beethoven essay

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer whose Symphony 5 is a beloved classic. Some of his greatest works were composed while Beethoven was going deaf.

(1770-1827)

Who Was Ludwig van Beethoven?

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German pianist and composer widely considered to be one of the greatest musical geniuses of all time. His innovative compositions combined vocals and instruments, widening the scope of sonata, symphony, concerto and quartet. He is the crucial transitional figure connecting the Classical and Romantic ages of Western music.

Beethoven’s personal life was marked by a struggle against deafness, and some of his most important works were composed during the last 10 years of his life, when he was quite unable to hear. He died at the age of 56.

Controversial Birthday

Beethoven was born on or about December 16, 1770, in the city of Bonn in the Electorate of Cologne, a principality of the Holy Roman Empire. Although his exact date of birth is uncertain, Beethoven was baptized on December 17, 1770.

As a matter of law and custom, babies at the time were baptized within 24 hours of birth, so December 16 is his most likely birthdate.

However, Beethoven himself mistakenly believed that he was born two years later, in 1772, and he stubbornly insisted on the incorrect date even when presented with official papers that proved beyond any reasonable doubt that 1770 was his true birth year.

Beethoven had two younger brothers who survived into adulthood: Caspar, born in 1774, and Johann, born in 1776. Beethoven's mother, Maria Magdalena van Beethoven, was a slender, genteel, and deeply moralistic woman.

His father, Johann van Beethoven, was a mediocre court singer better known for his alcoholism than any musical ability. However, Beethoven's grandfather, godfather and namesake, Kapellmeister Ludwig van Beethoven, was Bonn's most prosperous and eminent musician, a source of endless pride for young Beethoven.

Childhood Abuse

Sometime between the births of his two younger brothers, Beethoven's father began teaching him music with an extraordinary rigor and brutality that affected him for the rest of his life.

Neighbors provided accounts of the small boy weeping while he played the clavier, standing atop a footstool to reach the keys, his father beating him for each hesitation or mistake.

On a near daily basis, Beethoven was flogged, locked in the cellar and deprived of sleep for extra hours of practice. He studied the violin and clavier with his father as well as taking additional lessons from organists around town. Whether in spite of or because of his father's draconian methods, Beethoven was a prodigiously talented musician from his earliest days.

Meanwhile, the musical prodigy attended a Latin grade school named Tirocinium, where a classmate said, "Not a sign was to be discovered of that spark of genius which glowed so brilliantly in him afterwards."

Beethoven, who struggled with sums and spelling his entire life, was at best an average student, and some biographers have hypothesized that he may have had mild dyslexia. As he put it himself, "Music comes to me more readily than words."

In 1781, at the age of 10, Beethoven withdrew from school to study music full time with Christian Gottlob Neefe, the newly appointed Court Organist, and at the age of 12, Beethoven published his first composition, a set of piano variations on a theme by an obscure classical composer named Dressler.

By 1784, his alcoholism worsening and his voice decaying, Beethoven's father was no longer able to support his family, and Beethoven formally requested an official appointment as Assistant Court Organist. Despite his youth, his request was accepted, and Beethoven was put on the court payroll with a modest annual salary of 150 florins.

Beethoven and Mozart

There is only speculation and inconclusive evidence that Beethoven ever met with Mozart, let alone studied with him. In an effort to facilitate his musical development, in 1787 the court sent Beethoven to Vienna, Europe’s capital of culture and music, where he hoped to study with Mozart.

Tradition has it that, upon hearing Beethoven, Mozart said, "Keep your eyes on him; someday he will give the world something to talk about.”

After only a few weeks in Vienna, Beethoven learned that his mother had fallen ill and he returned home to Bonn. Remaining there, Beethoven continued to carve out his reputation as the city's most promising young court musician.

Early Career as a Composer

When the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II died in 1790, a 19-year-old Beethoven received the immense honor of composing a musical memorial in his honor. For reasons that remain unclear, Beethoven's composition was never performed, and most assumed the young musician had proven unequal to the task.

However, more than a century later, Johannes Brahms discovered that Beethoven had in fact composed a "beautiful and noble" piece of music entitled Cantata on the Death of Emperor Joseph II . It is now considered his earliest masterpiece.

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Beethoven and Haydn

In 1792, with French revolutionary forces sweeping across the Rhineland into the Electorate of Cologne, Beethoven decided to leave his hometown for Vienna once again. Mozart had passed away a year earlier, leaving Joseph Haydn as the unquestioned greatest composer alive.

Haydn was living in Vienna at the time, and it was with Haydn that the young Beethoven now intended to study. As his friend and patron Count Waldstein wrote in a farewell letter, "Mozart's genius mourns and weeps over the death of his disciple. It found refuge, but no release with the inexhaustible Haydn; through him, now, it seeks to unite with another. By means of assiduous labor you will receive the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Haydn."

In Vienna, Beethoven dedicated himself wholeheartedly to musical study with the most eminent musicians of the age. He studied piano with Haydn, vocal composition with Antonio Salieri and counterpoint with Johann Albrechtsberger. Not yet known as a composer, Beethoven quickly established a reputation as a virtuoso pianist who was especially adept at improvisation.

Debut Performance

Beethoven won many patrons among the leading citizens of the Viennese aristocracy, who provided him with lodging and funds, allowing Beethoven, in 1794, to sever ties with the Electorate of Cologne. Beethoven made his long-awaited public debut in Vienna on March 29, 1795.

Although there is considerable debate over which of his early piano concerti he performed that night, most scholars believe he played what is known as his "first" piano concerto in C Major. Shortly thereafter, Beethoven decided to publish a series of three piano trios as his Opus 1, which were an enormous critical and financial success.

In the first spring of the new century, on April 2, 1800, Beethoven debuted his Symphony No. 1 in C major at the Royal Imperial Theater in Vienna. Although Beethoven would grow to detest the piece — "In those days I did not know how to compose," he later remarked — the graceful and melodious symphony nevertheless established him as one of Europe's most celebrated composers.

As the new century progressed, Beethoven composed piece after piece that marked him as a masterful composer reaching his musical maturity. His Six String Quartets, published in 1801, demonstrate complete mastery of that most difficult and cherished of Viennese forms developed by Mozart and Haydn.

Beethoven also composed The Creatures of Prometheus in 1801, a wildly popular ballet that received 27 performances at the Imperial Court Theater. It was around the same time that Beethoven discovered he was losing his hearing.

Personal Life

For a variety of reasons that included his crippling shyness and unfortunate physical appearance, Beethoven never married or had children. He was, however, desperately in love with a married woman named Antonie Brentano.

Over the course of two days in July of 1812, Beethoven wrote her a long and beautiful love letter that he never sent. Addressed "to you, my Immortal Beloved," the letter said in part, "My heart is full of so many things to say to you — ah — there are moments when I feel that speech amounts to nothing at all — Cheer up — remain my true, my only love, my all as I am yours."

The death of Beethoven's brother Caspar in 1815 sparked one of the great trials of his life, a painful legal battle with his sister-in-law, Johanna, over the custody of Karl van Beethoven, his nephew and her son.

The struggle stretched on for seven years, during which both sides spewed ugly defamations at the other. In the end, Beethoven won the boy's custody, though hardly his affection.

Despite his extraordinary output of beautiful music, Beethoven was lonely and frequently miserable throughout his adult life. Short-tempered, absent-minded, greedy and suspicious to the point of paranoia, Beethoven feuded with his brothers, his publishers, his housekeepers, his pupils and his patrons.

In one illustrative incident, Beethoven attempted to break a chair over the head of Prince Lichnowsky, one of his closest friends and most loyal patrons. Another time he stood in the doorway of Prince Lobkowitz's palace shouting for all to hear, "Lobkowitz is a donkey!"

