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Accomplishments and Challenges of Ludwig van Beethoven
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After seeing the acclaimed film, Amadeus, based loosely on the life of the child prodigy and great composer Mozart, the next best or potentially better choice had to be Immortal Beloved, a film focused on the equally amazing Ludwig van Beethoven and his infamous letters to an unknown lover. The sequences of events in the movie were largely intertwined. The movie begins with the death of Beethoven and proceeds with a friend and employee of Beethoven obsessed with justifying the rightful will of Beethoven’s assets and estate to an unknown lover. Avoiding Beethoven’s greedy brother, he travels around to meet with Beethoven’s previous lovers, listening to the tale of each, becoming closer to the truth as the movie moves forward. The stories told narrate many different significant events in the great composers’ life, including many mishaps, struggles, and disappointments that seem to fuel his music and its robust passion. By the end of the movie, an unlikely lover is found, the immortal beloved, a girl that Beethoven had once loved and conceived a child with. The audience is led to beli...
Beethoven was a political composer. He stubbornly dedicated his art to the problems of human freedom, justice, progress, and community. The Third Symphony, probably Beethoven's most influential work, centers around a funeral march provoking patriotic ceremonies from the French Revolution. Beethoven was a long time admirer of Napoleon Bonaparte. So he dedicated the symphony to Napoleon, but when Napoleon was proclaimed the Emperor of France, he scratched the dedication to Napoleon. This Symphony is cited as the marking end of Beethoven's classical era and the beginning of musical Romanticism. But what of Beethoven after Napoleon? Beethoven's life and music became worse after the Third Symphony was composed because of his reaction to Napoleon becoming Emperor, his deafness, and through his personal and family difficulties.
In the novel Beloved, Toni Morrison focuses on the concept of loss and renewal in Paul D’s experience in Alfred Georgia. Paul D goes through a painful transition into the reality of slavery. In Sweet Home, Master Garner treated him like a real man. However, while in captivity in Georgia he was no longer a man, but a slave. Toni Morrison makes Paul D experience many losses such as, losing his pride and humanity. However, she does not let him suffer for long. She renews him with his survival. Morrison suggest that one goes through obstacles to get through them, not to bring them down. Morrison uses the elements of irony, symbolism, and imagery to deal with the concept of loss and renewal.
Beethoven’s early life was one out of a sad story book. For being one of the most well-known musicians one would think that sometime during Beethovens childhood he was influenced and inspired to play music; This was not the case. His father was indeed a musician but he was more interested in drinking than he was playing music. When his father saw the smallest sliver of music interest in Beethoven he immediately put him into vigorous musical training in hopes he would be the next Mozart; his training included organ, viola, and piano. This tainted how young Beethoven saw music and the memories that music brought. Nevertheless Beethoven continued to do what he knew and by thirteen he was composing his own music and assisting his teacher, Christian Neefe. Connections began to form during this time with different aristocrats and families who stuck with him and became lifelong friends. At 17 Beethoven, with the help of his friends, traveled to Vienna, the music capitol of the world, to further his knowledge and connection...
There is no question that the work of Beethoven are tremendous and phenomenal. His talent as a composer has rarely been closely met. The maturation of his compositions show a growth of important musical literature that admitted have changed the world within and without the realm of music. This fact has been a powerful tool carried by those promoting the gothic imagination for far too long. It is true that Beethoven was deaf and that he had difficult relations with his family as well as various women in his life. This gives no call for belief that he was any different than any of the other millions of people in the world that have been in the same situation. It is suggested that his great works were due to his suffering and gothic mind. It is suggested that he struggled and transcended because he was a gothic hero. The abuse of the contributions of such a remarkable musician is almost in excusable. In attempts to justify their own suffering and to give excuse for their inability to operate within normal human society, the gothics will say that Beethoven was misunderstood, suffered, and died miserably, and so will they. They have given up to the world and now feel justified in doing so.
From the beginning, Beloved focuses on the import of memory and history. Sethe struggles daily with the haunting legacy of slavery, in the form of her threatening memories and also in the form of her daughter’s aggressive ghost. For Sethe, the present is mostly a struggle to beat back the past, because the memories of her daughter’s death and the experiences at Sweet Home are too painful for her to recall consciously. But Sethe’s repression is problematic, because the absence of history and memory inhibits the construction of a stable identity. Even Sethe’s hard-won freedom is threatened by her inability to confront her prior life. Paul D’s arrival gives Sethe the opportunity and the impetus to finally come to terms with her painful life history.
