Ludwig van Beethoven

Musician

1770 - 1827

Beethoven had two younger brothers

who managed to survive into adulthood,

Caspar, born in 1774,

and Johann, born in 1776

Beethoven's mother, Maria Magdalena van Beethoven, was a slim, kind, and deeply moralistic woman. 

His father, Johann van Beethoven, was a mediocre court singer better known for his alcoholism than any musical ability. 

However, Beethoven's grandfather and godfather, Kapellmeister Ludwig van Beethoven, was Bonn's most prosperous and eminent musician, and young Ludwig was really proud of him.

Sometime between the births of his two younger brothers, Beethoven's father began teaching him music with an extraordinary rigor and brutality that affected him for the rest of his life.

Neighbors said that he was weeping while he played the clavier, standing on a footstool to reach the keys, his father beating him for each hesitation or mistake.

Almost everyday, Beethoven was locked in the cellar and deprived of sleep in order to practice extra hours. He studied the violin and clavier with his father as well as taking additional lessons from other organists. Nobody knows whether it was because of his father's draconian methods that Beethoven became a talented musician from his earliest days.

Hoping that his young son would be recognized as a musical phenomenon his father arranged his first public recital for March 26, 1778.

He was 7 years old and he played impressively, but his recital received no press whatsoever.

Meanwhile, he attended a Latin school named Tirocinium." Beethoven, who struggled with sums and spelling his entire life, was an average student, and some biographers have hypothesized that he may have had mild dyslexia. As he put it himself, "Music comes to me more readily than words."

In 1781, at the age of 10, Beethoven left school to study music full time with Christian Gottlob Neefe, the newly appointed Court Organist. Neefe introduced Beethoven to Sebastian Bach, and at the age of 12 Beethoven published his first composition.

When he was 29 years old, Beethoven debuted his first symphony, which was first performed in the Burgtheater in Vienna in April, 1800. 

Personal Life

For many reasons that included his shyness and his appearance, Beethoven never married or had children. Despite his beautiful music, Beethoven was lonely and frequently miserable. 

As Beethoven lost his temper easily, he couldn't concentrate to what he was told from others, he was greedy and suspicious to the point of paranoia, he argued with his brothers, his publishers, his housekeepers, his pupils and his patrons.