Born in Bonn, Germany in the year 1770, the young Ludwig van Beethoven was a gifted child who both performed and composed music. As a young man he moved to Vienna and studied with the famous composer Joseph Haydn; he also met Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He first gained public notice as a pianist; he was noted for his fire and brilliance as a performer, and his performances were often intensely moving. He was to write many pieces for the piano throughout his life, and he was instrumental (no pun intended) in bringing about the changes that turned the piano from the delicate instrument of Mozart’s time into the sturdy modern instrument we know today. Beethoven’s skill as a musician gained him the patronage of the Viennese nobility; he was invited to their houses and earned a living giving piano lessons to the rich and famous. By 1809 he was financially secure enough to be able to devote himself entirely to composing.
Beethoven began to lose his hearing in 1798, and within a few years he was completely deaf. His disability was the cause of much distress to him, driving him nearly to suicide at times. He withdrew from the world, and his many eccentricities became even more pronounced. Always a proud and sensitive man, Beethoven at first strove to hide his loss of hearing from even his closest friends, but eventually the truth made its way out. He continued to compose, and his deafness did not affect the beauty of his compositions in any way.
The last years of Beethoven’s life were particularly stressful; the isolation of his deafness and a bitter custody battle with his sister-in-law Johanna over his nephew Karl brought on illness and discomfort. Nonetheless, he continued to compose, and the public continued to respect him as a brilliant musical genius. When he died in 1827, tens of thousands of Viennese turned out to pay their final respects at his funeral.
Beethoven’s musical style was decidedly ahead of its time; a thoroughly Romantic composer, his works express a depth of feeling and a fluidity of form which were, to say the least, shocking to his 19th-century contemporaries. He wrote hundreds of works in his lifetime, many of which are still well-known and often-performed today. Among his masterpieces are the Moonlight Sonata, the Fur Elize, and the soaring Ninth Symphony, which contains his famous Ode to Joy.