As someone who has loved Peanuts for a long time, I would be remiss if I didn’t celebrate Ludwig van Beethoven on his birthday. As Schroeder reminds us each year, Beethoven was born on December 16 in the year 1770. Beethoven is the predominant musical figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras. He showed talent at an early age, and was taught originally by his father, who was a court singer and alcoholic. Hoping his son would be another prodigy like Mozart, Johann worked him very hard. Indeed, he was actually abusive to the child. At the age of 10, Beethoven withdrew from school to study music full time with Christian Gottlob Neefe, the newly appointed Court Organist. As his father’s alcoholism worsened, young Johann took over as the breadwinner for the family. He was only fourteen. He studied off and on in Vienna, where among others, Haydn, and Salieri taught him. At the time, he was known mainly as a virtuoso pianist.
Turning to composing, he debuted his first symphony in 1800. It was also about this time that he realized he was going deaf. One of his best-known symphonies debuted in 1804. It was to have been dedicated to Napoleon, who at first was seen as a savior of the French, ending the reign of terror. But when he took the title of emperor, Beethoven struck out the dedication and called the Eroica, or heroic symphony. Also during this time, he composed operas, concertos, sonatas, and others. His very famous Symphony No. 5, was first performed in 1808. Before he could finish his tenth symphony, he died on March 26, 1827.
Do listen to some of his inspiring music today. You can find many, many on YouTube, including three of his symphonies here.
Quotes by Beethoven
What I have in my heart and soul – must find a way out. That’s the reason for music.
The vibrations on the air are the breath of God speaking to man’s soul. Music is the language of God. We musicians are as close to God as man can be. We hear his voice, we read his lips, we give birth to the children of God, who sing his praise. That’s what musicians are.
Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents.
Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; art deserves that, for it and knowledge can raise man to the Divine.
I wish you music to help with the burdens of life, and to help you release your happiness to others.
Life would be flat without music. It is the background to all I do. It speaks to the heart in its own special way like nothing else.
Then let us all do what is right, strive with all our might toward the unattainable, develop as fully as we can the gifts God has given us, and never stop learning
What will be the judgment a century hence concerning the lorded works of our favorite composers today? … Then, let every man do that which is right, strive with all his might towards the goal which can never be obtained … For life is short, art eternal.
Music can change the world.
You ask me where I get my ideas. That I cannot tell you with certainty. They come unsummoned, directly, indirectly – I could seize them with my hands – out in the open air, in the woods, while walking, in the silence of the nights, at dawn, excited by moods which are translated by the poet into words, by me into tones that sound and roar and storm about me till I have set them down in notes.
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