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1770 |
Ludwig van Beethoven is baptized on December 17 in his
native Bonn* (on the Rhine). The date of his birth is not known but is
probably the 16th of December 1770.
*The cities marked in color are highlighted on the map to the right; their names in brackets are as they appear on the map. He is the first surviving child of Maria Magdalena vB, née Keverich, and her husband Johann vB who is a badly paid court musician (tenor and violinist) at the Bonn residence of Maximilian Friedrich, Elector and Archbishop of Cologne. The attribute van in front of the name Beethoven indicates that the family comes from the Flanders region (today part of Belgium); it is not a title of nobility. The grandfather, Ludwig vB senior, already was a respected singer (basso) at the same court. He drew a measly salary even after having been appointed conductor, but earned an income on the side as a wine merchant and with some other occasional dealings. |
|
1773 |
Death of the beloved grandfather. | |
1775 |
Music lessons from the strict father; the little boy has to stand on a footstool to play the piano. School attendance is not yet compulsory and the parents don’t send him to school on a regular basis; LvB will suffer the consequences for the rest of his life, principally with everything mathematical. | |
1778 |
Ludwig makes his first appearance in his relatively brief career as a pianist Wunderkind, in Cologne, before his eighth birthday. His talents in improvising music on any given theme are already widely known. | |
1782 |
Publication of Ludwig’s first compositions, the Variations
on a March by Dressler (in C minor, WoO 63) at the instigation of his music
teacher Christian Gottlob Neefe. From him he learns, among other things, to
play in thoroughbass notation (i.e. basso continuo or Generalbass) and he
replaces his teacher at times as an organist in the court chapel.
*Beethoven assigns opus numbers according to the importance of his works and along criteria that we do not know, at any rate not in a chronological order. Approximately half of his compositions remain without an opus number and are thus designated as WoO (= “work without an opus number” in German). |
|
1783 |
Neefe writes about young Beethoven’s virtuosity at the piano in the Magazin der Musik that appears in Hamburg and he mentions that he is partial to Johann Sebastian Bach’s Wohltemperirte Clavier. Publication of three Piano Sonatas (WoO 47). | |
1784 |
Beethoven is appointed assistant organist to the court, a
salaried position, by the Elector Maximilian Franz, successor of Maximilian
Friedrich. Apart from keyboard instruments, he plays the viola, the violin
and the violoncello. His salary eases the financial difficulties of his parents and his two younger brothers Caspar Anton (born in 1774) and Nikolaus Johann ( born in 1776). The father loses his voice and his professional reputation and sinks fast into alcoholism. |
|
1786 |
The painter Johann Peter Lyser reports to have noticed in this year, at a party with friends and for the very first time, that Beethoven was hard of hearing. | |
1787 |
In the spring, LvB leaves for Vienna on a study trip but has to return after only three weeks as his mother has become very ill. She dies of tuberculosis in July; in November, his baby sister Maria Margaretha (born in 1786) follows her. | |
1789 |
LvB enrols at Bonn University. He probably attends lectures
on philosophy, esthetics and literature – but probably not in a regular
fashion – and acquires the foundations of a liberal education of which he is
proud. He is well read and knows, for instance, Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s Sufferings of Young Werther
(published in 1774) and the first version of Friedrich Schiller’s Ode to Joy (published in 1785).
Following Ludwig’s petition, the Elector orders that forthwith half his father’s salary is to be paid to the court organist Ludwig van Beethoven. The father is obliged to retire early and the son becomes officially the head of the household. |
|
1792 |
With a stipend given him by the Elector, LvB travels to
Vienna, then one of the world’s foremost centers of music, to study with
Joseph Haydn. The day he leaves, his friend Ferdinand Count Waldstein writes
him the famous parting words: “Through application and diligence you shall
receive Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands. Bonn, 29 october 1792”. Beethoven moves into an attic in the house in which Prince Karl v. Lichnowsky occupies a floor. This rich proprietor of lands in Silesia (a region now in SW Poland) is a first-rate pianist, has taken lessons from Mozart and keeps a string quartet of his own whose first violinist is Ignaz Schuppanzigh, soon to become Beethoven’s close friend. Some weeks after arriving in Vienna, Beethoven gets the news that his father Johann has died (at approximately 52 years of age). |
|
1793 |
Ludwig Fischenich, professor of classical literature at the
University of Bonn, writes Charlotte Schiller of LvB’s plan to set her
husband’s, Friedrich Schiller’s, Ode to Joy to music (it will become, in
1823, the principal theme in the final movement of the Ninth Symphony).
