“Whoever penetrates the meaning of my music will be liberated from the misery in which other people suffer.” – Beethoven
Beethoven is one of the greatest musicians: unparalleled in many ways, a role model of artistic greatness and ethical strength. His musical art is one of the most sublime manifestations of the human mind. And perhaps, at times, in his works, the concept of music becomes questionable: the artist’s expression seems to transcend what the human ear can hear…
The fact that he lived almost an equal number of years in the 18th and 19th centuries reflects the deep symbolism of Beethoven’s role in the development of European music: he unites the efforts of Haydn and Mozart, leading them to unprecedented heights. But he also boldly leads into the future: his works strongly reflect the turbulent and painful everyday life and become subjective confessions of the artist’s internal conflicts; in these romantic features, Beethoven’s works truly belong to the 19th century.
Childhood
CHILDHOOD
Beethoven was a…
Born in Bonn on December 17, 1770, in a musical family of Flemish origin. Recognizing the exceptional musical abilities of the boy, his father, a tenor of the court chapel, directed him to piano and violin lessons. However, he was the first one to make his life bitter: as an incorrigible alcoholic, with a harsh temper, hoping to make money for drinking in the taverns of Bonn, he tried to turn little Ludwig into a new Mozart at all costs, forcing him to endless piano exercises as early as the age of five.
His teachers were oboist Federico Pfeiffer, violinist Francesco Rovantini, while the technique of harmony and counterpoint was taught by the famous composer and organist Christian Gottlob Neefe. Already at the age of eight, Beethoven achieved great success in Bonn, Cologne, and the Netherlands; he became a piano prodigy, starting a long and acclaimed career as a musician.
GOING TO VIENNA
On the recommendation of Count Waldstein, he went to Vienna in 1792, the same Vienna where he held a concert in 1787 after which he Mozart predicted a brilliant future. In Vienna, the city where he would spend his entire life, Beethoven introduced himself as a composer with a public performance of his Concerto in C major. He began studying counterpoint with the already celebrated Haydn, but despite Haydn’s valuable advice, this collaboration was a complete disappointment for Beethoven: Haydn demanded obedience that Beethoven’s unrestrained spirit could hardly bear…
Therefore, he sought out other teachers: he started taking lessons with Johann Schenk, and, upon Haydn’s recommendation, he studied under the renowned counterpoint teacher Albrechtsberger, while the famous Salieri gave him advice on dramatic declamation and vocal music.
During this period, he made great progress in his creativity, and his works, although influenced by Haydn and Mozart, already expressed his unrestrained personality; His First and Second symphonies were bolder and more innovative than Haydn’s and Mozart’s symphonies. In terms of the grandeur and brilliance of instrumentation and occasional martial-heroic tones… In some themes and rhythms, Beethoven’s dissatisfied nature with stagnant customs is apparent: Beethoven’s soul could not bear the shackles that restrain the flight of imagination; it needed a broader perspective…
This is also the period when he especially builds his personal culture, although he never stops acquiring new knowledge. He consistently reads works by Greek thinkers such as Plato, Plutarch, Homer, Sophocles, Aristotle, Euripides. He highly appreciated Shakespeare’s works, which influenced him as a composer. He knew French, Italian, and Latin. He read Voltaire’s and Rousseau’s works in the original, and as a child, he fell in love with the great German classics: Schiller, Goethe, Klopstock. In short, he was thirsty for knowledge and sought to rise in all his strength and greatness, surpassing his own pain in order to transform it into music – the essence of his own existence. A blow that can befall a musician: gradually losing hearing; at first almost imperceptibly, and then more and more intensively. With the loss of hearing comes a gradual loss of connection with the outside world, and one becomes more and more closed off. In 1801, he writes to his friend Dr. Wegeler: I am living a miserable life. For two years now, I have been avoiding social situations because I cannot tell people: I am deaf!…it is terrible… It is strange that there are people who, while talking to me, have never noticed it… Often, I have cursed my life. If possible, I will defy fate, but there are moments when I feel like the most wretched of God’s creatures.
