Ludwig van Beethoven, (baptized December 17, 1770, Bonn, archbishopric of Cologne [Germany]—died March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria), German composer, the predominant musical figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras.
Widely regarded as the greatest composer who ever lived, Ludwig van Beethoven dominates a period of musical history as no one else before or since. Rooted in the Classical traditions of Joseph Haydn and Mozart, his art reaches out to encompass the new spirit of humanism and incipient nationalism expressed in the works of Goethe and Friedrich von Schiller, his elder contemporaries in the world of literature; the stringently redefined moral imperatives of Kant; and the ideals of the French Revolution, with its passionate concern for the freedom and dignity of the individual.
He revealed more vividly than any of his predecessors the power of music to convey a philosophy of life without the aid of a spoken text; and in certain of his compositions is to be found the strongest assertion of the human will in all music, if not in all art. Though not himself a Romantic, he became the fountainhead of much that characterized the work of the Romantics who followed him, especially in his ideal of program or illustrative music, which he defined in connection with his Sixth (Pastoral) Symphony as “more an expression of emotion than painting.” In musical form he was a considerable innovator, widening the scope of sonata, symphony, concerto, and quartet, while in the Ninth Symphony he combined the worlds of vocal and instrumental music in a manner never before attempted.

His personal life was marked by a heroic struggle against encroaching 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. In an age that saw the decline of court and church patronage, he not only maintained himself from the sale and publication of his works but also was the first musician to receive a salary with no duties other than to compose how and when he felt inclined.
Beethoven was the eldest surviving child of Johann and Maria Magdalena van Beethoven. The family was Flemish in origin and can be traced back to Malines. It was Beethoven’s grandfather who had first settled in Bonn when he became a singer in the choir of the archbishop-elector of Cologne; he eventually rose to become Kappellmeister. His son Johann was also a singer in the electoral choir; thus, like most 18th-century musicians, Beethoven was born into the profession. Though at first quite prosperous, the Beethoven family became steadily poorer with the death of his grandfather in 1773 and the decline of his father into alcoholism. By age 11 Beethoven had to leave school; at 18 he was the breadwinner of the family.

When in 1780 Joseph II became sole ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, he appointed his brother Maximilian Francis as adjutant and successor-designate to the archbishop-elector of Cologne. Under Maximilian’s rule, Bonn was transformed from a minor provincial town into a thriving and cultured capital city. A liberal Roman Catholic, he endowed Bonn with a university, limited the power of his own clergy, and opened the city to the full tide of the German literary renaissance associated with Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, and the young Goethe and Schiller. A sign of the times was the nomination as court organist of Christian Gottlob Neefe, a Protestant from Saxony, who became Beethoven’s teacher.
Although somewhat limited as a musician, Neefe was nonetheless a man of high ideals and wide culture, a man of letters as well as a composer of songs and light theatrical pieces; and it was to be through Neefe that Beethoven in 1783 would have his first extant composition (Nine Variations on a March by Dressler) published at Mannheim. By June 1782 Beethoven had become Neefe’s assistant as court organist.

In 1783 he was also appointed continuo player to the Bonn opera. By 1787 he had made such progress that Maximilian Francis, archbishop-elector since 1784, was persuaded to send him to Vienna to study with Mozart. The visit was cut short when, after a short time, Beethoven received the news of his mother’s death. According to tradition, Mozart was highly impressed with Beethoven’s powers of improvisation and told some friends that “this young man will make a great name for himself in the world”; no reliable account of Beethoven’s first trip to Vienna survives, however.
For the next five years, Beethoven remained at Bonn. To his other court duties was added that of playing viola in the theatre orchestra; and, although the archbishop for the time being showed him no further mark of special favour, he was beginning to make valuable acquaintances. Sometime previously he had come to know the widow of the chancellor, Joseph von Breuning, and she engaged him as music teacher to two of her four children. From then on, the Breunings’ house became for him a second home, far more congenial than his own. Through Mme von Breuning, Beethoven acquired a number of wealthy pupils. His most useful social contact came in 1788 with the arrival in Bonn of Ferdinand, Graf (count) von Waldstein, a member of the highest Viennese aristocracy and a music lover.

