As a boy he showed an aptitude for music, and at some time in his teens — perhaps in the winter of —4 , when he became 16 — he chose Beethoven as his piano teacher. Rudolph treated Beethoven with consideration and humorous understanding; and Beethoven, though irked and sometimes provoked into ill-behaviour by the inevitable court protocol that surrounded a royal archduke, showed an almost childlike devotion to Rudolph, to whom he dedicated several of his greatest works. The warmth of this relationship was to be highlighted by several incidents in the months that followed the signing of the annuity.
For the second time within four years a French army bore down on Vienna, causing the imperial family, including Rudolph, to leave the city. Nevertheless it was decided that Vienna should be defended. As a result the city was bombarded by French howitzers throughout the night of 11 May and the following morning.
The summer of was a miserable one for Beethoven. Almost all his friends had, like the court, fled from the city, and communication with the outside world was greatly restricted.
Nor could he search for inspiration and recreation in the countryside. He spent some weeks therefore in copying extracts from the theoretical works of C. Beethoven intended not only the titles but the dates to be inserted in the published work. Earlier in the year, before the French invasion, Beethoven finished the greater part of the Fifth Piano Concerto, also dedicated to Rudolph. In the spring or summer of he also wrote three songs op.
Bettina obviously charmed Beethoven; rather less is known about another woman with whom he had been more seriously involved only a little earlier. For it seems clear that in the spring of Beethoven was more or less solemnly considering marriage. Not only did he turn his attention to his wardrobe and personal appearance; he even wrote to his old friend Wegeler in Bonn for a copy of his baptismal certificate, necessary evidence of his exact age. The woman who was the object of these concerns was a certain Therese Malfatti, the niece of Dr Johann Malfatti who had become his physician for a short while after the death of the trusted Dr Schmidt in his doctor since about It looks as though Beethoven made a proposal of marriage and it was turned down.
No doubt it was radically misconceived; there is no evidence that the family of Therese, who was not yet 20, would have found Beethoven, then in his 40th year, an acceptable suitor, and the one surviving letter from him to her, though warm enough, is not particularly intimate. He was urged to travel, perhaps because of his distracted state, but instead he merely moved to Baden for two months. The compositions on which he worked that summer include the String Quartet in F minor op.
The earlier months of seem to have been a time of comparative inactivity in composing, though a number of larger works, including the Choral Fantasy and the oratorio written several years earlier, had to be seen through the press.
He evidently returned to Vienna refreshed and began work on the Seventh Symphony, which he completed in the spring of , going on without a break to the Eighth Symphony. To judge from the sketchbook used for work on these symphonies, he at one time considered following them with a third, probably in D minor. For the second year running Beethoven decided to visit Teplitz, travelling via Prague and arriving there on 5 July.
Next morning he started to write a love-letter to an unknown woman, which — since it has been discussed almost as much as any music he ever wrote — will be considered shortly. But what was even more interesting to Beethoven was the presence there of Goethe, and the long-awaited meeting between them finally took place.
The contact was a cordial one, the reactions of the two men predictable. To his friend Zelter, Goethe confided:. His talent amazed me; unfortunately he is an utterly untamed personality, who is not altogether in the wrong in holding the world to be detestable but surely does not make it any the more enjoyable either for himself or for others by his attitude.
He is easily excused, on the other hand, and much to be pitied, as his hearing is leaving him, which perhaps mars the musical part of his nature less than the social. He then revisited Karlsbad, and finally returned once more to Teplitz, still apparently in search of improved health.
He applied both to the bishop and to the civil authorities, and ultimately obtained a police order to have the girl expelled from Linz. But before it could be effective Johann played a trump card by marrying Therese, on 8 November.
Nothing more is heard of him that year apart from the preparations for a concert with the French violinist Pierre Rode on 29 December, for which he completed the G major Violin Sonata op. The rebuff by his brother was the second emotional crisis of , a year that represented some sort of watershed for Beethoven. The Brentanos were in Vienna in the years —12 , so that Antonie could be with her dying father and subsequently wind up his estate.
