So, how can one explain Beethoven, who is the most performed composer in the world today and who made a significant contribution to the transition from the Classical period to the Romantic period in classical music with his works?
Ludwig van Beethoven was born in 1770 in Bonn, today's Germany. Although his exact date of birth is unknown, it is recorded that he was baptized in St. Remigius Church on December 17, 1770.
Born as the second child of a musician family, Beethoven's first music teacher was his father, Johann van Beethoven. Wanting to create a genius like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in his son, Johann van Beethoven ensured that his son received musical education from names such as Gilles van den Eeden, Tobias Friedrich Pfeiffer, Franz Rovantini and Franz Anton Ries.
Beethoven, who gave his first concert in 1778 when he was only seven years old, was given his musical education by conductor Christian Gottlob Neefe in 1780. Young Beethoven would develop rapidly alongside Neefe, starting to work as Neefe's assistant in the Bonn Palace Orchestra in 1782, and this would be followed by the publication of his first composition, which has survived to the present day, in 1783.
Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 1770 – 26 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank among the most performed of the classical music repertoire and span the transition from the Classical period to the Romantic era in classical music. His career has conventionally been divided into early, middle, and late periods. His early period, during which he forged his craft, is typically considered to have lasted until 1802.
Beethoven, who left Bonn in November 1792 and settled in Vienna, which could be considered the heart of art, especially classical music, continued his classical music studies under the guidance of composer Franz Joseph Haydn in this European city, where he arrived a year after Mozart's death.
The young musician, now in his early 20s, gave his first concert in Vienna in 1795 and composed his first symphony in this city in 1800.
He completely lost his hearing
Beethoven's life and music are generally discussed in three periods. The first of these is the years 1792-1802 after coming to Vienna. This "early" period is followed by the 10-year "middle" period (1802-1812), also referred to as the "heroic" period in some sources, when Haydn and Mozart began to depart from their classical style. The 15 years from 1812 until the musician's death in 1827 are called Beethoven's "late" period.
The late 1790s, when Ludwig van Beethoven began to make his name known in Vienna's art circles, was also the period when he realized that he had hearing loss. Although nothing much changed musically in his life until the "heroic" period of his career, when the calendar showed 1802, he realized that his situation was permanent, and worse, it was getting worse every day. Beethoven wrote to his two brothers that year:
"Oh, you think or say that I am a malicious, stubborn, misanthropic person; how wrong you are to me. You don't know why I look like this. Since my childhood, my heart and mind have been well-intentioned and inclined to good feelings. I have a lot of time to do great things. "I was willing. But think about it... I have been in a hopeless situation for six years, made worse by ignorant doctors, betrayed by the hope that I would get better from year to year, and in the end, I have to face a permanent malady that will take years to cure and may never be cured."
The following part of the same letter was interpreted as meaning that the musician even considered taking his own life because of his hearing problems:
"Oh, only art stopped me; it seemed impossible to leave this world without producing what I felt I had to produce."
Although some musicologists say that the famous musician was not completely deaf, according to many sources, Ludwig van Beethoven completely lost his hearing in 1819, when he was 49 years old, or perhaps even earlier, in 1814. But this would not prevent him from continuing to make music and producing new compositions and even symphonies.
"Musician who knows no barriers"
The 9th Symphony, which is estimated to have been composed between 1822 and 1824 and is Beethoven's last completed symphony, was first performed in Vienna on May 7, 1824.
Beethoven composed the 9th Symphony while being completely deaf, and the artist, who could not listen to his own compositions, settled in a rural area during this period and took occasional walks to think about his music.
History Channel describes what happened on the evening when the 9th Symphony was performed for the first time at the Theater am Kärntnertor with the following words:
“The Ninth Symphony required the largest orchestra Beethoven had ever used, and it was unusual at the time to use [human] voices in addition to instruments.
"Beethoven chose two young artists to sing the soprano and alto parts, one of whom was 18-year-old Henriette Sontag and the other 20-year-old Caroline Unger. When the Ninth Symphony was first performed, Beethoven appeared on stage and appeared to be conducting the orchestra, but due to his hearing impairment, he told the orchestra members to ignore their conductor. They were told to come and instead follow Michael Umlauf, the actual conductor.
"When the symphony ended, Beethoven was a few bars behind the main music. Since he could not hear the applause, Unger had to get up and turn him towards the audience. When he turned around, the audience was giving him a standing ovation, waving their hats and handkerchiefs."
As pointed out in this quote, Beethoven did something that had never been done before and added a choral section to his 9th Symphony.
This choir section, which we know today as An Die Freude and which was actually adapted from Friedrich Schiller's poem of the same name, continued to shape cultural and even political life centuries later.
"Be brothers, people...": EU Anthem
The European Anthem, which is one of the symbols of the European Union (EU) today, was inspired by the "Ode to Joy", the last movement of the 9th Symphony.
The Council of Europe accepted a wordless version of this section, composed based on Schiller's poem in which he included the "ideal of people living in brotherhood", as the "European Anthem" in 1972.
The piece in question, which "gives messages about freedom, peace, and solidarity, which are the priorities of the EU, using the universal language of music" without resorting to lyrical expression, was accepted as the official anthem of the union by the EU heads of state and government in 1985.
But the use of "Ode to Joy" in a political context was not limited to that. As Deutsche Welle Germany stated in its article subtitled "Beethoven's Ninth in the Service of Politics", the "Ode to Joy" section of the 9th Symphony, which is known to have been played on the birthday of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in 1942, is especially important from the Second World War. It was later embraced by different political movements in different parts of the world.
