LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN AND THE IMMORTAL BELOVED OF THE GREAT DEAF
Ludwig van Beethoven considered a key figure in Western music in the period between classicism and romanticism. Even now he is one of the most performed composers in the world. An unsurpassed master of sonatas, although he wrote in all the genres that existed in his time, including opera, ballet, music for dramatic performances, and choral compositions. She is his first true love, to whom he dedicated a brilliant sonata. And although there were other women in the life of the great German composer, it is this young charmer who is called his immortal lover.
Ludwig van Beethoven's first teacher
One of the three "Viennese classics" was born in 1770 in the German city of Bonn. The years of childhood can be called the most difficult in the life of the future composer. It was difficult for a proud and independent boy to survive the fact that his father, a rude and despotic man, noticing his son's musical talent, decided to use him for selfish purposes. Forcing little Ludwig to sit at the harpsichord from morning till night, he did not think that his son needed childhood so much. At eight years old Beethoven earned his first money - he gave a public concert, and by the age of twelve the boy was playing the violin and organ freely. But along with success, isolation, the need for solitude and lack of sociability came to the young musician.
At this time in life Ludwig appeared Christian Gottlieb Nefe, his wise and kind mentor. It was he who instilled 
the boy had a sense of beauty, taught him to understand nature, art, to understand human life. Nefe trained Ludwig ancient languages, philosophy, literature, history, ethics. Subsequently, being a deeply and broadly thinking person, Beethoven became an adherent of the principles of freedom, humanism, equality of all people.
In 1787 Ludwig comes to Vienna. The city of theaters and cathedrals, street orchestras and love serenades under the windows won the heart of the young genius. But it was there that the young musician was struck by deafness: at first the sounds seemed muffled to him, then he repeated the unheard phrases several times, then he realized that he was finally losing his hearing. “I lead a bitter existence,” wrote Beethoven to my friend. - I'm deaf. With my craft, nothing can be more terrible ... Oh, if I got rid of this disease, I would embrace the whole world.
"And the sun in it - Juliet"
She appeared in his life suddenly. The young provincial countess, who arrived in the Austrian capital from Italy with her family in 1800, was charming. 
The daughter of a respectable family, sixteen-year-old Juliet, struck the composer at first sight. She soon wished to take lessons from the idol of the Viennese aristocracy, especially since Beethoven was close to her cousins and cousin, the young Hungarian counts of Brunswick. And, of course, he could not resist - he began to give the girl piano lessons, and completely free of charge. Juliet had good musical abilities and grasped all his advice on the fly. She was pretty, young, sociable and tirelessly flirted with her 30-year-old teacher.
He impressed Juliet with his popularity and even oddities. With all the severity of views, Beethoven was not indifferent to female beauty and never refused to give lessons to young beautiful girls. He didn't say no this time either. He did not take money from her, and she gave him shirts - under the pretext that she embroidered them for him with her own hands. During the lessons, the composer often got annoyed and even threw the notes on the floor, but, nevertheless, quickly succumbed to the charm of his student.
And just imagine: they are sitting very close in front of the instrument, so that they feel each other's breath… The music fills the space with romance, emotions and mystery… Evening creeps up. A candle illuminating the music sheets illuminates the faces of the teacher and student with a warm light... Beethoven gently takes the girl's hand to put it on the keyboard correctly, and his heart flutters with excitement ...
The gloomy and unsociable composer understands that he has fallen in love. I loved passionately, recklessly. He loved so much, with all his heart, that he was ready to give his life for his beloved without the slightest delay. Sweet, beautiful in spring, with an angelic face and a divine smile, eyes in which you wanted to drown - all Beethoven's thoughts were about Juliet Guicciardi. She became for him that straw, for which he tried with all his might to hold on. She seemed ready to reciprocate. Ludwig again felt a surge of strength, hope for recovery. Happiness was so close.
Beethoven writes to his friend of youth Franz Wegeler: “Now I am more often in society. 
This change was made in me by a sweet, charming girl who loves me and whom I love.
“You can hardly believe how lonely and sad I have spent the last two years: deafness, like some kind of ghost, appeared to me everywhere, I avoided people, seemed to be a misanthrope, which I have so little resemblance to. Previously, I was constantly ill, but now my bodily strength, and at the same time my spiritual strength, has been growing stronger for some time. You must see me happy. I will grab fate by the throat, it will not be possible to completely bend me. Oh, how wonderful it is to live a thousandfold life!” This letter was also written to Wegeler, but a few months later.
Beethoven fell in love for the first time, and his soul was full of pure joy and bright hope. He is not young! But she, as it seemed to him, was perfection and could become for him a consolation in illness, joy in everyday life and a muse in creativity. Beethoven is seriously considering marrying Juliet, because she is nice to him and encourages his feelings. But increasingly, the composer feels helpless due to progressive hearing loss, his financial situation is unstable, he does not have a title or "blue blood", and Juliet is an aristocrat!
Sonata time
Literally crushed in October 1802 Beethoven left for Heiligenstadt, where he wrote the famous "Heiligenstadt Testament".
Fear, the collapse of hopes give rise to thoughts of suicide in the composer. But Beethoven
gathered his strength, decided to start a new life and almost completely deaf created great masterpieces.
Several years passed, Juliet returned to Austria and came to the apartment to Beethoven. Crying, she recalled the wonderful time when the composer was her teacher, talked about the poverty and difficulties of her family, prayed for forgiveness and asked for help with money. Being a kind and noble man, the maestro gave her a significant amount, but asked her to leave and never appear in his house. Beethoven seemed indifferent and indifferent. But who knows what was going on in his heart. At the end of his life, the composer will write: “I was very loved by her and more than ever, was her husband ...”
