Composers › Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
The bridge between the Classical and the Romantic era: he kept composing masterpieces even after he had become completely deaf.
Life
He was born in Bonn, Germany, in December 1770. His father, a court singer, pushed him to perform as a child prodigy on the model of Mozart.
In 1792 he moved to Vienna, where he studied with Haydn and became famous as a pianist with overwhelming improvisations. Around the age of thirty he began to lose his hearing: in 1802 he poured out his despair in a letter to his brothers, the “Heiligenstadt Testament”, but decided to keep writing.
He composed 32 piano sonatas, 9 symphonies, concertos and quartets. The Ninth Symphony, first performed in 1824 when he was already deaf, ends with the Ode to Joy, today the anthem of the European Union.
Portrait: Joseph Karl Stieler (1820), public domain, from Wikimedia Commons.
Curiosities
- Für Elise was not published by him: the manuscript was found and printed only in 1867, forty years after his death. Who “Elise” was is not known for sure.
- The name “Moonlight” is not his: it was given by the critic Ludwig Rellstab, who compared the first movement to moonlight on Lake Lucerne.
- When he was almost deaf, he used ear trumpets and pressed a wooden rod against the piano to feel its sound.
At the piano
- Beethoven lives on contrasts: sudden soft and loud, accents, rests. Follow the written dynamics.
- In the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata change the pedal at every change of harmony, so the sound does not blur.
- In fast passages practise slowly with the metronome and raise the speed a little at a time.
Pieces to learn 5 pieces
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