He was obliged to provide sustenance for his two younger brothers his father, who took to drink in excess, could not meet his obligations. After a few weeks in Vienna Beethoven went to Bonn when he received news that his mother was gravely ill she died on July 17, 1787.

In 1787 the Elector sent him to Vienna, where he stayed for a short time the report that he played for Mozart and that Mozart pronounced him a future great composer seems to be a figment of somebody’s eager imagination. in Bonn in 1784 the Elector Maximilian Franz officially appointed him to the post of deputy court organist, a position he retained until 1792 from 1788 to 1792 Beethoven also served as a violist in theater orchs. In 1783 he played the cembalo in the Court Orch. At the age of 12, in 1782, Beethoven composed Nine Variations for Piano on a March of Dressier, his first work to be publ. He guided Beethoven in the study of Bach and encouraged him in keyboard improvisation. His first important teacher of composition was Christian Gottlob Neefe, a thorough musician who seemed to understand his pupil’s great potential even in his early youth. Beethoven’s academic training was meager he was, however, briefly enrolled at the Univ. Beethoven also learned to play the horn, under the guidance of the professional musician Ni-kolaus Simrock.

In private, he even tolerated without forceful denial the fantastic rumor that he was a natural son of royalty, a love child of Friedrich Wilhelm II, or even of Frederick the Great.īeethoven’s father gave him rudimentary instruction in music he learned to play both the violin and the piano Tobias Friedrich Pfeiffer, a local musician, gave him formal piano lessons the court organist in Bonn, Gilles van Eeden, instructed him in keyboard playing and in music theory Franz Rovantini gave him violin lessons another violinist who taught Beethoven was Franz Ries. Beethoven firmly believed that the nobiliary particle “van” in the family name betokened a nobility in his demeaning litigation with his brother’s widow over the guardianship of Beethoven’s nephew Karl, he argued before the Vienna magistrate that as a nobleman he should be given preference over his sister-in-law, a commoner, but the court rejected his contention on the ground that “van” lacked the elevated connotation of its German counterpart, “von.” Beethoven could never provide a weightier claim of noble descent. Prevalent infant mortality took its statistically predictable tribute the couple’s only surviving child was Johann van Beethoven he married a young widow, Maria Magdalena Leym (née Keverich), daughter of the chief overseer of the kitchen at the palace in Ehrenbreitstein they were the composer’s parents. Lambert in 1733 he became a member of the choir in Bonn there he married Maria Poll. Pierre in Louvain in 1731 in 1732 he went to Liège, where he sang bass in the cathedral choir of St. 24, 1773), served as choir director of the church of St. Beethoven’s grandfather, Ludwig van Beethoven (b. (Beethoven himself maintained, against all evidence, that he was born in 1772, and that the 1770 date referred to his older brother, deceased in infancy, whose forename was also Ludwig.) The family was of Dutch extraction (the surname Beethoven meant “beet garden” in Dutch).

Beethoven, Ludwig van, great German composer whose unsurpassed genius, expressed with supreme mastery in his syms., chamber music, concertos, and piano sonatas, revealing an extraordinary power of invention, marked a historic turn in the art of composition b.

Franz schubert composed over 600 apex