Open, direct and honest, Beethoven was contemptuous of hypocrisy and servility, so he often seemed rude and ill-mannered. Often he expressed himself obscenely, which is why many considered him a plebeian and an ignorant boor, although the composer simply spoke the truth.
Ludwig van Beethoven's Last "Sorry"
Autumn 1826 Beethoven got sick. Exhausting treatment, three 
the most complex operations could not put the composer on his feet. Throughout the winter, without getting out of bed, he was completely deaf, tormented by the fact that ... he could not continue to work. In 1827, the genius died.
After his death, a letter "To the immortal beloved" was found in a desk drawer. Beethoven I titled the message myself. There were lines: "My angel, my everything, my me ...".
Then there will be disputes about who exactly the letter is addressed to. But a small fact points specifically to Juliet Guicciardi: next to the letter was kept a tiny portrait of her, made by an unknown master.
DATA
When Giulietta Guicciardi, while still a student of the maestro, and noticing that Beethoven's silk bow was not tied like that, tied it up, kissing him on the forehead, the composer did not take off this bow 
and did not change clothes for several weeks, until friends hinted at the not quite fresh look of his costume.
According to legend, the "Moonlight Sonata" was written in Hungary at the Brunswick estate of Korompa. The gazebo has been preserved there, in which the great composer created his brilliant work. That summer spent with Juliet was the happiest for the composer Ludwig van Beethoven.
Updated: April 13, 2019 by: Elena
In a family with Flemish roots. The composer's paternal grandfather was born in Flanders, served as a chorister in Ghent and Louvain, and in 1733 moved to Bonn, where he became a court musician in the chapel of the Elector-Archbishop of Cologne. His only son Johann, like his father, served in the chapel as a vocalist (tenor) and worked part-time giving violin and clavier lessons.
In 1767 he married Mary Magdalene Keverich, daughter of a court chef in Koblenz (residence of the Archbishop of Trier). Ludwig, the future composer, was the eldest of their three sons.
His musical talent showed up early. Beethoven's first music teacher was his father, and the musicians of the chapel also studied with him.
On March 26, 1778, the father organized the first public performance of his son.
Since 1781, the composer and organist Christian Gottlob Nefe led the young talent. Beethoven soon became concertmaster of the court theater and assistant organist of the chapel.
In 1782, Beethoven wrote his first work, Variations for Clavier on a March by composer Ernst Dresler.
In 1787 Beethoven visited Vienna and took several lessons from the composer Wolfgang Mozart. But he soon learned that his mother was seriously ill and returned to Bonn. After the death of his mother, Ludwig remained the sole breadwinner of the family.
The young man's giftedness attracted the attention of some enlightened Bonn families, and his brilliant piano improvisations provided him with free entry to any musical gatherings. The von Breining family, which took custody of the musician, did a lot for him.
In 1789, Beethoven was a volunteer in the philosophy department of the University of Bonn.
In 1792, the composer moved to Vienna, where he lived almost without a break until the end of his life. His initial goal when moving was to improve his composition under the guidance of the composer Joseph Haydn, but these studies did not last long. Beethoven quickly gained fame and recognition - first as the best pianist and improviser in Vienna, and later as a composer.
In the prime of his creative powers, Beethoven showed tremendous capacity for work. In 1801-1812, he wrote such outstanding works as the Sonata in C sharp minor ("Moonlight", 1801), the Second Symphony (1802), the Kreutzer Sonata (1803), the "Heroic" (Third) Symphony, the sonatas "Aurora" and "Appassionata" (1804), the opera "Fidelio" (1805), the Fourth Symphony (1806).
In 1808, Beethoven completed one of the most popular symphonic works - the Fifth Symphony and at the same time the "Pastoral" (Sixth) Symphony, in 1810 - the music for Johann Goethe's tragedy "Egmont", in 1812 - the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies.
From the age of 27, Beethoven suffered from progressive deafness. A serious illness for the musician limited his communication with people, made it difficult for pianistic performances, which Beethoven eventually had to stop. Since 1819, he had to completely switch to communicating with his interlocutors using a slate board or paper and pencil.
In his later compositions, Beethoven often turned to the fugue form. The last five piano sonatas (Nos. 28-32) and the last five quartets (Nos. 12-16) are distinguished by a particularly complex and refined musical language, requiring the greatest skill from the performers.
Beethoven's late work was controversial for a long time. Of his contemporaries, only a few were able to understand and appreciate his last writings. One of these people was his Russian admirer, Prince Nikolai Golitsyn, who commissioned and dedicated quartets Nos. 12, 13, and 15. The Overture Consecration of the House (1822) is also dedicated to him.
In 1823, Beethoven completed the Solemn Mass, which he considered his greatest work. This mass, designed more for a concert than for a cult performance, has become one of the milestone phenomena in the German oratorio tradition.
With the assistance of Golitsyn, the Solemn Mass was first performed on April 7, 1824 in St. Petersburg.
In May 1824, Beethoven's last benefit concert took place in Vienna, in which, in addition to parts from the Mass, his final, Ninth Symphony was performed with the final chorus to the words of "Ode to Joy" by the poet Friedrich Schiller. The idea of overcoming suffering and the triumph of light is consistently carried through the whole work.
The composer created nine symphonies, 11 overtures, five piano concertos, a violin concerto, two masses, one opera. Beethoven's chamber music includes 32 piano sonatas (not including six youthful sonatas written in Bonn) and 10 sonatas for violin and piano, 16 string quartets, seven piano trios, as well as many other ensembles - string trios, septet for mixed composition. His vocal heritage consists of songs, over 70 choirs, canons.
On March 26, 1827, Ludwig van Beethoven died in Vienna from pneumonia, complicated by jaundice and dropsy.
The composer is buried in the Vienna Central Cemetery.
