Born on the 16th December 1770 at Bonn, Beethoven is considered to be a brilliant composer who, through his entire creation, fully contributed to the development of the universal music and the improvement of genres and musical forms.<br><br>

 

<b>Origins and background</b>

            His father and grandfather were musicians of the court in Bonn and little Ludwig, whose talent came to light since he was 4, was destined to the same career. He studied with different teachers the piano, organ, violin and viola, excelling at playing the first two.  <br>

            At the age of 11 he became the pupil of the composer Christian Gotthof Neefe, organist and band master of the court, who not only broadened his musical background, but also encouraged him to compose. Though he was still a child, he soon became Neefe’s assistant at the organ, as well as in the Elector’s personal theatre orchestra and of some other families, being later hired as a band master.<br>

            With the help of the Elector and some other noble families from Bonn he was sent to study in Vienna where he had as teachers Haydn, Albrechtsberger, Schenk and Salieri. Here, he was firstly remarked as a skilled pianist, gifted with an unusual expressive power, which allowed him to present his own creations.<br><br>

 

<b>Character and personality</b><br>        

            His artistic personality was doubled by a passionate and unflinching temper which didn’t allow him to be intimidated or humiliated. Though he was supported by a series of aristocrats, he didn’t service anyone, defending ceaselessly his position as an independent professional musician. He is the first great example of this in the history of music, but the conditions of the feudal settlements were to impede him in finding the material stability and peace of mind to freely compose, until the end of his life. <br>

            Contemporaneous with the French Revolution from 1789 and the national independence current, which tormented the European peoples in this period, he understood the time’s call and expressed the new ideas of freedom, equality and fraternity, becoming a fighter through art, to accomplish humanity’s most noble aspirations.<br>

            Having appeared in the Viennese Classicism’s magnificent period, represented by Haydn and Mozart, he determinedly took over the achievements since, creatively developing them, widening the frame of the classic forms, using new templates, more suitable to the contemporary way of thinking and feeling, bringing in music the force of an impetuous dynamism which passionately revealed the dramas of the human existence. Also, through his language and through considerably increasing the number of the orchestra’s instruments he contributed to the extraction of the music out of the saloons’ privacy.<br>

 

<b>Musical Creation</b><br>