer creative. The few
works that date from
this period are often of
an experimental
character, including the
song cycle "An die
ferne Geliebte" and the
piano sonata Opus 90:
these works served as
inspirations to the
later generation of
Romantic composers.
This period also
produced the
extraordinarily
expressive, almost
incoherent, song "An die
Hoffnung", Opus 94.
Then Beethoven began
a renewed study of older
music, including works
by
J. S. Bach and
Handel, then being
published in the first
attempts at complete
editions. He composed
"The Consecration of the
House" overture, which
was the first work to
attempt to incorporate
his new influences. But
it is when he returned
to the keyboard to
compose his first new
piano sonatas in almost
a decade, that a new
style, now called his
"late period", emerged.
The works of the late
period are commonly held
to include the last five
piano sonatas and the
Diabelli Variations,
the last two sonatas for
cello and piano, the
late quartets (see
below), and two works
for very large forces:
the
Missa Solemnis and
the
Ninth Symphony
("Choral"), perhaps
Beethoven's best known
work. The Ninth Symphony
is the first to use a
chorus, and its
dimensions were, again,
larger than any previous
work.
Beethoven then turned
to writing string
quartets - the war
between
Austria and
France had
devastated his finances
- for 100 gold ducats
each. This series of
quartets - the "late
quartets" - would go far
beyond what either
musicians or audiences
were ready for at that
time. They would
continue to inspire
musicians - from
Richard Wagner to
B?a Bart? - for
their unique forms and
ideas.
Beethoven, even as he
composed these last
works, became ill, and
on March 26th, 1827, he
died, after several
operations failed to
stem the tide of an
infection.
Musical style and
innovations
Beethoven is viewed as a
transitional figure
between the
Classical and
Romantic eras of
musical history. Above
all, his works
distinguish themselves
from those of any prior
composer through his
creation of large,
extended architectonic
structures characterized
by the extensive
development of
musical material,
themes, and motifs,
usually by means of
"modulation" (key
change) through a
variety of
keys or harmonic
regions. This expanded
harmonic realm creates a
sense of a vast musical
and experiential space
through which the music
moves, and the
development of musical
material creates a sense
of unfolding drama in
this space. In this way
Beethoven's music
parallels the
simultaneous development
of the
novel in literature,
a literary form focused
on the life drama and
development of one or
more individuals through
complex life
circumstances, and of
contemporaneous
German idealism's
philosophical notion
of self, mind, or spirit
that unfolds through a
complex process of
contradictions and
tensions between the
subjective and objective
until a resolution or
synthesis occurs in
which all of these
contradictions and
developmental phases
have been resolved or
encompassed in a higher
unity.
Beethoven continued
to expand the
"development" section of
works, whereas in the
early works of Haydn and
Mozart, Beethoven's
major immediate
predecessors and
influences, the
development section of a
sonata form was
quite brief (though over
time they enlarged it).
Beethoven continued this
trend, by making the
development section not
merely longer, but also
more structured. The
very long development
section of the
Eroica Symphony, for
example, is divided into
four roughly equal
sections, making it, in
effect, a sonata form
within a sonata form.
The first movement alone
of this symphony is as
long as an entire
typical Italian-style
Mozart symphony from the
1770s. His focus on the
development would, like
others of his
innovations, set a trend
that later composers
would follow.
Although Beethoven
wrote many beautiful and
lyrical melodies,
another radical
innovation of his music,
compared especially to
that of Mozart and
Haydn, is his extensive
use of forceful, marked,
and even stark rhythmic
patterns throughout his
compositions and, in
particular, in his
themes and motifs, some
of which are primarily
rhythmic rather than
melodic. Some of his
most famous themes, such
as those of the first
movements of the
Third,
Fifth, and
Ninth symphonies,
are primarily
non-melodic rhythmic
figures consisting of
notes of a single chord,
and the themes of the
last movements of the
Third and
Seventh symphonies
could more accurately be
described as rhythms
rather than as
melodies. This use
of rhythm was
particularly well suited
to the primacy of
development in
Beethoven's music, since
a single rhythmic
pattern can more easily
than a melody be taken
through a succession of
different, even remote,
keys and harmonic
regions while retaining
and conveying an
underlying unity. This
allowed him to combine
different features of
his themes in a wide
variety of ways,
extending the techniques
of
Haydn in development
(see
Sonata Form).
He also continued
another trend - towards
larger orchestras - that
went on until the first
decade of the 20th
century, and moved the
center of the sound
downwards in the
orchestra, to the violas
and the lower register
of the violins and
cellos, giving his music
a heavier and darker
feel than
Haydn or
Mozart. In his
Fifth Symphony he
introduced a striking
motif, drawn from a late
Haydn symphony, in the
very opening bar, which
he echoed in various
forms in all four
movements of the
symphony. This is the
first important
occurrence of cyclical
form.