The traditions of Beethoven were taken up and continued by the composers Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms, Anton Bruckner, Gustav Mahler, Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich. As their teacher, Beethoven was also honored by the composers of the Novovensk school - Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Anton Webern.
Since 1889, a museum has been open in Bonn in the house where the composer was born.
In Vienna, three museum houses are dedicated to Ludwig van Beethoven, and two monuments have been erected.
The Beethoven Museum is also open at Brunsvik Castle in Hungary. At one time, the composer was friendly with the Brunsvik family, often came to Hungary and stayed at their house. He was alternately in love with two of his students from the Brunswick family - Juliet and Teresa, but none of the hobbies ended in marriage.
The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources
Beethoven's music is known to all lovers of the classics. His name is considered iconic for those who dream of becoming a real musician. How did one of the most popular composers live and work?
Beethoven: childhood and youth of a little genius
The exact birth date of Ludwig van Beethoven is not known for certain. The year of his birth is 1770. December 17 is called the day of baptism. Ludwig was born in the German city of Bonn.
The Beethoven family was directly related to music. The boy's father was a famous tenor. And his mother, Maria Magdalene Keverich, was the daughter of a chef.
The ambitious Johann Beethoven, being a strict father, wanted to make a great composer out of Ludwig. He dreamed that his son would become the second Mozart. He put in a lot of effort to achieve his goal.
At first, he himself taught the boy to play various instruments. Then he passed the training of the child to his colleagues. From childhood, Ludwig mastered two complex instruments: the organ and the violin.
When the young Beethoven was only 10 years old, the organist Christian Nefe arrived in his city. It was he who became the true mentors of the boy, as he saw in him a great ability for music.
Beethoven was taught classical music based on the works of Bach and Mozart. At the age of 12, the talented child began his career as an assistant organist. When a tragedy occurred in the family, and Ludwig's grandfather died, the finances of the venerable family were greatly reduced. Despite the fact that the young Beethoven never completed his studies at school, he managed to master Latin, Italian and French. Throughout his life, Beethoven read a lot, was curious, intelligent and erudite. He easily understood any scholarly treatises.
The youthful works of the future composer were later revised by him. The sonata "Marmot" has reached our days unchanged.
In 1787, Mozart himself gave the boy an audition. The great contemporary of Beethoven was pleased with his playing. He highly appreciated the improvisation of the young man.
Ludwig wanted to learn from Mozart himself, but fate decreed otherwise. Beethoven's mother died that year. He had to return to his hometown to take care of his brothers. In order to earn money, he got a job in a local orchestra as a violist.
In 1789, Ludwig again begins to attend classes at the university. The revolution that broke out in the French state inspires him to create the Song of a Free Man.
In the autumn of 1792, another idol of Beethoven, composer Haydn, happened to be passing through Bonn, his hometown of Beethoven. Then the young man decides to follow him to Vienna to continue his music studies.
Beethoven's mature years
The collaboration between Haydn and Beethoven in Vienna can hardly be called fruitful. An accomplished mentor considered the creations of his student beautiful, but too gloomy. Haydn later left for England. Then Ludwig van Beethoven found himself a new teacher. It turned out to be Antonio Salieri.
Thanks to Beethoven's virtuoso playing, a piano style of playing was created, where extreme registers, loud chords and the use of a pedal on the instrument became the norm.
This style of playing is fully reflected in the composer's popular Moonlight Sonata. In addition to innovation in music, Beethoven's lifestyle and character traits also deserved considerable attention. The composer practically did not look after his clothes and appearance. If in the hall during his performance someone dared to talk, Beethoven refused to play and went home.
With friends and relatives, Ludwig van Beethoven could be harsh, but he never refused them the necessary assistance to relatives. During the first decade that the young composer worked in Vienna, he managed to write 20 sonatas for classical piano, 3 full-fledged piano concertos, many sonatas for other instruments, one oratorio on a religious theme, as well as a full-fledged ballet.
The tragedy of Beethoven and his later years
The fateful year 1796 for Beethoven becomes the most difficult in life. The famous composer begins to lose his hearing. Doctors diagnose him with chronic inflammation of the inner ear canal.
Ludwig van Beethoven suffered greatly from his illness. In addition to pain, he was haunted by ringing in his ears. On the advice of doctors, he goes to live in the small and quiet town of Heiligenstadt. But the situation with his illness is not changing for the better.
Over the years, Beethoven increasingly despised the power of emperors and princes. He believed that equal human rights were the ideal good. For this reason, Beethoven decided not to dedicate one of his works to Napoleon, calling the Third Symphony simply "Heroic".
During the period of hearing loss, the composer withdraws into himself, but continues to work. He writes the opera Fidelio. Then he creates a cycle of musical works called "To a Distant Beloved".
Progressive deafness did not become an obstacle to Beethoven's sincere interest in what is happening in the world. After the defeat and exile of Napoleon, a strict police regime was introduced in the Austrian lands, but Beethoven, as before, continued to criticize the government. Perhaps he guessed that they would not dare to touch him and throw him in jail, because his fame had become really grandiose.
Little is known about Ludwig van Beethoven's personal life. It was rumored that he wanted to marry one of his students, Countess Juliette Guicciardi. For some time, the girl reciprocated the composer, but then she preferred another. His next student Teresa Brunswick was a devoted friend of Beethoven until her death, but the true context of their relationship is shrouded in mystery and is not known for certain.
When the composer's younger brother died, he took custody of his son. Beethoven tried to instill in the young man a love of art and science, but the guy was a gambler and a reveler. Once losing, he tried to commit suicide. This upset Beethoven greatly. On nervous grounds, he developed liver disease.
In 1827 the great composer died. The funeral procession included over 20,000 people. The famous musician was only 57 years old when he passed away and was buried in the Vienna cemetery.
