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Quick Facts
- NAME: Ludwig van Beethoven
- OCCUPATION: Songwriter, Pianist
- BIRTH DATE: c. December 16, 1770
- DEATH DATE: March 26, 1827
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Bonn, Germany
- PLACE OF DEATH: Vienna, Austria
Best Known For
Ludwig van Beethoven was a deaf German composer and the predominant musical figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras.
Videos see all videos
Beethoven - Meeting the Master
Beethoven got the opportunity to go to Vienna and intends to play for Mozart.
Beethoven - Music as a Metaphor
Celebrated as musical genius, Beethoven's compositions are often extremely difficult to play.
Beethoven - A Rough Childhood
As a child Beethoven was taught by his father to play the piano: His drunken teacher often beat him when he did not meet his standards.
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Play NowLudwig Beethoven. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 12:43, May 20, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/ludwig-van-beethoven-9204862.
Ludwig Beethoven. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/ludwig-van-beethoven-9204862 [Accessed 20 May 2013].
"Ludwig Beethoven." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 20 2013, 12:43 http://www.biography.com/people/ludwig-van-beethoven-9204862.
"Ludwig Beethoven," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/ludwig-van-beethoven-9204862 [accessed May 20, 2013].
"Ludwig Beethoven," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/ludwig-van-beethoven-9204862 (accessed May 20, 2013).
Ludwig Beethoven [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 20] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/ludwig-van-beethoven-9204862.
Ludwig Beethoven, http://www.biography.com/people/ludwig-van-beethoven-9204862 (last visited May 20, 2013).
Ludwig Beethoven. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/ludwig-van-beethoven-9204862. Accessed May 20, 2013.
His greatest late works include Missa Solemnis, a mass that debuted in 1824 and is considered among his finest achievements, and String Quartet No. 14, which contains seven linked movements played without a break.
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."
Beethoven died on March 26, 1827, at the age of 56. An autopsy revealed that the immediate cause of death was 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.
Recently, 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.
Ludwig van Beethoven is widely considered the greatest composer of all time. He is the crucial transitional figure connecting the Classical and Romantic ages of Western music. Beethoven's body of musical compositions stands with Shakespeare's plays at the outer limits of human accomplishment.
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 tag line that concluded many Latin plays at the time. "Plaudite, amici, comoedia finita est," he said. "Applaud friends, the comedy is over."
© 2013 A+E Networks. All rights reserved.
© 2013 A+E Networks. All rights reserved.
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