Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany, to Johann van Beethoven (17401792), of Flemish origins, and Magdalena Keverich van

Beethoven (17441787). Until relatively recently 16 December was shown in many reference
works as Beethoven's 'date of birth', since we know he was baptised on 17
December and children at that time were generally baptised the day after
their birth. However modern scholarship declines to rely on such
assumptions.
Beethoven's first music teacher was his father, who worked as a musician in
the Electoral court at Bonn, but was also an alcoholic who beat him and
unsuccessfully attempted to exhibit him as a child prodigy. However,
Beethoven's talent was soon noticed by others. He was given instruction and
employment by Christian Gottlob Neefe, as well as financial sponsorship by
the Prince-Elector. Beethoven's mother died when he was 17, and for several
years he was responsible for raising his two younger brothers.
Beethoven moved to Vienna in 1792, where he studied with Joseph Haydn
and other teachers. He quickly established a reputation as a piano virtuoso,
and more slowly as a composer. He settled into the career pattern he would
follow for the remainder of his life: rather than working for the church or a
noble court (as most composers before him had done), he was a freelancer,
supporting himself with public performances, sales of his works, and stipends
from noblemen who recognized his ability.
Beethoven's career as a composer is usually divided into Early, Middle, and
Late periods.
In the Early period, he is seen as emulating his great predecessors Haydn and
Mozart, at the same time exploring new directions and gradually expanding
the scope and ambition of his work. Some important pieces from the Early
period are the first and second symphonies, the first six string quartets, the
first two piano concertos, and about a dozen piano sonatas, including the
famous 'Pathtique'.
The Middle period began shortly after Beethoven's personal crisis centering
around deafness, and is noted for large-scale works expressing heroism and
struggle; these include many of the most famous works of classical music.
The Middle period works include six symphonies (Nos. 3 8), the last three
piano concertos and his only violin concerto, six string quartets (Nos. 7 11),
many piano sonatas (including the 'Moonlight', 'Waldstein', and
'Appassionata'), and Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio.
Beethoven's Late period began around 1816 and lasted until Beethoven
ceased to compose in 1826. The late works are greatly admired for their
intellectual depth and their intense, highly personal expression. They include
the Ninth Symphony (the 'Choral'), the Missa Solemnis, the last six string

quartets and the last five piano sonatas.

Beethoven's personal life was troubled. Around age 28 he started to become
deaf, a calamity which led him for some time to contemplate suicide. He was
attracted to unattainable (married or aristocratic) women, whom he idealized;
he never married. A period of low productivity from about 1812 to 1816 is
thought by some scholars to have been the result of depression, resulting
from Beethoven's realization that he would never marry. Beethoven
quarreled, often bitterly, with his relatives and others, and frequently
behaved badly to other people. He moved often from dwelling to dwelling,
and had strange personal habits such as wearing filthy clothing while washing
compulsively. He often had financial troubles.
It is common for listeners to perceive an echo of Beethoven's life in his music,
which often depicts struggle followed by triumph. This description is often
applied to Beethoven's creation of masterpieces in the face of his severe
personal difficulties.
Beethoven was often in poor health, and in 1826 his health took a drastic turn
for the worse. His death in the following year is usually attributed to liver
disease.
Beethoven is viewed as a transitional figure between the Classical and
Romantic eras of musical history. As far as musical form is concerned, he built
on the principles of sonata form and motivic development that he had
inherited from Haydn and Mozart, but greatly extended them, writing longer
and more ambitious movements. The work of Beethoven's Middle period is
celebrated for its frequently heroic expression, and the works of his Late
period for their intellectual depth
A continuing controversy surrounding Beethoven is whether he was a
Romantic composer. As documented elsewhere, since the meanings of the
word 'Romantic' and the definition of the period 'Romanticism' both vary by
discipline, Beethoven's inclusion as a member of that movement or period
must be looked at in context.
If we consider the Romantic movement as an aesthetic epoch in literature
and the arts generally, Beethoven sits squarely in the first half, along with
literary Romantics such as the German poets Goethe and Schiller (whose
texts both he and the much more straightforwardly Romantic Franz Schubert
drew on for songs), and the English poet Percy Shelley. He was also called a
Romantic by contemporaries such as Spohr and E.T.A. Hoffman. He is often
considered the composer of the first Song Cycle, and was influenced by
Romantic folk idioms, for example in his use of the work of Robert Burns. He
set dozens of such poems (and arranged folk melodies) for voice, piano, and
violin.

If on the other hand we consider the context of musicology, where

'Romanticism' is dated later, the matter is one of considerably greater
debate. For some experts Beethoven is not a Romantic, and his being one is
'a myth'; for others he stands as a transitional figure, or an immediate
precursor to Romanticism; for others he is the prototypical, or even
archetypical, Romantic composer, complete with myth of heroic genius and
individuality. The marker buoy of Romanticism has been pushed back and
forth several times by scholarship, and remains a subject of intense debate,
in no small part because Beethoven is seen as a seminal figure. To those for
whom the Enlightenment represents the basis of Modernity, he must
therefore be unequivocally a Classicist, while for those who see the Romantic
sensibility as a key to later aesthetics (including the aesthetics of our own
time), he must be a Romantic. Between these two extremes there are, of
course, innumerable gradations.