Through his virtuosity at the piano, Beethoven soon becomes acquainted with many of the best musicians in this thoroughly musical environment and gets to enter the highest classes of Vienna’s society. He is not happy with Haydn’s lessons that he calls careless and he therefore studies composition with Georg Albrechtsberger, surreptitiously so as not to offend Haydn, takes violin lessons from Ignaz Schuppanzigh, and has Antonio Salieri teach him the modern Italian style. A young lady student of his describes him as short and unassuming (he is about 1,68 m or 5ft 7in tall), with an ugly pockmarked face and dark hair, and she says that he does not dress as is expected in “better” circles. At any rate, he never wears a wig as does, e.g., Haydn. |
|
1794 |
Prince Lichnowsky becomes a close friend and supports him generously when Elector Maximilian Franz ceases to pay his stipend after Bonn’s occupation by the French. | |
1795 |
Beethoven is very hard at work. He composes a great number
of important pieces, plays often at Prince Lichnowsky’s evening receptions,
receives more and more invitations and starts to earn a very good income as
a self-employed artist. His brothers Caspar and Nikolaus move also to
Vienna.
It is probably at this time that he decides to stay in
Vienna. At his first public performance in Vienna, on March 29, he plays his Piano Concerto in C, op. 15. |
|
1796 |
Trips to Prague, Dresden, Berlin and Leipzig (Leypzig). | |
1798 |
Friends and acquaintances are starting to notice LvB’s
hearing difficulties. He himself complains about his ears buzzing and
ringing, and about periodic earaches. Creation of the Piano Sonata in C minor (Pathétique), op. 13, among many other works. |
|
1800 |
Première of Beethoven’s Symphony no. 1 (in C, op.
21) in Vienna’s Burgtheater. He is not yet 30 years old but already established as an artist, and even celebrated as a virtuoso, an ingenious improvisor at the piano, and a composer. |
|
1801 |
LvB writes a friend, the physician Franz Gerhard Wegeler, of his hearing troubles and asks him what he thinks of “galvanism”, a newfangled way of treating most everything with an electrical current. | |
1802 |
During a stay at Heiligenstadt, a village in the vicinity
of Vienna, Beethoven writes the so-called Heiligenstadt Testament. He
addresses it to his brothers but does not send it out; it will be found in
the papers of his estate. In it, he excuses his brusque behaviour with the
“hopeless situation” of his deafness, professes that only his art has kept
him from committing suicide, thanks his friends and his physician, affirms
that he shall endure this “miserable life” to its natural end, and he
bequeathes his “small fortune” to his brothers. Thus, the Testament is not
the parting letter of a person intent on suicide. Beethoven writes the Moonlight Sonata (in C sharp minor, op. 27). He dedicates it to the seventeen-year-old Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, one of his piano students, with whose family he stays occasionally. Composition of the jocular Lob auf den Dicken (WoO 100) for the friend and exceptional violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh. |
|
1803 |
Première presentation, among other works, of the Symphony no. 2 ( in D, op. 36), of the Third Piano Concerto (in C minor, op. 37) and of the Piano Sonata in A, op. 47, which he later dedicates to the violin virtuoso Rodolphe Kreutzer and is since known with this name. | |
1805 |
Beethoven courts the widowed Josephine Brunswick-Deym.
First public performance of the Symphony no. 3, in E flat, op. 55 (Eroica) and of the opera Fidelio (op. 72) in its first version, both of them in the Theater an der Wien. The Fidelio gets a very cool reception. Beethoven suffers from frequent colics which are not going away by repeated stays at a spa and taking the waters, without keeping to a diet. The dramatist Franz Grillparzer describes him, in his 1844 Erinnerungen an Beethoven, as “still lean at the time and most elegantly dressed ..” and wearing glasses. |
|
1806 |
Creation of three String Quartets, op. 69, for Count (later Prince) André Rasumowsky, the Czar’s envoy to the court of Vienna and a competent violinist. | |
1807 |
Around this time Beethoven’s appearance changes. According to Grillparzer, he has become stout during the past two years and neglects his clothes to the point of being unclean. | |
1808 |
A panaritium, i.e. a purulent inflammation, on a finger of his left (?) hand is operated and heals without affecting his piano playing. | |
1809 |
Beethoven goes through a number of profound crises with recurring thoughts of suicide because of his intestinal troubles and the increasing deafness. In spite of this, he still hopes to find a spouse. He falls in love with nineteen-year-old Therese Malfatti, the niece of his physician, orders some new suits and shirts and pays a bit more attention to his apearance. | |
1810 |
LvB asks one of his friends in
Bonn to send him a
certificate of baptism; he obviously intends to marry Therese.
Unfortunately, she refuses his advances.
The vivacious and ebullient Bettina Brentano who had impressed Johann Wolfgang Goethe with her intelligence – and whom he later found annoying – seeks Beethoven’s company, and there are indications that he is interested in her. |
|
1811 |
Beethoven stays in Teplitz, a spa NW of Prague (today Teplice, Tchetchenia), for the waters. Temporary improvement of his earaches | |
1812 |
In July, Beethoven writes one of the best known love
letters in German literature, the Letter to the Immortal Beloved. He
does not divulge the name of the lady and her identity remains an enigma.
