Ludwig Van Beethoven

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German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Classical music, he remains one of the most recognised and influential of all composers. His best-known compositions include 9 symphonies, 5 piano concertos, 1 violin concerto, 32 piano sonatas, 16 string quartets, his great Mass the Missa solemnis, and one opera, Fidelio. Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of the Holy Roman Empire, Beethoven displayed his musical talents at an early age and was taught by his father Johann van Beethoven and by composer and conductor Christian Gottlob Neefe. At the age of 21 he moved to Vienna, where he began studying composition with Joseph Haydn and gained a reputation as a virtuoso pianist. He lived in Vienna until his death. By his late 20s his hearing began to deteriorate, and by the last decade of his life he was almost completely deaf. In 1811 he gave up conducting and performing in public but continued to compose; many of his most admired works come from these last 15 years of his life. Beethoven's life was troubled by his encroaching loss of hearing and chronic abdominal pain since his twenties. He contemplated suicide as documented in his Heiligenstadt Testament. He was often irascible. Nevertheless, he had a close and devoted circle of friends all his life, thought to have been attracted by his strength of personality. Towards the end of his life, his friends competed in their efforts to help him cope with his incapacities. Beethoven's love life was hampered by class issues. In late 1801 he met a young countess, Julie ("Giulietta") Guicciardi through the Brunsvik family, at a time when he was giving regular piano lessons to Josephine Brunsvik. He mentions his love for Julie in a November 1801 letter to his boyhood friend, Franz Wegeler, but he could not consider marrying her, due to the class difference. He later dedicated his Sonata No. 14, now commonly known as the Moonlight sonata, to her. His relationship with Josephine Brunsvik deepened after the death in 1804 of her aristocratic first husband, the Count Joseph Deym. He wrote Josephine 15 passionate love letters from late 1804 to around 1809/10. Although his feelings were obviously reciprocated, Josephine was forced by her family to withdraw from him in 1807. She cited her "duty" and the fact that she would have lost the custodianship of her aristocratic children had she married a commoner. After Josephine married Baron von Stackelberg in 1810, Beethoven may have proposed unsuccessfully to Therese Malfatti, the supposed dedicatee of "Für Elise"; his status as a commoner may again have interfered with those plans. Beethoven was bedridden for most of his remaining months, and many friends came to visit. He died on 26 March 1827, 5:45 PM, in Vienna, Austria, at the age of 56 during a thunderstorm. His friend Anselm Hüttenbrenner, who was present at the time, said that there was a peal of thunder at the moment of death. An autopsy revealed significant liver damage, which may have been due to heavy alcohol consumption. It also revealed considerable dilation of the auditory and other related nerves. There is dispute about the cause of Beethoven's death: alcoholic cirrhosis, syphilis, infectious hepatitis, lead poisoning, sarcoidosis and Whipple's disease have all been proposed. Friends and visitors before and after his death clipped locks of his hair, some of which have been preserved and subjected to additional analysis, as have skull fragments removed during the 1862 exhumation. Some of these analyses have led to controversial assertions that he was accidentally poisoned to death by excessive doses of lead-based treatments administered under instruction from his doctor. Link to Wikipedia biography