Believing that due to his insidious illness he is doomed to a wretched future, in early October 1802, he seriously considers suicide. In Heiligenstadt, the place where he was receiving treatment, he decides to put an end to his unbearable life. There, he composed the famous Heiligenstadt Testament: …Oh divinity, you see my heart from up high, you know it, you know that love for one’s neighbor and the longing for good reside in it. My hopes have withered away like the fallen autumn leaves! Oh Providence, grant me one day, just one day of true joy!
On the edge of the abyss, he mustered the strength to defy death and continue the fight. Overcoming his crisis, he began to create with newfound enthusiasm: it was then, in the Third Symphony, that he reached his first peak in symphonic composition; as he worked on it, he thought of Napoleon’s heroic exploits… He believed that Napoleon would realize republican principles and establish a state based on equality, love, and brotherhood… Like countless artists of his time, Beethoven must have felt the power of feudalism. Although he freely entered aristocratic palaces and acquired acquaintances and patrons in high circles, he loudly expressed his opinions without regard for the person he was speaking to. Prince! What you are, you have become by chance and birth, while I owe my position to myself alone. There have been and will be thousands of princes, but Beethoven is only one. These were the words he directed towards the arrogant Prince Lich. Neither financial aid nor staying in his palace could make the artist a servant to the prince. The protection of the powerful never made Beethoven their servant.
In the monumental Third Symphony, Beethoven’s personal heroism is reflected; the strength and courage with which the artist confronted insidious illness… As if one can feel the hero’s pride and defiance in overcoming obstacles in those sounds; ultimately, the hero triumphs!
BEETHOVEN’S LIFE
In his battle with illness, his soul gained even greater strength. The bright and joyful Fourth Symphony is a poem of happiness and enthusiasm. During that time, the artist had moments of brightness: in 1806, while staying at the Brunswick family estate in Hungary, he met Teresa Brunswick, probably the only woman who truly loved him. In this work, Beethoven’s soul was guided by love and the beauty of nature, and he filled it with the intensity of love, shaping his experiences through music… However, they never married.
“I will seize destiny by the throat!” Beethoven wrote to Wegeler. , overcoming the mental crisis in Heiligenstadt. By listening to the Fifth Symphony, we can almost hear his words, which seem to be condensed into those initial four concise notes that, always different yet always the same, permeate the entire colossal masterpiece. Thus fate knocks on the door, allegedly said Beethoven about the initial measures of the Fifth Symphony. From them, tense drama penetrates the musical fabric; in the grandiose momentum, the artist’s struggle with himself transforms into the struggle of all humanity, overcoming and breaking barriers on the path to happiness… Prometheus will break the chains!
Many of his works composed after the crisis in Heiligenstadt have a tone of combativeness, enthusiasm, and fervor: he grabbed destiny by the throat! However, some of the works reveal lyrical moods, passion, and longing. His Sixth Symphony is an anthem that the artist dedicated to nature, his dearest refuge; everything he experienced in nature, the silence at dawn, the solemn evening peace, the bending of trees before the force of the wind, the joyful dance… The rural boys and girls, the concern of the peasants before the storm, its strength, and their grateful song when the storm subsides without consequences… all of this lives in this work. In the forest, in wood, in rock, a sound emerges that man wants to feel, he wrote once. The more deafness separated him from people, the more nature comforted him. He loved solitary walks in the fields and climbing hills from which his gaze stretched into endless distances. But this work is not only a reflection of his deep love for nature, but also his call to return to coexistence with nature before the corruption of modern civilization…
Beethoven, by closing himself in, pressed by unstoppable deafness, found solace in creation. In dedicated creative work, his faith in himself and in the mission he as an artist must fulfill grew. “I am Bacchus who squeezes nectar for humanity,” he said. Thus, the Seventh Symphony bursts with unbridled joy of life: the music is filled with the power of health and life, and in the finale, it resonates with happiness. There are people who celebrate in joy and happiness somewhere deep in the heart of nature… Joy also erupts from the Eighth Symphony, but of a different nature: the Eighth Symphony is childishly open-minded and charming, as if Beethoven wants to show us his victory over himself, overcoming his own destiny and conveying his joy of life to us…
