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The Best Books About Beethoven to Celebrate His 250th Birthday

2020 was supposed to be full of events commemorating the 250th anniversary of beethoven's birth. instead of gathering to hear his music in concert, explore his fascinating life through these books..

This was supposed to be the year of Ludwig van Beethoven . That is admittedly a strange thing to say in the light of how our world has changed, but it is true. Before COVID-19 forced us all indoors, there were hundreds of events planned to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of arguably the most famous musician who ever lived.

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In Europe, the federal government set aside a reported $33 million for these celebrations. The Berlin Philharmonic planned a 24-hour marathon in April, cultural TV channel Arte scheduled live performances of all nine symphonies, and tribute works were commissioned by renowned orchestras.

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It compels one to ask, naturally, why Beethoven still resonates as powerfully as he does in our collective consciousness. These books hold a few possible answers that should satisfy us until 2027, when we gather again to commemorate the 200th anniversary of his death and perhaps some of this year’s events might finally take place. For now, read about the many reasons this great composer deserves to be feted in some of the most interesting books written about his life and work.

Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph by Jan Swafford

There have been biographies of Beethoven written for centuries, the first appearing not long after his passing. Swafford’s version is recommended for several reasons, starting with how it manages to be entertaining without being hagiographic.

Beethoven was a genius, but never the nicest person to be around. What Swafford does is create a sense of what it meant to be Beethoven, fighting real and imagined illnesses, the terrifying loss of hearing, and commonplace tribulations that affected everyone who chose to make a living as a musician in 18th-century Europe.

There is enough here to occupy amateurs as well as connoisseurs, given that Swafford holds a DMA from the Yale School of Music. The most generous feat he accomplishes is in making his subject human, reminding us that he may have struggled more than most people around him, but used his pain to create something eternal.

Beethoven Variations: Poems on a Life b y Ruth Padel

The nuances of this tribute from the British poet, published in February this year, reveal themselves better to those who know more about the life of Beethoven. Padel trains her eye on his placid mother and alcoholic father, the early years when he was forced to become his brothers’ keeper, his unrequited loves and, inevitably, the withered auditory nerves that shut him out of his own music.

Padel played chamber music herself and, as a descendant of an immigrant who once trained under Beethoven’s pupils, brings poignancy to what is essentially a biography in verse.

Consider her closing lines for a poem on the Moonlight Sonata: 

The music of loss, of losing. Bass clef. High treble only once and in despair. Then the new shocked calm of Is it true . Is this what it sounds like, going deaf?

Beethoven for a Later Age: Living with the String Quartets b y Edward Dusinberre

Beethoven’s quartets are often described as the summits of the repertory. For musicians, they are an inexhaustible source of wonder, which makes this inside look so fascinating. It comes from the first violinist of the world-renowned Takács Quartet, who intersperses his group’s personal history with descriptions of their combined approach to some of the most magnificent music created.

For a listener, it can be hard to understand what life in a quartet is like; how its sound changes as the members themselves evolve; or how a piece of work shifts in tone as the musicians debate endless ways of playing it. Few listeners understood what Beethoven was trying to accomplish with his late quartets. There is an apocryphal anecdote of him describing them as works not for a contemporary audience but a later age. With Dusinberre’s help, it becomes easier to accept that anecdote as fact.

Beethoven’s Hair b y Russell Martin

The cover of this book describes it rather succinctly as “an extraordinary historical odyssey and a scientific mystery solved.” It opens with Beethoven on his deathbed as a lock of his hair is snipped by a young musician in awe. Martin traces the remarkable history of that purloined keepsake, following it across the country and Germany’s bloody history until it lands on the Sotheby’s auction block in the mid-1990s.

More interesting than that journey is what science has to say about Beethoven, offering tentative responses to queries that have been raised since his death: Was his deafness caused by lead poisoning? Did the doctors treating him do more harm than good? Why did he struggle with poor health all his life?

For those who love music as well as anyone interested in forensics, molecular science, or just a thoroughly entertaining tale, this is as good as it gets.

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10 of the best books about Beethoven

We pick out the best biographies, novels and poetry about the great composer Beethoven

1) Anton Schindler wrote one of the earliest Beethoven biographies, published in 1840, but its veracity was soon questioned.

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2) Alexander Wheelock Thayer was the next to take up the challenge, with three volumes published from 1866-79.

3) Of the other biographies, Lewis Lockwood’s Beethoven: The Music and the Life remains a classic.

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4) As does Maynard Solomon’s Beethoven .

5) More recently, Jan Swafford’s Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph impressed reviewers.

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6) Robin Wallace’s Hearing Beethoven: A Story of Musical Loss and Discovery offered revelatory research about the composer’s deafness.

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7) Beethoven’s Conversation Books have been translated into English by Theodore Albrecht ,

8) Novelist Sanford Friedman also turns to Beethoven’s discussions, this time fictionalised, in his Conversations with Beethoven .

9) Poet Ruth Padel’s Beethoven Variations: Poems on a Life

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10) Jessica Duchen’s Immortal looks at Beethoven’s mysterious immortal beloved.

Read our reviews of the latest Beethoven recordings here

Find out more about Beethoven and his works here

Read more reviews of the latest books here

• How did Beethoven cope with going deaf?
• Ten of the best (and worst) novels about composers
• 10 great Beethoven performers
• The top 20 Beethoven works

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Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces by Laura Tunbridge – review

The author lets the music do the talking in this pithy new biography, which uses the composer’s works to shed new light on his life

A book about the most famous composer in the western canon, a “dead white male” at that, isn’t an obvious place to look for insights into our current plight. Yet from the opening paragraph, Laura Tunbridge’s short, illuminating study of Beethoven (1770-1827), published to coincide with the 250th anniversary of his birth, casts a loose net across the centuries and deftly gathers in the connections. Not that she could have known quite how pertinent her starting point would be. Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces opens with a prolonged campaign, begun soon after his death and lasting nearly two decades, for a monument to the composer to be built in his birth city, Bonn. If our current preoccupation is more about knocking down than erecting, this statuary episode reminds us of our compulsion to honour, in lifelike replica or exhaustive biography, those we celebrate.

How can anyone say anything new about a composer who ranks alongside Shakespeare and Dante? Beethoven biographies have poured forth steadily since his death: from Johann Aloys Schlosser’s in 1827, to key works by Alexander Wheelock Thayer (three volumes, published 1866-79), Maynard Solomon and, most recently, and massively, Jan Swafford. If you can’t add musicological novelty, fiction could be the answer. Paul Griffiths (former music critic of the New Yorker ) and Jessica Duchen (the Independent critic, and a blogger) have produced novels to coincide with the inevitably thwarted anniversary: Griffiths’s Mr Beethoven (Unbound), with a formidable display of fantasy scholarship, depicts him living in and travelling to America. Duchen’s Immortal (Unbound) explores the enduring mystery of Beethoven’s unidentified “immortal beloved”, if she existed at all.

Tunbridge’s pithy A Life in Nine Pieces is different and welcome: a biography presented through the focus of nine different compositions, each casting light on aspects of Beethoven’s life, character and, given equal and readily comprehensible attention, the music. Her choices span early to late repertoire: from one of his first successes in Vienna, the Septet, to the Grosse Fuge, via Symphony No 3 “Eroica ” , the opera Fidelio , and the Missa Solemnis. Tunbridge, an Oxford professor here publishing her first non-academic book, writes clearly, explaining technical terms on the go and with ease: never an easy combination.

More interested in reality than myth – with Beethoven, there’s rather too much of it about – she is particularly sharp-eyed, and refreshing, on the practicalities that shape any artist’s life. How to make a living is a priority. “Reference is made throughout this book to the sums Beethoven earned,” reads the first introductory note. “He was strapped for cash,” she observes baldly, in those or similar words, more than once. How to find a venue, how to get a score published, how many rehearsals can be squeezed in (usually only one, leading to some disastrous premieres), how much tickets should cost, how to wheedle rich sponsors into donating, how to deal with the uncomfortable business of self-promotion: all make the difference between food on the table or hunger, performance or silence. Ask any composer working today. The issues have not changed.

Beethoven lived in some 60 different apartments in Vienna, at times maintaining more than one at once. From within the walls of these various stuffy, messy, less than hygienic dwellings, the world variously circled by or pressed in. Complaints from the neighbours about noise, musical or verbal – he was famous for having explosive arguments with his servants – may in part explain his peripatetic habit. At times the intrusion came from the political situation. He grumbled that the Napoleonic invasion of Vienna, with its “drums, cannons and human misery”, had put a stop to his singing parties with friends. Since at least one of these gatherings involved performing Handel’s oratorio Messiah – perhaps in Mozart’s version? – you can see why he objected. Public and political, private and domestic, are held deftly in balance.

In 288 pages, Tunbridge gives us detail enough to create a rounded portrait. She challenges, by example rather than theory, the presumption that Beethoven was curmudgeonly, friendless, loveless. Eccentric, yes, and with a canny knack at getting the best deals for his work, but a sympathetic figure too, frustrated by his ever-growing deafness. Her sensitive handling of Beethoven’s ongoing legal battle for custody of his nephew, Karl, and the pleas of Karl’s distressed mother for access, raises many questions. What generosity or need in Beethoven made him want to adopt the boy in the first place? What lack of humanity put him at war with an evidently loving, if low-born, mother? If these emotional trials caused some creative hiatus around that time, we should hardly be surprised. Yet out of this chaos he would write one of his most majestic and complex works, the piano sonata Op 106, “Hammerklavier” (1817-18).

Genius is too often treated as a rarefied commodity. Tunbridge places it, robustly and unflinchingly, at the centre of a hard-working life. She makes us marvel at Beethoven all the more. Her book closes in the summer of 2019, back in Bonn with an art installation called Ode to Joy – a reference to the famous last movement of his Ninth Symphony – in which 700 waist-high, coloured statues of Beethoven were installed in one of the main squares. What a field day for iconoclasts, should they find fault in this grandly humanitarian and all too human hero.

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Immortal Beloved

By Jeremy Denk

• July 31, 2014
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In the show “30 Rock,” there was a running joke about tragedy. A character appears, reveals her tearful past, then brightly adds, “They made a Lifetime movie about me” — the credential of an absurdly pathetic story with a redemptive payoff. Of all the great composers’ lives, Ludwig van Beethoven’s seems the most made for Lifetime. The curtain opens on a difficult childhood: an abusive alcoholic father, a boy genius mocked for his dark skin. He survives, makes his way to Vienna for fame and fortune — only to be stricken by (gasp) deafness. In addition, we have impossible passions for mysterious beloveds, side themes of class struggle, freedom, individuality, the backdrop of Napoleonic conquest and a score (what a score!) surging with alternating storminess and tenderness. Beethoven’s story is almost too good to be true, and almost too bad to be television.

