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“Rightness––that’s the word! When you get the feeling that whatever note succeeds the last is the only possible note that can rightly happen at that instant, in that context, then chances are you’re listening to Beethoven.”

– Leonard Bernstein

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and keyboardist whose life and works have achieved a legendary status beyond almost anything ever seen in Western music before or since. Often credited as the proverbial “missing link” between the functional elegance of Classicism and the extreme emotional power of its artistic successor, Romanticism, Beethoven met and almost supernaturally exceeded expectations in all manner of musical genres––perhaps most notably the orchestral symphony.

And yet for much of his life, he was deaf.

Born in Bonn, in what was then the Electorate of Cologne (a part of then as-yet-ununified Germany), Beethoven was a descendant of professional singers. His father, Johann, and grandfather, also named Ludwig, had both enjoyed prestigious vocal careers in Bonn’s local court, and it seemed only natural that Beethoven––Johann’s eldest son––would make a similar name for himself. But reports suggest Beethoven’s early music studies were highly intense and, quite possibly, abusive, as there’s some evidence his father was a violent alcoholic.

Yet while the training was cruel, the outcome was astonishing: at age 12, Beethoven was allegedly a master theorist and keyboardist, able to play his way through almost all of Bach’s monumental work, The Well Tempered Clavier.

Around this time, Beethoven began an apprenticeship of sorts with Bonn’s court organist Christian Gottlob Neefe (1748-1798), a position that put the younger Ludwig in front of local patrons who were soon bent on sending him to the musical metropolis of Vienna, where he traveled in 1787. Still, the road to settling in Vienna was a bumpy one—Beethoven quickly returned home following his mother’s sudden and fatal illness, and he wouldn’t resume his Viennese education until many years later.

When he finally returned to the city in 1792, Beethoven was able to take lessons with no less a composer than Franz Joseph Hadyn (1732-1809). And it was in Vienna that Beethoven would enjoy some of his greatest successes, kicked off perhaps with his premiere performance as both pianist and composer in 1795 and the debut of his Symphony No. 1 in C Major in 1800. Music historians are fond of referring to these works as part of Beethoven’s “early” period, a stream of musical output that would be followed by his “middle” and “later” works, each era representing a sizeable shift in style and expression, not only for Beethoven’s music itself but for Western music at large. This, of course, is a rather reductive way of looking at a lifetime’s worth of artistic development (and a highly varied and nuanced career), but it can be helpful in breaking down some of the crucial turning points in Beethoven’s composition as well as in his physical and emotional landscape.

Here’s a very cursory look at each Beethovenian period:

Beethoven’s early era roughly encompassed the years from 1787 to 1802. The period included many “smaller scale” works for solo piano (the “Moonlight” sonata, 1801, among them) and chamber quartets, as well as violin and cello sonatas, in addition to his first two symphonies. These earlier pieces hinted at the revolutionary image Beethoven would cultivate in his later years (and after his death), breaking with formal, thematic, dynamic, and harmonic traditions just enough to keep audiences enthralled but not appalled. Sadly, though, this era also marks the beginning of Beethoven’s hearing loss, the symptoms of which first manifested around 1798. These were likely compounded by tremendous levels of personal stress thanks to his de facto position as family breadwinner, which materialized once his widowed father proved unable to provide for Beethoven and his siblings. The composer’s suffering came to a head in 1802 when, while convalescing in the town of Heiligenstadt outside Vienna, the 32-year-old Beethoven penned a gut-wrenching testament detailing his internal struggles:

“Though born with a fiery, active temperament, even susceptible to the diversions of society, I was soon compelled to isolate myself, to live life alone. If at times I tried to forget all this, oh how harshly was I flung back by the doubly sad experience of my bad hearing. Yet it was impossible for me to say to people, ‘Speak louder, shout, for I am deaf.’”