The choir section in question, which was used as the national anthem by the Apartheid regime in today's Zimbabwe and then Rhodesia in the 1970s, was used in the protests of women for the release of political prisoners during the military dictatorship in Chile, in the student protests in China in 1989, and finally again. It was used to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Just as political movements were interested in him centuries after his time, Ludwig van Beethoven himself was interested not only in music, but also in philosophy, literature, and politics.
The heroic theme was prominent, especially in the early years of Beethoven's musical career. This was actually partly the reason why the second period of his musical life was called the "heroic" period. Beethoven, who was only 18 years old in 1789, greatly admired the French Revolution, the ideas of individual rights and freedom that the revolution brought, and Napoleon Bonaparte.
The famous musician decided to dedicate his third symphony called "Eroica" to Napoleon. Longer and more impressive than all his previous symphonies, this symphony was his "completely revolutionary piece composed in honor of Napoleon." But Beethoven later changed his mind. Let's hear from Stefano Russomanno why Beethoven gave up:
"Beethoven decided to dedicate the Third Symphony to the French commander. He was making his first plans for the symphony and weighing his thoughts about Napoleon in his mind.
"Then, in the summer of 1804, as he was about to finish the symphony, news came to Vienna: Napoleon had declared himself emperor of France.
"According to his student Ferdinand Reis, Beethoven's reaction to his old hero was a series of angry criticism: 'Now he too will trample all the rights of the people just for his own ambitions, now he too will think that he is superior to everyone else and become a tyrant!'
"One page from the preserved score shows how the word Bonaparte was crossed out harshly with a pencil."
Moonlight Sonata, Für Elise, and the women to whom they are dedicated
Of course, Ludwig van Beethoven's works were not limited to his third and ninth symphonies, just as the people to whom he dedicated his works were not only the politicians of the period...
Sources that have survived centuries ago reveal that Beethoven dedicated his "Moonlight Sonata" and "Für Elise" (for Elise), two of his best-known works, to the women he cared about.
According to what Patricia Morrisroe wrote in her book "The Woman in the Moonlight", Beethoven dedicated the Moonlight Sonata to Countess Julie Guicciardi, who was also his student.
The young woman, known today as Giulietta because the first dedication page of the sonata was written in Italian, was 18 years old when she started taking piano lessons from Beethoven in 1801, together with her older sister. The ringing and buzzing in Beethoven's ears, who was 30 years old at the time, was increasing day by day, and the young musician, thinking that his condition had reached an irreversible level, hid his experiences from everyone.
Beethoven completed the sonata, which he would later dedicate to Julie, in 1801, the year he met her. The sonata, which was a "hit" when it was first staged, took the name "Moonlight" 21 years later, in 1823 when the writer Ludwig Rellstab compared the introduction of the work to "a lake lying calmly under the pale light of the moon".
But all this was not enough for Beethoven and Julie's stories to have a happy ending. The young woman married composer Count Wenzel Robert von Gallenberg in November 1803 and settled in Naples.
After Beethoven's death, his friends who read the "Immortal Beloved" letter they found in a secret drawer in his desk were almost sure that the "beloved, charming girl" mentioned in the letter was Julie.
The story of "Für Elise", a work by Beethoven that is at least as well-known today as the Moonlight Sonata, is a little more complicated. According to Maddy Shaw Roberts from Classic FM, there are three different theses about who "Elise", to whom the work is dedicated, really is.
According to the first of these theses, when Beethoven wrote in the manuscript of his work to whom he dedicated the piece, he wrote "Für Therese", that is, "For Therese", not "Für Elise". However, due to a mistake made by a copywriter named Ludwig Nohl, the name written in the printed work was no longer Therese but Elise.
Although the widely accepted view today is that "Für Elise" was dedicated to Therese Malfatti, to whom Beethoven proposed marriage in 1810, according to some researchers, it is quite possible that Elise was soprano Elisabeth Röckel. Many sources show that Elisabeth, who appeared on stage in Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio, met frequently with the musician and that the musician wanted to marry this young woman with whom he fell in love.
Although not as common as the others, the possibility that the Elise of "Für Elise" is Beethoven's friend, soprano Elise Barensfeld, is among the theses that have been voiced.
Was Beethoven Black?
Ludwig van Beethoven, who embraced the ideas of individual rights and freedom brought by the Age of Enlightenment and the French Revolution throughout his 56-year life, and who is remembered as a "humanist and visionary world citizen" even 250 years after his birth, was a member of the Civil Rights Movement in the USA in the 1960s. It also influenced the movement.
So how did the slogan "Beethoven was Black" become a part of the struggle for the rights of Black people in the USA? Was Beethoven really Black?
The article titled "The Black Violinist Who Inspired Beethoven" published in the US newspaper The New York Times by Patricia Morrisroe stated that "Kreutzer", which is shown as "one of Beethoven's most famous and passionate pieces", was actually dedicated to the Black violinist George Polgreen Bridgetower. However, after an argument between the two, Beethoven gave up his decision.
Philip Clark from England's The Guardian newspaper explains how the idea that Beethoven might be Black came about:
"In 1907, exactly 80 years after Beethoven's death, British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor began to speculate that Beethoven was Black. Coleridge-Taylor was mixed race; his mother was a white Englishman and his father was from Sierra Leone. Photos of the composer Beethoven He said that when he looked, he couldn't help but notice the striking similarities between his facial features and hers.
"Coleridge-Taylor, who had just returned from the apartheid USA, reflected on his own experiences in the USA through the German composer. 'If the greatest musician of all time were alive today, he would not be able to find a hotel to stay in some American cities,' he said.
"His words were a kind of prophecy. In the 1960s, the mantra 'Beethoven was Black' became part of the civil rights struggle."