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Ludwig van Beethoven was one of the world's most famous composers. He was born in 1770 and died in 1827. He was born December 16, 1770 in Bonn Germany. His early musical talent was subjected to the discipline of his father a singer in the court chapel.
His father was an alcoholic and so the young Beethoven began supporting his family as a court musician. He studied under several famous composers - Christian Need, and Austrian Joseph Haydn. He would have studied under Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but Mozart died just before he could travel to Vienna to study under this master. In Vienna Beethoven dazzled the rich with his piano improvisations. His musical style often challenged the "norms" of the day - he composed works for every major type of music - symphony, concerto, string quartet and sonata.
He is remembered today for such famous works like his Symphony No. 3 (1803) and Symphony No. 8 (1912) This time was known as his heroic period. As he grew older, he became very eccentric. He had a growing handicap - deafness. He performed in public only rarely and made his last appearance in 1814. He raised his brother's son Karl and was not ideal parent and there was much friction between the two which lead to Karl attempting suicide in 1926. By 1818 Beethoven was virtually deaf and relied on small conversation books in which visitors wrote their remarks to him.
He then withdrew from all, but a steadily shrinking circle of friends. H died in Vienna on March 26, 1827, with tens of thousands of people watching his funeral procession. Beethoven's major musical achievements included 9 symphonies, 7 concertos (5 for piano), 17 string quartets, 32 piano sonatas, 10 violin sonatas, 5 sonatas for the cello, an opera and 2 masses and many piano pieces. He was one of the last composers of a Viennese classical style. His style was that closely resembling Haydn and Mozart. He wrote in a very romantic style and depending upon the period in his life all his music were of a different dominant style.
His string quartets have come as has so much of his music yardsticks against which all other musical achievements are measured. He had a lifelong habit of sketching musical compositions as he worked them out and this became even more important as he grew older. The more than 7000 pages of drafts entered outdoors on scraps of paper or in small notebooks, as well as the more extensive notebooks he filled up indoors, form one of Western music's most enduring monuments to musical creativity. He was the heroic idea and held a romantic image of an artist in his century. Beethoven created works which today form the backbone of orchestral and chamber music repertoires the world over.
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