The message about Beethoven, summarized in this article, will tell you about the great German composer, conductor and pianist, a representative of Viennese classicism.
Report on Beethoven
Beethoven was born on December 16, 1770 (this is an estimated date, since it is only known for sure that he was baptized on December 17) in a musical family in the town of Bonn. From an early age, parents instilled in their son a love of music, giving him to learn to play the harpsichord, flute, organ, and violin.
At the age of 12, he was already working as an assistant organist at court. The young man knew several foreign languages and even tried to write music. In addition to music, Beethoven was fond of reading books, he especially liked the ancient Greek authors Plutarch and Homer, as well as Friedrich Schiller, Shakespeare and Goethe.
After Beethoven's mother died in 1787, he began to provide for his family on his own. Ludwig got a job playing in the orchestra, and also went to university lectures. Acquainted with Haydn, he began to take private lessons from him. To this end, the future musician moves to Vienna. Once, the great composer Mozart heard his improvisations, and predicted a brilliant career and fame for him. Haydn, having given Ludwig several lessons, sends him to study with another mentor, Albrechtsberger. After some time, his teacher changed again: this time it was Antonio Salieri.
The beginning of a musical career
Ludwig Beethoven's first mentor noted that his music was too strange and dark. That is why he sent his student to another teacher. But this style of musical works brought Beethoven his first fame as a composer. Against the background of other performers of classical music, they favorably differed. While in Vienna, the composer wrote his famous works - "Pathétique Sonata" and "Moonlight Sonata". Then there were other brilliant works: "First Symphony", "Second Symphony", "Christ on the Mount of Olives", "Creation of Prometheus".
The further work and life of Ludwig Beethoven were overshadowed by sad events. The composer developed a disease of the auricle, as a result of which he lost his hearing. The composer decides to retire to Heiligenstadt, where he works on the Third Symphony. Absolute deafness separated him from the outside world. But he didn't stop making music. Beethoven's opera Fidelio was a success in Berlin, Vienna and Prague.
The period of 1802-1812 was especially fruitful: the composer created a series of works for cello, piano, the Ninth Symphony and the Solemn Mass. Fame, popularity and recognition came to him.
- He was the third person in the family to bear the name Ludwig van Beethoven. The first carrier was the composer's grandfather, a famous Bonn musician, and the second was his 6-year-old older brother.
- Beethoven left school at the age of 11 without learning division and multiplication.
- He was very fond of coffee, brewing 64 grains each time, no more and no less.
- His character was not simple: grumpy and friendly, gloomy and good-natured. Some remember him as a person with an excellent sense of humor, others as a person who is not pleasant in communication.
- He created the famous "Ninth Symphony" when he had already completely lost his hearing.
We hope that the report on Beethoven helped you prepare for the lesson. And you can leave your message about Beethoven through the comment form below.
My willingness to serve poor suffering humanity with my art has never, since my childhood ... needed any reward other than inner satisfaction ...
L. Beethoven
Musical Europe was still full of rumors about a brilliant miracle child - W. A. Mozart, when Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, in the family of a tenorist of the court chapel. They christened him on December 17, 1770, naming him after his grandfather, a respected bandmaster, a native of Flanders. Beethoven received his first musical knowledge from his father and his colleagues. The father wanted him to become the "second Mozart", and forced his son to practice even at night. Beethoven did not become a child prodigy, but he discovered his talent as a composer quite early. K. Nefe, who taught him composition and playing the organ, had a great influence on him - a man of advanced aesthetic and political convictions. Due to the poverty of the family, Beethoven was forced to enter the service very early: at the age of 13, he was enrolled in the chapel as an assistant organist; later worked as an accompanist at the Bonn National Theatre. In 1787 he visited Vienna and met his idol, Mozart, who, after listening to the young man's improvisation, said: “Pay attention to him; he will someday make the world talk about him." Beethoven failed to become a student of Mozart: a serious illness and the death of his mother forced him to hastily return to Bonn. There, Beethoven found moral support in the enlightened Breining family and became close to the university environment, which shared the most progressive views. The ideas of the French Revolution were enthusiastically received by Beethoven's Bonn friends and had a strong influence on the formation of his democratic convictions.
In Bonn, Beethoven wrote a number of large and small works: 2 cantatas for soloists, choir and orchestra, 3 piano quartets, several piano sonatas (now called sonatinas). It should be noted that sonatas known to all novice pianists salt And F major to Beethoven, according to researchers, do not belong, but are only attributed, but another, truly Beethoven's Sonatina in F major, discovered and published in 1909, remains, as it were, in the shadows and is not played by anyone. Most of the Bonn creativity is also made up of variations and songs intended for amateur music-making. Among them are the familiar song "Marmot", the touching "Elegy on the Death of a Poodle", the rebellious poster "Free Man", the dreamy "Sigh of the unloved and happy love", containing the prototype of the future theme of joy from the Ninth Symphony, "Sacrificial Song", which Beethoven loved it so much that he returned to it 5 times (last edition - 1824). Despite the freshness and brightness of youthful compositions, Beethoven understood that he needed to study seriously.
