The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. In the 29-volume second edition. Grove Music Online /General Editor – Stanley Sadie. Oxford University Press. 2001

JOSEPH KERMAN, ALAN TYSON (with SCOTT G. BURNHAM) (§§1–18), SCOTT G. BURNHAM (§19)

Beethoven, Ludwig van

(b Bonn, bap. 17 Dec 1770; d Vienna, 26 March 1827).German composer. His early achievements, as composer and performer, show him to be extending the Viennese Classical tradition that he had inherited from Mozart and Haydn. As personal affliction – deafness, and the inability to enter into happy personal relationships – loomed larger, he began to compose in an increasingly individual musical style, and at the end of his life he wrote his most sublime and profound works. From his success at combining tradition and exploration and personal expression, he came to be regarded as the dominant musical figure of the 19th century, and scarcely any significant composer since his time has escaped his influence or failed to acknowledge it. For the respect his works have commanded of musicians, and the popularity they have enjoyed among wider audiences, he is probably the most admired composer in the history of Western music.

1. Family background and childhood.

2. Youth.

3. 1792–5.

4. 1796–1800.

5. 1801–2: deafness.

6. 1803–8.

7. 1809–12.

8. 1813–21.

9. 1822–4.

10. 1824–7.

11. The ‘three periods’.

12. Music of the Bonn period.

13. Music of the early Vienna period.

14. The symphonic ideal.

15. Middle-period works.

16. Late-period style.

17. Late-period works.

18. Personal characteristics.

19. Posthumous influence and reception.

WORKS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beethoven, Ludwig van

1. Family background and childhood.

Three generations of the Beethoven family found employment as musicians at the court of the Electorate of Cologne, which had its seat at Bonn. The composer’s grandfather, Ludwig (Louis) van Beethoven (1712–73), the son of an enterprising burgher of Mechelen (Belgium), was a trained musician with a fine bass voice, and after positions at Mechelen, Leuven and Liège accepted in 1733 an appointment as bass in the electoral chapel at Bonn. In 1761 he was appointed Kapellmeister, a position which – although he seems not to have been a composer, unlike other occupants of such a post – carried with it the responsibility of supervising the musical establishment of the court.

With his wife Maria Josepha Poll, whom he had married in 1733, and who later took to drink, he had only one child that survived. Johann van Beethoven (c1740–1792) was a lesser man than his father. He, too, entered the elector’s service, first as a boy soprano in 1752, and continuing after adolescence as a tenor. He was also proficient enough on the piano and the violin to be able to supplement his income by giving lessons on those instruments as well as in singing. In November 1767 he married Maria Magdalena (1745–87), daughter of Heinrich Keverich, ‘overseer of cooking’ at the electoral summer palace of Ehrenbreitstein, and already the widow of Johann Leym, valet to the Elector of Trier; she was not yet 21. The couple took lodgings in Bonn at 515 Bonngasse. Their first child Ludwig Maria (bap. 2 April 1769) lived only six days; their second, also called Ludwig and the subject of this narrative, was baptized on 17 December 1770. Of five children subsequently born to the couple only two survived infancy: Caspar Anton Carl (bap. 8 April 1774) and Nikolaus Johann (bap. 2 October 1776). Both brothers were to play important parts in Beethoven’s life.

Inevitably the early years of the son of an obscure musician in a small provincial town are themselves sunk in obscurity, and though speculation and myth-making have both been productive, facts are rather scarce. It is clear that at a very early age he received instruction from his father on the piano and the violin. Tradition adds that the child, made to stand at the keyboard, was often in tears. Beethoven’s first appearance in public was at a concert given with another of his father’s pupils (a contralto) on 26 March 1778, at which (according to the advertisement) he played ‘various clavier concertos and trios’. A little later, when he was eight, his father is said to have sent him to the old court organist van den Eeden, from whom he may have received some grounding in music theory as well as keyboard instruction. He appears also to have had piano lessons from Tobias Friedrich Pfeiffer, who lodged for a while with the family, and informal tuition from several local organists. A relative, Franz Rovantini, gave the boy lessons on the violin and viola. His general education was not continued beyond the elementary school, but this was in accordance with the usual custom in Bonn at that time, only a few children going on to a Gymnasium (high school). The comparative brevity of Beethoven’s formal education, combined with the fact that most of his out-of-school hours must have been devoted to music, explains some of the gaps in his academic equipment, such as his blindness to orthography and punctuation and his inability to carry out the simplest multiplication sum.

In 1779 a musician arrived in Bonn who was to be Beethoven’s first important teacher. This was Christian Gottlob Neefe, who came as the musical director of a theatrical company that the elector took into his establishment. The point at which he began instructing Beethoven is not known. But in February 1781 Neefe succeeded to the post of court organist, a position that evidently required an assistant, and by June 1782, when Neefe left Bonn for a short period, Beethoven was acting as deputy in his absence; he was then 11½. Neefe’s estimate of his pupil is contained in a communication to Cramer’s Magazin der Musik dated 2 March 1783 – the first printed notice of Beethoven:

Louis van Beethoven, son of the tenor singer already mentioned, a boy of 11 years and of most promising talent. He plays the piano very skilfully and with power, reads at sight very well, and I need say no more than that the chief piece he plays is Das wohltemperirte Clavier of Sebastian Bach, which Herr Neefe put into his hands … So far as his other duties permitted, Herr Neefe has also given him instruction in thoroughbass. He is now training him in composition and for his encouragement has had nine variations for the piano, written by him on a march [by Ernst Christoph Dressler], engraved at Mannheim. This youthful genius is deserving of help to enable him to travel. He would surely become a second Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart if he were to continue as he has begun.

The reference to Mozart was presumably to the child prodigy and not to the mature composer whose years of fame in Vienna were yet to come; but Neefe’s affection for his young pupil and confidence in his ability are plain. The variations on Dressler’s march (woo63), published by Götz of Mannheim, were Beethoven’s first published work.

Further experience came to Beethoven via Neefe in 1783 when his teacher, overburdened with the work of the temporarily absent Kapellmeister Lucchesi, employed him as ‘cembalist in the orchestra’, not only a position of some responsibility but also one that will have enabled him to hear all the popular operas of the day. The autumn saw the publication of his first significant composition, the three piano sonatas dedicated to the Elector Maximilian Friedrich (woo47). Towards the close of the year Beethoven undertook a trip to Holland, where he is reported to have performed on numerous occasions, notably including an orchestral concert at The Hague (at which he probably played his Concerto in E , woo4).

Beethoven, Ludwig van