– Ludwig van Beethoven, “Heiligenstadt Testament”

Despite ongoing illness and growing despair, Beethoven used his time at Heiligenstadt wisely, ultimately sketching out the piece that was to spark his “middle” period: his Symphony No. 3 in E-Flat Major (1804), nicknamed the “Eroica” or “Heroic.” Indeed, the ensuing years (circa 1802-1815) witnessed nothing short of a heroic outpouring of music from the composer, much of which was inspired by themes of social heroism or personal triumph––perhaps in response to the political upheaval spearheaded by Napoleon Bonaparte, whom Beethoven appeared to find both impressive and problematic, depending on the year.

These works might also have represented Beethoven’s subversive reaction to the financial plight of composers like himself, who at the turn of the 19th century could no longer rely on a steady income from a group of wealthy patrons and often had to publish and perform to make a living. Glaring examples of constant striving reflected in this period include the first incarnation of his sole opera, Fidelio (1805, then titled Leonore), a story of love’s victory over tyranny; his Symphony No. 5 in C minor (1808), whose defiant transition to major in the final movement is read by many as a proverbial conquest of good over evil; and his Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-Flat Major (1809), the famed “Emperor” Concerto, built on a key conventionally associated with heroic deeds (see the “Eroica”).

But Beethoven was far from done.

The composer’s middle period saw the creation of, among other works, five towering symphonies (Nos. 4-8), two momentous piano concertos, a set of three string quartets (Op. 59, known as the “Rasumovsky” quartets, 1806), two symphonic overtures (Coriolan, 1807, and Egmont, 1810), and the Waldstein (1804) and Appassionata piano sonatas (1805), which brought Beethoven back to his roots as a talented and virtuosic keyboardist. Yet it was his final period that would secure his position in the pantheon of Western musicians once and for all.

It's hard to separate Beethoven the man from the colossal, tectonic achievement that was (and is) his Symphony No. 9 in D minor (1824)––the piece that epitomizes his final era, if not his entire legacy. Like other works of the period (including the 33 Diabelli Variations and the Missa Solemnis mass, both from 1823), the mighty Ninth was all but unprecedented in its use of dynamic, harmonic, and textural contrast, not to mention the sheer audacity of its size, scope, and groundbreaking form. Before Beethoven, symphonies were strictly instrumental, but with the Ninth, the pioneering composer saw fit to add human voices to the fray, featuring a choral adaptation of poet Friedrich Schiller’s (1759-1805) “Ode to Joy”––an anthem in celebration of humanity––as part of an added fifth movement (symphonies typically have only four).

But for all its ferocious optimism, Symphony No. 9 was written during a painfully tumultuous time in Beethoven’s personal life. Upon its completion in 1824, Beethoven was several years into a legal and psychological battle with his late brother Caspar’s wife over the care and custody of his young nephew, Karl. The endless litigation, combined with the composer’s reportedly strict and volatile behavior toward the young man, may have contributed to Karl’s attempted suicide in 1826, an act which appears to highlight a pattern of abuse passed down from Beethoven’s father. Beethoven’s deteriorating health could only have compounded the situation––by this time, the composer had endured over two decades of near complete deafness, which left him feeling alienated from society and, according to accounts, both paranoid and combative.

Yet while Beethoven was no saint, the centuries following his death in 1827 (from complications due to pneumonia and possible lead poisoning) have granted him near saintly status. Practically every Western symphonic composer has had to wrestle with the standard Beethoven’s Ninth has set, some famously refraining from composing their own symphony for fear of Beethoven’s shadow. And to this day, Beethoven looms larger than almost any other figure in classical music, a point perhaps most keenly felt inside Boston’s Symphony Hall, whose proscenium displays Beethoven’s name––and Beethoven’s name alone––directly above the stage.

Apparently, Beethoven was the only musician all interested parties could agree upon when deciding which composers should be prominently featured in the prestigious auditorium.

Written by Eleni Hagen

Sources

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Kenny Neal 
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