For years, rumors have swirled that Beethoven had some African ancestry. These unfounded tales may be based on Beethoven's dark complexion or the fact that his ancestors came from a region of Europe that had once been invaded by the Spanish, and Moors from northern Africa were part of Spanish culture.

A few scholars have noted that Beethoven seemed to have an innate understanding of the polyrhythmic structures typical to some African music. However, no one during Beethoven's lifetime referred to the composer as Moorish or African, and the rumors that he was Black are largely dismissed by historians.

Was Beethoven Deaf?

At the same time as Beethoven was composing some of his most immortal works, he was struggling to come to terms with a shocking and terrible fact, one that he tried desperately to conceal: He was going deaf.

By the turn of the 19th century, Beethoven struggled to make out the words spoken to him in conversation.

Beethoven revealed in a heart-wrenching 1801 letter to his friend Franz Wegeler, "I must confess that I lead a miserable life. For almost two years I have ceased to attend any social functions, just because I find it impossible to say to people: I am deaf. If I had any other profession, I might be able to cope with my infirmity; but in my profession it is a terrible handicap."

Heiligenstadt Testament

At times driven to extremes of melancholy by his affliction, Beethoven described his despair in a long and poignant note that he concealed his entire life.

Dated October 6, 1802, and referred to as "The Heiligenstadt Testament," it reads in part: "O you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you and I would have ended my life — it was only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me."

Almost miraculously, despite his rapidly progressing deafness, Beethoven continued to compose at a furious pace.

Moonlight Sonata

From 1803 to 1812, what is known as his "middle" or "heroic" period, he composed an opera, six symphonies, four solo concerti, five string quartets, six-string sonatas, seven piano sonatas, five sets of piano variations, four overtures, four trios, two sextets and 72 songs.

The most famous among these were the haunting Moonlight Sonata, symphonies No. 3-8, the Kreutzer violin sonata and Fidelio , his only opera.

In terms of the astonishing output of superlatively complex, original and beautiful music, this period in Beethoven's life is unrivaled by any other composer in history.

Beethoven’s Music

Some of Beethoven’s best-known compositions include:

Eroica: Symphony No. 3

In 1804, only weeks after Napoleon Bonaparte proclaimed himself Emperor of France, Beethoven debuted his Symphony No. 3 in Napoleon's honor. Beethoven, like all of Europe, watched with a mixture of awe and terror; he admired, abhorred and, to an extent, identified with Napoleon, a man of seemingly superhuman capabilities, only one year older than himself and also of obscure birth.

Later renamed the Eroica Symphony because Beethoven grew disillusioned with Napoleon, it was his grandest and most original work to date.

Because it was so unlike anything heard before it, the musicians could not figure out how to play it through weeks of rehearsal. A prominent reviewer proclaimed "Eroica" as "one of the most original, most sublime, and most profound products that the entire genre of music has ever exhibited."

Symphony No. 5

One of Beethoven’s best-known works among modern audiences, Symphony No. 5 is known for its ominous first four notes.

Beethoven began composing the piece in 1804, but its completion was delayed a few times for other projects. It premiered at the same time as Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, in 1808 in Vienna.

In 1810, Beethoven completed Fur Elise (meaning “For Elise”), although it was not published until 40 years after his death. In 1867, it was discovered by a German music scholar, however Beethoven’s original manuscript has since been lost.

Some scholars have suggested it was dedicated to his friend, student and fellow musician, Therese Malfatti, to whom he allegedly proposed around the time of the song’s composition. Others said it was for the German soprano Elisabeth Rockel, another friend of Beethoven’s.

Symphony No. 7

Premiering in Vienna in 1813 to benefit soldiers wounded in the battle of Hanau, Beethoven began composing this, one of his most energetic and optimistic works, in 1811.

The composer called the piece “his most excellent symphony." The second movement is often performed separately from the rest of the symphony and may have been one of Beethoven’s most popular works.

Missa Solemnis

Debuting in 1824, this Catholic mass is considered among Beethoven’s finest achievements. Just under 90 minutes in length, the rarely-performed piece features a chorus, orchestra and four soloists.

Ode to Joy: Symphony No. 9

Beethoven’s ninth and final symphony, completed in 1824, remains the illustrious composer's most towering achievement. The symphony's famous choral finale, with four vocal soloists and a chorus singing the words of Friedrich Schiller's poem "Ode to Joy," is perhaps the most famous piece of music in history.

While connoisseurs delighted in the symphony's contrapuntal and formal complexity, the masses found inspiration in the anthem-like vigor of the choral finale and the concluding invocation of "all humanity."

String Quartet No. 14

Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14 debuted in 1826. About 40 minutes in length, it contains seven linked movements played without a break.

The work was reportedly one of Beethoven’s favorite later quartets and has been described as one of the composer’s most elusive compositions musically.

Beethoven died on March 26, 1827, at the age of 56, of post-hepatitic cirrhosis of the liver.

The autopsy also provided clues to the origins of his deafness: While his quick temper, chronic diarrhea and deafness are consistent with arterial disease, a competing theory traces Beethoven's deafness to contracting typhus in the summer of 1796.

Scientists analyzing a remaining fragment of Beethoven's skull noticed high levels of lead and hypothesized lead poisoning as a potential cause of death, but that theory has been largely discredited.

Beethoven is widely considered one of the greatest, if not the single greatest, composer of all time. Beethoven's body of musical compositions stands with William Shakespeare 's plays at the outer limits of human brilliance.

And the fact Beethoven composed his most beautiful and extraordinary music while deaf is an almost superhuman feat of creative genius, perhaps only paralleled in the history of artistic achievement by John Milton writing Paradise Lost while blind.

Summing up his life and imminent death during his last days, Beethoven, who was never as eloquent with words as he was with music, borrowed a tagline that concluded many Latin plays at the time. Plaudite, amici, comoedia finita est , he said. "Applaud friends, the comedy is over."

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Ludwig Beethoven
• Birth Year: 1770
• Birth date: December 16, 1770
• Birth City: Bonn
• Birth Country: Germany
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer whose Symphony 5 is a beloved classic. Some of his greatest works were composed while Beethoven was going deaf.
• Astrological Sign: Sagittarius
• Nacionalities
• Interesting Facts
• Beethoven's father was an alcoholic who beat his son into practicing music.
• Many of Beethoven's most accomplished works were created during the time he was deaf.
• Death Year: 1827
• Death date: March 26, 1827
• Death City: Vienna
• Death Country: Austria

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Ludwig van Beethoven Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/musicians/ludwig-van-beethoven
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: July 13, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• Never shall I forget the time I spent with you. Please continue to be my friend, as you will always find me yours.
• Anyone who tells a lie has not a pure heart and cannot make good soup.
• Love demands all and has a right to all.
• Recommend to your children virtues that alone can make them happy. Not gold.
• I shall seize fate by the throat.
• Music is the mediator between the spiritual and sensual life.
• To play without passion is inexcusable!
• Ever thine, ever mine, ever ours.
• Don't only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets, for it and knowledge can raise men to the divine.
• Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

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Beethoven 250

Beethoven's life, liberty and pursuit of enlightenment.

Tom Huizenga

A portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven, painted in 1804 by W.J. Mähler. Wikimedia Commons hide caption

A portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven, painted in 1804 by W.J. Mähler.

Two-hundred-fifty years ago, a musical maverick was born. Ludwig van Beethoven charted a powerful new course in music. His ideas may have been rooted in the work of European predecessors Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Josef Haydn , but the iconic German composer became who he was with the help of some familiar American values: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That phrase, from the Declaration of Independence, is right out of the playbook of the Enlightenment, the philosophical movement that shook Europe in the 18th century.

"One way to look at it is what happened after Newton created the scientific revolution: Basically, people, for the first time, developed the idea that through reason and science, we can understand the universe and understand ourselves," says Jan Swafford, the author of Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph , a 1,000-page biography of the composer.