In November 1792, he finally left Bonn and moved to Vienna, the largest musical center in Europe. Here he studied counterpoint and composition with J. Haydn, I. Schenk, I. Albrechtsberger and A. Salieri. Although the student was distinguished by obstinacy, he studied zealously and subsequently spoke with gratitude about all his teachers. At the same time, Beethoven began to perform as a pianist and soon won the fame of an unsurpassed improviser and the brightest virtuoso. In his first and last long tour (1796), he conquered the audience of Prague, Berlin, Dresden, Bratislava. The young virtuoso was patronized by many distinguished music lovers - K. Likhnovsky, F. Lobkowitz, F. Kinsky, the Russian ambassador A. Razumovsky and others, Beethoven's sonatas, trios, quartets, and later even symphonies sounded in their salons for the first time. Their names can be found in the dedications of many of the composer's works. However, Beethoven's manner of dealing with his patrons was almost unheard of at the time. Proud and independent, he did not forgive anyone for attempts to humiliate his dignity. The legendary words thrown by the composer to the philanthropist who offended him are known: “There have been and will be thousands of princes, Beethoven is only one.” Of the many aristocrats - students of Beethoven - Ertman, sisters T. and J. Bruns, M. Erdedi became his constant friends and propagandists of his music. Not fond of teaching, Beethoven was nevertheless the teacher of K. Czerny and F. Ries in piano (both of them later won European fame) and the Archduke Rudolf of Austria in composition.
In the first Viennese decade, Beethoven wrote mainly piano and chamber music. In 1792-1802. 3 piano concertos and 2 dozen sonatas were created. Of these, only Sonata No. 8 (" pathetic”) has an author's title. Sonata No. 14, subtitled sonata-fantasy, was called "Lunar" by the romantic poet L. Relshtab. Stable names also strengthened for sonatas No. 12 (“With a Funeral March”), No. 17 (“With recitatives”) and later: No. 21 (“Aurora”) and No. 23 (“Appassionata”). In addition to the piano, 9 (out of 10) violin sonatas belong to the first Viennese period (including No. 5 - "Spring", No. 9 - "Kreutzer"; both names are also non-author's); 2 cello sonatas, 6 string quartets, a number of ensembles for various instruments (including the cheerfully gallant Septet).
With the beginning of the XIX century. Beethoven also began as a symphonist: in 1800 he completed his First Symphony, and in 1802 his Second. At the same time, his only oratorio "Christ on the Mount of Olives" was written. The first signs of an incurable disease that appeared in 1797 - progressive deafness and the realization of the hopelessness of all attempts to treat the disease led Beethoven to a mental crisis in 1802, which was reflected in the famous document - the Heiligenstadt Testament. Creativity was the way out of the crisis: "... It was not enough for me to commit suicide," the composer wrote. - "Only it, art, it kept me."
1802-12 - the time of the brilliant flowering of the genius of Beethoven. The ideas of overcoming suffering by the strength of the spirit and the victory of light over darkness, deeply suffered by him, after a fierce struggle, turned out to be consonant with the main ideas of the French Revolution and the liberation movements of the early 19th century. These ideas were embodied in the Third (“Heroic”) and Fifth Symphonies, in the tyrannical opera “Fidelio”, in the music for the tragedy “Egmont” by J. V. Goethe, in the Sonata No. 23 (“Appassionata”). The composer was also inspired by the philosophical and ethical ideas of the Enlightenment, which he adopted in his youth. The natural world appears full of dynamic harmony in the Sixth (“Pastoral”) Symphony, in the Violin Concerto, in the Piano (No. 21) and Violin (No. 10) Sonatas. Folk or close to folk melodies are heard in the Seventh Symphony and in quartets No. 7-9 (the so-called "Russian" - they are dedicated to A. Razumovsky; Quartet No. 8 contains 2 melodies of Russian folk songs: used much later also by N. Rimsky-Korsakov "Glory" and "Ah, is my talent, talent"). The Fourth Symphony is full of powerful optimism, the Eighth is permeated with humor and slightly ironic nostalgia for the times of Haydn and Mozart. The virtuoso genre is treated epicly and monumentally in the Fourth and Fifth Piano Concertos, as well as in the Triple Concerto for Violin, Cello and Piano and Orchestra. In all these works, the style of Viennese classicism found its most complete and final embodiment with its life-affirming faith in reason, goodness and justice, expressed at the conceptual level as a movement “through suffering - to joy” (from Beethoven’s letter to M. Erdedi), and at the compositional level - as a balance between unity and diversity and the observance of strict proportions at the largest scale of the composition.
1812-15 - turning points in the political and spiritual life of Europe. The period of the Napoleonic wars and the rise of the liberation movement was followed by the Congress of Vienna (1814-15), after which reactionary-monarchist tendencies intensified in the domestic and foreign policy of European countries. The style of heroic classicism, expressing the spirit of the revolutionary renewal of the late 18th century. and patriotic moods of the early 19th century, had to inevitably either turn into pompous semi-official art, or give way to romanticism, which became the leading trend in literature and managed to make itself known in music (F. Schubert). Beethoven also had to solve these complex spiritual problems. He paid tribute to the victorious jubilation, creating a spectacular symphonic fantasy "The Battle of Vittoria" and the cantata "Happy Moment", the premieres of which were timed to coincide with the Congress of Vienna and brought Beethoven an unheard of success. However, in other writings of 1813-17. reflected persistent and sometimes painful search for new ways. At this time, cello (Nos. 4, 5) and piano (Nos. 27, 28) sonatas, several dozen arrangements of songs of different nations for voice with an ensemble, and the first vocal cycle in the history of the genre “To a Distant Beloved” (1815) were written. The style of these works is, as it were, experimental, with many brilliant discoveries, but not always as solid as in the period of "revolutionary classicism."
The last decade of Beethoven's life was overshadowed both by the general oppressive political and spiritual atmosphere in Metternich's Austria, and by personal hardships and upheavals. The composer's deafness became complete; since 1818, he was forced to use "conversational notebooks" in which interlocutors wrote questions addressed to him. Having lost hope for personal happiness (the name of the "immortal beloved", to whom Beethoven's farewell letter of July 6-7, 1812 is addressed, remains unknown; some researchers consider her J. Brunswick-Deym, others - A. Brentano), Beethoven took on taking care of raising his nephew Karl, the son of his younger brother who died in 1815. This led to a long-term (1815-20) legal battle with the boy's mother over the rights to sole custody. A capable but frivolous nephew gave Beethoven a lot of grief. The contrast between sad and sometimes tragic life circumstances and the ideal beauty of the created works is a manifestation of the spiritual feat that made Beethoven one of the heroes of the European culture of modern times.
