Biography of Ludwig van Beethoven | German composer.

(Bonn, Germany, 1770 - Vienna, 1827) German composer. Born in a family of Flemish origin, his father, to the evident qualities for music showing the small Ludwig, tried to make him a second Mozart, though with little success.

The true musical vocation of Beethoven did not actually begin until 1779, when it came into contact with the organist Christian Gottlob Neefe, who became his teacher. He was, for example, who introduced him to the study of Johann Sebastian Bach, musician that Beethoven always profesaría a deep devotion.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Member of the Orchestra of the Court of Bonn from 1783, 1787 in Ludwig van Beethoven performed a first journey to Vienna with the purpose of having kinds of Mozart. However, the illness and subsequent death of his mother him forced to return to his hometown, few weeks after arrival.

In 1792 Beethoven traveled back to the Austrian capital to work with Haydn, and Antonio Salieri, and became known as a composer and pianist in a concert that took place in 1795 with great success. His career as a performer was abruptly interrupted as a result of deafness that began to affect you from 1796 and since 1815 deprived completely of the auditory faculty.

The last years of the life of Beethoven were also marked by solitude and a progressive introspection, yet continued his compositional work, and was even the time that created their most impressive and advanced works.

Works by Ludwig van Beethoven

Tradition divides the career of Beethoven in three major creative periods or styles, and although use has become topical, nonetheless they are less useful when it comes to frame his legacy.

The first time covers compositions written up to 1800, characterized by closely follow the model established by Mozart and Joseph Haydn and classicism in general, without excessive innovations or personal traits. To this period belong works such as the famous Septimino or his first two concertos for piano.

A second way or style ranges from 1801 to 1814, this period that may be considered mature, with works fully originals in which Ludwig van Beethoven boasts a stranglehold of form and expression (the opera Fidelio, his first eight symphonies, its last three concertos for piano, violin concerto).

The third stage covers until the death of the musician and is dominated by his works most innovative and personal, misunderstood in his time for the novelty of its harmonic language and its unconventional form; the Symphony No. 9, the Missa solemnis and the last string quartets and piano sonatas represent the culmination of this period and the style of Ludwig van Beethoven.

In these works, Beethoven anticipated many of the traits which characterize the subsequent romantic music, and even, 20th century. The work of Ludwig van Beethoven is located between the classicism of Mozart and Haydn and the romanticism of a Schumann or a Brahms. There is no doubt that, as a composer, designates a before and an after in the history of music and reflex, perhaps like no other - with the exception of his contemporary Francisco Goya-, not only change between the romantic and the classical taste, between the first formalism and subjectivism of the second, but also between the old regime and the new social and political situation that emerged from the French Revolution.

Indeed, in 1789 the Bastille fell and with it all a conception of the world which included the role of the artist in society. Following the footsteps of his admired Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven was the first musician who managed to gain independence and live of the tasks that were performed, without being at the service of a Prince or an aristocrat, while, in contrast to Salzburg, he got success and win the respect and recognition of their contemporaries.

Extracted from the website: Biografías y Vidas