Caramoor Leadership

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

(1770–1827)

String Quartet No. 14, in C# minor, Op. 131

About the Composer

Beethoven is considered one of the most important figures in the history of music. His innovations are credited with widening the scope of the sonata, symphony, concerto, and quartet. He was the most important transitional composer connecting the Classical and Romantic periods. A prolific composer, he composed nine symphonies, choral music, piano music, string quartets and other chamber music, and one opera, Fidelio. In an almost superhuman achievement of creative genius, he created some of his greatest works after becoming totally deaf.

His father, a musician at the Bonn court, taught his gifted and interested young son to play piano and violin. With a weakness for alcohol, his father, who thought he was creating a new Mozart-like child prodigy, often pulled the young Ludwig out of bed in the middle of the night, to suffer beatings if he did not comply when ordered to perform for his father’s drinking companions. When he was 13, Beethoven published his first set of piano pieces. In 1787, he journeyed to Vienna, apparently with the expectation of having lessons from Mozart, but he was forced to return home to care for his ill mother, who died a few months later.

In 1792, he returned to Vienna, (where he would live the rest of his life) to study with Haydn, but the two did not get along; nevertheless, Beethoven quickly became recognized as a brilliant keyboard performer and a gifted young composer. In 1795, he published his first mature works. Although publishers frequently sought out Beethoven, publishing practices of his time were corrupt; even though publishers paid composers for rights to their works, there were no copyrights or royalties, so Beethoven only received one initial payment for any work even though his works were often published in various editions.

The biggest problem Beethoven encountered in his adult life was his failing hearing, which began to falter in his early years in Vienna. It became so severe that in 1802 he considered suicide, and a little more than a decade later, he gave up hope of performing publicly as a pianist. By 1818, he was no longer able to have conversations and was forced to communicate with visitors in writing. His deafness and his temper combined to give him a reputation as an unpleasant and difficult man, yet his deafness must have greatly affected his social intercourse. His musical output and his letters do confirm that he was not only self-conscious, but also completely immersed in his work. By the time he wrote his late works, no one had ever heard anything like them: they challenged the understanding of both audiences and professional musicians. He understood that reaction to them and remarked: “They are not for you, but for a later age.”

About the work

Between 1816 and 1826, Beethoven composed a series of extraordinary masterpieces: the Ninth Symphony and Missa Solemnis, five piano sonatas, and five string quartets, Ops. 127-135. Just prior to the appearance of these