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Caspar Carl van Beethoven (1774-1815) If there was one family member who loomed large in Ludwig’s life, it was Caspar Carl, a pushy and tightfisted man whom the pianist Carl Czerny once characterized as “small of stature, red-haired, ugly.”. Biographer Jan Swafford, writing in Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph, described Carl as a “slowly ...
Ludwig van Beethoven (the grandfather) married Maria Josepha Poll and had 3 children together, from which only one survived. The one, called Johann (father of Ludwig van Beethoven the composer), was born around 1739. The singer had gradual advancement in the city’s musical life and in society, thus later petitioned to be a Kapellmeister at ...
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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.
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Signature. Ludwig van Beethoven[n 1](baptised 17 December 1770 – 26 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. He is one of the most revered figures in the history of Western music; his works rank among the most performed of the classical music repertoire and span the transitionfrom the Classical periodto the Romanticera in classical music.
Jul 17, 2024 · Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer whose Symphony 5 is a beloved classic. Some of his greatest works were composed while Beethoven was going deaf. By Biography.com Editors Updated: Jul 17 ...
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Mar 23, 2019 · Ludwig van Beethoven was the second of seven children born to his parents, Johnann van Beethoven and Maria Magdalena Keverich, the daughter of a chef. Sadly, only three of their children survived to adulthood. Their first son was born in 1769 and named Ludwig Maria, but he only lived six days. Their second son, born in 1770 was also named ...
Childhood. Ludwig van Beethoven was born on 16th December 1770 in Bonn. His parents, Johann van Beethoven and Maria Magdalena Keverich had married on 12th December 1767 in the church of Saint Remigio. Johann was 27 and Maria 21 at the time. The Beethoven family, partly Flemish by ancestry, a mixture of middle class and Rhineland peasantry, had ...
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