Jan Swafford’s new biography of Beethoven, a personal and loving contribution to the literature, even has a Life­timeish subtitle: “Anguish and Triumph.” The triumph, of course, is the triumph of will through artistic creation; the anguish is copious failures of the body: “deafness, colitis, rheumatism, rheumatic fever, typhus, skin disorders, abscesses, a variety of infections, ophthalmia, inflammatory degeneration of the arteries, jaundice and at the end chronic hepatitis and cirrhosis of the liver.” When Beethoven’s body wasn’t betraying him, he was destroying himself, sabotaging his most important relationships, succumbing to destructive obsessions. Between these willful and fateful destructions, he squeezed out the miracle of his music. (Lazy readers, I just saved you 1,077 pages; you’re welcome.)

Swafford’s voice is genial and conversational, that of a friend who loves to tell you about his fascinations: the foibles of court life, logistical problems of the musician. He supplies a generous chapter on the German Enlightenment, connecting threads of the 1770s and ’80s, opposing currents of rationalism and expressive release: Schiller, Kant, Goethe, the American Revolution. He nods toward Beethoven’s unhappy childhood, but emphasizes “the golden age of old Bonn’s intellectual and artistic life” and “the town’s endless talk of philosophy, science, music, politics, literature.”

The narrative acquires momentum when Beethoven reaches his darkest hour (Heiligenstadt, 1802). In one of the best chapters, Swafford considers the tune of the last movement of the Third Symphony, an englische , a dance connected to democratic ideals (according to Schiller, it was “the most perfectly appropriate symbol of the assertion of one’s own freedom and regard for the freedom of others”), then heads off to the wider European stage to watch a dubious moment in democracy: Napoleon being proclaimed first consul for life. Swafford’s craftsmanship shines in the meeting of these contrapuntal lines: Beethoven’s personal heroism against illness and adversity, Napoleon’s world-conquering heroism, both seemingly servants of broader freedoms.

This book is two books: a biography and a series of journeys through the music, a travelogue with an excitable professor. Readers will want to have a recording playing, so they can match metaphors to sounds. I found myself engaged by his imagery, sometimes delighted and surprised, often bewildered, and occasionally furious. The descriptions include the clinical, but trend Romantic: A climax of the “Waldstein” Sonata is like “a gust of wind that shocks the listener into a sense of the joyous effervescence of life.” There is silliness: The last movement of a sonata “begins with a couple of can’t-get-started stutters followed by sort of a sneeze.” When Swafford described the middle movement of the “Appassionata” as “somber,” I threw the book on the floor, Beethoven-style. The piece is the opposite of gloomy; its gesture, its reason for being, is to reach up in a gradual arc toward elation.

Swafford repeatedly points out the way Beethoven cunningly derived pieces from a single, simple idea. This is not news — but it’s worth meditating on. Beethoven preferred musical ideas of almost unusable simplicity, things that seem pre-­musical, or ur-musical, like chords, or scales — not music, but the stuff music is made of. Imagine a building constructed of blueprints, or a novel based on the word “the.” To demonstrate this, Swafford focuses on a magical aha moment: Beethoven has just figured out how he’ll begin the Fifth Symphony, with a motif we know all too well. “Then something struck him,” Swafford says. “He jotted down an idea in G major . . . the melodic line, virtually intact, of the opening piano soliloquy of the Fourth Piano Concerto.” This other melody is built on the same rhythmic DNA, the same da-da-da-dum, but in place of agitation, you have the most gorgeous benediction, a melody of unbelievable tenderness. There they are, on facing pages: two of the greatest musical works of all time, born from the same piece of Morse code, a single unit of rhythm that was turned in Beethoven’s mind (at the moment of creation!) to utterly opposing ends.

In Mozart and Haydn, these same units, these triads and scales, are lurking behind the surface; but generally there is a film or veil concealing the girders from view. In Mozart, the ends of phraselets are often decorated with little dissonances, elegant deflections; in Haydn, the same role is often played by witty cross-accents, or unusual figurations. But you can notice, more and more, in later Beethoven — for example the slow movement of the last violin sonata, or of the “Archduke” Trio, both of which should be on any essential listening list — the way he purges his music of these artifacts of elegance, and prefers having harmonies on the main beats without decoration or deflection.

There is a danger in relying on rudimentary materials. They can be felt as an emptiness, a skeleton, a mere outline — Beethoven sometimes uses this expressive effect, calling our attention to the flesh that isn’t there. But more often they are felt as a strength, a frame, something to hold on to. By the late years, an uncanny duality develops: On the one hand, the sense that Beethoven might do anything , harmonically, that he would venture to the far ends of the musical earth; on the other, always there, rock-solid, the triads, the tonic and the dominant, the familiar landmarks of classical harmony. The sense of the world dissolving into the modern, the ground disappearing beneath your feet, and yet . . . the ground reassuringly remains. Beethoven somehow gets to have it both ways — absolute liberty and total control.

I found myself aching to replace the “Triumph” in Swafford’s subtitle with “Consolation.” Of course we love Beethoven’s movements of triumph: the C major fanfares that conclude the Fifth Symphony, the lust for life in the dances of the Seventh Symphony, the “Ode to Joy.” They are a crucial part of his persona, but not the center. As Swafford enumerates the endless romantic unfulfillments, the fevers and headaches and close shaves with death, you realize how much Beethoven needed the strength and consolation that he poured into his music. The pianist Leon Fleisher observed that Schubert’s consolations always come too late; his beautiful moments have the sense of happening in the past. Generally, Romantic consolations tend to be poisoned by nostalgia and regret. By the modern era, consolation is mostly off the table. But Beethoven’s consolations seem to be in the now. They are always on time — maybe not for him, but for us.

Anguish and Triumph: A Biography

By Jan Swafford

Illustrated. 1,077 pp. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $40.

Jeremy Denk is a concert pianist; he writes the blog Think Denk.

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Ludwig van Beethoven

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.

(1770-1827)

Who Was Ludwig van Beethoven?

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German pianist and composer widely considered to be one of the greatest musical geniuses of all time. His innovative compositions combined vocals and instruments, widening the scope of sonata, symphony, concerto and quartet. He is the crucial transitional figure connecting the Classical and Romantic ages of Western music.

Beethoven’s personal life was marked by a struggle against deafness, and some of his most important works were composed during the last 10 years of his life, when he was quite unable to hear. He died at the age of 56.

Controversial Birthday

Beethoven was born on or about December 16, 1770, in the city of Bonn in the Electorate of Cologne, a principality of the Holy Roman Empire. Although his exact date of birth is uncertain, Beethoven was baptized on December 17, 1770.

As a matter of law and custom, babies at the time were baptized within 24 hours of birth, so December 16 is his most likely birthdate.

However, Beethoven himself mistakenly believed that he was born two years later, in 1772, and he stubbornly insisted on the incorrect date even when presented with official papers that proved beyond any reasonable doubt that 1770 was his true birth year.

Beethoven had two younger brothers who survived into adulthood: Caspar, born in 1774, and Johann, born in 1776. Beethoven's mother, Maria Magdalena van Beethoven, was a slender, genteel, and deeply moralistic woman.

His father, Johann van Beethoven, was a mediocre court singer better known for his alcoholism than any musical ability. However, Beethoven's grandfather, godfather and namesake, Kapellmeister Ludwig van Beethoven, was Bonn's most prosperous and eminent musician, a source of endless pride for young Beethoven.

Childhood Abuse

Sometime between the births of his two younger brothers, Beethoven's father began teaching him music with an extraordinary rigor and brutality that affected him for the rest of his life.

Neighbors provided accounts of the small boy weeping while he played the clavier, standing atop a footstool to reach the keys, his father beating him for each hesitation or mistake.

On a near daily basis, Beethoven was flogged, locked in the cellar and deprived of sleep for extra hours of practice. He studied the violin and clavier with his father as well as taking additional lessons from organists around town. Whether in spite of or because of his father's draconian methods, Beethoven was a prodigiously talented musician from his earliest days.

Meanwhile, the musical prodigy attended a Latin grade school named Tirocinium, where a classmate said, "Not a sign was to be discovered of that spark of genius which glowed so brilliantly in him afterwards."

Beethoven, who struggled with sums and spelling his entire life, was at best an average student, and some biographers have hypothesized that he may have had mild dyslexia. As he put it himself, "Music comes to me more readily than words."

In 1781, at the age of 10, Beethoven withdrew from school to study music full time with Christian Gottlob Neefe, the newly appointed Court Organist, and at the age of 12, Beethoven published his first composition, a set of piano variations on a theme by an obscure classical composer named Dressler.

By 1784, his alcoholism worsening and his voice decaying, Beethoven's father was no longer able to support his family, and Beethoven formally requested an official appointment as Assistant Court Organist. Despite his youth, his request was accepted, and Beethoven was put on the court payroll with a modest annual salary of 150 florins.

Beethoven and Mozart

There is only speculation and inconclusive evidence that Beethoven ever met with Mozart, let alone studied with him. In an effort to facilitate his musical development, in 1787 the court sent Beethoven to Vienna, Europe’s capital of culture and music, where he hoped to study with Mozart.

Tradition has it that, upon hearing Beethoven, Mozart said, "Keep your eyes on him; someday he will give the world something to talk about.”

After only a few weeks in Vienna, Beethoven learned that his mother had fallen ill and he returned home to Bonn. Remaining there, Beethoven continued to carve out his reputation as the city's most promising young court musician.

Early Career as a Composer

When the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II died in 1790, a 19-year-old Beethoven received the immense honor of composing a musical memorial in his honor. For reasons that remain unclear, Beethoven's composition was never performed, and most assumed the young musician had proven unequal to the task.

However, more than a century later, Johannes Brahms discovered that Beethoven had in fact composed a "beautiful and noble" piece of music entitled Cantata on the Death of Emperor Joseph II . It is now considered his earliest masterpiece.

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Beethoven and Haydn

In 1792, with French revolutionary forces sweeping across the Rhineland into the Electorate of Cologne, Beethoven decided to leave his hometown for Vienna once again. Mozart had passed away a year earlier, leaving Joseph Haydn as the unquestioned greatest composer alive.

Haydn was living in Vienna at the time, and it was with Haydn that the young Beethoven now intended to study. As his friend and patron Count Waldstein wrote in a farewell letter, "Mozart's genius mourns and weeps over the death of his disciple. It found refuge, but no release with the inexhaustible Haydn; through him, now, it seeks to unite with another. By means of assiduous labor you will receive the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Haydn."