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Swafford says the Enlightenment idea embodied in the Declaration of Independence is that the aim of life is to serve your own needs and your own happiness. "But you can only do that in a free society," he says. "So freedom is the first requirement of happiness."

Other key components of the Enlightenment — including a cult of personal freedom and the importance of heroes — were vibrating in the air in Beethoven's progressive hometown of Bonn when he was an impressionable teenager. "There was discussion of all these ideas in coffeehouses and wine bars and everywhere," Swafford adds. "Beethoven was absorbed into all that and he soaked it up like a sponge."

You can hear ideas from the Enlightenment in Beethoven's Third Symphony, nicknamed "Eroica" — heroic. "There's an amazing place near the end of the first movement of the 'Eroica' where you hear this theme which I think represents the hero," Swafford points out. "It starts playing in a horn, and then it's as if it leads the whole orchestra into a gigantic proclamation, as if that is the hero leading an army into the future."

The hero of the "Eroica" Symphony was originally Napoleon — until Beethoven found out he was just another brutal dictator, and tore up the dedication page of the score. Overall, the hero of much of Beethoven's music is humanity itself.

"He was a humanist, above all," says conductor Marin Alsop, who had planned to mount Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on six continents this year, before the pandemic hit. Beethoven, she says, believed that each of us can surmount any obstacle.

"You can hear his perspective on this new philosophy of the Enlightenment, because it's very personal to Beethoven," Alsop says. "Throughout all of his works, you have this sense of overcoming."

You can hear that journey from darkness to light in pieces like the "Eroica," in the famous Fifth Symphony — and, Alsop says, at the very beginning the groundbreaking Ninth Symphony.

"It opens in the most unexpected way for a piece that's about to make a huge statement," Alsop says. "You can't even tell if it's a major or a minor key. It's kind of fluttering with a tremolo sound in the strings. It's this idea of possibility, an empty slate."

From there, Alsop adds, "Beethoven builds this whole journey of empowerment of unity. There's a lot of unison where the orchestra shouts out as one."

Those unisons are the way Beethoven depicts the connections between people – a pretty important thing for a man who began to go deaf before he was 30. He's a perfect symbol for this era of COVID, Alsop says, because of his severe isolation. That solitude sent the composer out for long walks in the woods outside Vienna.

"Beethoven absolutely loved and cherished nature, and thought of nature as a holy thing," says conductor Roderick Cox, who led performances of Beethoven's Symphony No. 6, the "Pastorale," this fall in Fort Worth, Texas. "Those are some of the principles of Enlightenment, of this music, the liberation of the human mind."

Cox also points to another Beethoven obsession: freedom, which is captured on stage, he says, in the composer's politically fueled opera Fidelio . "It really is the epitome of this Enlightenment spirit: This governmental prisoner, speaking out against the government for individual rights and liberty, has been jailed." In the opera, when the chorus of political prisoners leave their dungeon cells for a momentary breath of fresh air, Beethoven has them sing the word "Freiheit" — freedom.

Two and a half centuries after his birth, Beethoven continues to loom large over today's composers — literally, in some cases. American composer Joan Tower has a picture of Beethoven over her desk, and says he even paid her a ghostly visit once while she was trying to write music.

"He walked into the room right away," Tower says," and I said, 'Listen, could you leave? I'm busy here.' He would not leave. So I said, 'OK, if you're going to stay, then I'm going to use your music.' " And she did, in her piano concerto: Dedicated to Beethoven, the piece borrows fragments from three of his piano sonatas, including his final sonata, No. 32 in C minor.

"The thing I relate to is the struggle, because I struggle the way he does," Tower adds. "He was slow, and I'm slow. So there are certain connections that I'm so happy to have with him."

Everyone can connect to Beethoven, according to Alsop. "This is art that defies time, that defies culture, that defies partisanship, that unifies. And it can speak to each individual differently, but it speaks loudly to each of us," she says.

It's music that speaks to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — things we're all yearning for right now.

• Ludwig van Beethoven
• Marin Alsop

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Ludwig Van Beethoven, Essay Example

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By many people and for centuries Ludwig Van Beethoven is recognized to be the greatest composer who has ever lived. With every new generation the fame and prodigy of the musician is rising higher and higher. His music like the universe is grand and everlasting. He was and forever will be the crucial figure in classical music whose masterpieces inspire and enlighten people all over the world. “The image of Beethoven that survives in the mind of posterity is a diffuse compilation of impressions emanating from the music and biographical fragments that consist to a great extent of legends.”[1]

Prodigy child was born in 1770 in Bonn to a family of musicians at the Cologne Royal Court. His name, Ludwig Van Beethoven acquired from his grandfather who was a bass player at court and earned his name to become a maestro of the chapel. Composer is said to have been born in a family where his father Johann was unable to bring about positive influences on his son’s musical education. Whereas, his mother Maria-Magdalena, being a kind-hearted and gentle person, was the most radiant figure in young Beethoven’s childhood. “Beethoven was recognized in his teens as a genius of the first order.”[2] Having understood the extraordinary talent of his son, Johann rushed to provide Ludwig with best in his thought musical education in order to ensure son’s remarkable abilities. The childhood of the brilliant composer is marked with cruel attempts of his father to convert Ludwig into a music genius. The studies provided to Beethoven strongly lacked systematic organization. In 1778 an eight year old boy was forced by his parent to hold a concert in Koeln.

In 1782 young composer found his first true teacher Christian-Gottlob Neefe who became his mentor and showed Beethoven the sophisticated ideas of the century. The two people hold devoted friendship for many years. Neefe highly spoke of young Ludwig being amazed by his skills and talent and calling him “a second Mozart”. Neefe was a good mentor who not only highlighted the genius of young boy but was able to understand that Beethoven at his young age was still lacking some discipline, culture and self-restraint. He introduced Ludwig to the great composers who were sensational before him such as Bach, Mozart and Haydn. The first work of Beethoven that has significance today was made up of three sonatas and was devoted to the old prince of Cologne in hope to gain some financial benefits.

At the age of fourteen the works of Ludwig Van Beethoven have improved and were strongly influenced by Mozart. In two years composer already gained reputation in Bonn by teaching music classes and holding concerts for aristocracy. Beethoven’s musical improvisations always hold audience in delight and amazement. His first sonatas and compositions were compared to the great people of that time.

Becoming unsatisfied with artistic life of Bonn, Beethoven makes a decision to go to Vienna and study with great Mozart. When maestro found time to listen to young boy he was amazed about how brilliantly Ludwig improvised on the theme offered by Mozart. It was back then when maestro said his famous words that world should hold on because one day Ludwig Van Beethoven will give it something to talk about. Family problems that happened at this period of time left deep marks on the existence of composer. His mother passed away leaving Ludwig and his two other children with a wretched father. Putting his new life on hold, Beethoven returns to Bonn and takes the custody over his two siblings.

Time period between 1788 and 1792 Ludwig Van Beethoven spent playing in the orchestra of his mentor Neefe. It was a great chance to get acquainted with popular operas and to practice a lot. Time spent in Bonn gave composer a strong spiritual completion to acquire progressive thinking of the century in opera, drama and poetry. Another important influence of this period is that being admitted to the Bonn University Ludwig Van Beethoven was delighted to have met Joseph Haydn. Haydn highly commented on composer’s compositions from 1790. Ludwig Van Beethoven spent a year studying with Joseph Haydn. However, due to the temper of Beethoven as well as Haydn’s lack of time, the classes did not bring as much quality as composer aimed for.