It is clear not merely that she disliked the idea of returning to Frankfurt, where she was most unhappy, but that she did everything possible to postpone it, delaying the event until the last months of Beethoven had been introduced to the family by Bettina in , and became a warm friend not only of Antonie but of her husband Franz and their ten-year-old daughter Maximiliane — for whom in June he wrote an easy piano trio in one movement woo Since the Brentanos had not only been in close contact with Beethoven in Vienna shortly before his departure at the end of June, but were also in Prague while he was there 2—4 July and moved on to Karlsbad on 5 July, Antonie Brentano fulfils all the chronological and topographical requirements for being the addressee of the famous letter.
And there is no doubt that Beethoven, though vociferous in his condemnation of adulterous relations, was especially attracted to women who were married or who were in some other way already involved with a man. Beethoven describes his harrowing trip to Teplitz from Prague, where the relationship reached a crisis; Antonie may have known or suspected that she was pregnant she gave birth on 8 March Doubtless the ambiguities were clarified when, later in the month, Beethoven joined the Brentanos at Karlsbad.
It initiated a long period of markedly reduced creativity, and there is evidence that he became deeply depressed. Henceforth Beethoven accepted the impossibility of achieving a sustained relationship with a woman and entering into a shared domestic routine, though he was scarcely reconciled to it; even in , as will be seen, he had by no means overcome his longing. Some of the hints contained in the letter are stated more baldly in diary entries made about this time. To forgo a great act which might be and might remain so … O God, God, look down on the unhappy B.
But by a stroke of irony that may contain an inner truth, at this very time he pledged himself to a responsibility that was increasingly to encroach on the exercise of his art and indeed to dominate his emotional outlook in the last 12 years of his life. Caspar Carl became seriously ill with tuberculosis, and on 12 April he signed a declaration appointing Beethoven guardian of his son Karl, then aged six, in the event of his death. At this time Beethoven too was financially embarrassed.
The severe depreciation of the Austrian currency as a result of the war, leading to an official devaluation in February , had reduced the value of his annuity of florins to little more than florins. This may be one reason why Beethoven, even though he was still nursing secret sorrows, nevertheless became more of a public and social figure in the next year or so, reaching for popular acclaim by way of the concert hall and the theatre.
He not only engaged a servant, but appears to have kept him for three years. This bombastic piece of programme music, with its fanfares, cannonades, and fugal treatment of God Save the King , was thunderously acclaimed at two charity concerts on 8 and 12 December — together with the Seventh Symphony, which had not been heard before.
On that occasion the Eighth Symphony was one of its companion pieces. Beethoven agreed but stipulated that there would have to be a good many changes. The poet G. Treitschke was then stage manager at the theatre, and he undertook to make the necessary alterations in the libretto. The new overture, not ready for the opening night, was given at the second performance, on 26 May. The vocal score of the opera was prepared by the young pianist Ignaz Moscheles, then just And March was the date at which another enthusiastic follower of Beethoven later said he had first been introduced to him: this was the year-old Anton Schindler, at the time a law student and a good violinist.
For Schindler the claims of music proved stronger than those of the law, and by he was leader of the orchestra at the Theater in der Josefstadt. Thus it is unfortunately unreliable even in its account of the years after during which Schindler was often in very close contact with the composer; the material of value that it contains is hard to distinguish from his fabrications.
A later edition of his biography, although greatly expanded and indeed largely rewritten, was no more accurate. In the summer of excitement began to mount in Vienna as preparations were made to welcome the crowned heads of Europe for the Congress of Vienna. But before starting work on anything of that nature, he quickly completed a piano sonata op. The fawningly inflated text of Der glorreiche Augenblick op.
Beethoven could not have had a more enthusiastic admirer than Weissenbach; when the two men met, they took a great liking to each other, and the cantata was a result of their collaboration.
They had more than music in common, for Weissenbach too was deaf. Not only were his compositions applauded by large audiences, but he also received in person the commendations of royal dignitaries. This last aspect is typified in one final congress piece, the little Polonaise op. His deafness had latterly become much more severe. Beethoven now found himself possessed not only of fame but of a good deal of money, which he invested in bank shares. Moreover, as a result of a settlement reached with the Kinsky family and the goodwill of Prince Lobkowitz, most of the original value of the annuity had now been restored and the arrears made up.