Creativity 1817-26 marked a new rise of Beethoven's genius and at the same time became the epilogue of the era of musical classicism. Until the last days, remaining faithful to classical ideals, the composer found new forms and means of their embodiment, bordering on the romantic, but not passing into them. Beethoven's late style is a unique aesthetic phenomenon. Beethoven's central idea of the dialectical relationship of contrasts, the struggle between light and darkness, acquires an emphatically philosophical sound in his later work. Victory over suffering is no longer given through heroic action, but through the movement of the spirit and thought. The great master of the sonata form, in which dramatic conflicts developed before, Beethoven in his later compositions often refers to the fugue form, which is most suitable for embodying the gradual formation of a generalized philosophical idea. The last 5 piano sonatas (Nos. 28-32) and the last 5 quartets (Nos. 12-16) are distinguished by a particularly complex and refined musical language that requires the greatest skill from the performers, and penetrating perception from the listeners. 33 variations on a waltz by Diabelli and Bagatelli, op. 126 are also true masterpieces, despite the difference in scale. Beethoven's late work was controversial for a long time. Of his contemporaries, only a few were able to understand and appreciate his last writings. One of these people was H. Golitsyn, on whose order the quartets No. , and were written and dedicated to. The overture "The Consecration of the House" (1822) is also dedicated to him.
In 1823, Beethoven completed The Solemn Mass, which he himself considered his greatest work. This mass, designed more for a concert than for a cult performance, became one of the milestone phenomena in the German oratorio tradition (G. Schütz, J. S. Bach, G. F. Handel, W. A. Mozart, J. Haydn). The first mass (1807) was not inferior to the masses of Haydn and Mozart, but did not become a new word in the history of the genre, like the "Solemn", in which all the skill of Beethoven as a symphonist and playwright was realized. Turning to the canonical Latin text, Beethoven singled out in it the idea of self-sacrifice in the name of the happiness of people and introduced into the final plea for peace the passionate pathos of denying war as the greatest evil. With the assistance of Golitsyn, the Solemn Mass was first performed on April 7, 1824 in St. Petersburg. A month later, Beethoven's last benefit concert took place in Vienna, in which, in addition to parts from the Mass, his final, Ninth Symphony was performed with the final chorus to the words of F. Schiller's "Ode to Joy". The idea of overcoming suffering and the triumph of light is consistently carried through the entire symphony and is expressed with utmost clarity at the end thanks to the introduction of a poetic text that Beethoven dreamed of setting to music in Bonn. The Ninth Symphony, with its final call - "Hug, millions!" - became Beethoven's ideological testament to mankind and had a strong influence on the symphony of the 19th and 20th centuries.
G. Berlioz, F. Liszt, I. Brahms, A. Bruckner, G. Mahler, S. Prokofiev, D. Shostakovich accepted and continued Beethoven's traditions in one way or another. As their teacher, Beethoven was also honored by the composers of the Novovensk school - the “father of dodecaphony” A. Schoenberg, the passionate humanist A. Berg, the innovator and lyricist A. Webern. In December 1911, Webern wrote to Berg: “There are few things so wonderful as the feast of Christmas. ... Shouldn't Beethoven's birthday be celebrated this way too? Many musicians and music lovers would agree with this proposal, because for thousands (perhaps millions) of people, Beethoven remains not only one of the greatest geniuses of all times and peoples, but also the personification of an unfading ethical ideal, the inspirer of the oppressed, the comforter of the suffering, the faithful friend in sorrow and joy.
L. Kirillina
Beethoven is one of the greatest phenomena of world culture. His work takes a place on a par with the art of such titans of artistic thought as Tolstoy, Rembrandt, Shakespeare. In terms of philosophical depth, democratic orientation, courage of innovation, Beethoven has no equal in the musical art of Europe of the past centuries.
The work of Beethoven captured the great awakening of the peoples, the heroism and drama of the revolutionary era. Addressing all advanced humanity, his music was a bold challenge to the aesthetics of the feudal aristocracy.
Beethoven's worldview was formed under the influence of the revolutionary movement that spread in the advanced circles of society at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. As its original reflection on German soil, the bourgeois-democratic Enlightenment took shape in Germany. The protest against social oppression and despotism determined the leading directions of German philosophy, literature, poetry, theater and music.
Lessing raised the banner of struggle for the ideals of humanism, reason and freedom. The works of Schiller and the young Goethe were imbued with civic feeling. The playwrights of the Sturm und Drang movement rebelled against the petty morality of feudal-bourgeois society. The reactionary nobility is challenged in Lessing's Nathan the Wise, Goethe's Goetz von Berlichingen, Schiller's The Robbers and Insidiousness and Love. The ideas of the struggle for civil liberties permeate Schiller's Don Carlos and William Tell. The tension of social contradictions was also reflected in the image of Goethe's Werther, "the rebellious martyr", in the words of Pushkin. The spirit of challenge marked every outstanding work of art of that era, created on German soil. Beethoven's work was the most general and artistically perfect expression in the art of the popular movements in Germany at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries.
The great social upheaval in France had a direct and powerful effect on Beethoven. This brilliant musician, a contemporary of the revolution, was born in an era that perfectly matched the warehouse of his talent, his titanic nature. With rare creative power and emotional acuity, Beethoven sang the majesty and intensity of his time, its stormy drama, the joys and sorrows of the gigantic masses of the people. To this day, Beethoven's art remains unsurpassed as an artistic expression of feelings of civic heroism.
