Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was born on December 17, 1770 in Bonn. Beethoven was the second oldest child of the court musician and tenor singer Johann van Beethoven. His father was said to be a very violent, intemperate man. He would come home late at night after he finished drinking. He would get Beethoven up out of the bed and make him practice his music lessons. Beethoven wound up developing a sensitivity and vision for music. By the age of seven he was advanced enough to go in public. A year later the composer Christian Gottlob Neefe began working with Beethoven and he quickly began progressing. Christian Gottlob Neefe introduced him to music by Bach and Mozart. Beethoven gave his first public performance as a pianist at the age of eight years old. At the age of eleven he received training in piano performing and composition from Neefe, organist and court musician in Bonn. Beethoven was employed as a musician in the Bonn court orchestra. He was given a paid leave of absence in 1787 to study in Vienna under Mozart. It was not long before he moved back to Bonn because his mother was not doing very well. After his mother died he looked after the rest of the family. He had to look after the family because
His piano playing ended in 1808. He had a charity appearance in 1814, but it was a disaster because of his deafness. After the death of his father, he chose to move back to Vienna permanently. He took lessons from Haydn, Alberchtsberger, Schenck, and Salieri. By 1795 he had earned a name for himself as a pianist and was admired for his great improvisation. Towards the end of his life he changed residences at least fifty two times. During these years he had very serious illnesses. When he died, around thirty thousand people came to his funeral on March 26, 1827. Beethoven grew up to be a short, well built man. He had dark gray and white hair that was always thick and unruly. His mouth had a fixed, grim, down-curving line. He hardly ever took care of his appearance. His mood changed very frequently. He was very impatient, impulsive, unreasonable and intolerant. His deafness added suspicion and paranoia to these features. Beethoven wrote only one opera. Eventually he called it Fidelio after the name assumed by the heroine Leonora. The play is about a woman who disguises herself as a boy and gets a job at the prison in which her husband has been unjustly incarcerated. The opera ends with the defeat of the evil prison governor and the rescue of Florestan, testimony to the love and constancy of his wife Leonora. By autumn, he realized that there was no improvement in his hearing. It caused him to feel so bad mentally and physically that he was scared that he would not make it through the winter. He had short periods of remission but for the last ten years of his life he was totally deaf. Beethoven's
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Approximate Word count = 1111
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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