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Baptized December 17, 1770, in Bonn, Germany
Died March 26, 1827, in Vienna, Austria
Ludwig van Beethoven’s musical presence has dominated classical music for more than two centuries. The unprecedented dynamism of his music impressed his contemporaries, and the works in which that dynamism was expressed most emphatically—especially the symphonies, concertos, and overtures—soon formed the heart of the concert repertory. There they have remained, exerting a profound influence on how music is heard and valued, and indeed on how it is written. His work had an enormous effect on composers from Schubert and Berlioz to Debussy and Mahler.
Trained by his father and other local musicians, but without much regular schooling, Beethoven made his public debut in March 1778. Soon after that he became the pupil of Christian Gottlob Neefe, who had him playing preludes and fugues from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier.
In 1787 he went to Vienna, where almost certainly he met Mozart. However, he came back after two weeks to be with his ailing mother before her death. His father was already drinking heavily, and Beethoven at 18 took charge of the family. He played viola in the orchestra, undertook court commissions for cantatas marking the change of emperor, and enjoyed the friendship and protection of Count Waldstein and others. Beethoven left for Vienna in November 1792 to study with Haydn, the most distinguished master of the day. As Waldstein wrote in the album he took with him: “You shall receive Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands.”
The relationship was not good—Beethoven was a mistrustful pupil, Haydn seemingly a complacent teacher, and both may have been glad to part when Haydn left for England in January 1794. Beethoven then studied counterpoint with Albrechtsberger for over a year, while continuing to establish himself as a virtuoso pianist and composer in Viennese high society. Among those who gave him support were several who had been patrons of Haydn and Mozart, including Prince Lichnowsky, Baron van Swieten, Prince Lobkowitz, and Count Razumovsky. He also began appearing in public concerts in March 1795, playing concertos of his own and Mozart’s, and doing what earned him most astonishment: improvising.
He was slower to publish anything, because he wanted to be sure his Op. 1 would be remarkable. It was: the set of three piano trios that came out in the summer of 1795, just before Haydn’s return. Op. 2 was a set of piano sonatas, dedicated to Haydn. Right from this early point he seems to have wanted to keep opus numbers for his important works, to reflect his priorities rather than publishing convenience. That was new. By 1798 he had reached, through further sonatas and chamber pieces, Op. 11, while other compositions were published without opus number. It was perhaps also out of complete confidence in his artistic status that, in 1798, he began making his sketches in bound books, which he kept by him, providing a legacy for future scholars. They help show how the urgent feeling of growth within each of his pieces reflects a painstaking process of development in the act of composition, how he would slowly build themes and forms, over months and sometimes years.
In 1798 he set himself to completing works in the two genres Haydn had made his own: the string quartet and the symphony. His six quartets Op.18 were published in 1800, and his Symphony No. 1 was introduced at a concert he gave on April 2 that year; the program also included his immediately popular Septet. His ability to enjoy these triumphs was limited, for by now he was aware of increasing deafness, a condition he admitted to friends in 1801. It did not interfere with his creative work, but, as he said, it caused him to withdraw from society. Yet though the years of spectacular improvising in aristocratic salons were over, he retained his weakness for high-born young women, notably including at this time the Countess Giulietta Guicciardi. In 1802 he spent a long summer in Heiligenstadt, outside Vienna, composing his Symphony No. 2. There he wrote a document to his brothers, the Heiligenstadt Testament, in which he spoke of his passionate despair and of overcoming thoughts of suicide.
He could not expect romantic interest from the aristocracy, only patronage, esteem, and caring friendship, which he duly received. In 1809 three of his patrons—Archduke Rudolph, Prince Kinsky, and Prince Lobkowitz—clubbed together to guarantee him an income, as long as he remained in Vienna, and so he was freed from serious financial worries.
The pressure to compose came, rather, from within. In 1809 he wrote his last concerto (the “Emperor”), the “Harp” Quartet, and the “Les Adieux” Sonata, all works in the heroic key of E-flat. He also began music for a hero of liberation: the Egmont of Goethe’s drama. Then in 1812, on a visit to the spa town of Teplitz, in Bohemia, he and Goethe met. He was dismayed by Goethe’s courtliness, which he found unbecoming in a poet; Goethe found him “an utterly untamed personality,” whose scorn for the world caused difficulties for himself and others. Such comments give us the image of him as a bear of a man, unruly but lovable, and loving, though with an irascibility that deafness surely intensified. He had a passionate moral sense: he was loyal to his friends, dutiful to his brothers, and intolerant of sexual frivolity.
Marriage to him was an ideal as high as heroism, and similarly a sacrifice that raised human dignity. In this same year of 1812 he descended furiously on his brother Johann for taking a mistress. And close to the same time he wrote his letter to “the Immortal Beloved” (probably Antonie Brentano), a letter that is both a declaration of love and a stout resignation to celibacy. Consciously he saw music as the only partner with whom he could live.
It was in 1814 that, his deafness increasing, he appeared for the last time in public playing an important piano part, that of the “Archduke” Trio. And that same year he acquired parental responsibilities in caring for his nine-year-old nephew Karl, after the death of his brother Caspar Carl. His struggle for guardianship with his sister-in-law went on until 1820, with corresponding interruptions to the boy’s education, and after that there were tussles with Karl himself.
Meanwhile he devoted the last 10 years of his life to piano music, string quartets, and two immense scores: the Missa solemnis and Symphony No. 9. The five late quartets have always been regarded as among music’s Himalayas. They bring 19th-century drive to bear on 18th-century fugue and variations: often, and notably in the Große Fuge, the result is fiercely dissonant, befitting the clash of eras.
Beethoven’s funeral was a public event in Vienna: an actor stood at the graveside to deliver an oration by the poet-dramatist Franz Grillparzer. The contrast with Mozart’s unceremonious burial in the same city, 35 years or so before, could hardly have been more marked. A new age had come, and, as the crowd knew, this lonely man had provided its first music.
—Paul Griffiths
Adapted from the article on Beethoven in Paul Griffiths, The Penguin Companion to Classical Music (Penguin, 2005).
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