Ludwig Van Beethoven's Life and Accomplishments

Ludwig Van Beethoven was born on December 16, 1770 in Bonn, Germany and he died on March 26, 1827 in Vienna Austria. Beethoven’s music is mostly associated with the classical era because that is when he crafted most of his greatest works. Beethoven’s father and grandfather were both musicians that played at Court of Elector of Cologne. Beethoven’s main instrument that he played was the piano. He was taught by his father how to play the piano. His father was very strict on him, and sometimes he made Beethoven, “stand at the keyboard, was often in tears.” He had other teachers that taught him how to play the violin, and how to play the piano. In 1779, Beethoven began to learn how to write compositions under the teachings of Christian Gottlob Neefe. In March 1783, Beethoven had written and published his first composition, with the help of Neefe. Beethoven also studied under Joseph Hayden in Vienna, after Hayden came back from London. When Beethoven had written his first and second symphonies, “Beethoven became regarded as one of the most important of a generation of young composers following Hayden and Mozart. He taught students how to play music, one student in particular; he fell in love with, Josephine Brunsvik. He had one student that became a composer, and one that became a renowned music teacher. By the 1800’s, Beethoven’s started to lose much of his hearing. “He suffered from a severe form of tinnitus, a "ringing" in his ears that made it hard for him to hear music; he also tried to avoid conversations.” His loss of hearing was very detrimental to his musical career because musicians needed to hear the music they had written to know if was outstanding to them. It also affected his social life, causing him to attend less soc...

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... reasons why Beethoven’s ninth symphony is my favorite symphony of all time. He had so many struggles in his life, but he never let them keep him down. He kept on going and writing these outstanding and beautiful musical pieces.

Works Cited

• "Classical Net - Basic Repertoire List - Beethoven." Classical Net - Basic Repertoire List - Beethoven. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2013.

• Cook, Nicholas. Beethoven: Symphony No. 9. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993. Print.

• "Ludwig Van Beethoven." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 11 Dec. 2013. Web. 01 Nov. 2013.

• Sachs, Harvey. The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824. New York: Random House, 2010. Print.

• "Symphony No. 9 (Beethoven)." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 11 Dec. 2013. Web. 01 Nov. 2013.

• Yudkin, Jeremy. "Chapter 8-Beethoven." Understanding Music. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2013. N. pag. Print.