The revolutionary theme by no means exhausts Beethoven's legacy. Undoubtedly, the most outstanding works of Beethoven belong to the art of the heroic-dramatic plan. The main features of his aesthetics are most vividly embodied in works that reflect the theme of struggle and victory, glorifying the universal democratic beginning of life, the desire for freedom. "Heroic", Fifth and Ninth symphonies, overture "Coriolan", "Egmont", "Leonore", "Pathétique Sonata" and "Appassionata" - it was this range of works that almost immediately won Beethoven the widest worldwide recognition. And in fact, Beethoven's music differs from the structure of thought and manner of expression of its predecessors primarily in its effectiveness, tragic power, and grandiose scale. There is nothing surprising in the fact that his innovation in the heroic-tragic sphere, earlier than in others, attracted general attention; mainly on the basis of Beethoven's dramatic works, both his contemporaries and the generations immediately following them made a judgment about his work as a whole.
However, the world of Beethoven's music is stunningly diverse. There are other fundamentally important aspects in his art, outside of which his perception will inevitably be one-sided, narrow, and therefore distorted. And above all, this is the depth and complexity of the intellectual principle inherent in it.
The psychology of the new man, liberated from feudal fetters, is revealed by Beethoven not only in a conflict-tragedy plan, but also through the sphere of high inspirational thought. His hero, possessing indomitable courage and passion, is endowed at the same time with a rich, finely developed intellect. He is not only a fighter, but also a thinker; along with action, he has a tendency to concentrated reflection. Not a single secular composer before Beethoven achieved such philosophical depth and scale of thought. In Beethoven, the glorification of real life in its multifaceted aspects was intertwined with the idea of the cosmic greatness of the universe. Moments of inspired contemplation in his music coexist with heroic-tragic images, illuminating them in a peculiar way. Through the prism of a sublime and deep intellect, life in all its diversity is refracted in Beethoven's music - stormy passions and detached dreaminess, theatrical dramatic pathos and lyrical confession, pictures of nature and scenes of everyday life...
Finally, against the background of the work of its predecessors, Beethoven's music stands out for that individualization of the image, which is associated with the psychological principle in art.
Not as a representative of the estate, but as a person with his own rich inner world, a man of a new, post-revolutionary society realized himself. It was in this spirit that Beethoven interpreted his hero. He is always significant and unique, each page of his life is an independent spiritual value. Even motifs that are related to each other in type acquire in Beethoven's music such a richness of shades in conveying mood that each of them is perceived as unique. With an unconditional commonality of ideas that permeate all of his work, with a deep imprint of a powerful creative individuality that lies on all Beethoven's works, each of his opuses is an artistic surprise.
Perhaps it is this unquenchable desire to reveal the unique essence of each image that makes the problem of Beethoven's style so difficult.
Beethoven is usually spoken of as a composer who, on the one hand, completes the classicist (In domestic theater studies and foreign musicological literature, the term “classicist” has been established in relation to the art of classicism. Thus, finally, the confusion that inevitably arises when the single word “classical” is used to characterize the pinnacle, “eternal” phenomena of any art, and to define one stylistic category, but we, by inertia, continue to use the term "classical" in relation to both the musical style of the 18th century and classical examples in music of other styles (for example, romanticism, baroque, impressionism, etc.).) era in music, on the other hand, opens the way for the "romantic age". In broad historical terms, such a formulation does not raise objections. However, it does little to understand the essence of Beethoven's style itself. For, touching on some sides at certain stages of evolution with the work of the classicists of the 18th century and the romantics of the next generation, Beethoven's music actually does not coincide in some important, decisive features with the requirements of either style. Moreover, it is generally difficult to characterize it with the help of stylistic concepts that have developed on the basis of studying the work of other artists. Beethoven is inimitably individual. At the same time, it is so many-sided and multifaceted that no familiar stylistic categories cover all the diversity of its appearance.
With a greater or lesser degree of certainty, we can only speak of a certain sequence of stages in the composer's quest. Throughout his career, Beethoven continuously expanded the expressive boundaries of his art, constantly leaving behind not only his predecessors and contemporaries, but also his own achievements of an earlier period. Nowadays, it is customary to marvel at the multi-style of Stravinsky or Picasso, seeing this as a sign of the special intensity of the evolution of artistic thought, characteristic of the 20th century. But Beethoven in this sense is in no way inferior to the above-named luminaries. It is enough to compare almost any arbitrarily chosen works of Beethoven to be convinced of the incredible versatility of his style. Is it easy to believe that the elegant septet in the style of the Viennese divertissement, the monumental dramatic "Heroic Symphony" and the deeply philosophical quartets op. 59 belong to the same pen? Moreover, they were all created within the same six-year period.
None of Beethoven's sonatas can be distinguished as the most characteristic of the composer's style in the field of piano music. Not a single work typifies his searches in the symphonic sphere. Sometimes, in the same year, Beethoven publishes works so contrasting with each other that at first glance it is difficult to recognize commonalities between them. Let us recall at least the well-known Fifth and Sixth symphonies. Every detail of thematism, every method of formation in them is as sharply opposed to each other as the general artistic concepts of these symphonies are incompatible - the sharply tragic Fifth and the idyllic pastoral Sixth. If we compare the works created at different, relatively distant from each other stages of the creative path - for example, the First Symphony and the Solemn Mass, the quartets op. 18 and the last quartets, the Sixth and Twenty-ninth Piano Sonatas, etc., etc., then we will see creations so strikingly different from each other that at first impression they are unconditionally perceived as the product of not only different intellects, but also from different artistic eras. Moreover, each of the mentioned opuses is highly characteristic of Beethoven, each is a miracle of stylistic completeness.