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.

Debut Performance

Beethoven won many patrons among the leading citizens of the Viennese aristocracy, who provided him with lodging and funds, allowing Beethoven, in 1794, to sever ties with the Electorate of Cologne. Beethoven made his long-awaited public debut in Vienna on March 29, 1795.

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, 1800, Beethoven debuted his Symphony No. 1 in C major at the Royal Imperial Theater in Vienna. 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 1801, 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 1801, 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.

Personal Life

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 1812, 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 1815 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.

Was Beethoven Deaf?

At the same time as Beethoven was composing some of his most immortal works, he was struggling to come to terms with a shocking and terrible fact, one that he tried desperately to conceal: He was going deaf.

By the turn of the 19th century, Beethoven struggled to make out the words spoken to him in conversation.

Beethoven revealed in a heart-wrenching 1801 letter to his friend Franz Wegeler, "I must confess that I lead a miserable life. For almost two years I have ceased to attend any social functions, just because I find it impossible to say to people: I am deaf. If I had any other profession, I might be able to cope with my infirmity; but in my profession it is a terrible handicap."

Heiligenstadt Testament

At times driven to extremes of melancholy by his affliction, Beethoven described his despair in a long and poignant note that he concealed his entire life.

Dated October 6, 1802, and referred to as "The Heiligenstadt Testament," it reads in part: "O you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you and I would have ended my life — it was only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me."

Almost miraculously, despite his rapidly progressing deafness, Beethoven continued to compose at a furious pace.

Moonlight Sonata

From 1803 to 1812, what is known as his "middle" or "heroic" period, he composed an opera, six symphonies, four solo concerti, five string quartets, six-string sonatas, seven piano sonatas, five sets of piano variations, four overtures, four trios, two sextets and 72 songs.

The most famous among these were the haunting Moonlight Sonata, symphonies No. 3-8, the Kreutzer violin sonata and Fidelio , his only opera.

In terms of the astonishing output of superlatively complex, original and beautiful music, this period in Beethoven's life is unrivaled by any other composer in history.

Beethoven’s Music

Some of Beethoven’s best-known compositions include:

Eroica: Symphony No. 3

In 1804, only weeks after Napoleon Bonaparte proclaimed himself Emperor of France, Beethoven debuted his Symphony No. 3 in Napoleon's honor. Beethoven, like all of Europe, watched with a mixture of awe and terror; he admired, abhorred and, to an extent, identified with Napoleon, a man of seemingly superhuman capabilities, only one year older than himself and also of obscure birth.

Later renamed the Eroica Symphony because Beethoven grew disillusioned with Napoleon, it was his grandest and most original work to date.

Because it was so unlike anything heard before it, the musicians could not figure out how to play it through weeks of rehearsal. A prominent reviewer proclaimed "Eroica" as "one of the most original, most sublime, and most profound products that the entire genre of music has ever exhibited."

Symphony No. 5

One of Beethoven’s best-known works among modern audiences, Symphony No. 5 is known for its ominous first four notes.

Beethoven began composing the piece in 1804, but its completion was delayed a few times for other projects. It premiered at the same time as Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, in 1808 in Vienna.

In 1810, Beethoven completed Fur Elise (meaning “For Elise”), although it was not published until 40 years after his death. In 1867, it was discovered by a German music scholar, however Beethoven’s original manuscript has since been lost.

Some scholars have suggested it was dedicated to his friend, student and fellow musician, Therese Malfatti, to whom he allegedly proposed around the time of the song’s composition. Others said it was for the German soprano Elisabeth Rockel, another friend of Beethoven’s.

Symphony No. 7

Premiering in Vienna in 1813 to benefit soldiers wounded in the battle of Hanau, Beethoven began composing this, one of his most energetic and optimistic works, in 1811.

The composer called the piece “his most excellent symphony." The second movement is often performed separately from the rest of the symphony and may have been one of Beethoven’s most popular works.

Missa Solemnis

Debuting in 1824, this Catholic mass is considered among Beethoven’s finest achievements. Just under 90 minutes in length, the rarely-performed piece features a chorus, orchestra and four soloists.

Ode to Joy: Symphony No. 9

Beethoven’s ninth and final symphony, completed in 1824, remains the illustrious composer's most towering achievement. The symphony's famous choral finale, with four vocal soloists and a chorus singing the words of Friedrich Schiller's poem "Ode to Joy," is perhaps the most famous piece of music in history.

While connoisseurs delighted in the symphony's contrapuntal and formal complexity, the masses found inspiration in the anthem-like vigor of the choral finale and the concluding invocation of "all humanity."

String Quartet No. 14

Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14 debuted in 1826. About 40 minutes in length, it contains seven linked movements played without a break.

The work was reportedly one of Beethoven’s favorite later quartets and has been described as one of the composer’s most elusive compositions musically.

Beethoven died on March 26, 1827, at the age of 56, of post-hepatitic cirrhosis of the liver.

The autopsy also provided clues to the origins of his deafness: While his quick temper, chronic diarrhea and deafness are consistent with arterial disease, a competing theory traces Beethoven's deafness to contracting typhus in the summer of 1796.

Scientists analyzing a remaining fragment of Beethoven's skull noticed high levels of lead and hypothesized lead poisoning as a potential cause of death, but that theory has been largely discredited.

Beethoven is widely considered one of the greatest, if not the single greatest, composer of all time. Beethoven's body of musical compositions stands with William Shakespeare 's plays at the outer limits of human brilliance.

And the fact Beethoven composed his most beautiful and extraordinary music while deaf is an almost superhuman feat of creative genius, perhaps only paralleled in the history of artistic achievement by John Milton writing Paradise Lost while blind.

Summing up his life and imminent death during his last days, Beethoven, who was never as eloquent with words as he was with music, borrowed a tagline that concluded many Latin plays at the time. Plaudite, amici, comoedia finita est , he said. "Applaud friends, the comedy is over."

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Ludwig Beethoven
• Birth Year: 1770
• Birth date: December 16, 1770
• Birth City: Bonn
• Birth Country: Germany
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: 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.
• Astrological Sign: Sagittarius
• Nacionalities
• Interesting Facts
• Beethoven's father was an alcoholic who beat his son into practicing music.
• Many of Beethoven's most accomplished works were created during the time he was deaf.
• Death Year: 1827
• Death date: March 26, 1827
• Death City: Vienna
• Death Country: Austria

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Ludwig van Beethoven Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/musicians/ludwig-van-beethoven
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: July 13, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• Never shall I forget the time I spent with you. Please continue to be my friend, as you will always find me yours.
• Anyone who tells a lie has not a pure heart and cannot make good soup.
• Love demands all and has a right to all.
• Recommend to your children virtues that alone can make them happy. Not gold.
• I shall seize fate by the throat.
• Music is the mediator between the spiritual and sensual life.
• To play without passion is inexcusable!
• Ever thine, ever mine, ever ours.
• Don't only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets, for it and knowledge can raise men to the divine.
• Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

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Beethoven’s Lives: The Biographical Tradition

Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna

Ludwig van Beethoven; portrait by Joseph Willibrord Mähler, 1815

Early in E.M. Forster’s novel Howards End , the Schlegel sisters, Margaret and Helen, attend a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. For Helen, the flighty younger sister, the music functions as the soundtrack to a story unfolding in her mind. She identifies the symphony’s themes with characters and events—heroes, shipwrecks, elephants dancing. Most important is the third movement, the Scherzo, whose main theme represents “a goblin walking quietly over the universe, from end to end.” The goblin theme insinuates to Helen that there is “no such thing as splendor or heroism in the world,” and the movement represents Beethoven’s struggle to vanquish this nihilistic thought. It is seemingly overcome by a new theme, a heroic recasting of the symphony’s opening four-note call, but then the goblin theme returns for a last, ghostly repetition, which Helen sees as Beethoven’s acknowledgment that evil and despair can never be permanently overcome. “Panic and emptiness! Panic and emptiness! Even the flaming ramparts of the world might fall,” Forster writes. “The goblins were there. They could return. He had said so bravely, and that is why one can trust Beethoven when he says other things.”

The novel goes on to prove the point: when Helen rushes out of the hall, overcome by emotion, she accidentally takes an umbrella belonging to Leonard Bast, setting in motion a chain of events that will end in his ruin and death. Forster seems to be suggesting that Helen’s way of listening to Beethoven reveals the same character flaws that will lead her to destroy Leonard. She is a romantic egoist, more interested in the fantasy she creates about the Fifth Symphony than in the music itself. Whereas the wiser Margaret Schlegel, Forster says, “can only see the music,” just as she sees the reality of other people’s lives.

In this way Forster makes a moral and fictional problem out of what might seem like a strictly aesthetic issue: the relationship between music and language. Should we think of music as a narrative that can also be expressed in words? Or does this betray the abstract, nonsemantic nature of musical thought? The question was hotly debated in the nineteenth century, with musical progressives like Berlioz and Wagner in favor of “program music”—meant to illustrate an extramusical idea or story—and conservatives like Brahms opposing it.

Both sides appealed to the authority of Beethoven, making Forster’s use of the composer especially canny. Brahms, like Beethoven, composed in forms like symphonies and sonatas that obey a strictly musical logic. But Wagner claimed that Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, with its introduction of a chorus in the last movement, showed that the development of music could only be fulfilled if it was united with language, as in his own operas. Forster’s ambiguous scene offers support for both positions: Helen’s storytelling about the Fifth Symphony can be seen as whimsical and reductive or as insightful and prescient.

Today, it is not respectable to hear classical music as a narrative. A concert program does not tell you “what happens” in a piece of music, as Berlioz did in the detailed text he wrote to accompany his Symphonie Fantastique , which depicts the dreams of a young man who has taken opium out of despair at his unrequited love for a beautiful woman. But telling stories about individual works is only one way of moralizing and psychologizing music. Telling stories about composers is another, and it is now standard for a program to explain what the composer was doing and thinking about when he wrote the piece.

For instance, any discussion of Beethoven’s Third Symphony, the Eroica , is sure to mention that he originally planned to dedicate it to Napoleon and then scratched the dedication out, dismayed by the revolutionary hero’s decision to assume the autocratic title of emperor. Presenting the symphony this way turns it into a more sophisticated kind of program music. Instead of being about a hero who fights goblins, it is about “the image of the masculine hero as the embodiment of virtue [that] pervaded the social culture of Beethoven’s time,” Lewis Lockwood writes in his biography Beethoven: The Music and the Life (2002). 1

As that subtitle suggests, Lockwood was at pains to respect the difference between Beethoven’s life and his works, treating them in separate sections. His introduction quotes Schopenhauer: “In the composer, more than in any other artist, the man is entirely separate and distinct from the artist.” In his new book, Beethoven’s Lives: The Biographical Tradition , Lockwood returns to the dilemma of art and life from a different point of view, offering a briskly paced tour of the history of Beethoven biography, starting in 1827, the year of the composer’s death, and continuing almost to the present. It would be impossible for such a survey to be totally comprehensive and up to date, since the flood of Beethoven books is ongoing—last year, the 250th anniversary of his birth, brought a new crop. But Beethoven’s Lives shows that our understanding of the music has always been profoundly shaped by the stories we tell about the man.

