Why beethoven is important

Beethoven was an earlier admirer of two of the most important figures of the Classical era: Franz Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. A virtuoso pianist and an often difficult man, Beethoven nonetheless impressed with his fierce individualism and determination in an age where patronage was still the norm. While he did not abandon patronage entirely as Mozart had, Beethoven rarely went out of his way to please anyone but himself.

His legend grew as he kept performing and composing while becoming fully deaf, a handicap he would carry for the last 30 years of his life. Instead of his deafness impeding his composition, his individualistic style only intensified upon his discovery of his impending deafness, leading to some of his most beloved works, including his last three Piano Concertos and the immortal Fifth Symphony.

He is also credited with fully embracing the expanding range of the piano in his sonatas and concertos, and for inadvertently popularizing steel-framed keyboards, as he would often leave a stream of broken wooden pianos on stages wherever he performed. The adult that emerged from that hell was angry, sullen and suspicious. He was scarred physically and mentally, often suicidal, clumsy, badly co-ordinated, obtuse, prone to obsessive-compulsive behaviours and lacking both personal hygiene and social graces.

He went on singlehandedly to change the musical world for ever. It has been said that he alone dragged music out of the Classical age and into the Romantic. I believe passionately that Beethoven both defined and deserves his own musical era. Ascribing specific dates and composers to different musical movements or eras works for everyone except Beethoven.

And there is Beethoven, standing alone above them all. Beethoven, whose Ninth Symphony was composed in and waited patiently until the early s for Mahler to pick up its mantle. His last three piano sonatas perhaps found an equal when Prokofiev started work on his War Sonatas in Before Beethoven, composers worked for the glory of God. Or else they wrote on bended knee for wealthy courts and egotistical patrons. Beethoven kicked down the doors of the aristocratic world and made himself at home.

He wrote for himself alone. For the text he used Friedrich Schiller's "Ode to Joy": Beethoven's ideals, summarized in one poem: freedom, equality, brotherhood. This is why Beethoven's music is so fascinating Beethoven left no stone unturned in classical music. He worked hard on that. Why was Beethoven's music so good?

Symphony No. Hard Work Beethoven's scores look like battlefields. Working on the best possible version Beethoven struggled with himself and his perfectionism. Sonata for piano A major op. Discarded notes Beethoven's writing was often so illegible that even his copyists had difficulties in transferring the notes into fair copy.

Corrections in red In the final step, Beethoven uses red mineral paint to draw in necessary changes. Fireworks with many effects In the second movement of the symphony, Beethoven inserts birdcalls.

And this is what the birdcalls sound like in the orchestra. Extraordinarily, Beethoven did not just help invent a new style of music, he also perfected it. Romanticism was primarily a literary movement and it was already established when Beethoven became the first to take its ideals and apply them to the way he wrote music. Structure and refinement gave way to emotion, and the inner world of the artist. Audiences of the time were familiar with the way composers communicated their ideas and intentions — which keys were used where, systematic repetition of certain melodies, and the character and tempo of each movement.

Beethoven broke all these rules, and not simply for the sake of it: it was always in service of whatever he wanted to express, whether that was incredible drama or the most intimate, personal sentiments.