THE NEW GROVE Dictionary of Music Beethoven, Ludwig van 73 and Musicians and the subject of this narrative, was baptized on 17 December 1770. Of five children subsequently born to the couple only two survived infancy: Caspar Anton Carl (bap. 8 April 1774) and Nikolaus Johann (bap. 2 October SECOND EDITION 1776). Both brothers were to play important parts in Beethoven's life. Inevitably the early years of the son of an obscure musician in a small provincial town are themselves sunk in obscurity, and though speculation and myth-making have both been productive, facts are rather scarce. It is Beethoven, Ludwig van Bonn, bap. 17 Dec 1770; d clear that at a very early age he received instruction from ^po 76 MarchJT- German composer. His early his father on the piano and the violin. Tradition adds that achievements, as composer and performer, show him to the child, made to stand at the keyboard, was often in be extending the Viennese Classical tradition that he had tears. Beethoven's first appearance in public was at a inherited from Mozart and Haydn. As personal affliction concert given with another of his father's pupils (a - deafness, and the inability to enter into happy personal contralto) on 26 March 1778, at which (according to the relationships - loomed larger, he began to compose in an advertisement) he played 'various clavier concertos and increasingly individual musical style, and at the end of his trios'. A little later, when he was eight, his father is said life he wrote his most sublime and profound works. From to have sent him to the old court organist van den Eeden, his success at combining tradition and exploration and from whom he may have received some grounding in personal expression, he came to be regarded as the music theory as well as keyboard instruction. He appears dominant musical figure of the 19th century, and scarcely also to have had piano lessons from Tobias Friedrich any significant composer since his time has escaped his Pfeiffer, who lodged for a while with the family, and influence or failed to acknowledge it. For the respect his informal tuition from several local organists. A relative, works have commanded of musicians, and the popularity Franz Rovantini, gave the boy lessons on the violin and they have enjoyed among wider audiences, he is probably viola. His general education was not continued beyond the most admired composer in the history of Western ^the elementary school, but"this waTln accordance with music. the usual custom in Bonn at that time, only a few children going on to a Gymnasium (high school). The comparative | 1. Family background and childhood. 2. Youth. 3. 1792-5. 4. 1796- brevity of Beethoven's formal education, combined with I 1800. 5. 1801-2: deafness. 6. 1803-8. 7. 1809-12. 8. 1813-21. 9. 1822-4. 10. 1824-7. 11. The 'three periods'. 12. Music of the Bonn the fact that most of his out-of-school hours must have I period. 13. Music of the early Vienna period. 14. The symphonic been devoted to music, explains some of the gaps in his fi ideal. 15. Middle-period works. 16. Late-period style. 17. Late-period academic equipment, such as his blindness to orthography works. 18. Personal characteristics. 19. Posthumous influence and and punctuation and his inability to carry out the simplest reception: (i) History of the myth (ii) Beethoven's influence on music multiplication sum. ^—s and musical thought (iii) Political reception. 1. FAMILY BACKGROUND AND CHILDHOOD. Three gen- erations of the Beethoven family tound employment as musicians at the court of the Electorate of Cologne, which had its seat at Bonn. The composer's grandfather, Ludwig (Louis) van Beethoven (1712-73), the son of an enterpris- ing burgher of Mechelen (Belgium), was a trained musician with a fine bass voice, and after positions at Mechelen, Leuven and Liege accepted in 1733 an appointment as bass in the electoral chapel at Bonn. In 1761 he was appointed Kapellmeister, a position which - although he seems not to have been a composer, unlike other occupants of such a post - carried with it the responsibility of supervising the musical establishment of the court. With his wife Maria Josepha Poll, whom he had married in 1733, and who later took to drink, he had only one child that survived. Johann van Beethoven (c!740-1792) was a lesser man than his father. He, too, entered the elector's service, first as a boy soprano in 1752, and continuing after adolescence as a tenor. He was also proficient enough on the piano and the violin to be able to supplement his income by giving lessons on those instruments as well as in singing. In November 1767 he married Maria Magdalena (1745-87), daughter of Hemrich Keverich, 'overseer of cooking' at the electoral summer palace of Ehrenbreitstein, and already the widow of Johann Leym, valet to the Elector of Trier; she was not vet 21. The couple took lodgings in Bonn at 515 Bonngasse. Their first child Ludwig Maria (bap. 2 April 2. Ludwig van Beethoven: miniature by Christian Horneman, 1803 1769) lived only six days; their second, also called Ludwig (Beethoven-Haus, Bonn).