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THE NEW GROVE
Dictionary of Music
and Musicians
SECOND EDITION
Bonn, bap. 17 Dec 1770; d
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.
Beethoven, Ludwig van
^po 76 M a r c h J T -
1. Family background and childhood. 2. Youth. 3. 1792-5. 4. 17961800. 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: (i) History of the myth (ii) Beethoven's influence on music
and musical thought (iii) Political reception.
1. FAMILY BACKGROUND AND CHILDHOOD. Three generations of the Beethoven family tound 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 Liege 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
(c!740-1792) 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 Hemrich 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
vet 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
Beethoven, Ludwig van
73
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 waTln 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 I
the fact that most of his out-of-school hours must have I
been devoted to music, explains some of the gaps in his fi
academic equipment, such as his blindness to orthography
and punctuation and his inability to carry out the simplest
multiplication sum.
^—s
2. Ludwig van Beethoven: miniature by Christian Horneman, 1803
(Beethoven-Haus, Bonn)