Ludwig van Beethoven

Friedrich Dürck, Ludwig van Beethoven with the manuscript by Missa Solemnis,
Beethoven House Bonn

Beethoven was born in Bonn in 1770 and is considered one of the most outstanding composers in Western music history. Trained by his father he made his first appearance as a pianist in a concert in Cologne in 1778 at the age of eight. At the age of thirteen – in June 1784 – he took up a permanent position as organist at the court of Elector Maximilian Franz, a son of Maria Theresa, in his residence city of Bonn. From 1782 he had been friends with the Bonn bourgeois family Wegeler and in particular with their son Franz Gerhard Wegeler (1765-1848) who was five years older than him. This friendship lasted a lifetime. Wegeler introduced the young musician to the wealthy von Breuning family where Beethoven found in Helene von Breuning (1750-1838) an extremely important personality for his development and who became one of his main reference persons, especially in the period after the death of his own mother. In March 1795 Beethoven’s first public appearance took place in the Vienna Burgtheater. In January 1803 he was hired as a composer at the „Theater an der Wien“ and was declared an honorary citizen of Vienna in 1815. From February 1818 onwards his steadily increasing deafness forced him to use conversation books, small notebooks that he always carried with him. In December 1826 Beethoven became seriously ill. He died in the late afternoon of March 26. Ludwig van Beethoven composed numerous piano and violin sonatas, cantatas, string quartets, songs, the opera „Fidelio“ and in particular brought the symphony to its highest perfection. Beethoven was in Ehrenbreitstein, his mother’s birthplace, only a few times: in 1787 on a trip to Vienna, in 1791 on a trip with the Bonn court orchestra via Koblenz to Bad Mergentheim and in 1792 again on the way to Vienna.

(Image source: Beethoven House Bonn, permanent loan from the Julius Wegeler Family Foundation (taken from: Kämpken, N. and Bettermann, S.: Franz Gerhard Wegeler and his family – music and cultural care in Koblenz. In: von der Bank, M. [Ed.][2020]: Museum Mother Beethoven House. Petersberg 2020)