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Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven, one of the supreme creative artists our civilization has produced, was also the most influential composer in history. Nearly all subsequent developments in "classical" music owe something to his work, and so does the modern concept of the artist’s role in society.
Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany, in December 1770. His father, a court singer eager to exploit his son’s precocious and prodigious musical talent, held him to a rigorous program of musical discipline. This did not prevent the young Beethoven from developing an intense love of music, but that dominating, all-consuming love also rendered exceedingly difficult his friendships, his love affairs and even his everyday dealings with the outside world. His problems were exacerbated by a hearing loss that he began to notice when he was in his late 20s and that made him seriously consider suicide for a time. When his deafness became acute, it isolated him even further from other people. The isolation, however, allowed him — forced him, perhaps — to discover and explore new approaches to compositional and instrumental techniques, and created in him a belief that music ought to help light the path along which humanity was groping, from misery toward happiness, from ignorance toward knowledge.
Indeed, he was one of the first major artists to believe that art had a moral mission, in a humanistic rather than a specifically religious sense; he transmuted his mistrust of individual human beings into an overwhelmingly affirmative love of humankind. His nine symphonies, 16 string quartets, 32 piano sonatas and dozens upon dozens of other major compositions constitute not only an œuvre of a richness paralleled by few other creative geniuses, but also a spiritual autobiography of their creator. Beethoven spent most of his active life in and near Vienna, where he was an eccentric although much respected and far from unloved figure, and he died there on March 26, 1827.
Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany, in December 1770. His father, a court singer eager to exploit his son’s precocious and prodigious musical talent, held him to a rigorous program of musical discipline. This did not prevent the young Beethoven from developing an intense love of music, but that dominating, all-consuming love also rendered exceedingly difficult his friendships, his love affairs and even his everyday dealings with the outside world. His problems were exacerbated by a hearing loss that he began to notice when he was in his late 20s and that made him seriously consider suicide for a time. When his deafness became acute, it isolated him even further from other people. The isolation, however, allowed him — forced him, perhaps — to discover and explore new approaches to compositional and instrumental techniques, and created in him a belief that music ought to help light the path along which humanity was groping, from misery toward happiness, from ignorance toward knowledge.
Indeed, he was one of the first major artists to believe that art had a moral mission, in a humanistic rather than a specifically religious sense; he transmuted his mistrust of individual human beings into an overwhelmingly affirmative love of humankind. His nine symphonies, 16 string quartets, 32 piano sonatas and dozens upon dozens of other major compositions constitute not only an œuvre of a richness paralleled by few other creative geniuses, but also a spiritual autobiography of their creator. Beethoven spent most of his active life in and near Vienna, where he was an eccentric although much respected and far from unloved figure, and he died there on March 26, 1827.
