Written by Robert Bruce
This month we celebrate the 250th birthday of one of the greatest composers of all time, Ludwig van Beethoven. In our recent survey, many KCME listeners voted Beethoven their favorite composer. What makes the music of this man so special? Indoctrinated in the musical style and forms of Mozart and Haydn, Beethoven transformed them, endowing his symphonies, piano sonatas, and string quartets with a unique, powerful voice that proclaimed to all who heard them, “Listen to me! This is what I have to say!” There is an energy, a fire, a passion in Beethoven’s music that literally took Europe by storm, leading the 18th century Classical style determinedly into that of the burgeoning Romanticism of the next century.
Yet Beethoven had to deal with the worst affliction a musician could possibly face: the loss of his hearing. So despondent was he at the prospect of going deaf, he contemplated suicide in 1802. In a heroic letter to his brothers from that time, Beethoven expresses his anguish, at the same time resolving to continue living through his music. His heartache, defiance, and ultimate triumph is expressed again and again in Beethoven’s later music, most famously in the Symphony in C minor, his fifth, from 1808. That work is one of classical music’s best-known compositions, one of the cornerstones of Western Music, and has been hailed as the greatest symphony ever written.
