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Beethoven
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The events of Beethoven's life are the stuff of Romantic legend, evoking images of the solitary creator shaking his fist at Fate and finally overcoming it through a supreme effort of creative will. Born in the small German city of Bonn on or around December 16, 1770, he received his early training from his father and other local musicians. As a teenager, he earned some money as an assistant to his teacher, Christian Gottlob Neefe, then was granted half of his father's salary as court musician from the Electorate of Cologne in order to care for his two younger brothers as his father gave in to alcoholism. Beethoven played viola in various orchestras, becoming friends with other players such as Antoine Reicha, Nikolaus Simrock, and Franz Ries, and began taking on composition commissions. As a member of the court chapel orchestra, he was able to travel some and meet members of the nobility, one of whom, Count Ferdinand Waldstein, would become a great friend and patron to him. Beethoven moved to Vienna in 1792 to study with Haydn; despite the prickliness of their relationship, Haydn's concise humor helped form Beethoven's style.
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Beethoven's first music teacher was his father, who was a tenor in the service of the Electoral court at Bonn. He was reportedly a harsh instructor. Johann later engaged a friend, Tobias Pfeiffer, to preside over his son's musical training, and it is said Johann and his friend would at times come home late from a night of drinking to pull young Ludwig out of bed to practice until morning. Beethoven's talent was recognized at a very early age, and by 1778 he was studying the organ and viola in addition to the piano. His most important teacher in Bonn was Christian Gottlob Neefe,[5] who was the Court's Organist. Neefe helped Beethoven publish his first composition: a set of keyboard variations.
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TO SAY Beethoven had an arresting personality would be understatement epitomized. That personality was as powerful as his piano-playing and just as unique in his day. A product of The Age of Enlightenment, he personified revolution. Through his free and frequently fierce nature, he wrenched music out of the 18th century and into the next. (Stravinsky performed a comparable historical service a century later). What Beethoven did makes him if not the last of the Classicists (Brahms might claim title) then arguably the first of the Romantics.
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"At any rate this new work by Beethoven has great daring ideas, and, as can be expected from the genius of this composer, is very powerfully carried out. But the symphony would gain immensely (it lasts a full hour) if Beethoven would decide to shorten it and introduce into the whole more light, clarity and unity....There is, for example, a funeral march in C-minor which is then developed fugally. Now every fugal movement pleases inasmuch as it brings order out of apparent confusion. But if, as now, its coherence escapes even the most attentive ear after repeated hearings, it must appear peculiar even to the unprejudiced listener. Moreover there were very few people who liked the Symphony." Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, 1 May, 1805.
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In this, Beethoven combines chorus and vocal soloists and an orchestra. He was the first composer to ever do anything like this. He borrowed and changed some of Friedrich Schiller's "Ode to Joy" for the lyrics. The words and music yearn for peace, joy, and the brotherhood of man. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony still sings that yearning for people today. It was played at the Tiananmen Square protest in 1989, and at the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1990.
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Beethoven’s patrons loved his music but were not quick to support him. He eventually came to rely more on patrons such as Count Franz Joseph Kinsky, (d. 1811), Prince Joseph Franz Maximilian Lobkowitz (1772-1816) and Karl Alois Johann-Nepomuk Vinzenz, Fürst Lichnowsky, and as these patrons passed away or reneged on their pledges, Beethoven fell into debt. In 1807, Prince Lobkowitz advised Beethoven to apply for the position of composer of the Imperial Theatres, but the nobility who had newly been placed in charge of the post did not respond. Beethoven considered leaving Vienna: in the fall of 1808, he was offered a position as chapel maestro at the court of Jerome Bonaparte, the king of Westphalia, which he accepted. To persuade him to stay in Vienna, the Archduke Rudolf, Count Kinsky and Prince Lobkowitz, after receiving representations from the composer’s friends, pledged to pay Beethoven a pension of 4000 florins a year.
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