Lockwood begins with what may be the most influential “biography” of all, the oration written for Beethoven’s funeral by the playwright Franz Grillparzer. By the time Beethoven died, his reputation as the greatest composer of his time was assured, but his popularity was on the wane. While the 1820s saw the premiere of large-scale works like the Missa Solemnis and the Ninth Symphony, his best-known music had appeared at least a decade earlier. And his last compositions, the five string quartets completed in 1825–1826, struck listeners as bizarre. As Laura Tunbridge writes in her episodic biography Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces , 2 these pieces were “unlike anything anyone had ever heard,” characterized by “experimentation, fragmentation, repetition, unusual sonorities and extended length.” Not until the twentieth century would the late quartets come to be seen as supreme masterpieces; at the time, Tunbridge writes, people “thought their exaggeration to be the result of illness and eccentricity, if not madness.”

This suggests that people were already seeing Beethoven’s music as a reflection of his personality. He was always known as a prickly man, but his deafness, which began to manifest itself in his late twenties, made him even more unapproachable toward the end of his life. He could communicate only through his “conversation books,” notebooks in which he exchanged questions and answers. (The surviving 139 books constitute a unique resource for biographers. 3 )

Tunbridge lists some of the details noted by observers of the celebrity on his walks in Vienna:

Grey hair flew out from underneath his battered hat, which was worn tipped back on his head; his coat was heavily loaded, a handkerchief spilling from one pocket, while notebooks for musical ideas and conversation, and a thick carpenter’s pencil, stretched the seams of another.

Some people noted his “overwhelming volubility” as he spoke without pausing for an answer he couldn’t hear, while others described him as “lost to the world, either through his deafness or being in reverie.”

The image of Beethoven as a kind of outcast, cut off from the rest of humanity by his deafness and his genius, was central to Grillparzer’s speech, delivered (by an actor, not the author) to a crowd of some 20,000 at the gates of the cemetery. Grillparzer, who was a teenager when he first met the composer, knew Beethoven was regarded by the Viennese as “a volatile, erratic, misanthropic personality,” in Lockwood’s words. But he argues that this was just the armor Beethoven was forced to wear:

Because he withdrew from the world they called him hostile, and because he held himself aloof from sentimentality, unfeeling…. He fled the world because, in the depth of his loving nature, he found no foothold from which to oppose it. He withdrew from mankind because he had given them his all and received nothing in return.

Artistically and professionally, this was hardly the case, as the enormous crowd at the funeral proved. Far from imposing himself on a resistant public, Beethoven was recognized from the very beginning of his career as the genius German music had been waiting for. When he was twenty-one and preparing to leave Bonn for Vienna, one of his patrons wrote in his personal album that “Mozart’s genius is still in mourning”—he had died the year before, in 1791—but that it would soon attach itself to Beethoven.

His career in Vienna, where he spent the rest of his life, justified these hopes. Beethoven arrived in the Austrian capital at the start of a long period of war and political turmoil, which was also a time of transition in musical culture. Composers could no longer expect to spend decades in the service of a single aristocratic patron, as Haydn did with the Esterházy family. Instead, Beethoven was a freelancer. He received regular financial support from a few wealthy patrons, including the Archduke Rudolph and the Russian ambassador Count Razumovsky, whose names are associated with some of his masterpieces. But the pledges of aristocrats couldn’t always be relied on, especially when the struggling Habsburg Empire was liable to suddenly devalue its currency. Beethoven had to take some of his patrons to court to make them pay what they promised.

Increasingly, however, composers could also write for the market. Beethoven earned money from the publication of his scores, particularly in arrangements for home performance, and from ticket sales for concerts of his music, which he had to organize personally. As a popular composer and a shrewd negotiator, he did well for himself; Tunbridge writes in her book that the value of his estate when he died placed him in Vienna’s wealthiest 5 percent. In this sense he certainly outstripped Mozart, who was buried in a pauper’s grave.

Yet Grillparzer’s sense of Beethoven as an unhappy, unrequited man captures an essential truth. This would be dramatically confirmed after his death by the publication of two letters that continue to fascinate Beethovenites today. The first is the Heiligenstadt Testament, which Lockwood calls “one of the most moving statements by an artist ever made.” Named after the village where Beethoven wrote it in the fall of 1802 at the age of thirty-one, it is a will in the form of a letter to his brothers, Carl and Johann. More important, it is the only place where Beethoven confides the full misery of his deafness, which he says transformed his personality.

“Though born with an active, fiery temperament, and receptive to the diversions of society, I was soon compelled to withdraw, to live life alone,” he writes, because “it was impossible for me to say to people, ‘speak louder, shout, for I am deaf.’” He mentions occasions when someone with him heard a flute or a shepherd singing that he was unable to hear—a tragic irony for a musician whose sense of hearing was once of “the highest perfection.” Beethoven says he came close to committing suicide and only decided to keep living for one reason: “It seemed to me impossible to leave the world until I had produced all the works that I felt the urge to compose.”

The Heiligenstadt Testament humanized Beethoven for a public that had only known his forbidding exterior. It also provided a “program” for his music that continues to influence the way we hear it. So many of Beethoven’s works seem to be about struggle and endurance, the clash and triumph of contending forces—the precise quality Helen Schlegel responded to in the Fifth Symphony. How Beethoven creates this effect can be explained through formal analysis, but to understand why he created it, we can only turn to biography, and the testament seems to provide the perfect answer. Beethoven made music about struggle because his life was a struggle—against deafness, loneliness, even death itself.

The same spiritual turbulence appears in the “Immortal Beloved” letter of 1812. Here the forty-one-year-old composer, who never married, addresses an unknown woman—“My angel, my all, my own self”—and urges resignation to the fate that separates them: “Can our love persist otherwise than through sacrifices, than by not demanding everything? Can you change it, that you are not entirely mine, I not entirely yours?” This letter, too, shows that qualities powerfully expressed in Beethoven’s music—passion, yearning, defiance—were also present in the man.

Naturally, every Beethoven biographer tries to solve the mystery of the beloved’s identity. Several candidates have been advanced over the centuries, but Lockwood casts his vote for Antonie Brentano, a married mother of six whose family Beethoven knew well. The case for Antonie as the Immortal Beloved was made by Maynard Solomon in his landmark 1977 biography, the first to approach Beethoven psychoanalytically; Lockwood calls it “one of the most brilliant exercises in document interpretation in many years.”

The fact that Beethoven never sent these two letters but held onto them for decades, through many moves around Vienna, suggests that he wanted posterity to see them. That happened thanks to Anton Schindler, his first serious biographer—and the villain of Beethoven’s Lives . Schindler was one of a series of musical young men who served as Beethoven’s unpaid assistants in his last decade. Upon the composer’s death he lost no time in establishing himself as the keeper of the flame. As well as finding and publishing the Heiligenstadt Testament and the Immortal Beloved letter, Schindler took over Beethoven’s conversation books, manuscripts, and even personal effects. Lockwood quotes a letter he wrote in 1828 boasting that he possessed Beethoven’s books, walking stick, compass, and coffee machine, “in which he made his own coffee for 8–9 years, always making it himself and also for his guests.”

Contemporaries seem to have found Schindler’s obsession creepy and laughable, noting that he sometimes received guests while wearing Beethoven’s old gray robe, and carried a business card identifying himself as the “ami de Beethoven.” But it made him the natural candidate to write the composer’s biography, and when Schindler’s Biographie von Ludwig van Beethoven appeared in 1840 it became, in Lockwood’s words, “the reigning authority.”

One person who was not convinced was Alexander Wheelock Thayer, an American admirer of Beethoven who was a student when Schindler’s biography came out. Comparing it to other books and memoirs about Beethoven, he noticed “errors or discrepancies” and thought of preparing a revised edition. But he soon decided to write a new biography of his own, and he would devote most of his adult life to the task, helped by his eventual appointment as US consul in Trieste. Between 1866 and 1879 Thayer published three volumes of Ludwig van Beethovens Leben , in German, taking the story up to 1816. It was completed after his death by German scholars and not translated into English until 1921.

Lockwood admires Thayer for his impartiality and rigor, calling his book “a model of close factual historical research” and “the anchor of Beethoven biography” to this day. Among his achievements was to correct many of Schindler’s factual and chronological errors. But Thayer had a soft spot for Schindler, whom he met twice and called “a perfectly honest writer…fired with a love and veneration for Beethoven’s memory.”

As it turned out, this was giving Schindler too much credit. In the late twentieth century scholars discovered that he had greatly exaggerated his intimacy with Beethoven, turning a less than two-year stint as his assistant into a ten-year friendship. He had even forged 150 entries in Beethoven’s conversation books, Lockwood writes, making up “fictitious exchanges” in order “to bolster [his] claim that he had been a close confidant of Beethoven’s during his last years.” Lockwood shows that scholars have based entire theories about Beethoven’s musical thought on remarks that turned out to have been made up.

But perhaps Schindler’s audacity makes him a perfect emblem for writers about Beethoven. Like Helen Schlegel, he loved the composer so much that he couldn’t resist telling stories about him. Lockwood and other scrupulous biographers are more constrained by facts and evidence, but ultimately they too are responding to Beethoven’s musical creativity with their own literary creativity. Every time we listen to music and translate its notes and tones into narratives and ideas, we are doing the same thing—which may mean that stories and symphonies are inseparable after all.