Repeated visits to Teplitz and other spas. He meets on several occasions
with Johann Wolfgang Goethe who admires him since he has composed the music
for his drama Egmont (“His talents have astonished me”) but who
thinks of him as a wild and unruly person.
The widely known bust of Beethoven is sculpted by Franz Klein after a clay mask taken of his face and is considered a reliable likeness. |
|
1813 |
Not one of a variety of ear trumpets is of any help. His
search for such a device shows how deeply deaf he has become and that he
nearly despairs of his handicap. For instance, he is holding a wooden stick
between his teeth when he plays the piano, touching the piano’s sounding
board with the free end in order to perceive the tone of a key he hits
through bone conduction.
His compositions still show the musicality of the genius, his vigour and force of expression, but his virtuosity at the piano declines. On December 8, his portrait of the battle of Vittoria (Spain), Wellington’s Victory (op. 91) has its première performance; it is a rousing success, the greatest of all his compositions during his lifetime. Beethoven’s financial situation is bad although he has is earning enough or has even a very good income. His household is in a dreadful state of disorder. He is abrupt and brusque in dealing with others; he accuses the household help and his employees several times of dishonesty. His timidity and mistrust are certainly to be explained by his deafness. Prince Ferdinand Bonaventura Kinsky dies; he was one of the friends and patrons from the circle of nobility who had paid Beethoven a generous allowance over the years. |
|
1814 |
The very first of LvB’s patrons dies also, Prince Karl v. Lichnowsky, who was his close friend since he arrived in Vienna. | |
1815 |
The Congress of Vienna deliberates on the reorganization of
Europe after the Napoleonic wars. Beethoven salutes the new Europe with the
joyously optimistic cantata (op. 136) The Glorious Moment. In honour
of the Czarina he performs on stage, for the last time, on January 25.
His younger brother Caspar Anton, called Carl, who had become a capable and much beloved music teacher, dies toward the end of the year. LvB is appointed legal guardian of his nephew Karl, together with his mother Johanna. The widow is rapidly spending the money her husband has left, and to preserve something for her son, Beethoven becomes involved in a long legal dispute that taxes his strength. Nevertheless, he sees to it conscientiously that Karl obtains a good education, especially in music, provided at some time or other also by his former student Karl Czerny. |
|
1817 |
As Beethoven still cannot feel any improvement of his
various health problems, he becomes increasingly dissatisfied with his
physician Johann Malfatti. On this point one has to state that he hardly
follows any of the recommendations, advice and prescriptions given him.
He drinks about 1 litre (= 1 quart) of table wine during the day, a quantity that is not considered excessive at the time. The physicians following Malfatti order him to abstain from alcohol altogether. |
|
1819 |
Starting around January, Beethoven uses notebooks in his
conversations, i.e. visitors write down their questions and remarks; LvB’s
spoken answers or contributions are, of course, not given. 120 of these
notebooks are still in existence.
He works principally on the Missa solemnis that he started the year before. |
|
1821 |
Beethoven falls ill with jaundice at the beginning of July.
This sickness is characterized by a gradual and progressive destruction of
liver cells through the influence of toxins or infectious agents; a
yellowish product of the blood’s hemoglobin is then deposited in the skin.
He recovers somewhat in the course of November, in order to “.. live again
for my art, something I was really not able to do for the past two years
..”.
Since the jaundice, his skin retains a yellow color permanently and this points to a chronic liver disease, i.e. a cirrhosis. |
|
1822 |
The famous soprano Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient writes in
her memoirs that Beethoven acting as conductor of his Fidelio at the
main rehearsal brought orchestra and choir out of beat and into total
confusion, “.. with a bewildered face and unearthly inspired eyes ..”, and
how heartbreaking it was to see him sitting behind the orchestra during the
actual performance. This time, the Fidelio proves a big success.
Anton Schindler, a competent musician and sometime student of the law, becomes Beethoven’s secretary and factotum. He does not receive a salary for his services and is often very badly treated by Beethoven who accuses him, for instance, to have embezzled money from a concert. Schindler will publish, in 1840, the first biography of Beethoven which, however, contains a number of errors and inaccuracies. |
|
1823 |
The Missa solemnis (op. 123) and the
Diabelli-Variations (in C, op. 120) are complete.
