Ludwig Van Beethoven
For many people, Beethoven is the greatest of all composer. His music expresses every kind of emotion, from the passionate to the tender, yet technically, it is never anything other than faultless. From the beginning to the end of his creative life, Beethoven constantly expanded his style and ideals, and his work forms a bridge between the Classical and Romantic periods. His increasing deafness, from the age of about 30, came as a terrible blow.
He was born on December 15 or 16 in Bonn, Germany. In 1782
studies with court organist Christian Gottlob Neefe. On 1787
he visits Vienna, but returns to Bonn when his mother dies.
He dies in Vienna on March 26, 1827.
Beethoven lived through the turmoil of the French Revolution
and the Napoleonic Wars and he believed passionately in the
French revolutionary ideas of "Liberty, Equality, and
Brotherhood." He saw himself as a new kind of artist:
One who wrote not just for the church or the aristocracy,
as most composers before him had, but for people everywhere,
and for posterity as well as for his own time. This sense
of destiny caused him to struggle over some of his compositions
for years.
Beethoven still based much of his music on the Classical forms
and styles of the late 18th century-the symphony, sonata,
and string quartet. But he filled his compositions with a
new sense of freedom and personal expression that heralded
the much more emotional and poetic Romantic period of the
19th century; and he influenced nearly every composer who