September 23, 2021

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Reviewed by Joseph Kerman in these pages , February 27, 2003.   ↩

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See Lockwood’s review in these pages of the first two volumes of a new edition of the conversation books in English, March 26, 2020.  ↩

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Beethoven, A Life

• by Jan Caeyers (Author) , Daniel Hope (Foreword) , Brent Annable (Translator)
• First Edition
• Hardcover $34.95,  £30.00 Paperback $29.95,  £25.00 eBook $34.95,  £30.00

Title Details

Rights: Available worldwide Pages: 680 ISBN: 9780520390218 Trim Size: 6 x 9

About the Book

The authoritative Beethoven biography, endorsed by and produced in close collaboration with the Beethoven-Haus Bonn, is timed for the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth. With unprecedented access to the archives at the Beethoven House in Bonn, renowned Beethoven conductor and scholar Jan Caeyers expertly weaves together a deeply human and complex image of Beethoven—his troubled youth, his unpredictable mood swings, his desires, relationships, and conflicts with family and friends, the mysteries surrounding his affair with the “immortal beloved,” and the dramatic tale of his deafness. Caeyers also offers new insights into Beethoven’s music and its gradual transformation from the work of a skilled craftsman into that of a consummate artist. Demonstrating an impressive command of the vast scholarship on this iconic composer, Caeyers brings Beethoven’s world alive with elegant prose, memorable musical descriptions, and vivid depictions of Bonn and Vienna—the cities where Beethoven produced and performed his works. Caeyers explores how Beethoven’s career was impacted by the historical and philosophical shifts taking place in the music world, and conversely, how his own trajectory changed the course of the music industry. Equal parts absorbing cultural history and lively biography, Beethoven, A Life paints a complex portrait of the musical genius who redefined the musical style of his day and went on to become one of the great pillars of Western art music.

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About the Author

Jan Caeyers is a conductor and musicologist. One of Europe’s preeminent experts on Beethoven, he is the music director of the Beethoven orchestra Le Concert Olympique and a member of the Department of Musicology at KU Leuven.

" Beethoven, A Life  continues the journey towards a more complex and nuanced picture of the great composer. . . . Caeyers seeks to unravel the networks that influenced Beethoven’s career, to paint portraits of those who supported him, and to outline the many interests that were at play in forming Beethoven both as a man and an artist. . . . The result is a very readable book that, as a byproduct, offers a generous supply of scene-setting detail. This ranges from life in Vienna in the early 19th century to the grinding economic impact of the French revolution and its aftermath, and even the bathing customs in Bohemian spa towns." FT Books of the Year 2020 — Financial Times

"Among the books about the legend . . . in this anniversary year, the most substantial is Jan Caeyers’s  Beethoven: A Life , a magisterial account, rich in archival findings, translated with revisions from the German edition of 2009." Books of the Year 2020 — Times Literary Supplement

Notable Music Books of 2020 —Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise

"Detailed and engaging, this fitting tribute to the iconic composer will enrich anyone’s enjoyment and appreciation of his great music." — Library Journal

Table of Contents

Foreword by Daniel Hope Prologue Part One: The Artist as a Young Man (1770–1792) 1 • Louis van Beethoven: A Grandfather Figure 2 • Jean van Beethoven: The Absent Father? 3 • The Early Years 4 • Christian Gottlob Neefe: The Mentor 5 • The Young Professional 6 • Bonn Turns to Vienna 7 • Beethoven’s First Crisis 8 • A Second Home, and New Horizons 9 • Renewed Vigor and the First Major Works 10 • Farewell to Bonn Part Two: A Time of Proving (1792–1802) 11 • Vienna in 1792 12 • Beethoven’s First Patron: Karl von Lichnowsky  13 • Haydn and Albrechtsberger 14 • Career Plans 15 • Family, Friends, and Loves in Vienna 16 • In Anticipation of Greater Things 17 • Lobkowitz’s “Center of Excellence” 18 • The Immortal Beloved: Episode One 19 • The Road to a Broader Public 20 • A Word from the Critics 21 • The Disciples: Carl Czerny and Ferdinand Ries 22 • The Heiligenstadt Testament Part Three: The Master (1802–1809) 23 • A “New Way” Forward 24 • The Laboratorium Artificiosum  25 • Publishing Pains and the “Warehouse of the Arts” 26 • Composer in Residence 27 • Salieri’s Opera Lessons  28 • The Mystery of the Eroica 29 • The Immortal Beloved: Episode Two 30 • In Search of the Perfect Piano 31 • Leonore : A Work in Progress 32 • The Golden Years

Part Four: Crowds and Power (1809–1816) 33 • A New Social Status 34 • New Prospects 35 • An Imperial Pupil 36 • Beethoven and Goethe 37 • The Immortal Beloved: Episode Three 38 • Se non è vero . . . 39 • The End of the Classical Symphony 40 • Music for the Masses 41 • A Lucrative Sideline 42 • From Leonore to Fidelio 43 • From Coffee and Cake to Congress and Kitsch 44 • The Fight for a Child 45 • From the “Immortal Beloved” to a “Distant Beloved” Part Five: The Lonely Way (1816–1827) 46 • Longing for Greater Things 47 • Post-Congress Vienna 48 • London Plans 49 • A Faustian Sonata and a Diabolical Contraption 50 • The Missa solemnis : A Mass for Peace 51 • The Circle Is Complete: The Late Piano Works 52 • Estrangement 53 • Encounters with the Younger Generation 54 • An Ode to Joy 55 • Decline 56 • Karl’s Emancipation 57 • Money Matters 58 • The Discovery of Heaven: The Late String Quartets 59 • Comoedia finita est Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Illustration Credits Index of Works Index of People

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5 books about Beethoven to read on the 250th anniversary year of his birth

March 26, 2020 | Guest Author @ Boydell and Brewer | Music

We are celebrating the 250 th birthday year of the world’s most influential composer the way we know best – with books!

The following is a selection of books on Ludwig van Beethoven. Of course, the music cannot be separated from the man and is an ever-consuming preoccupation of the authors featured.

You would think that in 2020 we would know everything that there is to know about the German composer of the most famous notes in the history of music, but new discoveries are still being made in the year of what has been dubbed Beethoven 250, and this list showcases this fascinating scholarship.

The New Beethoven

This essay collection brings together some of the most respected Beethoven scholars and incorporates the latest archival research to give us completely new insights into the music known and loved by people around the world. The new revelations include a newly discovered cello owned by the composer, the Premiere of the Ninth Symphony, Beethoven’s relationship with the Archduke Rudolph of Austria (1788–1831), and the two strikingly different finales for String Quartet, Op. 130.

Beethoven’s Lives

In the span of nearly 200 years since Beethoven’s death, there have been enough books published on the composer’s life to fill the Theater an der Wien from floor to gilded ceiling. But in #Beethoven250 , it may be wise to question how biographers have distorted different elements of Beethoven’s life and career. Beethoven’s Lives , by leading scholar Lewis Lockwood, is a historiography of Beethoven biography for those who wish to navigate from their copies of the Anton Schindler forgery, through to the path-breaking work of Alexander Wheelock Thayer, to modern times.

From Silence to Sound

Where shall we start on the 250th anniversary year of Beethoven’s birth, maybe at the beginning? During the opening moments of classical music both halves of the human brain are engaged, physiological arousal and mental attention are heightened, and there is a spike in neuron firing. This book combines musical and rhetorical theory, neuroscience and psychology, to analyse the beginnings of nearly 200 compositions, offering a new analysis of Beethoven’s music for musicologists and Beethoven enthusiasts alike.

Beethoven’s Cello: Five Revolutionary Sonatas and Their World

In 1796, the young composer presented his first two cello sonatas, Op. 5, at the court of Frederick William II, an avid cellist. Beethoven continued to develop the potential of the duo partnership in his three other cello sonatas – Op. 69 and Op. 102, No. 1 and No. 2. These revolutionary sonatas forever altered the cello repertoire. This book, written by a cellist- pianist author duo, is an essential introduction to those desiring a comprehensive understanding of Beethoven’s cello sonatas.

Beethoven’s Conversation Books, Volume 1 to Volume 3

This extraordinary set of original documents, which once rode around Vienna in Beethoven’s coat pocket, allows us to eavesdrop on the composer’s intimate conversations with his friends at the dinner table. When ear trumpets failed him, the increasingly deaf composer asked his companions to jot down their side of the conversation in notebooks, while he answered aloud. Today, 139 of these booklets survive, covering the years 1818 up to the composer’s death in 1827. In post-Napoleonic Europe, table-talk topics included politics, literature, art, and theatre, and there’s a lot about Beethoven’s peculiar eating habits ! Volume 3 (published May 2020) will contain revolutionary evidence that Beethoven could hear his final symphony after all .

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LVBEETHOVEN.COM

Ludwig van beethoven: the ultimate biography and resource, beethoven, ludwig van 1770-1827.

Ludwig van Beethoven: A Glimpse into the Life of a Genius

Born in 1770 in the city of Bonn, Ludwig van Beethoven was destined to be one of the greatest composers the world has ever known. From an early age, his prodigious talent was evident, and he soon moved to Vienna, the epicenter of musical innovation. Overcoming a series of personal trials, including the tragedy of progressive deafness, Beethoven crafted compositions that are celebrated for their emotion, depth, and revolutionary spirit. His works, spanning from intimate piano sonatas to powerful symphonies, not only reflect his own struggles and joys but also resonate with universal human experiences.

Throughout his life, Beethoven remained a figure of fascination, admiration, and at times, controversy. Yet, his undying commitment to his art and his indomitable spirit have inspired countless generations of musicians, scholars, and music lovers around the globe.

Your Resource for Everything Beethoven

This website is dedicated entirely to Ludwig van Beethoven and the rich tapestry of his life and works. Delve deeper and explore:

The Definitive Ludwig van Beethoven Biography

Covering all of the most significant events and contributions of the the masterclass Composer that defined an era.

Music & Masterpieces

A comprehensive library of his celebrated compositions.

Books & Literature

Reviews and insights into the best books about Beethoven.

Family Tree

Trace the lineage and uncover the history of the Beethoven family .

Historical Timeline

Key events that shaped the life and times of the maestro.

Portrait Gallery

A visual journey through the many faces of Beethoven.

Philatelic Collection

Rare stamps and postal memorabilia commemorating Beethoven’s influence on culture.

… and so much more!

Join us as we celebrate the life, music, and legacy of Ludwig van Beethoven, a luminary who continues to inspire the world.

What’s new?

Make sure to check out our recently updated section on Beethoven Music . Includes comprehensive guides to all of Beethoven’s most beloved Symphonies, Sonatas, Piano Concerto’s, and more!

We are also in the process of updating and expanding our section on Beethoven Films . We provide comprehensive guides to all of the most acclaimed films that portrayed Beethoven’s extraordinary impact on the world.

Beethoven – Did you know?

One of the most beloved musical geniuses of all-time, Beethoven remains one of the most popular people (albeit deceased) in the world.

