Beethoven Accomplishments

Imagine, you’re in Vienna, and it’s the year 1808 on December 22nd. You have been privately invited to a benefit concert for Ludwig van Beethoven at the Theater an der Wien. Beethoven is newly famous and you heard that he is debuting his new Fifth Symphony. You sit down in the red velvet seats and your heart starts racing with anticipation as the lights come down and the curtain opens. There he is, Ludwig van Beethoven. He raises his hands and with a wave of his arms, it starts with four heart-pounding notes. Your ears flood with the loud and intense sound of multiple different instruments pounding away. There is so much passion, excitement, and emotion behind every note, you feel like you’re being transported. You have finally experienced

Beethoven began his first two symphonies as Classical pieces. It wasn’t until Beethoven's frustration with The French Revolution that influenced him to create Romantic music. The French Revolution was a revolution to end the French monarchy of King Louis XVI. The French were fighting for liberty, equality, and fraternity. To further explain, they wanted everyone to have their natural rights and freedoms, to be equal in the eyes of the government, and to get along and respect one another's rights. Beethoven was passionate about the ideals of the French Revolution and even idolized Napoleon Bonaparte who at the time was popular for his work to reform French society to equality for the working class. Beethoven even dedicated his third symphony to him. Unfortunately, Napoleon then named himself emperor in 1804. Outraged and feeling betrayed, Beethoven tore up the first page of his symphony and renamed it Eroica, meaning “heroic.” Beethoven began expressing his frustrations through his music, writing a more ethical piece as well as incorporating his emotions with dynamics. His main themes of this piece are heroism, perseverance, strife, and idealism. Something had also recently happened to Beethoven that motivated him to write this piece. He began to lose his hearing which caused him to go into a deep depression. It had ended his piano career but would throw him into the

While it might seem exciting, living the life of a sensational composer, he went through many hardships and often at times felt isolated. Beethoven first began playing the piano at five years old. It was his life and what he initially became famous for. He played his first concert at the age of seven although his father wanted to show off his “child prodigy” and advertised him as a six-year-old. He then moves to Vienna, just shy of twenty-two years old, and begins to showcase his career as a pianist. Beethoven is starting to get recognized and applauded for his expertise until he suddenly becomes very sick. Researchers assume it to be typhus, which leads to the beginning of Beethoven's deafness. Beethoven suffered from not only typhus but also hepatic cirrhosis, a liver disease, from his dangerous obsession with wine. Dealing with these illnesses and handling his slow decline into deafness was his worst nightmare. By the age of forty-five Beethoven's hearing was completely gone and so was his public life. He gave up performing, public performances and only saw a very small select group of friends. They communicated by writing in a notebook back and forth. His deafness forced him into privacy and isolation. Beethoven was a very driven and passionate man who was often said: “to carry his feelings on his sleeve.” After finding letters he wrote, researchers say he had depression along with suicidal thoughts. He had