During his first years in Vienna, Ludwig Van Beethoven quickly became famous in the musical circles. He plays for nobility, starts studying with his good friends such as Forster, Schenk, Salieri and others. Composer indeed got the best musical knowledge from the best teachers of his time. His mentors Haydn and Mozart served as the archetype of Beethoven’s creative works in the direction of Classicism. Forster provided composer with the art of quarter composition. Salieri introduced Ludwig Van Beethoven to the artistic matters of musical tragedy. Thanks to these brilliant composers, Beethoven had a chance to enrich his creative work experience.

Being a promising musician, his first years in Vienna Beethoven spent having financial problems and living in the basement. It was with the help of his genius that with time composer was able to gain resources that would allow him to maintain a decent living. He made money by giving concerns, by selling author’s rights to his works as well as getting gifts from the aristocrats. Beethoven even gave classes which he was not a big fan of. Among his students were such prominent ladies as Dorothea Ertmann or Tereza Brunswik.

The fame of Beethoven was growing daily. In 1795 he was invited to the first “Academy” which was a charity event held for orphans and widows of musicians. Shortly an already famous composer was invited to the “Academy” of Haydn. In 1796 Beethoven, supported by his protector and a nobleman Prince Lichnowsky, goes on the tour to Berlin and Prague. The tour was a total success leaving his audience in astonishment and emotional delight. Being a true virtuoso, he becomes a favorite in the musical life of Vienna and other German countries. Beethoven took a special niche in the musical life because not only was he a brilliant pianist but also an outstanding genius creator. In Spain composer devoted a lot of time to the creation of piano sonatas as well as string quartets and his very famous Symphony #1.

On 1 June 1801 when writing a letter to his very friend Karl Amenda, Beethoven is telling him about a terrible thing that is happening to the composer. He is complaining that his sense of hearing is becoming weaker and weaker. What an incredible misfortune? First years of the sickness were the toughest on Beethoven because for the person whose life was totally devoted to music to become deaf is a tragedy of a life time. It’s a terrible injustice and despair.

At the age of 35 Ludwig Van Beethoven was an established prominent cultural personality in all the German countries. His works were brilliant and his admirers were countless. Being practically deaf, his work did not seem to have suffered from that. It was at this time that Beethoven wrote four concerts, three symphonies, several sonatas and many other masterpieces. However, despite the public success Beethoven was lovely. He had financial problem and personal discontent. He spent his days alone writing in the mornings and spending the rest of the day thinking and composing new works. As his illness progressed in summer of 1807 Beethoven started having severe health issues and exhausting headaches.

The time period between 1805 and 1815 is considered to be the full artistic maturity of a brilliant composer. During these years Beethoven created his very famous and valuable works such as Symphonies 4, 5 and 7 as well as overtures and piano concerts. With regards to his love life Ludwig Van Beethoven was not very successful. His relations with Giucciardi, Deym, Brunswich lasted for several years but all eventually ended. Along his sentimental problems, Beethoven was going through deep financial issues. Even though he had numerous protectors, they were not always prompt to rush in and make his life easier. When the composer applied for a position of a composer of the imperial theatres, he was not only not accepted by nobility but did not even get any kind of response. Beethoven started to dislike nobility. Having been rejected, composer starts thinking about moving to another city. When he was about to accept an offer from Jerome Bonaparte, noblemen of Vienna offered him annual allowance and made him stay in the city. Even though the payments were not always at the established date, composer was able to maintain a normal life for a while and pay off his debts.

In 1810 Ludwig Van Beethoven fell in love with his own student, a beautiful Therese Malfatti, whom he even thought of proposing. Her love and devotion to the composer, man interpreted as true feelings of love. When invited to an event held by Malfatti’s family, Beethoven wanted to propose to the eighteen year old lady. However, getting totally drunk, he could only write out her name on a bagatelle. The illegible writing on a manuscript later was published to become composer’s famous “Fur Elise”.

Another dear female friend of Beethoven was Bettina Brentano-Armin who organized a meeting between the composer and Goethe. The woman adored composer and their friendship lasted a very long time. Beethoven’s visit to Tepliz to meet Goethe is the same time period when a famous document was written called “Letter to the Immortal Beloved”. Having been numerously analyzed after composer’s death, the letter’s recipient stays unknown. However, many believe that it was addressed to Brunswick. Beethoven was lonely in Teplitz minding his health. His meetings with Goethe were the only bright moments. The two talented people admired each other’s work which was noted in their letters. They enjoyed each other’s company. However, yet again coming to the topic of Beethoven’s dislike of nobility, the friendship between two ended because Goethe did not share the same thinking.

Last years of Beethoven’s life were troublesome. The composer spent lots of efforts to take custody of his brother’s son Karl. Due to his inability to leave the child and his sickness, Beethoven declined an offer to perform in London. His performance at “Academy” where he played his Symphony # 9 along with other brilliant works, received a standing ovation. Beethoven was deaf and blind. Ovations lasted five times.

During his last days Beethoven received a good financial gift from the London Philharmonic Society which he left as his inheritance to his beloved nephew Karl. “He was an artist, but a man, as well… in the highest sense.” [3] His close friends stood by his side at the end of his life. The funeral of a brilliant composer took place on March 29 th .  Numerous crowds came to say good-bye to Beethoven. “The funeral march was a true march, which moved at a stately pace.” [4] He has died but his fame and history were just beginning. The truly noble prominence of a revolutionary composer is an archetype of a heroic life, sincere passion and artistic truth.

Bibliography

Dahlhaus, Carl. “Ludwig Van Beethoven. Approaches to His Music.” Oxford University Press (1991): 54

Josephson, Judith P. “Bold Composer. A Story About Ludwig Van Beethoven.”  Millbrook Press/Minneapolis (2007): 57

Morris, Edmund. “Beethoven. The Universal Composer.” Harper-Collins Publishers (2005): 3

Tommasini, Anthony. “Beethoven, a Refined Classicist of Vienna.” The New York Post , 14 February 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/15/arts/music/15till.html

[1] Carl Dahlhaus, “Ludwig Van Beethoven. Approaches to His Music”, Oxford University Press (1991), 54

[2] Edmund Morris, “Beethoven. The Universal Composer”, Harper-Collins Publishers (2005), 3

[3] Judith P. Josephson, “Bold Composer. A Story About Ludwig Van Beethoven”, Millbrook Press/Minneapolis (2007): 57

[4] Anthony, Tommasini. “Beethoven, a Refined Classicist of Vienna.” The New York Post , 14 February 2010

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Friday essay: Beethoven - an icon at risk of overexposure?

Senior Lecturer in Musicology, University of Sydney

Disclosure statement

David Larkin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Sydney provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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In a series marking the 250th year of his birth, we analyse the significance of Ludwig van Beethoven.

In the centre of Bonn, a bronze statue stands on a pedestal in the Münsterplatz.

The figure is dressed in typical early 19th-century garb, cravat and jacket visible beneath a heavy outer cloak. Protruding from the rough folds, the left hand clutches an open notebook. The right hand holds a pen at arm’s length, the gesture suggesting action momentarily suspended by thought. Above the collar, a face framed by a shock of hair frowns into the middle distance.

This memorial to Bonn’s greatest musical son has been in place since 1845, a reminder that paying tribute to Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), whose 250th birthday is celebrated this year, is a practice with its own lengthy history.

The Bonn statue, the first erected to any musician in Germany, was unveiled on the 75th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. It would not be the last statuary tribute to the composer, whose reputation grew ever greater as the 19th century advanced. Thirty-five years later, his adoptive city of Vienna unveiled an even more substantial Beethoven monument .

This was followed by Max Klinger’s 1902 sculpture for the Viennese Secession, in which the bare-torso composer is literally enthroned. Today, 3D representations in the form of busts and even action figures are widely available.

The ubiquity of Beethoven imagery reflects his status as a true icon, one of a handful of creative personalities whose achievements have become bywords for the supreme capacities of the human spirit. As he turns 250, Beethoven has been lauded as “not just […] history’s greatest composer, but also one of its greatest human beings”.