• Beethoven began losing his hearing in his late 20s, and by the age of 49, he was almost completely deaf, yet he continued to compose groundbreaking music.
• He was baptized on December 17, 1770, in Bonn, Germany, but his exact birthdate remains unknown.
• Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” was dedicated to his pupil, Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, with whom he fell in love.
• Despite his fame, Beethoven often struggled financially and was supported by a group of wealthy patrons.
• His Symphony No. 9 was the first example of a major composer using voices in a symphony.
• Beethoven was known for his fiery personality and frequent mood swings, often reflected in his music.
• He never married, but his Immortal Beloved letters suggest he had a mysterious, intense love affair.
• Beethoven’s “Für Elise,” one of his most famous pieces, was discovered and published 40 years after his death.
• He was a crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western music.
• Beethoven’s last words were reportedly “Pity, pity—too late!”, as he was told of a gift of wine from his publisher.
• His Ninth Symphony’s “Ode to Joy” is the anthem of the European Union.
• Beethoven often dipped his head in cold water before composing, believing it stimulated his creativity.
• He wrote only one opera, “Fidelio,” which was revised multiple times and premiered in its final form in 1814.
• As a child prodigy, Beethoven gave his first public performance at the age of 7½.
• His “Heiligenstadt Testament,” a letter written to his brothers, reveals his thoughts on his growing deafness and his resolve to continue living through his art.
• Beethoven’s compositions include 9 symphonies, 5 piano concertos, 1 violin concerto, 32 piano sonatas, and 16 string quartets.
• He was known to have a messy living space and a disheveled appearance, often focusing so intensely on his work that he neglected his surroundings.
• Beethoven was a great admirer of Napoleon until Napoleon declared himself Emperor, after which Beethoven famously scratched out Napoleon’s name from the dedication of his “ Eroica ” Symphony.
• His music was influenced by his love of nature, often taking long walks in the countryside for inspiration.
• Beethoven’s funeral in Vienna in 1827 was attended by an estimated 10,000 to 30,000 people, reflecting his immense popularity.

Beethoven’s Influence on Global Classical Music

Ludwig van Beethoven, a towering figure in classical music, has left an indelible mark on the world of music that transcends time and geography. His compositions are not just artifacts of the era in which they were created but are living, breathing entities that continue to evolve through classical performances around the globe. This exploration traces how Beethoven’s music has

Beethoven’s Impact on Music Education

Ludwig van Beethoven is not just a name that resonates through the corridors of music history; he has become an integral part of education systems around the world. His compositions, which broke boundaries and introduced new musical philosophies during and beyond his time, continue to influence how music is taught in schools today. This article explores the global impact of

Beethoven in Movies: His Timeless Music in Film

Ludwig van Beethoven, a towering figure in classical music, continues to influence modern cinema centuries after his death. His music not only enriches the soundscapes of films but also deepens the narrative and emotional engagement, making his compositions a favored choice among filmmakers. This article explores how Beethoven’s work has seamlessly integrated into the fabric of modern cinema, enhancing storytelling

Beethoven and Ballet: His Music in Dance

Ludwig van Beethoven, a titan of classical music, has left an indelible mark not only on music but on the broader canvas of the arts, influencing numerous fields including the world of ballet. Despite being known primarily for his symphonies, sonatas, and quartets, Beethoven’s work has also found a unique niche in ballet, an art form that traditionally leans towards

Beethoven’s Eco-Musical Legacy: Nature and Sustainability

Ludwig van Beethoven, a name synonymous with musical genius, left an indelible mark on the world not just through his compositions, but also through his unique relationship with nature. This connection is not just a footnote in his biography , but a core element that permeated his work, embodying a proto-environmental consciousness that resonates even in today’s world. Nature as a

Healing Through Harmony: Beethoven’s Impact in Music Therapy

Ludwig van Beethoven’s legacy is not just a testament to musical brilliance but also an embodiment of healing through harmony. His compositions have transcended the realm of auditory pleasure, offering significant psychological and neurological benefits. This influence, often termed “The Beethoven Effect,” is a testament to how classical music, particularly Beethoven’s works, can profoundly impact the human mind and emotions.

Frequently Asked Questions about Ludwig van Beethoven

Yes, Beethoven began to lose his hearing in his late twenties, and it deteriorated progressively over time. By his late 40s, he was almost completely deaf. Despite this significant challenge, many of Beethoven’s most celebrated works were composed during the period when he was experiencing profound hearing loss.

For more thorough information on Beethoven’s Deafness check out this comprehensive article we wrote on the topic – “ Beethoven’s Deafness: Triumph of Creativity .”

There is no solid evidence to support the claim that Beethoven was black. The majority of historical records and portraits depict him as a European man of Caucasian descent. Over the years, there have been debates and speculations about his heritage, but there’s no concrete evidence to counter the widely accepted view of his ethnicity. Some of the debates arise from descriptions of Beethoven’s darker complexion, but this can be attributed to various reasons, including his health and the standards of description at the time.

Ludwig van Beethoven was born on December 17, 1770, in Bonn, a city in what is now Germany.

For more information check out our comprehensive Biography of Ludwig van Beethoven .

Beethoven passed away on March 26, 1827, in Vienna. The exact cause of his death is not definitively known. Over the years, various theories have been proposed, including lead poisoning, syphilis, and autoimmune disorders. During an autopsy, significant amounts of lead were found in Beethoven’s hair, lending support to the lead poisoning theory. However, the true cause of his death remains a subject of debate among historians and researchers.

Check out our comprehensive Biography of Ludwig van Beethoven for more information on this topic.

You may also want to check out Beethoven’s Family Tree .

Ludwig van Beethoven composed a total of 9 symphonies.

Visit (and listen) to Beethoven’s Symphonies and Music .

Also check out Beethoven’s Biography .

Use LVBeethoven.com as a resource to learn more about this extraordinary many.

Beethoven passed away on March 26, 1827.

For thorough information on the life of Ludwig van Beethoven check out Beethoven’s Biography.

Beethoven was born in Bonn, which is located in present-day Germany.

Here is a Chronology of Beethoven’s life – https://lvbeethoven.wpenginepowered.com/biography/chronology-of-beethovens-life/

Beethoven began to experience hearing loss in his late twenties. This hearing loss worsened progressively over the years, and by the time he was in his late 40s, he was almost completely deaf.

For the most comprehensive treatise on Beethoven’s Deafness check out “ Beethoven’s Deafness: Triumph of Creativity .”

No, Beethoven was not blind. He is famously known for his hearing impairment, but there are no records or evidence to suggest that he suffered from blindness.

For a comprehensive look at the life of Ludwig van Beethoven check out his BIO .

Yes, Ludwig van Beethoven was German. He was born in Bonn, a city in the Electorate of Cologne, which was a part of the Holy Roman Empire at the time of his birth. This region is now in modern-day Germany.

Here are a few helpful links to learn more about Ludwig van Beethoven:

LVBeethoven.com is your comprehensive resource for information about the impeccable Ludwig van Beethoven.

Perhaps the most famous piece by Ludwig van Beethoven is the Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, often referred to as the “Choral” Symphony. This masterpiece is notable not just for its musical brilliance but also because it was the first time a major composer used voices in a symphony. The final movement of this symphony incorporates Friedrich Schiller’s “Ode to Joy,” sung by a chorus and soloists. This movement has since become an anthem for unity and fraternity. Moreover, the symphony’s structure, themes, and the sheer emotional power it exudes make it a groundbreaking work in the history of classical music. Today, the “Ode to Joy” theme is recognized worldwide and has been adapted for various purposes, including being the anthem of the European Union.

Check out our section dedicated to Beethoven’s Music .

Ludwig van Beethoven was a prolific composer, and throughout his lifetime, he composed a vast number of works across various musical genres. While it’s challenging to pinpoint an exact number due to variations in counting (some pieces have multiple parts, or movements), Beethoven wrote 9 symphonies, 32 piano sonatas, 16 string quartets, 5 piano concertos, 1 violin concerto, 1 opera (“Fidelio”), and many other compositions including sonatas for various instruments, overtures, choral works, and chamber music pieces. In total, he composed well over 200 individual works. His influence in shaping the Classical and Romantic eras of music is monumental, with many of his compositions being staples in the repertoires of orchestras, chamber groups, and soloists around the world.

BTW – you can learn more about Beethoven through Films and Literature .

While Beethoven wrote numerous renowned pieces throughout his lifetime, the Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, also known as the “Choral” Symphony, stands out as one of his most celebrated. The piece’s final movement is particularly famous for its incorporation of Friedrich Schiller’s “Ode to Joy,” performed by a choir and soloists. This inclusion of a choral element was revolutionary for symphonic works at the time. The symphony as a whole, and especially its final movement, is emblematic of Beethoven’s vision for music as a powerful force for unity and shared humanity. It encapsulates his masterful ability to convey profound emotions and ideals through musical expression. This symphony’s enduring popularity is a testament to its universal appeal and its representation of Beethoven’s genius.

Don’t miss the Beethoven Biography for a thorough education on everything Beethoven.

Ludwig van Beethoven is buried in Vienna, Austria. Initially, he was interred at the Währing Cemetery, but in 1888, his remains, along with those of Franz Schubert, were moved to the Zentralfriedhof (Central Cemetery) in Vienna, one of the largest cemeteries in the world. The Zentralfriedhof is notable for its numerous graves of famous composers, making it a significant site for music enthusiasts and historians. Beethoven’s grave attracts countless visitors each year, who come to pay their respects to one of the greatest composers in the history of music. The grand monument marking his final resting place is a testament to the profound impact he left on the world of classical music and his enduring legacy.

Check out the chronology of Beethoven’s life .

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Beethoven, A Life Hardcover – September 8, 2020

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The authoritative Beethoven biography, endorsed by and produced in close collaboration with the Beethoven-Haus Bonn, is timed for the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth. With unprecedented access to the archives at the Beethoven House in Bonn, renowned Beethoven conductor and scholar Jan Caeyers expertly weaves together a deeply human and complex image of Beethoven—his troubled youth, his unpredictable mood swings, his desires, relationships, and conflicts with family and friends, the mysteries surrounding his affair with the “immortal beloved,” and the dramatic tale of his deafness. Caeyers also offers new insights into Beethoven’s music and its gradual transformation from the work of a skilled craftsman into that of a consummate artist. Demonstrating an impressive command of the vast scholarship on this iconic composer, Caeyers brings Beethoven’s world alive with elegant prose, memorable musical descriptions, and vivid depictions of Bonn and Vienna—the cities where Beethoven produced and performed his works. Caeyers explores how Beethoven’s career was impacted by the historical and philosophical shifts taking place in the music world, and conversely, how his own trajectory changed the course of the music industry. Equal parts absorbing cultural history and lively biography, Beethoven, A Life paints a complex portrait of the musical genius who redefined the musical style of his day and went on to become one of the great pillars of Western art music.

