Unlike Mozart, Beethoven’s genius took time to flower fully. Nevertheless, by the age of nine he was receiving composition lessons from Christian Gottlob Neefe, court organist at Bonn, becoming official assistant organist by the age of fourteen. Around this time Beethoven traveled to Vienna, and it is likely that he met Mozart and played to him. But his stay was interrupted by news of his mother’s illness, and he was forced to return home to Bonn, where he found her dying of tuberculosis.
Beethoven now took charge of the family finances, largely because of his father’s increasing incapacity. He began working as a musical tutor to the children of wealthy courtiers, as well as performing as a violinist in the court orchestra and the local theater. His positions allowed him to meet many influential nobles, including the Viennese aristocrat Count Ferdinand Waldstein, a skilled musician who became a friend and patron. Possibly at Waldstein’s arrangement, Beethoven went to Vienna to study with the composer Haydn, lessons paid for by the elector, his employer. He left Bonn in 1792 and never returned.
Impressing the Viennese salons and nobility with his virtuoso performances on the piano, Beethoven performed widely and was considered a superb improviser—even greater than Mozart. His compositions at this time included piano sonatas, variations and concerti, as well as his first two symphonies, all of which show the influence of his own heroes, Mozart and Haydn.
The following years, up until around 1802, are considered Beethoven’s early period, during which he composed some significant piano works. Brilliant, fine compositions, they are not as innovative as the music of his later years. By now Beethoven’s progressive deafness had become impossible for him to ignore. He was brought close to despair and, perhaps recognizing that his career as a virtuoso was over, began to focus on composition.
The story goes that when Beethoven oversaw the first performance of his Ninth Symphony at the Kärntnertor Theater in 1824, the soloists in the orchestra had to point out that the audience was applauding his work. Turning to see the silent adulation, he began to weep. He was by now totally deaf and never heard the work that had just been performed to such acclaim.
Beethoven had noticed the first symptoms from 1796, when he had begun to experience tinnitus, a constant ringing in his ears that made it difficult to hear and appreciate music or to engage in conversation. By 1802 there was little doubt that his condition was serious, and worsening. For a composer there could be nothing so destructive. Fully realizing the depth of his affliction darkened his mood. In the summer of 1802, in a letter discovered only after his death and known as the “Heiligenstadt Testament,” he wrote:
All that kept him from suicide, he said, was his art, which made it “unthinkable for me to leave the world forever before I had produced all that I felt called upon to produce.”
Although he could not hear the music he composed, Beethoven’s gradual descent into deafness coincided with an increasing brilliance in his composition, with his middle-period works being characterized by themes of struggle and heroism, and those of his third period—the late period—a time of total deafness, displaying a powerful intellectual depth.
By 1817 Beethoven was completely deaf, and for the latter part of his life he was able to communicate with friends only through written conversations. The resulting notebooks are unique historical documents, recording his thoughts and opinions on his music and the way it should be interpreted, and there are also written notes in the scores of his works.
At Beethoven’s autopsy he was diagnosed as having a “distended inner ear,” which had developed lesions over time. Since then, other explanations have been suggested, including syphilis, typhus, the physical damage caused by beatings from his father and the effects of immersing his head in cold water to stay awake.