Overcoming tragedy

Even before we try to grasp what makes Beethoven’s musical creations so special, the fact that he continued to write music in spite of his worsening hearing has enshrined him in the broader cultural imaginary as a martyr-magician.

Beethoven’s deafness may have contributed to his legend, but several of works have achieved iconic status in their own right, often spawning complex reception traditions of their own. Some of the most popular, including the Fifth and Ninth Symphonies, trace a struggle-to-victory trajectory, on one level a musical metaphor for the way the composer triumphed over his disability.

The Ninth Symphony begins in a dark D minor, and concludes with a D-major setting of Schiller’s Ode to Joy, usually seen as a paean to universal brotherhood. As such, it was a fitting choice for a historic December 1989 concert to celebrate the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. Yet this work has also been interpreted as a celebration of violence, as was brilliantly but subversively brought out in Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film of A Clockwork Orange (based on Anthony Burgess’s novel).

Equally ubiquitous is the Fifth Symphony, famous for its opening da-da-da-DAH , which is obsessively pursued throughout the first movement.

The coincidental relationship of this motif to the morse-code pattern for the letter “V” — dot, dot, dot, dash — linked it to Churchill’s two-fingered “V for Victory” salute. This led the BBC to use a version of Beethoven’s motif for timpani at the start of their broadcasts to Europe during the second world war, a blatant challenge to the Germans who otherwise might have seen Beethoven as their property.

In less fraught times, this four-note motif acquired the text le-che con PAN (milk with bread) in the Spanish-speaking world . Whether intended or not, this serves as fitting commentary on how Beethoven has become the staple diet of orchestras throughout the world.

Straddling the romantic-classical divide

While Beethoven’s position in the musical pantheon is well-entrenched today (in 2019, he was once again voted Australia’s favourite composer in an ABC Classic poll ), matters were more equivocal during his lifetime.

The premiere of the breakthrough Eroica Symphony in 1805 left audiences divided: according to a contemporaneous report , some believed this was Beethoven’s “masterpiece, […] the true style for high-class music”, while others felt that it illustrated “a completely unbounded striving for distinction and oddity, which, however, has produced neither beauty nor true sublimity and power”.

The idea that Beethoven was “difficult” was only strengthened by the works he produced in the last decade of his life, which (with the exception of the Ninth Symphony) have lagged in popularity behind earlier masterpieces such as the Third to Eighth Symphonies, the Waldstein and Appassionata Sonatas for piano, the Violin Concerto and so forth.

However, for cognoscenti and many performers, late works such as the last five piano sonatas and the last five string quartets have a special place as rarefied exhalations of the human spirit.

In his celebrated 1810 review of the Fifth Symphony, E.T.A. Hoffmann wrote that “Beethoven’s instrumental music unveils before us the realm of the mighty and the immeasurable”. This becomes even more true when we consider the titanic fugue that concludes the ‘Hammerklavier’ Piano Sonata, Op. 106 (1818), or the Heiliger Dankgesang movement from the String Quartet in A minor No. 15, Op. 132 (1825).

Hoffmann’s essay also made the important claim that Beethoven was

fully the equal of Haydn and Mozart in rational awareness, his controlling self detached from the inner realm of sounds and ruling it in absolute authority.

This was a notable departure from the critical consensus of the day, which viewed Beethoven’s music as a byword for quasi-improvisatory freedom. Hoffmann’s analysis demonstrated that the apparently unbridled emotionalism of the Fifth Symphony was actually underpinned by a rigorous logic of construction. In the intervening two centuries, Beethoven has become a textbook exemplar of formal mastery. Glenn Gould, no uncritical admirer of the composer, neatly summarised these two sides of his art in a 1967 pre-performance talk :

Beethoven is a kind of living metaphor for the creative condition. In part he is the man who respects the past, who honours the traditions [from] which art develops, and while never other than intense and constantly gesticulating with those rather violent gestures which are so peculiarly his own, this side of his character leads him to smooth off the edges of his structure sometimes, to be watchful and even painstaking on occasion about the grammar of his musical syntax. And then there’s this other side, the fantastical romantic side of Beethoven, which draws from him those unapologetically wrongheaded gestures, those proud, nose-thumbing anti-grammatical moments which, in the context of tradition [and] against the smooth and polished edges of classical architecture, make him unique among composers for the sheer devil-may-careness of his manner. But in the end this sort of amalgam exists for every artist, really; within every creative person there is an inventor at odds with a museum-curator.

This captures the productive tension that existed between Beethoven the classicist and Beethoven the romantic. Without his tendency to strain against the norms of his day, his music would lack that transgressive thrill and the feeling that he was taking the art forward. But without his mastery of structural control, his muse would have risked incomprehensibility. The two are crucial to Beethoven’s achievement, the synthesis he achieved between expressive individuality and formal balance.

An (overly?) dominant presence

Significant anniversaries of major composers are typically marked by an uptick in the number of performances of their music. However, the Beethoven market is already close to saturation point.

An Australian composer, Ian Whitney, noted back in 2016 that Beethoven made up 11% of the repertoire put on by the seven major Australian orchestras in that year, where the entire sum of Australian works heard amounted to only 6%. His witty analysis of 2020 shows that the disproportion is even more marked in this anniversary year.

The total eclipse of all things by Beethoven is not uniquely an Australian problem. Back in 2014-15, in cosmopolitan San Francisco, Beethoven outmatched the combined totals of the second- and third-most played composers (Stravinsky and Mozart respectively) in the local Symphony’s programs. The vain wish to avoid such saturation led Andrea Moore in the Chicago Tribune to call for a year-long moratorium on Beethoven performances, to be replaced with new music.

While one might have sympathy for the living, squeezed out of the picture by the long dead, a ban on Beethoven is never going to be the answer. Much better is the solution followed by the Opus Now collective , which in recent years put on a series of 16 concerts pairing a Beethoven string quartet with avant garde compositions.

A series of this sort accomplishes much: it resists the ghettoisation of contemporary music into cliquish events and serves to remind both Beethovenians and devotees of new music how radical Beethoven’s works were — and indeed, still are. More than a century after it was written, the Grosse Fuge Op. 133 was described by Igor Stravinsky as “an absolutely contemporary piece of music that will be contemporary forever”.

The lesser-known Beethoven

Moreover, when we dig down into the matter, can we really say we know Beethoven all that well? Some of his works have been played to the point of overexposure, but there are plenty of other discoveries to be made. Thankfully the ABC is running a year-long series of weekly broadcasts with the aim of covering the entirety of Beethoven’s output, pairing major masterpieces with curiosities like his music for mandolin, or for mechanical clock.

One underrated gem that deserves to be better known is the Fantasie Op. 77 (1809). Scholars think this captures something of Beethoven’s legendary improvisations at the keyboard. Beginning with a precipitate descending scale, answered by a soulful melody, the music continually changes style, tempo and key in the first half: now jaunty, now stormy, with busy passage-work alternating with melancholy Adagio moments and occasional hints of imitation between the hands. Eventually, order emerges from the chaos in the form of a set of variations on a theme in B major.

Beethoven’s instrumental music tends to dominate our perceptions, meaning that his vocal music is comparatively less well known (with the arguable exception of his single opera, Fidelio). One piece that is underperformed in the anglophone world is the 1816 song cycle [ An die ferne Geliebte [To the distant beloved], Op. 98 ] A compact set of six Lieder lasting only a quarter of an hour, Beethoven’s sole song cycle is very different in both size and organisation from the famous later cycles by Schubert (Die schöne Müllerin, Winterreise), Schumann (Frauenliebe und -leben, Dichterliebe) or Wolf (Italienisches Liederbuch).