He was also fond of
making usual what had
previously been unusual:
in the Fifth Symphony,
instead of using a
stately minuet, as had
been the norm for the
"dance" movement of a
four-movement work, he
created a dark march,
which he used as the
third movement and ran
into the fourth without
interruption. While one
can point to previous
works which had one or
more of these individual
features, his music,
combined with the use of
operatic scoring that he
learned from Mehul and
Cherubini, created a
work which was
altogether novel in
effect - too novel, in
fact, for some critics
of the time. On the
other hand, his
contemporary Spohr found
the finale "too
baroque", though he
praised the second
movement as being in
"good Romantic style".
His
Ninth Symphony
included a chorus and
solo voices in the 4th
movement for the first
time, and made extensive
use of fugues, which
were generally
considered to be a
different form of music,
and again unusual in
symphonies.
He wrote one opera,
Fidelio. It has
been said that he wrote
beautiful vocal music
without regard for the
limitations of human
singers, treating the
voice as if it were a
symphonic instrument -
even though his
conversation books note
his desire to try and
make his music singable,
and include references
which indicate that he
had remembered the
singing lessons of his
father.
Beethoven's
development and works
are typically divided
into three periods: an
early, youthful period
in which his works show
especially the influence
of Mozart and Haydn; a
middle, mature period in
which he developed his
distinctive individual
style, sometimes
characterized as
"heroic"; and a late
period, in which he
wrote works of a highly
evolved, individuated,
sometimes fragmented and
unorthodox style
sometimes characterized
as "transcendent" and
"sublime", where he
tried to combine the
baroque ideas of Handel
and Bach with his icons
Mozart and Haydn. In his
late years he called
Handel "my grand
master".
In contrast to
Mozart, he labored
heavily over his work,
leaving intermediate
drafts that provide
considerable insight
into his creative
process. Early drafts of
his Ninth Symphony used
rough vertical marks on
the score in place of
actual notes, to
indicate the structure
he had in mind for the
melody. Studies of his
sketch books show the
working out of dozens of
variations on a
particular theme,
changing themes to fit
with an overall
structure that evolved
over time, and extensive
sketching of
counter-melodies.
Personal beliefs and
their musical influence
Beethoven was much taken
by the ideals of
the Enlightenment.
He initially dedicated
his third symphony, the
Eroica, to
Napoleon in the
belief that the general
would sustain the
democratic ideals of
the
French Revolution,
but later crossed out
the dedication as
Napoleon's imperial
ambitions became clear.
The fourth movement of
his Ninth Symphony is a
setting of
Schiller's ode
An die Freude
("To Joy"), an
optimistic hymn
championing the
brotherhood of humanity.
Symphonies
Beethoven completed nine
numbered
symphonies. His
first symphony, in C, is
reliant upon Haydn
models. His Symphony No.
2 in D extends
Beethoven's
understanding of the
symphony. His first
famous symphony was
No. 3 in E-flat,
better known as the
Eroica. As
mentioned, although this
was originally dedicated
to the French First
Consul,
Napoleon, Beethoven
angrily ripped off the
dedication after the
Frenchman declared
himself emperor.
The
Symphony No. 4 in B-flat
is a remarkable example
of good humor. Even more
famous is
Symphony No. 5 in C
minor, which starts
with a well-known theme
which people say sounds
like fate knocking at
the door. The Sixth
Symphony, in F, is
better known as the
Pastoral. It is
based on country life,
and made up of five
movements, of which the
most famous are the
second movement, Scene
by the Brook, and the
third, Merry Gathering
of Country Folk.
The
Seventh and
Eighth symphonies
are more rhythmic, the
second movement of the
eighth being based on
the
metronome, an
invention by Beethoven's
friend
Johann Maelzel. The
final complete symphony
is
Symphony No. 9 in D
minor, composed in
1823 (and occasionally
referred to as
Choral), whose last
movement, as mentioned,
was a setting of
Schiller's poem
celebrating joy. A choir
and four vocal soloists
appear in this movement.
Beethoven also made
sketches for a tenth
symphony (Barry Cooper
later made a performing
version of its first
movement, though it is
mainly conjecture). He
also composed the
so-called "Battle
Symphony",
Wellington's Victory,
a work in two movements
commemorating the Duke
of Wellington's defeat
of Napoleon in
Spain. It is
considered to be
something of a
pot-boiler, and less
than satisfactory.
Works
For a complete list, see
List of works by
Beethoven.