Under the influence of life circumstances, Beethoven gradually became distrustful of everyone; sometimes he misunderstood even the sincerest manifestation of someone else’s kindness and affection. He also suffered because of his loves, which were strange and unhappy in succession: the women he loved were mostly noblewomen, and that circumstance alone created insurmountable chasms. In addition, his illness would stand like a wall in front of his emotions… Longing for family warmth, after the death of his brother, he becomes the guardian of his beloved nephew Karl. He had to fight for a long time until a court decision removed him from his mother, whom he did not consider capable of raising a child due to her disorderly life. However, over time, it was shown that… The wretch was unworthy of such love and attention: he loved gambling, accumulated debts, and in 1826, he attempted suicide. He didn’t die, but he dealt a blow to his uncle, whose love had forgiven all his actions, from which he never recovered… Because of all these troubles, Beethoven experienced a creative crisis towards the end of his life. But in reality, it was a time of preparation, gathering strength to create new works, perhaps the most sublime that the human mind has ever produced in the field of music. Lonely, withdrawn, and committed to inner life, Beethoven had a premonition that great works awaited him: “Here is the autumn of my life”, he once said. “I want to be like a fruitful tree that can be shaken, and ripe juicy fruits will fall from it like rain.” His masterwork, the magnificent Ninth Symphony, was completed and performed in 1824. The artist’s fundamental thought that guided its creation was the antithesis of darkness and light, slavery and freedom. The question of man and his struggle. and suffering, but secure path towards happiness. Beethoven, for the first time in a symphonic work, uses words to clearly express his thought: he takes an excerpt from Schiller’s Ode to Joy and entrusts it to a human voice that announces that pain has been overcome and joy has taken hold of all beings. But as Schiller says in the Ode to Joy, joy will only remain with man if he loves and respects his neighbor. With this work, Beethoven left a kind of testament to humanity, of deep and far-reaching significance: an anthem of Love, Brotherhood, and the Creator…
BEETHOVEN’S DEPARTURE
At the premiere of the Ninth Symphony on May 7, 1824, Beethoven appears in public for the last time. He sat next to the conductor, with his back to the audience, flipping through the score, trying to grasp the sound of his work that he couldn’t hear: they had to turn him around to see the illuminated faces of people and understand the great success…
However, his physical strength is leaving him. Grieving for his nephew, he finds solace in his sister After this suicide attempt, Beethoven became despondent. On March 26th, 1827, while a stormy blizzard raged over Vienna, the great artist fell into agony… Thirty thousand people bid him farewell at his final resting place. In one corner, an anonymous musician at the time – Franz Schubert – watched the funeral ceremony, who a year later, at the age of 31, left this world, requesting to be buried next to the great Beethoven. This profound admiration for his genius arose from Beethoven’s vision of music as a bridge that connects people; as a bridge that unites, elevates, and constructs the hearts and minds of all people, regardless of their differences, on their difficult path towards happiness.
Beethoven left behind fewer musical works compared to his predecessors Haydn and Mozart. He did not, like Mozart, create at such an incomprehensible speed and ease. No, the great artist rarely experienced a creative process that unfolds in one stroke and knows no hesitations: this was a Orostas, whose entire life was a struggle with illness, unfavorable circumstances, and his surroundings, fought even when he was creating: his notebooks testify to how persistently he sought the final form of a musical theme. Musical ideas came to him everywhere: passers-by would then see him taking out sheet music from his pocket and beginning to write, singing and beating time with his hand… He walked along the road distractedly, always deep in thought, ignoring greetings from acquaintances who sometimes didn’t recognize him due to his neglected appearance.
Nevertheless, his legacy is immense: it encompasses vocal, orchestral, and works for piano, organ, cello, violin, harp… His thirty-two piano sonatas speak of the most prominent moments of his life; they narrate joy and pain and convey the deepest emotional impressions. Without a doubt, Beethoven is one of the greatest orchestral composers; his nine symphonies are monumental works, with philosophical meanings; they reflect the artist’s striving for knowledge: his works, which he could not complete during his lifetime, have gained immense significance in the history of music. They reveal an exceptional richness of musical imagination and an unbreakable strength of will. In his instrumental works, Beethoven manifests himself as both a man and an artist; his compositions, created in deafness, illuminate all of his intentions: his fighting spirit and perseverance, the humanity of his empathy, his love for nature and mankind. This is expressed through his pure, miraculous, sublime music.