In the first poem by Alois Isodor Jeitteles, the protagonist expresses his yearning for his beloved. Poems 2 through 5 address the clouds, woods and hills separating the two, while poem 6 bids her “accept these songs, beloved, which I sang to you”.

This final song returns to the key and, from halfway through, the music of the first song, giving it a satisfying feeling of coming home. Moreover, unlike his successors, Beethoven binds his cycle into an unbroken whole by writing brief transitional passages between songs. Thus, while the individual songs have a folk-like simplicity to them, the collection as a whole is satisfyingly subtle in its organisation.

When it comes to Beethoven’s orchestral works, if one were looking for alternatives or supplements to the great series of symphonies, overtures and solo concertos that are concert-hall fixtures, one might reexamine the so-called Choral Fantasy, Op. 80 (1808), a piece that begins as a solo piano fantasy, turns into a concerto proper and ends as a dry run for the choral finale of the Ninth Symphony.

Another curiosity (whose existence many would prefer to forget) is Wellington’s Victory (The Battle of Vittoria), Op. 91 (1813). Sometimes called Beethoven’s Battle Symphony, it has rightly been kept apart from the canonic nine numbered symphonies. This is not just a matter of puritan distaste for the very vivid musical pictorialisms (there is, for instance, more cannon fire here than is found in Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture ), but also because Beethoven deliberately chose not to follow the layout proper to a multi-movement symphony of the era.

Beethoven took some well-known themes as his material: Wellington’s forces are represented at the outset by Rule Britannia, and in victory by God save the King, while the French are identified by “Marlbrough s’en va-t-en guerre” (a French folk tune generally sung in English to the words “the bear came over the mountain”).

While the piece as a whole falls short of the level of compositional craft one finds in the numbered symphonies, the “victory” section has plenty of moments of interest (including a fugue on a hyper-accelerated version of the British anthem), and the unprejudiced ear will recognise its rhetorical kinship with the finale of the Fifth Symphony.

Happy birthday

And so, 250 years after his birth, Beethoven remains important, and not just for the listening public. The past two centuries are unthinkable without the stimulus his music gave to other musicians: not only was his oeuvre the touchstone for virtually every symphonic and instrumental composer who followed in the 19th century, even today he continues to inspire the creation of new music .

There should be no begrudging him his place in our concert halls, where an imaginative live performance can render even works as beloved as the Moonlight Sonata, the Seventh Symphony or the “Emperor” Piano Concerto fresh and interesting.

Whether we stick with old favourites, or try to make new discoveries, let 2020 be a year in which we unashamedly indulge in the output of a composer who more than any other has shaped the classical musical landscape we know today. For, as Austrian writer Franz Grillparzer first asked in his funeral oration for Beethoven: “He was an artist, and who shall stand beside him?”

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Beethoven Poem Analysis

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The best things to do this weekend in San Diego: April 5-7

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Here are some of the best things to do this weekend in San Diego from Friday, April 5 to Sunday, April 7.

Fern Street Circus: The annual San Diego communities tour by the Fern Street Circus is back starting this Saturday and visiting a different community park on Saturdays and Sundays through May 5. With a theme this year of “home,” the traveling show will start in City Heights and make its way to 10 different locations. It features professional artists and musicians, as well as students from Fern Street Circus’ after-school program. See performances in clowning, puppetry, tight wire, juggling, contortion and other circus arts. Each appearance by the circus comes with an opening act by Mariachi Victoria de San Diego and a health resource fair. See the circus at 2 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays at the following locations: Teralta Park on April 6, Golden Hill Recreation Center on April 7, Memorial Park on April 13, Azalea Park on April 14, Colina del Sol Park on April 20, Gompers Park on April 21, Officer Jeremy Henwood Memorial Park on April 27, North Park Recreation Center on April 28, Cesar Chavez Recreation Center on May 4 and Park de la Cruz on May 5. Health resource fair at 12:30 p.m., Mariachi Victoria de San Diego show at 1:15 p.m. 2 p.m. circus start time on Saturday.Teralta Park, over I-15 freeway, between Orange and Park Avenues. Free. fernstreetcircus.com

626 Night Market: 626 Night Market returns to San Diego this weekend starting today. This three-day event travels all around California and includes over 100 food and merchandise vendors, arts and crafts stations, games, music and live entertainment. The market takes place at the Mission Valley Mall parking lot next to the Broken Yolk Cafe. It costs $3 to get into the event or $6 for all three days, and is free for kids ages 3 years and under. The night market is influenced by the open-air bazaars found in numerous parts of Asia, where the community gathers for entertainment, to socialize and to taste various foods and beverages. 3 to 11 p.m. Friday; 1 p.m. to 11 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. 1640 Camino Del Rio North, San Diego. 626nightmarket.com

WOW Festival now underway: La Jolla Playhouse’s Without Walls Festival runs today through Sunday on the campus of UC San Diego. Twenty-five shows from the U.S. and abroad, ranging from immersive theater, to dance, acrobatics, music and puppetry, are being presented free of charge to the community. Some shows require reservations and have no slots left, but many are walk-up shows encounters. 4 to 10 p.m. Friday; 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. UCSD, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla. Schedule and directions at wowfestival.org .

“Ride”: The Old Globe presents the U.S. premiere of this musical based on the true story of Annie Londonderry, the first woman to ride a bcycle around the world in the 1890s. Opens tonight and runs through April 28. 7 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays; 8 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Old Globe Theatre, 1363 Old Globe Way, Balboa Park, San Diego. $29 and up. (619) 234-5623, theoldglobe.org

Old Globe’s ‘Ride’ musical to tell the story of the first woman to bike around the world in the 1890s

“Ride,” which made its world premiere in London last year, is making its U.S. premiere at the Globe this weekend

March 29, 2024

“The Harvest”: OnStage Playhouse opens its 40th season with Samuel D. Hunter’s drama about a group of evangelical missionaries facing questions of faith, family and the future on the eve of a missionary trip to the Middle East. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 5 p.m. Sundays. Through April 14. 291 Third Ave., Chula Vista. $15-$25. (619) 422-7787, onstageplayhouse.org

Silent Disco: Put on headphones and dance it out with four DJS and drink specials. Rent the headphones for 30 min. for $5. 9 p.m. Friday. Duck Dive, 4650 Mission Blvd., San Diego. Register here: eventbrite.com/e/silent-disco-at-the-duck-dive-tickets-857144812207

Will You Accept This Rose? Live!: Comedian Arden Myrin and celebrities will discuss the latest episodes of “The Bachelor” with special guests from the cast of previous “Bachelor Nation” shows: Aaron Clancy, Logan Seagull and Tyler Norris. 2 p.m. Saturday. Mic Drop Comedy, 8878 Clairemont Mesa Blvd., San Diego . $30. micdropcomedy.com/shows/253782

Jacqueline Johnson author event: Local veterinarian Jacqueline Johnson will do a reading from her book, “Elinor McGrath, Pet Doctor,” about the first female veterinarian. Children are invited to bring their stuffed animals to the event, because after the reading, she will be available to do veterinary check-ups on them. Johnson will also sign books and answer questions. 3 to 4 p.m. Saturday. La Jolla/Riford Library, 7555 Draper Ave., La Jolla. Free. sandiego.librarymarket.com/event/elinor-mcgrath-pet-doctor-story-americas-first-female-veterinarian-local-author-dr-jacqueline

Earth Month Celebration: The city of Carlsbad hosts this annual event to celebrate earth and educate the public on food waste. Attendees can bring used clothing to swap, join a kids’ bike rodeo, pick up free compost and mulch or make sustainable produce bags. 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday. Pine Avenue Community Center and Park, 3209 Harding St., Carlsbad. Free. carlsbadca.gov