In spite of this, his worries about his financial situation continued to be voiced in letters to publishers and friends abroad such as his former pupil Ries, now resident in London , whom he was trying to interest in the large number of his more recent works that were still unpublished.
But towards the end of an unhappy event occurred that immediately focussed all his concerns and anxieties. Having learnt that my brother… desires after my death to take wholly to himself my son Karl, and wholly to withdraw him from the supervision and training of his mother, and inasmuch as the best of harmony does not exist between my brother and my wife, I have found it necessary to add to my will that I by no means desire that my son be taken away from his mother, but that he shall always and so long as his future career permits remain with his mother, to which end the guardianship of him is to be exercised by her as well as by my brother… for the welfare of my child I recommend compliance to my wife and more moderation to my brother.
This is the last wish of the dying husband and brother. It proved a tragedy for Beethoven that he could not do what his brother asked. The situation in which he found himself was one that aroused deep passions and longings that he doubtless did not fully understand. Frustrated in his several attempts — however ambiguously conceived and executed — to marry and have a family of his own, he began to feel that if he had sole responsibility for Karl he could combine the discharge of a sacred duty to his brother with some of the satisfactions and fulfilments of parenthood.
But for that to be possible, he had first to convince himself and others that Johanna was quite unfit to have the custody of Karl and should be excluded from the guardianship. The struggle for possession of the nephew lasted some four and a half years, to be followed by another six in which his care and upbringing weighed heavily upon Beethoven.
As will be seen, the burdensome intensity of the relationship between uncle and nephew — or as Beethoven preferred to see it, between father and son — led to something near disaster in the summer of Before then an incalculable number of hours had been spent by Beethoven in litigation, letter-writing, quarrels, reconciliations and private agony of mind.
Six days later Beethoven appealed to the court requesting the guardianship to be transferred to himself. He took vows for the performance of his duties on 19 January. On 2 February Karl was taken from his mother and entered the private school of a certain Cajetan Giannatasio del Rio as a boarder. But Viennese society was permissive in sexual matters. Few of her contemporaries saw her in the same lurid light as her brother-in-law, in spite of the forceful and relentless way that he marshalled the case against her.
Yet that is what he now asked the Landrechte to put in his control, and the court agreed that Johanna should visit her son only at hours and places that Beethoven sanctioned — which at times was liable to mean once a month, or even less frequently. This seems to have consisted of a series of minor offences against discipline, but Karl particularly shocked the priest by speaking of his mother in abusive terms — a breach of the Fifth Commandment in which, it was later noted, Beethoven had gleefully encouraged him.
With the help of a relative with legal training, Jacob Hotschevar, she presented a series of petitions to the Landrechte. In the course of giving evidence in court on 11 December Beethoven incautiously let slip the fact that Karl was not of noble birth. From the start the Magistracy seems to have been more sympathetic to Johanna than to Beethoven. Its first action was to suspend him temporarily from the guardianship. Karl returned for a time to his mother, being instructed by a tutor and also being taught at an institute run by one Johann Kudlich.
From March to July Beethoven resigned the guardianship in favour of a Councillor Tuscher, and applied for a passport to enable Karl to be educated in Bavaria. This was of course a defeat for Beethoven. His first move was to protest at the decision; this was rejected by the Magistracy on 4 November. This application too was rejected. He now had recourse to the Court of Appeal, for whose benefit he prepared a page draft memorandum the longest extant document in his handwriting.
It is unlikely that the memorandum was ever submitted in the form in which it survives. After further scrutiny these claims were upheld by the Court of Appeal on 8 April ; a petition by Johanna to the emperor against the decision was rejected three months later. Thus in July Beethoven found that he had finally won in a struggle that had lasted for over four years.
At that time he had decided, however confusedly and irresolutely, that his creative activity was incompatible with having a wife; now he was testing whether it could be reconciled with caring for a child. The cost of those years to Beethoven is reflected in the paucity of valuable music completed in them.