• Print length 680 pages
• Language English
• Publisher University of California Press
• Publication date September 8, 2020
• Dimensions 6 x 1.9 x 9 inches
• ISBN-10 0520343549
• ISBN-13 978-0520343542
• See all details

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of California Press; First Edition (September 8, 2020)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 680 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0520343549
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0520343542
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.62 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.9 x 9 inches
• #232 in Classical Musician Biographies
• #1,791 in Music History & Criticism (Books)
• #6,731 in Actor & Entertainer Biographies

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Music & Drama » Music » Opera & Classical Music

The best books on the lives of classical composers, recommended by giles swayne.

From Bach to Stravinsky, British composer Giles Swayne discusses the most insightful books for getting to know the real lives of classical composers. "You can have people who are really extremely mediocre with huge careers, and people who are wonderfully good but don’t have wonderful careers. Bach was one of those."

Harmony And Discord by Julian Shuckburgh

The Letters of Mozart and His Family by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The Letters of Beethoven by Ludwig van Beethoven Translated by Emily Anderson

Conversations with Igor Stravinsky by Robert Craft

Stravinsky by Stephen Walsh

1 Harmony And Discord by Julian Shuckburgh

2 the letters of mozart and his family by wolfgang amadeus mozart, 3 the letters of beethoven by ludwig van beethoven translated by emily anderson, 4 conversations with igor stravinsky by robert craft, 5 stravinsky by stephen walsh.

T ell me about Julian Shuckburgh’s biography of Johann Sebastian  Bach , Harmony and Discord .

This just came out. Most biographies of Bach have been tremendously hagiographical and, broadly speaking, treated him as if he was God. Julian Shuckburgh’s approach is to treat him like any composer now, as it were: to study him in his living conditions, in his contracts and his disagreements with his employers – which were constant. The interesting thing about Bach is that he was actually, in career terms, not very successful, and the book shows the struggles that he had – for example, to support his (very large) family. Bach was essentially a local church musician who was also a schoolmaster – it’s very surprising when you think like that.

“Unlike Handel, say, who was a sort of flamboyant impresario figure, Bach remained a local composer who never made it beyond the confines of regional German culture.”

This is an integrated biography and very much a story of his actual life, as opposed to the sanctified version that was spread during the 19th century when Bach was rediscovered – largely by Mendelssohn. Before Mendelssohn, Bach was only really known to professionals – he wasn’t forgotten as a name, but his music was no longer performed. Mendelssohn, to his eternal credit, spent a lot of his career bringing Bach’s work to public attention. In 1829 Mendelssohn conducted the first performance of the St Matthew Passion since Bach’s death in 1750, and he was the first to perform the Mass in B Minor, which Bach had never heard.

Is there new material in the book?

What sort of picture emerges?

Your next choice is The Letters of Mozart and His Family. 

These are Mozart’s complete letters, with selected replies from his father and sister, and occasionally his friends, or his wife. Mozart was an infant prodigy, of course, who spent most of his early life on the road with his ambitious father Leopold, performing, so the earliest letters are mostly to his mother or sister. The first part of the book is letters from his father which are all entirely practical: about contracts and fees, and the success, how little Wolfi has done so well, and they went to see the Duke of this and that, and how Marie Antoinette gave him a snuffbox or whatever.

You see the first letter from Mozart at the age of 14, and it’s quite extraordinary really. It’s partly in Latin – he just loved language, and was very good at languages, and he wrote multilingual letters all his life. And some of the letters are in code: the Mozart family all wrote in code when they had something insulting to say about their employers, because all post was opened. Mozart wrote very long letters and, within the family, they’re increasingly playful and scatological – an awful lot about eating shit and sending people farts, and all that sort of thing.

A very scatological family?

I think people in the 18th century were just much more down to earth. The letters are incredibly entertaining, and give a wonderful picture of real, everyday life in the 18th century. His letters are extremely playful and comic, and they also show the amazing development of somebody from a performing monkey to one of the greatest musicians who’s ever lived, how he was able to overcome what was almost child abuse – because he really was exploited by his father for commercial ends. I mean he went along with it, but he wasn’t to know any better at the age of six. And he did somehow transcend this and become a great musician, rather like Beethoven transcended deafness and used it to become greater. But I think there are very few like him, because it’s by definition such a shallow thing to be an infant prodigy.

How does he deal with all the pressures from his father?

Well, by being a good little boy. Once he married there were big problems because his father was a control freak – he wrote the book on the art of violin playing, which is still used. But what is fascinating is, rather as Bach was not a success in external terms, Mozart went from Salzburg to settle in Vienna (against the wishes of his father), and in worldly career terms he failed, because he didn’t get the jobs that, for example, Salieri and other people got. I suspect that was because he was very impatient with people.

Beethoven wasn’t prone to such flights of fancy.

Beethoven had much more guilt than Mozart. It’s astonishing because between Mozart’s death and Beethoven’s it’s only 36 years, but the Napoleonic wars, the weakening of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the rise of the individual as opposed to the class meant that the whole zeitgeist had changed. Beethoven lived at exactly the time when individual, personal feelings, and the personal experience, became something to be expressed (thanks to Goethe , Schiller, and indeed Beethoven), rather than the effect of the Baroque, and the 18th century, where an emotion was slightly generalised.

One of the things that particularised emotion in Beethoven’s case was his deafness – it’s very hard to imagine how difficult that must have been. Beethoven wrote a lot of letters because of his deafness.

Does he mention it in the letters?

Oh yes – he wonders how he can face people. How can he of all people face the public, when the one organ that distinguishes him and gives him his art is not working? It agonised him. He drank a lot. I mean, I suspect he was deeply frustrated by his deafness. But in a funny kind of way, the isolation of his deafness was a huge help to him – I don’t think there’s much doubt that it gave him an ability to think more deeply. And he tried to find ways to avoid work.

Next up we have Conversations with Igor Stravinsky.

These were very controversial at the time. They were conversations between Stravinsky and his, if you like, musical secretary, Robert Craft: an American conductor and musicologist who became his sort of right hand – some would say his evil genius. Stravinsky had been exiled from Russia, exiled from France by the First World War and then again by the Occupation, and he arrived in America in 1945 and settled in Hollywood. Because he was rather stuck up and spoilt and grand, Stravinsky refused to teach at a university in America. The thing about teaching is it keeps you in touch with what’s happening. Stravinsky wasn’t. And so, when this young guy, Craft, turned up as a fan, he took him on as an amanuensis. Craft became an adopted son almost, and eventually a sort of Svengali.

And this is what the Stephen Walsh biography, Stravinsky: The Second Exile , deals with?

That’s what the biography sheds a rather interesting light on: that Stravinsky wasn’t this great powerful omniscient figure, but, wonderful composer that he was, he was subject to all the usual difficulties. Even more so because he’d lived through these two world wars and a revolution, and was actually in quite a shaky state when he arrived in America. He had to rebuild his career, really.

What does this book say about Stravinsky’s relationship with Craft?

It’s difficult because Robert Craft is still alive and he’s quite litigious, but it’s pretty blunt about him: he made himself very unpopular with the music profession, because he was seen to be exploiting Stravinsky and was also very rude to him in public, in rehearsals, when Stravinsky was very old and frail. It was also felt that he’d misled the public about the extent of how much of these ‘conversations’ were actually written by Craft, which they largely were, towards the end. For me Walsh’s biography was an eye-opener because it’s a counterweight to the slight myth-making of the conversation books, which for Stravinsky were really a way of making some money.

May 30, 2010

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Giles Swayne

Giles Swayne is a British composer, best known for his monumental choral pieces and his interest in African musical culture. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music under Harrison Birtwistle and at the Paris Conservatoire with Olivier Messiaen. In 1980 his choral work Cry , for 28 amplified voices, was premiered by the BBC Singers under John Poole. Hailed as a landmark, it has since been performed twice at the Proms and many times worldwide. In 1981, Swayne visited Senegal to record the music of the Jola people of Casamance. These recordings are now in the British Library. From 1990 to 1996 he lived in the Akuapem Hills in eastern Ghana. He now lives in London and is Composer-in-residence at Clare College, Cambridge. He is currently working on an open-ended series of bagatelles for piano, and a choral setting of a poem. ‘The thing about music, like the arts, is that there’s an extraordinary dichotomy between the art and the career,’ he says. ‘You can have people who are really extremely mediocre with huge careers, and you can have people who are wonderfully good, who explore their art in great depth, and actually don’t have wonderful careers. Bach was one of those.’

Giles Swayne's Homepage Giles Swayne on Wikipedia Profile of Giles Swayne by Chester Novello

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All About Beethoven: Best Beethoven Biographies

Ludwig van Beethoven was born on December, 17, 1770 A.D. in the federal city of Bonn , North Rhine-Westphalia , Germany . We celebrate Ludwig van Beethovens 250th Anniversary on December, 17, 2020. In this Poll series we want to shine through one of the biggest music genius in history. How has Beethoven influenced the movie history? This time we go through the biographies. Which movie or documentary would you be most interested to watch? Celebrate here .

• Movies or TV
• IMDb Rating
• In Theaters
• Release Year

1. Copying Beethoven (2006)

PG-13 | 104 min | Biography, Drama, Music

A fictionalized account of the last year of Beethoven's life.

Director: Agnieszka Holland | Stars: Ed Harris , Diane Kruger , Matthew Goode , Ralph Riach

Votes: 14,118 | Gross: $0.35M

Ed Harris as Beethoven

2. Eroica (1949)

95 min | Biography, Drama, Music

"Eroica" is an Austrian film from 1949 that illustrates the life and work of composer Ludwig von Beethoven.

Director: Walter Kolm-Veltée | Stars: Ewald Balser , Marianne Schönauer , Judith Holzmeister , Oskar Werner

Ewald Balser as Beethoven

3. Immortal Beloved (1994)

R | 121 min | Biography, Drama, Music

The life and death of the legendary Ludwig van Beethoven. Besides all the work he is known for, the composer once wrote a famous love letter to a nameless beloved, and the movie tries to ... See full summary  »

Director: Bernard Rose | Stars: Gary Oldman , Jeroen Krabbé , Isabella Rossellini , Johanna ter Steege

Votes: 26,208 | Gross: $9.91M

Gary Oldman as Beethoven

4. The Life and Loves of Beethoven (1936)

116 min | Biography, Drama, Music

Lyrical biography of the classical composer, depicted as a romantical hero, an accursed artist.

Director: Abel Gance | Stars: Harry Baur , Annie Ducaux , Jany Holt , Jean-Louis Barrault

Harry Baur as Beethoven

5. In Search of Beethoven (2009)

Not Rated | 139 min | Documentary, Biography, Music

The first truly comprehensive feature length cinema documentary ever made about Beethoven. With over 60 live performances.

