page_title: Ludwig van Beethoven
section_title: Pause
hierarchical_section_title: Ludwig van Beethoven / Life and career / 1813–1822: Acclaim / Pause
caption_attribution_description: Beethoven 1818
context_page_description: Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist; his music is amongst the most performed of the classical music repertoire, and he is one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music. His works span the transition from the classical period to the romantic era in classical music. His career has conventionally been divided into early, middle, and late periods. The "early" period in which he forged his craft is typically seen to last until 1802. His "middle" period, sometimes characterised as "heroic", showing an individual development from the "classical" styles of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, covers the years 1802 to 1812, during which he increasingly suffered from deafness. In the "late" period from 1812 to his death in 1827, he extended his innovations in musical form and expression.
  Beethoven was born in Bonn. His musical talent was obvious at an early age, and he was initially harshly and intensively taught by his father Johann van Beethoven. He was later taught by the composer and conductor Christian Gottlob Neefe, under whose tutelage he published his first work, a set of keyboard variations, in 1783.
context_section_description: Between 1815 and 1819 Beethoven's output dropped again to a level unique in his mature life. He attributed part of this to a lengthy illness (he called it an "inflammatory fever") that he had for more than a year, starting in October 1816. His biographer Maynard Solomon suggests it is also doubtless a consequence of the ongoing legal problems concerning his nephew Karl, and of Beethoven finding himself increasingly at odds with current musical trends. Unsympathetic to developments in German romanticism that featured the supernatural (as in operas by Spohr, Heinrich Marschner and Carl Maria von Weber), he also "resisted the impending Romantic fragmentation of the ... cyclic forms of the Classical era into small forms and lyric mood pieces" and turned towards study of Bach, Handel and Palestrina. An old connection was renewed in 1817 when Maelzel sought and obtained, Beethoven's endorsement for his newly developed metronome. During these years the few major works he completed include the 1818 Hammerklavier Sonata (Sonata No. 29 in B flat major, Op. 106) and his settings of poems by Alois Jeitteles, An die ferne Geliebte Op. 98, (1816), which introduced the song cycle into classical repertoire. In 1818 he began musical sketches that were eventually to form part of his final Ninth Symphony.
  By early 1818 Beethoven's health had improved, and his nephew Karl, now aged 11, moved in with him in January, (although within a year Karl's mother had won him back in the courts). By now Beethoven's hearing had again seriously deteriorated, necessitating Beethoven and his interlocutors writing in notebooks to carry out conversations. These 'conversation books' are a rich written resource for his life from this period onwards. They contain discussions about music, business, and personal life; they are also a valuable source for his contacts and for investigations into how he intended his music should be performed, and of his opinions of the art of music.  His household management had also improved somewhat; Nanette Streicher, who had assisted in his care during his illness, continued to provide some support, and he finally found a skilled cook. A testimonial to the esteem in which Beethoven was held in England was the presentation to him in this year by Thomas Broadwood, the proprietor of the company, of a Broadwood piano, for which Beethoven expressed thanks. He was not well enough, however, to carry out a visit to London that year which had been proposed by the Philharmonic Society.
caption: Beethoven in 1818 by August Klöber [de]
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