Productively the years —15 were lean; apart from two cello sonatas op. This trend was continued in the following years. Instead, Beethoven during these years contented himself with elegant trivia, such as the polished march that he wrote in June for the Vienna artillery corps woo 24 , as well as continuing to compose the instrumental and vocal settings of Scottish airs that he provided for George Thomson of Edinburgh from the years to he worked intermittently on close to such settings.
And, even more significantly, he toiled hard on a number of new compositions without managing to complete them; they included a piano concerto in D, a piano trio in F minor, and a string quintet in D minor. Scores of these three works were in fact begun. These were indeed unhappy years for Beethoven.
He was now thoroughly out of sympathy with the kind of music being written and being applauded in Vienna. The aristocratic milieu that had welcomed and sheltered him in his earlier years in Vienna had been shattered by the military, political and financial upheavals of the Napoleonic wars, with the result that he had lost or broken with almost all his high-born friends apart from the Archduke Rudolph.
In spite of his popular successes in and , his general acceptance as the greatest living composer, and a resurgence of Viennese performances of his works from onwards testifying to their growing status as part of the standard repertory , Beethoven found no wide public in Vienna that he could respect, and daydreams of journeys abroad — to England, even to Italy — filled his mind.
Nor should it be supposed that the attachment to Antonie Brentano, though he had not seen her for some years, was forgotten. In September she recorded in her diary a confession of Beethoven to her father that she had overheard. Unfortunately, I have no wife. There were also difficulties of a more practical kind. Beethoven was consumed with misgivings as to his ability to look after his nephew and to run an orderly household.
The year , in particular, is marked by an immense number of letters to the kindly Nannette Streicher, a pianist and wife of the piano maker Johann Andreas Streicher, on the minutiae of domestic administration, the cost of household commodities, the employment of servants, and the like. God, God, my refuge, my rock, my all. Thou seest my inmost heart and knowest how it pains me to be obliged to compel another to suffer by my good labours for my precious Karl!!!
O hear me always, thou Ineffable One, hear me — thy unhappy, most unhappy of all mortals. Further problems were created by his slowly but unmistakably deteriorating health and especially by one aspect of it, his deepening deafness.
By he was virtually stone deaf, so conversation had to be carried on with pencil and paper. It was at first very slow. At that time he decided to accept an offer made earlier in the year by the Philharmonic Society of London. This invited him to write two grand symphonies for the Society, and to appear in person in London for the winter season of — But he made no start on a symphony, or plans for a journey to London, afterwards explaining that his health had not allowed it.
Beethoven dedicated it to the Archduke Rudolph, for whom he was now planning a work on an even grander scale. For the archduke was being made the recipient of ecclesiastical honours.
Evidently the news that the archduke was to be elevated had been known to friends in advance. Since the installation of the archbishop was set for 9 March , some way ahead, Beethoven must have felt that he could afford to proceed at a measured pace. But he had not allowed for the time about to be lost in litigation in and the first months of , or for the tendency of each section of the work to expand to a vast scale. But he persevered with it, making substantial progress in the summer and autumn of He even took on new commitments at this time, undertaking at the end of May to produce three piano sonatas within three months for the Berlin publisher Adolf Martin Schlesinger.
The sonata that was now ready was the one in E, published as op. But in illnesses both at the start of the year and in July — this time an attack of jaundice — as well as continued work on the mass resulted in the other two sonatas not coming near to completion until the end of the year.
Unlike op. This was the work now known as the Ninth Symphony. Before that he had also assembled a set of 11 bagatelles for the piano op. He found time, too, to compose a fine overture op. The piano variations need a word of explanation. Such an album was indeed published by Diabelli, though not until , with variations from 50 composers including Schubert and the year-old Liszt. But from the start Beethoven had decided to contribute not one variation but a set of them.
The nature of the symphony to which Beethoven now turned his attention can be understood as the coalescence of several diverse elements that had been stirring in his imagination, in some cases over many years. This was an intention to which he returned a number of times — in for instance, and in , in connection with sketches for an overture that later became the Namensfeier.
Another element was the desire to complete at least one symphony for the Philharmonic Society, and possibly the promised two. It was also a year of great concern with copyists and publishers. Beethoven made the mistake of offering manuscript copies of his mass on a subscription basis — at a price of 50 ducats — to the crowned heads of Europe; this involved him first in a tedious correspondence with the courts, and then in a no less irksome scrutiny of the handwritten scores a task for which Schindler was put to use.