Despite the fact that Beethoven’s hearing was slowly diminishing, he continued to write works that surprised the people in Vienna and other famous composers of the time. Years passed of fame and praise of his work from all different kinds of people. In November of 1815, however, his brother died, leaving behind his wife and their 9 year old son named Karl (Budden and Knapp). This was particularly stressful not only for his brother’s death but also because he had wished that his son’s guardianship was “to be exercised by both his wife and his brother, Ludwig” (“Ludwig Van Beethoven’s Biography”). Beethoven took this role of being a guardian as important to him, but as he was becoming deaf and older, so it seemed harder for him to take care of the child like his brother wished. As the years went by, so did his hearing and in 1816 he was completely deaf however by the time he went completely deaf he had written 8 Symphonies and many other great works. Many people by this point would have given up and lost hope because the one aspect that they passionately pursued was destroyed, but Beethoven overcame his disability and continued to make music despite being completely and utterly deaf. His 9th symphony was created and finished in 1823 by him using what many musicians call their “Inner ear” and because “he was not attached anymore to physical sound, [he could] just use his imagination” (Jones). After the completion of his 9th symphony he created an estimated 26 works and in 1827 had sketches for a 10th symphony (Harrison); however, the sketches were to remain sketches. Beethoven started to become ill with a disease, still unsure of which it was today, and died in Vienna on March 26th, 1827. The funeral was held three days after and approximately anywhere from ten thousand people to thirty thousand showed up for his funeral (Budden and
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven are two of the greatest composers ever to write music. Both men lived in the early 18th and 19th century, but their music and influences are still felt today. The men faced similar experiences, yet they both lead very different lives. All together the pieces that these men composed amounts to over 300 published, and unpublished works of art. The people of their time period often had mixed feelings about these men, some “complained that Mozart’s music presented them with too many ideas and that his melodies moved from one to the next faster than audiences could follow, yet the ideas themselves seem effortless and natural, clear and unforced.” (Bonds 210-211) Beethoven’s criticisms ranged from ‘genius’ to grim dislike. Mozart and Beethoven were influenced by things going on around them such as: love, nature, and the Enlightenment.
Beethoven was born on December 17, 1770 in Bann, Germany. From a young age Beethoven was involved with music because he came from three generations of musicians. He received instruction from his father on the piano and violin. One of his earliest concerts was in front of his father’s peers against his will. Beethoven had a fiery temper and was somewhat introverted in his school years. Beethoven went to school until the age of ten. At this time his family’s finances prevented his family from affording the education that he needed. In July of 1787, Beethoven’s life was further thrown into disarray with the death of his mother. Despite Beethoven’s misfortune he would still achieve monumental amounts of success while in Vienna. His success can be attributed to the fact that he crafted relatio...
In Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo tells the stories and struggles of families living in a slum adjacent to the Sahar Airport in Mumbai, India. Boo details the ways in which the residents of this slum, Annawadi, attempt to escape their poverty, but fail to do so. Despite numerous initiatives sponsored by the Central Government of India to improve the lives of the many individuals living in Annawadi, these programs are ultimately unable to do so due to deep-rooted corruption in the city of Mumbai. Regardless of this, the residents of Annawadi seem to accept corruption as a fact of life, and do little to fight it. As illustrated over the course of Boo’s narrative, this results from the fact that many Annawadians recognize the ways in which the laws of their society allow for the unfair treatment of certain groups of people, especially the poor and religious minorities, and are also cognizant of the fact that they have no real power to change a system that
The German composer Ludwig van Beethoven, born in 1770, transformed music and revolutionized the history of music as a whole during his lifetime. As William Kinderman writes in his book, Beethoven, “His restless, open vision of the work of art reflects a modern and essentially cosmopolitan aesthetic attitude” (Kinderman). Born in Bonn, Germany, Beethoven was a visionary. He further expanded what his early contemporaries, Mozart and Haydn, had produced by escalating the scope of sonata, concerto, quartet, and the symphony. Beethoven was a radical composer who did not like to do what everyone else was doing; he pushed his limits to create the extraordinary. People argue that Beethoven was the composer that transitioned music from the Classical
Beethoven slowly began showing his emotions, and feelings, but very subtly. His work began to have a very sublime feeling to it, very deep and not knowing what to expect. It was after those first two that Beethoven had a big life crisis. (Sayre 407) He then began seeing life as a shorter journey than previously sought, and stopped caring about what consequences would arise from what he wanted to do. Which was to show strong emotion in his music. It was his escape from his impending doom, which was becoming deaf. He released music very quickly over the next decade. This shows how Beethoven’s own life experiences changed the direction of his
Beethoven’s piano sonata ‘quasi una fantasia’ gives listeners an emotional journey through his complicated life. When I first listened to this song I felt a wave of sadness as I can sense this piece was related to a tragic event. After researching more, I was able to understand Beethoven and sympathize with him in another level, how as individuals we can never control and protect what we care about in our lives, and eventually we realize that it is not possible to achieve a happily ever
Specific traits pervading Beethoven’s style and increasingly developed over time, converge in this piece to make a strong assertion that Beethoven actively participated in turning to Romanticism
Ludwig van Beethoven once said “Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.” Beethoven is known as one of the greatest composers of the classical era who was not afraid to push the boundaries of the music world. But who was the man behind the music? Beethoven’s life was filled with many obstacles beginning at a young age. This can be heard throughout all of the music he writes. One piece in particular is Symphony No. 3 also known as Sinfonia Eroica.
In the book Beethoven His life & Music by Jeremy Siepmann, he talks about Beethoven’s childhood and how his father saw something extraordinary in Beethoven. Siepmann says he was “ruthlessly set about trying to produce a second Mozart” (5). Not only was his father trying to make him perfect he also made it to where when visitors would come over they would see Beethoven crying at the piano. Not only that he was also locked in the cellar and/or not given food (Siepmann 5). At the age of eight his father organized a concert in Cologne for him and Johanna Averdonk which ended up being a failure and Beethoven was blamed for this. After this happened in the progress of five years he also learned piano, harpsichord, violin, viola, organ and horn (Siepmann 5). Beethoven’s life as a child is not known to many people which is why it’s included in many of his biographies because it shows the frustrations that Beethoven had to