Director: Phil Grabsky | Stars: Emanuel Ax , Jonathan Biss , Riccardo Chailly , Alban Gerhardt

Documentary

6. Following the Ninth: In the Footsteps of Beethoven's Final Symphony (2013)

Not Rated | 90 min | Documentary, Drama, History

Documentary follows the impact of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on people's lives around the world.

Director: Kerry Candaele

8. Beethoven (2005)

60 min | Documentary, Biography, Drama

A dramatized documentary on the life and music of Ludwig van Beethoven.

Stars: Paul Rhys , Charles Hazlewood , David Bamber , Casper Harvey

Documentary Paul Rhys as Ludwig van Beethoven Suggested by pbn

9. Eroica (2003 TV Movie)

129 min | Drama, History, Music

On June 9, 1804, Ludwig van Beethoven and his pupil Ries assemble a group of musicians to give the first performance of his Third Symphony, 'Bonaparte', to his patron Prince Lobkowitz and ... See full summary  »

Director: Simon Cellan Jones | Stars: Peter Hanson , Jack Davenport , Leo Bill , Ian Hart

Historical drama Ian Hart as Ludwig van Beethoven Suggested by pbn

10. Beethoven's Nephew (1985)

R | 103 min | Drama

In an effort to provide a secure future for his nephew Karl, Beethoven is fighting his sister-in-law over the custody for the boy. The mother doesn't consider the ageing and irate composer ... See full summary  »

Director: Paul Morrissey | Stars: Wolfgang Reichmann , Dietmar Prinz , Jane Birkin , Nathalie Baye

About Beethoven's relationship to his Nephew Wolfgang Reichmann as Ludwig van Beethoven Suggested by pbn

12. Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 Op. 125 (1991 TV Special)

Documentary, Music

Director: Rodney Greenberg | Stars: Kurt Masur , Venceslava Hruba-Freiberger , Doris Soffel , James Wagner

I like the concerts better.

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Definitively the 20 greatest Beethoven works of all time

12 December 2023, 12:47

By John Suchet

Beethoven is considered by many the greatest classical music mind of all time. From his symphonies to his sonatas, I’m going to count down this extraordinary composer’s most memorable pieces of music.

Ludwig van Beethoven was possibly the most influential composer in the history of classical music, making it very hard to choose just 20 of his greatest works (I’m putting in an honourable mention now for the lovely ‘Moonlight’ Sonata and Für Elise !).

But to mark the 250th anniversary of his birth – and to celebrate my new series, Beethoven 250 – let’s give it a go.

Read more: 10 works of Beethoven that actually changed the world

Archduke Trio

This was the last piece Beethoven performed in public, due to the worsening of his deafness. Dedicated to his greatest patron, the trio has a joyous first movement, but the slow movement is one of his loveliest. I can’t hear it without thinking of the pain he felt at knowing he would no longer perform in public.

Read more: If Beethoven was completely deaf, how did he compose music?

Beethoven - Piano Trio, Op. 97 (Archduke Trio)

Waldstein Piano Sonata

The Waldstein Piano Sonata was dedicated to Beethoven’s patron in Bonn, back in his teenage years. Once again there’s a joyous first movement, with rapidly repeated chords at the opening – a challenge for the pianist. It’s followed by a mysterious slow movement, before the final movement takes flight with a glorious soaring theme. An answer to those who say his music is always angry.

Lucas Jussen - Beethoven 'Waldstein' Sonata

Triple Concerto

This is my candidate for one of the two most unjustly neglected compositions by Beethoven. He wrote it for friends, so the piano part – to be played by Archduke Rudolf – is not complex. The cello has the most demanding part, because it was played by a professional. The slow movement has a deep beauty to it.

Anne-Sophie Mutter, Daniel Barenboim, Yo-Yo Ma – Beethoven: Triple Concerto in C Major, Op. 56 No. 2

Choral Fantasia

Like the Triple Concerto – unjustly neglected. It begins with solo piano, then orchestra comes in, then chorus and soloists. At the first performance, Beethoven was improvising, and the piece went off the rails. The main theme is a precursor for the theme of the final movement of the ‘Choral’ Symphony , and has suffered by comparison.

Martha Argerich-Beethoven,Choral Fantasy

Kreutzer Violin Sonata

An exposed opening for solo violin, double-stopping across all four strings. The longest, and most complex, of Beethoven’s 10 violin sonatas, regarded as the pinnacle of violin sonatas. At the first performance, with Beethoven on piano, the violinist George Bridgetower sight-read the score, because Beethoven only finished it the night before.

Yuja Wang & Joshua Bell : Beethoven - Violin Sonata No. 9 "Kreutzer" Opus 47

Violin Concerto

Beethoven only wrote one violin concerto. The opening — four soft beats on timpani — creates a new sound right at the start. The slow movement is one of the most beautiful in the repertoire. Brahms modelled his own violin concerto entirely on this.

BEETHOVEN Concerto for Violin and Orchestra - Hilary Hahn, violin; Leonard Slatkin, conductor

Grosse Fuge

The ‘Great Fugue’ – which was the original final movement of the String Quartet No. 13 – achieves a degree of intensity never before or since achieved by any other composer. One of the most complex pieces of writing in all classical music, and one that makes extraordinary demands on the players.

Beethoven Grosse Fugue Op.133

String Quartet No. 15, Op. 132

There are five movements to this quartet, the middle one being the Heiliger Dankgesang — the Holy Song of Thanks from a Convalescent to the Godhead . It represents some extraordinary writing, that Beethoven finished just after recovering from a serious illness that he thought would kill him.

Beethoven String Quartet Op. 132 in A Minor - Ariel Quartet (full)

String Quartet No. 13, Op. 130

The five Late Quartets are the single most intense body of writing Beethoven ever achieved. There are six movements in Op. 130. The ‘Cavatina’ is deeply emotional – the first violin ‘weeps’ – and a friend said its composition cost Beethoven real tears. The final movement, the ‘Grosse Fuge’, was considered too massive for what had gone before, and Beethoven replaced it and published it separately (see no. 14).

Beethoven String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat Major, Op. 130 (Grosse Fuge) - American String Quartet

Beethoven’s only opera... and it took him three versions (and four overtures) to get it right. Fidelio is at the same time a love story – a wife disguises herself as a boy to get a job at the jail where her husband Florestan is imprisoned, and engineers his release – and the story of freedom triumphing over oppression. Florestan’s aria at the opening of Act II sums up Beethoven’s political creed.

Jonas Kaufmann - Beethoven - Fidelio - 'Gott! welch Dunkel hier!'

Missa Solemnis

Missa Solemnis was Beethoven’s only serious attempt at a religious work, yet it is more of a concert piece than a mass. The violin soaring above the orchestra in the ‘Benedictus’ was seen as an attempt to portray the Holy Spirit in music, and the censor banned it! On the manuscript Beethoven wrote ‘Von Herzen – Möge es wieder – Zu Herzen gehn!’ (‘From the heart – may it return to the heart!).

Leonard Bernstein & Concertgebouworkest Amsterdam - Beethoven: Missa solemnis

Hammerklavier Piano Sonata

The greatest of his 35 piano sonatas, written at the height of the draining court case he waged against his sister-in-law, and inspired by the arrival of a Broadwood piano as a gift from London. The leap in the left hand at the opening is almost humanly impossible to play at the speed he set!

Read more: Beethoven’s epic ‘Hammerklavier’ played on his own piano

Beethoven Sonata #29 Op. 106 "Hammerklavier" Valentina Lisitsa

Piano Concerto No. 4

This is Beethoven breaking new ground yet again. For the first time, solo piano opens the concerto, with a simple turning phrase, which goes on to dominate the first movement. In the second movement the piano and orchestra are like two separate voices engaged in argument. Only in the final movement are they reconciled.

Hélène Grimaud: Beethoven - Piano Concerto No. 4, Op. 58 (Orchestre de Paris, Christoph Eschenbach)

‘Pathétique’ Piano Sonata

An early piano sonata, but it broke new ground. Nobody had ever begun a piano sonata with a single fortissimo chord. The lyrical second movement is famously used by Billy Joel in ‘This Night’ on his album Innocent Man.

Daniel Barenboim plays Beethoven Sonata No. 8 Op. 13 (Pathetique)

‘Emperor’ Piano Concerto

The highest placed piece by Beethoven in the Classic FM Hall of Fame . The huge opening runs on piano – signalling something extraordinary to come – a slow movement breathtaking in its beauty, leading straight into a syncopated finale. The name was given to it by Beethoven’s English publisher. Beethoven disapproved.

Lang Lang —— BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 5

Symphony No. 9 (‘Choral’)

The Ninth is the culmination of Beethoven’s genius. He uses solo voices in a symphony for the first time, setting the words of Schiller’s poem An die Freude . It is the longest and most complex of all his symphonies, which we may regard it as the pinnacle of his achievement, because it is his last symphony – but he was working on his Tenth when he died.

Read more: What are the lyrics to ‘Ode to Joy’, Beethoven’s triumphant choral anthem?

Beethoven 9th Symphony - Movement IV - "Ode to Joy"

Symphony No. 5

The most famous bars in all classical music open this symphony. Yet it is not a tune, a melody. It is a motif. For the first time in any symphony by any composer, Beethoven carries the motif right through the symphony. Again, for the first time, he uses trombones, piccolo, and contra-bassoon in a symphony. We have a new sound.

Beethoven's 5th, conducted by a 3-year-old boy

Piano Concerto No. 3

Beethoven has finally shaken off the influence of Mozart . The first movement has a richness and complexity beyond the earlier two. The slow movement is almost hymn-like, with a scale towards the end in which the 7th note is flattened. Just in case you think it is a mistake, he repeats it in the next bar. Beethoven the master has emerged.

Beethoven - Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor Op. 37 (Daniel Barenboim & West-Eastern Divan Orchestra)

Piano Sonata No. 31, Op. 110

This is the middle of the final set of three piano sonatas Beethoven composed. In it he tells us of his deafness, the pain it has caused him, and how he overcame it. I see his 35 piano sonatas as his ‘autobiography’.

Ashkenazy: Beethoven - Sonata 31 Opus 110

Symphony No. 3 ‘Eroica’

Quite simply the most important symphony ever written by any composer in the history of the world. Ever. Beethoven, at the age of 32, had finally confronted his deafness, and determined to overcome it. This is the beginning of his ‘Heroic’ phase.

It was originally dedicated to Napoleon, but Beethoven scratched his name off the title page when he learned he had declared himself ‘Emperor’. Those two opening chords signalled a new era in music.

Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 Eroica | Michael Boder & ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra

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