This year also saw the publication of the op. The mass formed the centre of an immensely complicated series of negotiations with publishers in Vienna and abroad, in which other works completed and uncompleted, such as the op. The final result was satisfactory: a firm that he could trust, Schott of Mainz, agreed to publish several of his important works, including the mass and the Ninth Symphony. But as he had long been unhappy with the Viennese reception of serious art, he was reluctant to risk a concert, and made an inquiry of Berlin whether a performance of the mass and the symphony might be given there.
News of this fact became known in Vienna and led to a touching document being presented to him by a number of his friends and admirers. This was an eloquent declaration of their confidence in him, and a plea for him to allow his latest works to be heard in Vienna. Beethoven responded by agreeing to give a concert. The theatre was crowded and the reception enthusiastic.
Many years later the pianist Thalberg, who was among those present, recalled that after the scherzo had ended Beethoven stood turning over the leaves of the score, quite unaware of the thunderous applause, until the contralto Caroline Unger pulled him by the sleeve and pointed to the audience behind him, to whom he then turned and bowed Schindler and Mme Unger also remembered the moving incident, though they placed it at the end of the concert.
A second performance of the symphony and the Kyrie of the mass with some other pieces 16 days later was much less successful. Unlike the earlier ones he had written opp.
At the end of the year he returned to a poem that he had come to value highly. He had set it in and again in ; now he produced his final version, a setting for soprano, chorus and orchestra op. In these years, when Beethoven was hoping that his smaller pieces at any rate would prove easy to sell, he was no doubt tempted to refurbish drafts of songs written many years earlier and to put them on the market.
He was already beginning to suspect that not much time was left to him. Since he had composed no quartets. In his reply of 25 January Beethoven accepted the invitation, fixing his honorarium at 50 ducats per quartet and promising to complete the first by the end of February or by the middle of March at latest.
But he had not allowed for the claims of the mass and the symphony; not until after the concerts of May was the work resumed in earnest. Later performances, however, in which Joseph Boehm led instead of Schuppanzigh, were well received.
Some progress had already been made when a sharp illness in April sent him to his bed. He was ill for about a month, but felt well enough by 7 May to move to Baden, and there the quartet was completed in July. The first public performance of the A minor Quartet was on 6 November, again by the Schuppanzigh Quartet.
No doubt this work too should have gone to Schlesinger to publish, but in the end Beethoven gave it to the Viennese firm of Matthias Artaria.
Just as in the previous year, while he had been engaged on the A minor quartet, so now illness once again interrupted him. As before it was abdominal pain, and seemingly pain in his joints; his eyes were also affected. But before the end of March he was better, and completed the quartet in all essentials by June. To understand the events of the summer of it is necessary to go back some way and resume the story of the nephew at the point that it was broken off in Having by then matriculated, he proceeded to the university and attended the philological lectures that were given there.
He was also making himself useful to his uncle, with whom he spent the summer of in Baden, acting as messenger and handyman, and sometimes as amanuensis and ready-reckoner.
When Beethoven returned to Vienna for the winter Karl moved in with him, and remained until Easter , when he left the university for the Polytechnic Institute and moved to lodgings run by a certain Matthias Schlemmer.
Whether they were living together or apart, it was not an easy relationship. From the conversation-book entries Karl appears as good-natured, lively and shrewd, but perhaps also a little sly and prone to tell tales; he must after all have been used to hearing people slandered recklessly, and he was eager to please his intimidating uncle. This was Karl Holz, the second violin in the Schuppanzigh Quartet, who was then Holz came to occupy something of the same place in his household that had previously been held by Schindler; Schindler was more or less completely displaced by Holz during and most of , and never forgave him.
The conversation-book entries suggest that Beethoven began to use Holz to spy on Karl. The letters of Beethoven to Karl in the years and are full of reproaches and recriminations, and demands for his affection and attention.
