The Accompanist Ludwig Van Beethoven's Role Model

Imagine having the opportunity to spend a couple years with your favorite celebrity, only to meet them once and then receiving a phone call from a relative saying your mother was about die. You would be devastated, being prevented from spending time with your idol because you needed to go care for your sick and dying mother. It would feel as if both your dream and your reality were shattered. This is the exact situation the pianist Ludwig van Beethoven found himself in when he traveled to Vienna in hopes of receiving lessons from his role model, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Beethoven delivered an impressive and successful audition, earning his spot as Mozart’s pupil. Unfortunately, before his first lesson, he received news that his mother was ill and dying, so he had to go back to Bonn, Germany, his hometown. Even though Beethoven never got the chance to study with his favorite pianist,

According to Churgin’s research, Beethoven used Mozart’s piano concertos as models for his own concertos and also studied and copied, or hand-wrote, Mozart’s works: “The largest numbers of copies are for works by J. S. Bach, Handel, and Mozart.” Undoubtedly, Beethoven looked up to Mozart’s compositional skills. Like any other music student, he studied the composer he admired the most. By copying his works, Beethoven analyzed Mozart’s music closely and applied the ideas he found to his own compositions. In addition, he also built on Mozart’s pieces: “Beethoven penned four sets of variations on Mozart themes, drawing more on Mozart than any other composer.” Writing variations is a way for composers to borrow ideas from other pieces and make them their own. Beethoven used Mozart’s themes as the foundation for the variations and added his own stylistic touch from there on. He copied and wrote the most variations on Mozart’s works, thus revealing that he preferred the themes in Mozart’s