Mexican brunch starts at Casa Gabriela The Cohn Restaurant Group and Chef Gabriela Lopez have launched a brunch program every weekend at Casa Gabriela in La Mesa. The Mexican-inspired brunch menu has 14 items to choose from, such as the sopes Benedictos, made with birria, refried black beans, poached eggs, rajas con papas, habanero white onions, queso fresco and guajillo hollandaise. The brunch menu also has six cocktails. 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. 8384 La Mesa Blvd., La Mesa. (619) 337-3445, casagabrielalamesa.com

Tomato growing class: Learn about growing tomatoes at a San Diego Seed Co. workshop on Saturday. Participants will learn from San Diego Seed team members about the entire process of cultivating tomatoes and each person gets a special tomato to take home. Some of the topics include tomato types, growing stages, myths and plant care. The class has a capacity of up to 15 people. 10:30 a.m. to noon. Saturday. 16827 California 67, Ramona. $50. sandiegoseedcompany.com

Golden State Ballet’s “From New York, with Love”: A trilogy of dance works by award-winning, New York-based choreographers Justin Peck, Gabrielle Lamb and Norbert De La Cruz III. 7:30 p.m. Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday. Balboa Theatre, 868 Fourth Ave., downtown. $35-$75. goldenstateballet.org

Music, tacos and tequila: Snapdragon Stadium will host the Tequila & Taco Music Festival on Saturday and Sunday. Guests will get to sample six half-ounce shots of tequila, various street tacos and enjoy live performances from Warren G, Shaggy, Ozomatli, Vilma Diaz and more. There will also be vendors selling margaritas, craft beer and clothing. 1 to 9 p.m. Saturday; noon to 6 p.m. Sunday. 2101 Stadium Way, San Diego. $34.99-$80. tequilaandtacomusicfestival.com

Beer festival: The North Park Festival of Beers will be held in front of the Lafayette Hotel on Saturday. It will bring together 50 beer and spirit companies, five food vendors and three live musical performances by Ash Easton, Anthony Cullins and the band Half Hour Late. Money from the event goes toward the San Diego Music Foundation, which funds the program Taylor Guitars in Schools. Noon to 4 p.m. Saturday. 2223 El Cajon Blvd., San Diego. $25-$65. northparkbeerfest.com

San Diego Writers Festival: The San Diego Writers Festival will feature 90 speakers and a slew of author talks, workshops, food, live music and tent crawl prizes. Author discussions cover topics ranging from Writing About Place, Words Birthed From The Borders and Getting Published to The Art of Leaving Everything on the Page, Black Authors Speak Out and Writing From our Immigrant Hearts. There will be talks on creating comic books, mysteries, fantasies and thrillers along with a poetry reading and open mic. The event kicks off with Gill Sotu and the Naruwan Taiko Drummers and concludes with an interview with Patty Lin, author of “End Credits: How I Broke Up with Hollywood.” 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday. Coronado Public Library, 640 Orange Ave., San Diego. Admission is free. Register and view the schedule at sandiegowritersfestival.com .

San Diego Native Garden Tours: The California Native Plant Society will give Native Garden Tours at various locations in San Diego County. This year’s theme is “Planting Animals,” highlighting the ties between native plants and the animals that depend on them. The event features the gardens of several “visionaries,” Dennis and Pamela Mudd in Poway and Jim Smith in Del Mar. Together they created Calscape, an online tool for the home gardener. The tour gardens are divided geographically. Your ticket gives you garden access on both days. April 6 features gardens in Rancho Bernardo, Poway, Miramar Ranch North and Scripps Ranch. April 7 features gardens in La Jolla, North Clairemont, University City, Del Mar and Solana Beach. 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. General admission tickets are $40 through April 7. Admission is free for children 17 and younger. Visit bit.ly/43TCnip .

Microtonal bassoonist Jonny Reinhard : In his West Coast premiere, this composer-conductor will perform a solo recital. 2 p.m. Saturday. Bonita Museum, 4355 Bonita Road, Bonita. Free to $6. (619) 267-5141 , bonitahistoricalsociety.org

“Magdalene: The Musical”: Genesis Opera Theatre presents this 1983 Sal Ponti musical about the Biblical character of Mary Magdalene. 7 p.m. Saturday; 3 p.m. Sunday. Star Repertory Theatre, 329 E. Valley Parkway, Escondido. $30-$45 . genesisoperatheatre.com

Taylor Chapin solo show: Quint Gallery presents optical and pop-inspired artwork by this Oceanside painter. Opens Saturday and runs through May 11. 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays. 7722 Girard Ave., La Jolla. Free. (858) 454-3409, quintgallery.com

National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day: The Armed Forces PB&J Classic will be held aboard the steam ferry Berkeley. The sandwich-eating contest features two-person teams representing six branches of the U.S. military. The event is open to the public with museum admission. A free, PB&J-inspired sampling bar opens at 11 a.m. on the Berkeley. Noon Saturday. Maritime Museum of San Diego, 1494 N. Harbor Drive. Tickets are $12-$24 at sdmaritime.org . Proceeds benefit Paralyzed Veterans of America, Cal-Diego Chapter. Visit armedforcespbjclassic.com .

North Park Festival of Beers: This festival features more than 50 craft breweries, food, live music and craft vendors. Listed participants include Ballast Point, Black Plague, Boochcraft, Karl Strauss, Societe, Sierra Nevada and more. noon to 4 p.m. Lafayette Hotel, El Cajon Blvd., San Diego. Tickets start at $30. northparkbeerfest.com

Polish countertenor Jakub Józef Orlinski: La Jolla Music Society presents a vocal recital of early music by Monteverdi, Strozzi, Cavalli and more, with music by Il Pomo d’Oro chamber orchestra. 3 p.m. Sunday. Baker-Baum Concert Hall, Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center, 7600 Fay Ave., La Jolla. $61-95. theconrad.org

National Beer Day special: Puesto is offering $5 beer flights all day at its three San Diego County locations on Sunday. Flights come in four, 5-ounce pours. At the Mission Valley location, Puesto brews six beers that are Mexican-inspired and range from lagers and ambers to an IPA. eatpuesto.com

Le Salon de Musiques: A six-piece chamber ensemble will perform works by Mozart, Beethoven and Lachner. 4 p.m. Sunday. La Jolla Women’s Club, 7791 Draper Ave., La Jolla $45-$95 . lesalondemusiques.com

Two free lectures: MiraCosta College’s LIFE (Learning is for Everyone) group holds two free lectures April 5 at the Oceanside Campus, in the Board Room Trailer (T200) by the Police Station. At 1 p.m., author Mark Cannon will discuss “Lincoln’s Scout — The Diary of Horatio Cooke, Soldier, Spy, Escape Artist.” At 2:30 p.m., MiraCosta astronomy professor Rica French will present “The Next Eclipse.” French will discuss how to safely watch the total solar eclipse that is expected to transverse the continental U.S. on April 8. Visit miracosta.edu/life .

Myth-inspired poetry reading: As part of the National Endowment for the Arts’ annual Big Read program, Write Out Loud is hosting a series of events this month celebrating the books, “Circe” by Madeline Miller, and “Mythology” by Edith Hamilton. Friday, there will be a myth-inspired poetry reading. The first five guests will receive free books. 5:15 p.m. Friday. San Diego Writer’s INK, 730 Historic Decatur Road #204, San Diego. writeoutloudsd.com/nea-big-read-circe

San Elijo Lagoon Family Day: A Family Fun Day will focus on “Traveling Seeds.” Highlights include hands-on activities, craft-making and animal encounters led by rangers. There will be presentations and Track Trails activity guides. Young attendees can earn a Junior Ranger badge. 11:30 a.m. Sunday at the San Elijo Lagoon Nature Center, 2710 Manchester Ave. Visit naturecollective.org .