Educators, there is a Lesson Plan available on this site for Ludwig van Beethoven. Click here to learn more. Music by Beethoven: Symphony No. At this point he was completely deaf and slightly mad. Also his brother died leaving Beethoven's only nephew, Karl, in the guardianship of his mother. Now Beethoven felt that she was not fit to raise Karl, so he entered into a vicious lawsuit over custody of the child.
For the most part he was able to use his influence with the aristocracy to win the battle. Unfortunately Beethoven was not a fit father and his relationship with Karl was quite poor, driving him to an suicide attempt a few years later. Beethoven loved Karl dearly, and the pain of his failed attempts to teach Karl music must have been devestating for Beethoven. It's often spectulated that Karl was probably a strong contributor to Beethoven's late style.
It is relevant at this time to include a few words about Beethoven's compositional processes. Mozart was able to get on a train, a few hours later get off with a whole opera composed in his head. Beethoven couldn't do that. In fact every phrase, every note was like pulling teeth.
Beethoven never had less than one composition going on at the same time. In Vienna, Beethoven dedicated himself wholeheartedly to musical study with the most eminent musicians of the age. He studied piano with Haydn, vocal composition with Antonio Salieri and counterpoint with Johann Albrechtsberger.
Not yet known as a composer, Beethoven quickly established a reputation as a virtuoso pianist who was especially adept at improvisation. Beethoven won many patrons among the leading citizens of the Viennese aristocracy, who provided him with lodging and funds, allowing Beethoven, in , to sever ties with the Electorate of Cologne.
Beethoven made his long-awaited public debut in Vienna on March 29, Although there is considerable debate over which of his early piano concerti he performed that night, most scholars believe he played what is known as his "first" piano concerto in C Major. Shortly thereafter, Beethoven decided to publish a series of three piano trios as his Opus 1, which were an enormous critical and financial success.
In the first spring of the new century, on April 2, , Beethoven debuted his Symphony No. Although Beethoven would grow to detest the piece — "In those days I did not know how to compose," he later remarked — the graceful and melodious symphony nevertheless established him as one of Europe's most celebrated composers. As the new century progressed, Beethoven composed piece after piece that marked him as a masterful composer reaching his musical maturity.
His Six String Quartets, published in , demonstrate complete mastery of that most difficult and cherished of Viennese forms developed by Mozart and Haydn. Beethoven also composed The Creatures of Prometheus in , a wildly popular ballet that received 27 performances at the Imperial Court Theater.
It was around the same time that Beethoven discovered he was losing his hearing. For a variety of reasons that included his crippling shyness and unfortunate physical appearance, Beethoven never married or had children. He was, however, desperately in love with a married woman named Antonie Brentano. Over the course of two days in July of , Beethoven wrote her a long and beautiful love letter that he never sent.
Addressed "to you, my Immortal Beloved," the letter said in part, "My heart is full of so many things to say to you — ah — there are moments when I feel that speech amounts to nothing at all — Cheer up — remain my true, my only love, my all as I am yours.
The death of Beethoven's brother Caspar in sparked one of the great trials of his life, a painful legal battle with his sister-in-law, Johanna, over the custody of Karl van Beethoven, his nephew and her son. The struggle stretched on for seven years, during which both sides spewed ugly defamations at the other. In the end, Beethoven won the boy's custody, though hardly his affection.
Despite his extraordinary output of beautiful music, Beethoven was lonely and frequently miserable throughout his adult life. Short-tempered, absent-minded, greedy and suspicious to the point of paranoia, Beethoven feuded with his brothers, his publishers, his housekeepers, his pupils and his patrons. In one illustrative incident, Beethoven attempted to break a chair over the head of Prince Lichnowsky, one of his closest friends and most loyal patrons. Another time he stood in the doorway of Prince Lobkowitz's palace shouting for all to hear, "Lobkowitz is a donkey!
For years, rumors have swirled that Beethoven had some African ancestry. These unfounded tales may be based on Beethoven's dark complexion or the fact that his ancestors came from a region of Europe that had once been invaded by the Spanish, and Moors from northern Africa were part of Spanish culture.
A few scholars have noted that Beethoven seemed to have an innate understanding of the polyrhythmic structures typical to some African music. However, no one during Beethoven's lifetime referred to the composer as Moorish or African, and the rumors that he was Black are largely dismissed by historians.
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