One can speak about a single artistic principle that characterizes Beethoven's works only in the most general terms: throughout the entire creative path, the composer's style developed as a result of the search for a true embodiment of life. The powerful coverage of reality, richness and dynamics in the transmission of thoughts and feelings, finally a new understanding of beauty compared to its predecessors, led to such many-sided original and artistically unfading forms of expression that can only be generalized by the concept of a unique “Beethoven style”.
By Serov's definition, Beethoven understood beauty as an expression of high ideological content. The hedonistic, gracefully divertissement side of musical expressiveness was consciously overcome in the mature work of Beethoven.
Just as Lessing stood for precise and parsimonious speech against the artificial, embellishing style of salon poetry, saturated with elegant allegories and mythological attributes, so Beethoven rejected everything decorative and conventionally idyllic.
In his music, not only the exquisite ornamentation, inseparable from the style of expression of the 18th century, disappeared. The balance and symmetry of the musical language, the smoothness of rhythm, the chamber transparency of sound - these stylistic features, characteristic of all of Beethoven's Viennese predecessors without exception, were also gradually ousted from his musical speech. Beethoven's idea of the beautiful demanded an underlined nakedness of feelings. He was looking for other intonations - dynamic and restless, sharp and stubborn. The sound of his music became saturated, dense, dramatically contrasting; his themes acquired hitherto unprecedented conciseness, severe simplicity. To people brought up on the musical classicism of the 18th century, Beethoven's manner of expression seemed so unusual, "unsmoothed", sometimes even ugly, that the composer was repeatedly reproached for his desire to be original, they saw in his new expressive techniques the search for strange, deliberately dissonant sounds that cut the ear.
And, however, with all the originality, courage and novelty of Beethoven's music is inextricably linked with the previous culture and with the classicist system of thought.
The advanced schools of the 18th century, covering several artistic generations, prepared Beethoven's work. Some of them received a generalization and final form in it; the influences of others are revealed in a new original refraction.
Beethoven's work is most closely associated with the art of Germany and Austria.
First of all, there is a perceptible continuity with the Viennese classicism of the 18th century. It is no coincidence that Beethoven entered the history of Culture as the last representative of this school. He began on the path laid down by his immediate predecessors Haydn and Mozart. Beethoven also deeply perceived the structure of the heroic-tragic images of Gluck's musical drama, partly through the works of Mozart, which in their own way refracted this figurative beginning, partly directly from Gluck's lyrical tragedies. Beethoven is equally clearly perceived as the spiritual heir of Handel. The triumphant, light-heroic images of Handel's oratorios began a new life on an instrumental basis in Beethoven's sonatas and symphonies. Finally, clear successive threads connect Beethoven with that philosophical and contemplative line in the art of music, which has long been developed in the choral and organ schools of Germany, becoming its typical national beginning and reaching its highest expression in the art of Bach. The influence of Bach's philosophical lyrics on the entire structure of Beethoven's music is deep and undeniable, and can be traced from the First Piano Sonata to the Ninth Symphony and the last quartets created shortly before his death.
Protestant chorale and traditional everyday German song, democratic singspiel and Viennese street serenades - these and many other types of national art are also uniquely embodied in Beethoven's work. It recognizes both the historically established forms of peasant songwriting and the intonations of modern urban folklore. In essence, everything organically national in the culture of Germany and Austria was reflected in Beethoven's sonata-symphony work.
The art of other countries, especially France, also contributed to the formation of his multifaceted genius. Beethoven's music echoes the Rousseauist motifs that were embodied in French comic opera in the 18th century, starting with Rousseau's The Village Sorcerer and ending with Gretry's classical works in this genre. The poster, sternly solemn nature of the mass revolutionary genres of France left an indelible mark on it, marking a break with the chamber art of the 18th century. Cherubini's operas brought sharp pathos, spontaneity and dynamics of passions, close to the emotional structure of Beethoven's style.
Just as the work of Bach absorbed and generalized at the highest artistic level all the significant schools of the previous era, so the horizons of the brilliant symphonist of the 19th century embraced all the viable musical currents of the previous century. But Beethoven's new understanding of musical beauty reworked these sources into such an original form that in the context of his works they are by no means always easily recognizable.
In exactly the same way, the classicist structure of thought is refracted in Beethoven's work in a new form, far from the style of expression of Gluck, Haydn, Mozart. This is a special, purely Beethoven variety of classicism, which has no prototypes in any artist. Composers of the 18th century did not even think about the very possibility of such grandiose constructions that became typical for Beethoven, like freedom of development within the framework of sonata formation, about such diverse types of musical thematics, and the complexity and richness of the very texture of Beethoven's music should have been perceived by them as unconditional a step back to the rejected manner of the Bach generation. Nevertheless, Beethoven's belonging to the classicist structure of thought clearly emerges against the background of those new aesthetic principles that began to unconditionally dominate the music of the post-Beethoven era.
From the first to the last works, Beethoven's music is invariably characterized by clarity and rationality of thinking, monumentality and harmony of form, an excellent balance between the parts of the whole, which are characteristic features of classicism in art in general, in music in particular. In this sense, Beethoven can be called a direct successor not only to Gluck, Haydn and Mozart, but also to the very founder of the classicist style in music - the Frenchman Lully, who worked a hundred years before the birth of Beethoven. Beethoven showed himself most fully within the framework of those sonata-symphonic genres that were developed by the composers of the Enlightenment and reached the classical level in the work of Haydn and Mozart. He is the last composer of the 19th century, for whom the classicist sonata was the most natural, organic form of thinking, the last one for whom the internal logic of musical thought dominates the external, sensually colorful beginning. Perceived as a direct emotional outpouring, Beethoven's music actually rests on a virtuoso erected, tightly welded logical foundation.