Rotary Club holds Mariachi Festival: Mariachi Los Camperos is the featured performer for the Route 78 Rotary Club’s 10th annual Mariachi Festival. Opening acts include Tierra Caliente Academy dancers, Rancho Buena Vista Mariachi and 9-year-old vocalist LuMaya. A VIP “Tacos and Tequila” tasting social and silent auction is from noon to 12:30 p.m. and tickets are $100, including the concert from 3 to 5:30 p.m. Proceeds support education and charitable programs for children, youths and nonprofits in North County and worldwide. Route 78 Rotary, a regional Hispanic Club, is a member of Rotary International and promotes programs including youth leadership, scholarships, music, medical and dental clinics, food distribution and polio eradication. Saturday at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido, 340 N Escondido Blvd. $25 and $50. For tickets, visit artcenter.org and route78rotary.org .

Spring Fling & Street Fair: The 33rd annual event is expected to attract thousands of attendees and will feature more than 225 artisans and crafters, retailers and nationwide vendors, live entertainment on two stages, carnival rides and a fun zone along with a Rhythm, Brews & Wine Garden. 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday along Via Vera Cruz. Admission is free. Visit sanmarcoschamber.com .

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She’s Shaking Up Classical Music While Confronting Illness

The pianist Alice Sara Ott, who makes her New York Philharmonic debut this week, is upending concert culture — and defying stereotypes about multiple sclerosis.

By Javier C. Hernández

The pianist Alice Sara Ott, barefoot and wearing a silver bracelet, was smiling and singing to herself the other day as she practiced a jazzy passage of Ravel at Steinway Hall in Midtown Manhattan. A Nintendo Switch, which she uses to warm up her hands, was by her side (another favored tool is a Rubik’s Cube). A shot of espresso sat untouched on the floor.

“I feel I have finally found my voice,” Ott said during a break. “I feel I can finally be myself.”

Ott, 35, who makes her New York Philharmonic debut this week, has built a global career, recording more than a dozen albums and appearing with top ensembles. She has become a force for change in classical music, embracing new approaches (playing Chopin on beat-up pianos in Iceland) and railing against stuffy concert culture (she performs without shoes , finding it more comfortable).

And Ott, who lives in Munich and has roots in Germany and Japan, has done so while grappling with illness. In 2019, when she was 30, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis . She says she has not shown any symptoms since starting treatment, but the disorder has made her reflect on the music industry’s grueling work culture.

“I learned to accept that there is a limit and to not go beyond that,” she said. “Everybody knows how to ignore their body and just go on. But there’s always a payback.”

Ott has used her platform to help dispel myths about multiple sclerosis, a disorder of the central nervous system that can cause a wide range of symptoms, including muscle spasms, numbness and vision problems. She has taken to social media to detail her struggles and to challenge those who have suggested that the illness has affected her playing.

She said she felt she had no choice but to be transparent, saying it was important to show that people with multiple sclerosis could lead full lives.

“I don’t consider it as a weakness,” she said. “It’s a fact. I live with it. And I don’t want to make a big drama out of it.”

Ott’s colleagues describe her as an adventurous musician who has helped bring new audiences to classical music with experiments like “Echoes of Life,” a project that blends Chopin preludes with contemporary works, video and Ott’s reflections on life and music.

Bryce Dessner, a composer and a guitarist who wrote a concerto for Ott that she premiered in Zurich this year, said that “what she brings onstage is so specific to her — it’s like she’s unlocking some sort of hidden doorway in each piece that she confronts or interprets.”

The conductor Elim Chan , who performed with Ott a few months after she began treatment, said that from the start, Ott had a “don’t baby me” attitude about her illness.

“She is able to go to a very beautiful and fragile place, but it’s also very honest and it has integrity within it,” Chan said. “And then she flies from there. And that is something I find very beautiful.”

Ott was born in Munich to a Japanese mother, a piano teacher, and a German father, an electrical engineer. She began piano lessons at 4, drawn to the expressive power of music, she said, and when she was 12, she started commuting to Salzburg, Austria, to study with the renowned teacher Karl-Heinz Kämmerling.

After winning a series of prizes, her career took off, and at 19, she signed with the prestigious label Deutsche Grammophon. Still, she began to feel uneasy about classical music’s emphasis on tradition in programming, concert formats and dress. She sometimes faced sexism; a colleague once told her to play a passage of Beethoven like a “cute little Japanese woman,” she said. And her packed touring schedule was taking a toll on her as a musician, she said.

“I felt like people were expecting something from me that I could not provide,” she said. “I was floating around, and I didn’t have stability in the sense of who I was as an artist.”

She began to forge her own path, working with artists like the experimental composer Ólafur Arnalds to record reimagined versions of Chopin. Eager for a more rugged sound, they went searching for out-of-tune pianos in bars in Reykjavik, Iceland.

In 2014, she released “Scandale,” an homage to the Ballets Russes, with the pianist and composer Francesco Tristano, featuring works by Stravinsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Ravel and Tristano. On tour, they decorated the stage with magenta duct tape and invited the audience to clap along with the music.

“You can really hear the intelligence in the way she performs,” Tristano said. “Nothing is left to randomness or sheer virtuosity. She’s beyond that. She really wants to make a point about the music she’s creating — that it’s relevant today.”

In 2018, on tour in Japan, Ott began to experience health problems, feeling some numbness in her lips and later having difficulty walking.

Her doctors said her symptoms were probably caused by stress. But when she returned home to Munich after another tour a couple months later, half of her body went numb. After undergoing tests, she received her diagnosis: relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis, the most common form, in which symptoms can flare up and dissipate.

At first, Ott said, she was “scared as hell” and panicked. But she also worried about upsetting her family. “There were lots of times,” she said, “when I just locked myself somewhere and cried.”

Her only knowledge of the illness came from the story of Jacqueline du Pré, the British cellist who died in 1987 , at 42, of complications from multiple sclerosis. On the day Ott received her diagnosis, she lost control of her left hand while playing a Chopin nocturne at a recital in Munich. She ran offstage, sat on the floor and cried, and canceled the rest of the concert.

But as Ott read about modern treatments, she grew more optimistic, especially since her illness was in the early stages. In February 2019, about a month after her diagnosis, she posted about it on Instagram.

“An acknowledgment is not a weakness,” she wrote, “but a way to protect and gain strength, both for oneself and for those around us.”

Ott was praised for her courage. When she toured, musicians approached her to share their experiences with multiple sclerosis. But her health challenges also drew scrutiny.

When a critic reviewing one of Ott’s albums last fall suggested that its inclusion of some easier pieces was related to her multiple sclerosis, she shot back. On Instagram , she noted that she had explained her choice of repertoire and that she had plans for more albums. She said that such reductive labeling was “the exact reason why it’s still so hard for many to come out and talk about their own conditions.”

In New York, Ott will perform Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major with the conductor Karina Canellakis, who is also making her Philharmonic debut, in a program that includes works by Webern, Strauss and Scriabin. (Last year, the two were featured performing Beethoven in advertisements for Apple Music Classical , the technology giant’s streaming service.)

Canellakis said Ott had a “a serenity about her that is infectious.”

“There’s a sense of pure focus,” she said, “and she inspires everyone else around her to assume that state of being.”

Ott has been refining her interpretation of the Ravel concerto, which she first performed when she was 17, working to mimic the sound of jazz instruments in the piano part.

On a recent evening, she went to the Blue Note jazz club in Manhattan to hear the Japanese composer and pianist Hiromi. The concert felt intimate and laid-back, she said: People cheered freely, laughed, talked and shared food and drinks.

Ott said she strives to create similar connections with audiences.

“Music itself can only fully blossom when we unite in it,” she said. “We have to be vulnerable. That is one of the most beautiful sources of togetherness and strength.”

Javier C. Hernández is a culture reporter, covering the world of classical music and dance in New York City and beyond. He joined The Times in 2008 and previously worked as a correspondent in Beijing and New York. More about Javier C. Hernández

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