Ludwig Van Beethoven 1770-1827
    Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.
    "Braun von Braunthal met him in an inn a year later (1826). Beethoven was sitting in a corner with closed eyes, smoking a long pipe - a habit which grew on him more and more as he approached death. A friend spoke to him. He smiled sadly, drew from his pocket a little note-tablet, and in a thin voice which frequently sounded cracked notes, asked him to write down his request?"
    Romain Rolland "Beethoven"
    He had a life full of suffering and tragedy?
    He was a son of nature, intended to love and to be loved?
    The power, the thunderer, Prometheus of Music?
    Board shoulders, athletic build body, always very rumpled wild black hair, melancholically sad eyes. Shakespearean King Leer...
    Beethoven was a master symphonist - the master symphonist in the eyes of most musicians and listeners. His compositions for orchestra were revolutionary in his day; while he adhered to Classical musical forms, his melodies and orchestration were of such unprecedented power and beauty that they astonished even the most hardened listeners.
    One of his the most famous motives - the theme of his 5th symphony is known, in his own words, as "Fate, knocking at the door." It seems fate really was knocking at the door for all of his life.
    From his first years his life was not happy for him. Seeing the extensive musical talent of young Ludwig, his father, a music enthusiast, but an extremely crude and violent person, wanted to make him a next Mozart. Ludwig was only four years old when his father started to force him to play the harpsichord and violin for hours a day, shutting him alone in his room. But boy did not come to hate music. He was not as gifted as Mozart was, but he was unusually talented, learning the piano, organ and violin at an early age.
    One of his first instructors, and the most significant in his life was a court organist and notable musician of the time, Christian Gottlob Neefe. Under his instruction, at the age of ten Beethoven published his first compositions (Nine variations in C Minor). "If I ever become anybody," Beethoven wrote to Neefe in October, 26 1873, "I shall owe it to you". *** At thirteen his teacher got him a salaried job in the court orchestra, where Ludwig obtained his profound knowledge of instrumentation.
    At the age of 17 he left for Vienna with the hope of studying with Mozart. According to some sources Mozart took little notice of him, to others - he was impressed by Beethoven's improvisatory skills and said: "Watch this young man; he will yet make a noise in the world," but because of his mother's death Beethoven returned to Germany. In 1792, when he came back, never to return to his motherland for the rest of his life, Mozart was not alive any more. But he became a pupil of other famous musicians: Joseph Haydn gave him composition lessons, Johann Alberchtsberger - lessons of Counterpoint and Fugue, Salieri trained him in vocal writing.
    Young Beethoven was accepted as the most important performing pianist of his time, giving concertos at the homes of music patrons. But his unbowed character could not live in frivolous Vienna. In 1809 he was given a salary from three richest noblemen with only one condition - to remain in Austria and compose. Despite his dislike of Vienna, Beethoven rejected the position of court musician for the King of Westphalia and became the first free composer in music history.
    But fate was already knocking at his door: his hearing became gradually weaker. The first symptoms appeared in 1796. For several years he kept secret to himself, avoiding company so as not to be noticed in his infliction. In 1801 he could no longer hide and in the letter to his friends he wrote: "Your Beethoven is very unhappy. You must know that the best part of me, my hearing, has became very weak?How sad is my life?I'm deaf. Had my profession been any other, things might still be bearable: but if it is, my situation is terrible?" The tragic sadness was expressed in some of his work in this period: in the Largo of the Piano Sonata in D, opus 10 (1798), in the Sonata Pathetique, Op.13 (1799). It is important to notice that only opus 1 of his work was written before 1796, the next opus - the first three Piano Sonatas appeared in March 1796. So, almost all Beethoven's works are that of a deaf man.
    Another kind of suffering was added to that: his was rejected by his dearest love, Giulietta Guicciardi, to whom in 1802 he dedicated his Piano sonata in c#.*** In some years he met Theresa von Brunswick - a women, who played a very significant role in his life, whom he will love until the end of his life, and to whom he will write the famous letter, overfill with tender and love - "Immortal beloved" (it is difficult to say why they were not married. Preferably, the main reason was the difference in those social positions).
    Beethoven passed a terrible crisis, his deafness was more and more significant and the last hopes of recovering his health disappeared. At that time he wrote a letter for his brothers, Carl and Johann, known as "Heiligenstadt Testement", with the following direction: "To be read and carried out after my death". He was on the verge of suicide. "How humiliated I have felt if somebody standing beside me heard the sound of a flute in the distance and I heard nothing... If not for my music, little more of this and I would have ended my life... I have been stranger to the trill of joy for so long. When, O God, when shall I feel joy once more?" But his powerful nature could not give up under the weight of his suffering: "My physical beneath improves always with the growth of my intellectual force? Yes, I can fell that my youth is only just beginning... ............