Beethoven suffers from a painful conjunctivitis in both eyes, an affliction that starts early in the year and lasts until August. |
|
1824 |
Première of Kyrie, Credo and Agnus Dei of the Missa solemnis and of the Ninth Symphony (in D minor, op. 125), both at the Kärntnertor-Theater in Vienna. The composer is no longer able to hear the cheering applause. | |
1825 |
Ludwig van Beethoven’s biography is from now on near exclusively a report of his ailments. His health deteriorates steadily. The chronic digestive troubles cause him much distress, he has rather often colics and diarrhoea and he reports of blood in stool and expectorations. All these symptoms are the probable consequence of his chronic liver disease. Added are the inflammation of his eyes and, lately, arthritis pains that make walking hard for him. | |
1826 |
In very bad November weather, Beethoven pays a visit to his
brother Johannes who has become a wealthy pharmacist and landholder, at his
estate in Krems on the Danube. Johannes writes in his diary that Ludwig has
a noticeably swollen belly.
On the return trip from his brother, LvB contracts a vicious cold with fever, the shivers and difficulty breathing. The diagnosis is pneumonia; his physician, now professor Ignaz Andreas Wawruch of the University of Vienna is treating him and saves his life from this at the time very often deadly disease. Beethoven’s belly is swollen because of an accumulation of fluid in the abdomen. The loss of functional liver cells incurred years earlier with the jaundice has transformed much of the liver into scar tissue, which is the definition of a cirrhosis. This, in turn, diminishes the blood flow in the liver, the vessels leading to the liver are excessively filled with blood that is eventually pressed through their walls. Professor Wawruch punctures the belly several times and on one of these occasions drains a volume of fluid weighing more than 25 pounds (!). This symptomatic treatment performed without anesthesia brings not more than a passing relief. |
|
1827 |
On January 3, Beethoven writes his testament. He leaves
everything he owns to his nephew Karl.
On March 25, Ludwig van Beethoven goes into a coma. He dies on March 26 at around 5h45 pm, in his 56th year. An autopsy is performed the following day. The funeral is held on March 29, in the Währingen cemetery. Franz Grillparzer delivers the eulogy. |
|
1863 |
First exhumation of Beethoven’s corpse. Examination by a pathologist. The remains are laid to rest in a metal coffin. | |
1888 |
Second exhumation. Solemn transfer of Beethoven’s remains to Vienna’s central cemetery and into a tomb of honour. | |
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The protocol of Beethoven’s first autopsy, written in Latin, was re-discovered in 1970 in a pile of old documents. It gives a description typical for a cirrhosis of the liver; the diagnosis of his physicians is confirmed. The direct cause of death is therefore insufficiency of the liver following a cirrhosis. For an examination of the inner ear, parts of the temporal bones on both sides of the skull were removed at the autospy, and preserved. The fragments were considered precious relics by the family of a professor for the history of medicine but were finally given in 1985 to professors Hans Bankl, MD, and Hans Jesserer, MD, both of the University of Vienna, for examination. These scientists published a book on Beethoven’s diseases in 1987 and offer, among others, the conclusion that the composer’s deafness was not, as often stated, caused by Paget’s disease, and that it was not a consequence of syphilis. The authors present a compelling case for the diagnosis of a relatively rare type of otosclerosis in which the blood vessels accompanying the acoustic nerve are damaged and the nerve slowly atrophies. Their findings explain completely the symptoms and progression of Beethoven’s hearing troubles. Concerning Beethoven’s shortsightedness: the refraction of two of his eyeglasses, of a monocle and of a loupe was measured to be between - 1.75 and - 4.0 diopters. The degree of myopia cannot be determined with precision since we do not know at which age Beethoven wore these glasses and since both an improvement and a deterioration of the eyesight with age are possible. A final note in passing: Beethoven had nearly all his teeth when he died, and this was rare at the time. |
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Recommended reading |
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Bankl, Hans; Jesserer, Hans: Die Krankheiten Beethovens. Verlag Wilhelm Maudrich, Wien 1987 (in German) Beethoven Bicentennial Collection (recordings) George G. Daniels, ed., Time Inc., New York: 1972 Geck, Martin: Ludwig van Beethoven. Rowohlt-Verlag, Reinbek, 5. Aufl.: 2001 (in German) Grillparzer, Franz: Sämtliche Werke. Carl Hauser, München: 1965, Bd. IV, pp. 195-203 (in German) Kaiser, Joachim: Beethovens 32 Klaviersonaten und ihre Interpreten. S. Fischer, Frankfurt/Main: 1975 (in German) Kinsky, Georg; Halm, Hans: Thematisch-Bibliographisches Verzeichnis aller vollendeten Werke Ludwig van Beethovens. G. Henle, München: 1955/83 (in German) Schindler, Anton: Biographie von Ludwig van Beethoven. Faksimile-Nachdruck der Ausgabe von 1871. Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim: 1994 (in German) Schmidt, Leopold: Beethoven, Werke und Leben. Wegweiser-Verlag, Berlin: 1924 (in German) Solomon, Maynard: Beethoven. Schirmer Books, New York: 1998 Uhde, Jürgen: Beethovens Klaviermusik. Reclam, Stuttgart: 1984 (in German) |
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