Hope you enjoy this writing piece, and see you tomorrow at eight AM for more assuming nothing goes terribly wrong. Oh, if you somehow haven't, listen to Moonlight Sonata already.
Ludwig Van Beethoven by Mackinley Clevinger, April 11, 2016
Throughout history, there have been men and women who rose to the top of their selected fields in the arts or the sciences, each possessing some spark or nigh-mystical element that made them stand out from the crowds of their days; to take their craft to a whole other level and inspire countless generations following their inevitable demise, a death in body but never in legend.
In the sciences we have Babbage and Lovelace, creating the first computer a century before it became mainstream; Einstein’s theory of relativity and entire volumes of research that takes years of study to be able to understand even the simplest concept therein; Marie Curie, on the front lines of research into radioactivity who would ultimately fall victim to that very interest.
In the arts we have painters; Van Gogh, M.C. Escher, Picasso, and Leonardo Davinci; all masters of a craft they took it upon themselves to master and take further, entrancing the minds and interests of the world to create works of such worth, that no value can be put to their names. But what value could ever be put on something closer to mankind than their own sight, an aspect of ourselves that has been with us since our very first days on this Earth; an art that can save your soul or turn it to ruin?
Music, found in every culture in the world as a constant across the human spectrum. We live, we love, and we listen; to the greats of our time and those before, whose everlasting impression they have left on the world through the music they have played and created, all of mankind is grateful, but it is towards the cream of that crop that we truly must pay homage to.
Throughout his lifetime, baptized on December 17 of 1770 and meeting his end on March 26, 1827, he was an artist, composing symphonies that shocked and amazed the world that was lucky enough to receive it; the genius they saw within him overshadowing his short stature and rough temperament that grated against the sensibilities of the public.
For all his work and accomplishments; nine symphonies to the kingdoms of men, carrying their minds and souls along an ethereal ride of his creation before bringing them back to Earth once more, changed through and through; the man suffered dearly in his life. His father was abusive, an alcoholic who wanted his son to be a child prodigy like so many others, but whenever Ludwig failed in his task he was beaten severely. He was said to have suffered chronic stomach pain as well, beginning in his twenties, but this all paled in comparison to the greatest dishonor he would feel in his lifetime.
Beethoven was deaf for much of the time he spent composing, ultimately composing scores of pieces without ever being able to hear them for himself without any falter in the quality of his work. At the point where he couldn’t hear a cheering crowd set not ten feet away from, he composed his Ninth Symphony, one of his most personal and telling works that spoke of his life, now considered his greatest work that has, throughout over a century since his death, not been left to the annals of time to be forgotten and ignored.
Beethoven’s genius took time to develop, and it was underneath the tutelage of teachers such as Joseph Haydn, declared the greatest composer living after Mozart’s passing, Antoni Salieri, and Johann Albrechtsberger that his skills approached the full force they would one day be. At this time, in 1792, Beethoven was merely a stellar pianist with an aptitude for improvisations in his playing. It would be at the dawn of the nineteenth century when he publicly displayed his first composition: Symphony No.1 in C major, a piece that gained him acclaim across all of Europe.
Many of his works were influenced by the politics of his time, and so too was his Symphony No.3, written in honor of Napoleon’s rise to power in France due to Beethoven identifying with his humble origins and achievements in life. Soon after Napoleon began his conquest of Europe, though, Ludwig grew disgusted by the man and renamed the piece the Eroica Symphony, one of such complexity and originality that many musicians were dumbfounded as to how to play it.
Despite his now growing deafness, he entered a period of his life known as the ‘heroic’, composing an opera, six symphonies, four solo concerti, five string quartets, six string sonatas, seven piano sonatas, five sets of piano variations, four overtures, four trios, two sextets, and 72 songs. Among this body of work lies one of his better known melodies: The Moonlight Sonata, a beautiful piece of music in its own right and all the more impressive to rest alongside so many other powerful works.
Though his was a brilliant mind, outside of the field of music his life was a lonely and painful one, for his temperament and unbalanced nature drove those who might call themselves his allies away to leave him alone to his deafness, pain, and despair. The death of his brother did him no favors when he entered into a custody battle with his brother’s widow for possession of her son, a battle he won, to the misfortune of the lad Karl to whom all Ludwig’s aspirations for a successor to his talent went, driving the boy to attempt suicide in the stress and pressure he felt, and ultimately become a soldier.
No matter what may have been going on in his life, however, he never stopped composing; in the final years of his life creating Missa Solemnis, String Quartet No. 14, and the immortally beloved Ninth Symphony, the finale of which bearing a chorus which sang Friedrich Schiller’s poem “Ode to Joy” thus giving it a more recognizable name. This composition so captured the minds of Europe and beyond that it has been the anthem for individual countries as well as the entirety of Europe numerous times, and is played at the end of every year in Japan after captured German soldiers in World War II shared the song with their captors.
Beethoven’s final symphony was finished in 1824, and three years later he would die at the age of 56 after a time of illness ending in the loss of history’s most-renowned and arguably greatest composer, without a doubt the greatest of his time. Examinations of the exhumed body and other remains have gleaned information into the nature of his deafness that caused him such strife in his life, either being from acute lead poisoning, catching typhus early in his life, or having his hearing damaged when beaten by his father while young.
Words alone cannot describe the full majesty of the works of Ludwig Van Beethoven; if a picture is worth a thousand words, then what body of literature could every hold the full force of the astounding images that come to mind when listening to one of mankind’s purest inventions, and truly an art mastered in his lifetime which he was gracious enough to share with his contemporaries: The Music of Ludwig Van Beethoven.