Waldstein became a member of the Breuning circle, where he heard Beethoven play and at once became his devoted admirer. At a fancy dress ball given in 1790, the ballet music, according to the Almanach de Gotha (a journal chronicling the social activities of the aristocracy), had been composed by the count, but it was generally known that Beethoven had written it for him. The same year saw the death of the emperor Joseph II. Through Waldstein again, Beethoven was invited to compose a funeral ode for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, but the scheduled performance was canceled because the wind players found certain passages too difficult. He then added to it a complementary piece celebrating the accession of Joseph’s brother Leopold II. There is no record that either was ever performed until the end of the 19th century, when the manuscripts were rediscovered in Vienna and pronounced authentic by Johannes Brahms.
Before Beethoven left Bonn, he had acquired a very considerable reputation in northwest Germany as a piano virtuoso, with a particular talent for extemporization. Mozart had been one of the finest improvisers of his age; by all accounts Beethoven surpassed him. In the age of sensibility he could move an audience to tears more easily than any other pianist of the time. For this reason especially he was taken up by the Viennese aristocracy almost from the moment he set foot in Vienna. Waldstein had, of course, prepared the way with his talk of a successor to Mozart; and it is significant that Beethoven’s earliest patrons in Vienna were Gottfried, Baron van Swieten and Karl, Fürst (prince) von Lichnowsky, who alone among the aristocracy had remained Mozart’s supporters until his death.

Perhaps, as well, Beethoven traded on the “van” in his name—which was widely if wrongly understood to denote noble lineage—to gain easier access to aristocratic circles. In the Vienna of the 1790s, music had become more and more the favourite pastime of a cultured aristocracy, for whom politics under the reactionary emperor Francis II were now discreditable and dangerous and who had, moreover, never shown a like appreciation of any of the other fine arts. Many played instruments themselves well enough to be able to take their place beside professionals. Probably at no other time and in no other city was there such a high standard of amateur and semiprofessional music-making as in the Vienna of Beethoven’s day.
In this period too, he considered more seriously than before the idea of marriage. As early as 1801, letters to his friend Wegeler refer to “a dear sweet girl who loves me and whom I love.” This is thought to have been the countess Giulietta Guicciardi, a piano pupil and the cousin of two other pupils, Therese and Josephine, daughters of the Graf von Brunsvik. It was to Giulietta that he dedicated the Piano Sonata in C-sharp Minor, Opus 27, No. 2, known as the Moonlight Sonata. But the countess married the Graf von Gallenberg in 1803, and in later years Beethoven seems to have remembered her only with mild contempt.

It seems clear, however, that he did propose marriage to her cousin Josephine, whose elderly husband, the Graf von Deym, died in 1804, and the understanding appears to have continued for about three years, until it was brought to an end partly by Beethoven’s own indecisiveness and partly by pressure from Josephine’s family. The prospective bride of 1810 is thought to have been Therese Malfatti, daughter of one of Beethoven’s doctors, but, like the other marriage projects, this too lapsed, and Beethoven remained a bachelor.
A curious item, however, was found among his effects, locked away in a drawer, at the time of his death: three letters, written but apparently never sent (they may have been sent but returned to him), to the “Immortal Beloved.” The content, which varies from high-flown poetic sentiments to banal complaints about his health and discomfort, makes it clear that this is no literary exercise but was intended for a real person. The month and day of the week are given, but not the year. The periods 1801–02, 1806–07, and 1811–12 have been proposed, but the last is the most probable. The most cogent arguments regarding the identity of the person addressed, those by Maynard Solomon, point to Antonie Brentano, a native Viennese, who was the wife of a Frankfurt merchant and sister-in-law to Beethoven familiar Bettina Brentano