Beethoven

Beethoven
•Name: Ludwig Van Beethoven
•Born: Bonn, Germany. December 16th, 1770
•Died: Vienna. March 26th, 1827
His first works as a musician
•1789 – he worked in the German court to support his
family.
•1790 – Funereal cantata with Neefe.
•1792 – Beethoven goes to Vienna to work with Haynd
•He also studied with Schenk, Albrechtsberger and Salieri.
•1794 – he amazed the aristocracy
•1795 – his public debut
“Heroic decade”
• From 1803 to 1812
symphony no. 3 opus 55
symphony no. 8 opus 93
Impaired hearing
•1802 – Beethoven realized that his impaired
hearing
was incurable.
•He became a solitary person because of his
deafness.
•1814 – Beethoven offered his last concert.
•1818 – He became completely deaf and he had to
use note books for conversation.
A love story
•Beethoven always chose unavailable women from
the aristocracy, married women or both.
•In the letter to his “eternally-beloved”, he
expressed all of his feelings to the only women that
could love him back.
•Maynard Solomon realized in 1977 that this
woman was Antonie Bretano, a merchant’s wife
from Vienna
•His ethics and his afraid to marriage made
Beethoven gave up to this relationship though all
the emotional problems it meant.
“Late period”
• His profoundest music reflects something of what he
had been through.
• There are seven piano sonatas in his ‘late period’
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Turbulent Hammerklavier
Rebarbative fugue
A Choral Symphony, no.9 in d Minor (Ode to Joy)
String quartets
Spiritual depth
1826 - 1827
• 1826 – Beethoven got pneumonia.
• 1827 – he died
• More than 20000 attended the funeral.
• Beethoven had become a public figure.
• His hand scripts and possessions were sold.