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Who were Beethoven's parents?
Why is Beethoven a divided family?
How did Johann van Beethoven become a musician?
Who was Beethoven's grandfather?
A Divided Family. The contradictory aspects of Beethoven’s personality — short-tempered then conciliatory, melancholic then high-spirited — may be traced in part to his upbringing in Bonn. His father, Johann van Beethoven, was a court musician and harsh disciplinarian who gave Ludwig his first music lessons and later suffered from alcoholism.
This is a short essential coverage on Beethoven’s ancestry, who they were, where this family of musicians came from. Let’s dive in! As far as the family’s history is traceable (beginning of the seventeenth century) the Beethovens came from a Belgian village near Louvain.
- Overview
- The early years
Beethoven is widely regarded as the greatest composer who ever lived, in no small part because of his ability—unlike any before him—to translate feeling into music. His most famous compositions included Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67 (1808), Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op 92 (1813), and Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op. 125 (1824).
Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67
Listen to an excerpt from Symphony No. 5 in C Minor.
Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92
Listen to an excerpt from Symphony No. 7 in A Major.
How did Ludwig van Beethoven get his start in music?
Beethoven was the eldest surviving child of Johann and Maria Magdalena van Beethoven. The family was Flemish in origin and can be traced back to Malines. It was Beethoven’s grandfather who had first settled in Bonn when he became a singer in the choir of the archbishop-elector of Cologne; he eventually rose to become Kappellmeister. His son Johann was also a singer in the electoral choir; thus, like most 18th-century musicians, Beethoven was born into the profession. Though at first quite prosperous, the Beethoven family became steadily poorer with the death of his grandfather in 1773 and the decline of his father into alcoholism. By age 11 Beethoven had to leave school; at 18 he was the breadwinner of the family.
Having observed in his eldest son the signs of a talent for the piano, Johann tried to make Ludwig a child prodigy like Mozart but did not succeed. It was not until his adolescence that Beethoven began to attract mild attention.
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When in 1780 Joseph II became sole ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, he appointed his brother Maximilian Francis as adjutant and successor-designate to the archbishop-elector of Cologne. Under Maximilian’s rule, Bonn was transformed from a minor provincial town into a thriving and cultured capital city. A liberal Roman Catholic, he endowed Bonn with a university, limited the power of his own clergy, and opened the city to the full tide of the German literary renaissance associated with Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, and the young Goethe and Schiller. A sign of the times was the nomination as court organist of Christian Gottlob Neefe, a Protestant from Saxony, who became Beethoven’s teacher. Although somewhat limited as a musician, Neefe was nonetheless a man of high ideals and wide culture, a man of letters as well as a composer of songs and light theatrical pieces; and it was to be through Neefe that Beethoven in 1783 would have his first extant composition (Nine Variations on a March by Dressler) published at Mannheim. By June 1782 Beethoven had become Neefe’s assistant as court organist.
In 1783 he was also appointed continuo player to the Bonn opera. By 1787 he had made such progress that Maximilian Francis, archbishop-elector since 1784, was persuaded to send him to Vienna to study with Mozart. The visit was cut short when, after a short time, Beethoven received the news of his mother’s death. According to tradition, Mozart was highly impressed with Beethoven’s powers of improvisation and told some friends that “this young man will make a great name for himself in the world”; no reliable account of Beethoven’s first trip to Vienna survives, however.
Pictures. Guides. Johann van Beethoven (1739 or 1740-92) Beethoven's father. At the age of 22, Johann van Beethoven secured an appointment as court musician, due to his fine tenor voice. To supplement his small income, he gave singing and piano lessons.
Early Ancestors and Parents. The Flemish Connection. Beethoven’s story begins in the Flemish region, now part of modern-day Belgium. His paternal ancestors were notable musicians in their own right, laying the groundwork for what would become a legacy. Lodewijk van Beethoven.
Johann married Maria Magdalena Keverich in 1767; she was the daughter of Heinrich Keverich (1701–1751), who was head chef at the court of Johann IX Philipp von Walderdorff, Archbishop of Trier. [5] Beethoven was born of this marriage in Bonn, at what is now the Beethoven House Museum, Bonngasse 20. [6]
He was a good singer and bandmaster - a role model for Ludwig. Unlike his father. Ludwig van Beethoven (1838) by Joseph Neesen Beethoven-House Bonn. The father: heavy baggage for the...
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