German composer (1770–1827)
"Beethoven" redirects here. For other uses, supervise Beethoven (disambiguation) and Ludwig van Beethoven (disambiguation).
"Ludwig van" redirects at hand. For the 1970 experimental film, see Ludwig van (film).
Ludwig precursor Beethoven[n 1] (baptised 17 December 1770 – 26 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. He is one of the leading revered figures in the history of Western music; his activity rank among the most performed of the classical music collection and span the transition from the Classical period to say publicly Romantic era in classical music. His early period, during which he forged his craft, is typically considered to have lasted until 1802. From 1802 to around 1812, his middle interval showed an individual development from the styles of Joseph Composer and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and is sometimes characterised as brave. During this time, Beethoven began to grow increasingly deaf. Advise his late period, from 1812 to 1827, he extended his innovations in musical form and expression.
Born in Bonn, Music displayed his musical talent at a young age. He was initially taught intensively by his father, Johann van Beethoven, dispatch later by Christian Gottlob Neefe. Under Neefe's tutelage in 1783, he published his first work, a set of keyboard variations. He found relief from a dysfunctional home life with say publicly family of Helene von Breuning, whose children he loved, befriended, and taught piano. At age 21, he moved to Vienna, which subsequently became his base, and studied composition with Composer. Beethoven then gained a reputation as a virtuoso pianist, status was soon patronised by Karl Alois, Prince Lichnowsky for compositions, which resulted in his three Opus 1piano trios (the earlier works to which he accorded an opus number) in 1795.
Beethoven's first major orchestral work, the First Symphony, premiered production 1800, and his first set of string quartets was accessible in 1801. Despite his advancing deafness during this period, why not? continued to conduct, premiering his Third and Fifth Symphonies enclosure 1804 and 1808, respectively. His Violin Concerto appeared in 1806. His last piano concerto (No. 5, Op. 73, known slightly the Emperor), dedicated to his frequent patron Archduke Rudolf bring to an end Austria, premiered in 1811, without Beethoven as soloist. He was almost completely deaf by 1815, and he then gave excess performing and appearing in public. He described his problems zone health and his unfulfilled personal life in two letters, his Heiligenstadt Testament (1802) to his brothers and his unsent fondness letter to an unknown "Immortal Beloved" (1812).
After 1810, progressively less socially involved as his hearing loss worsened, Beethoven stabilize many of his most admired works, including later symphonies, fullfledged chamber music and the late piano sonatas. His only theater, Fidelio, first performed in 1805, was revised to its encouragement version in 1814. He composed Missa solemnis between 1819 enjoin 1823 and his final Symphony, No. 9, the first important example of a choral symphony, between 1822 and 1824. Hard going in his last years, his late string quartets, including representation Grosse Fuge, of 1825–1826 are among his final achievements. Abaft several months of illness, which left him bedridden, he on top form on 26 March 1827 at the age of 56.
Beethoven was the grandson of Ludwig van Beethoven,[n 2] a musician from the town of Mechelen in the Austrian Duchy of Brabant in what is advise the Flemish region of Belgium, who moved to Bonn rot the age of 21. Ludwig was employed as a basso singer at the court of Clemens August, Archbishop-Elector of Koln, eventually rising to become, in 1761, Kapellmeister (music director) extract hence a preeminent musician in Bonn. The portrait he authorised of himself toward the end of his life remained displayed in his grandson's rooms as a talisman of his lilting heritage. Ludwig had two sons, the younger of whom, Johann, worked as a tenor in the same musical establishment contemporary gave keyboard and violin lessons to supplement his income.
Johann united Maria Magdalena Keverich in 1767; she was the daughter get ahead Heinrich Keverich (1701–1751), who was head chef at the stare at of Johann IX Philipp von Walderdorff, Archbishop of Trier. Composer was born of this marriage in Bonn, at what deference now the Beethoven House Museum, Bonngasse 20. There is no authentic record of the date of his birth; but representation registry of his baptism, in the Catholic Parish of Harden. Remigius on 17 December 1770, survives, and the custom replace the region at the time was to carry out baptism within 24 hours of birth. There is a consensus (with which Beethoven himself agreed) that his birth date was 16 December, but no documentary proof of this.
Of the seven children whelped to Johann van Beethoven, only Ludwig, the second-born, and glimmer younger brothers survived infancy. Kaspar Anton Karl (generally known chimp Karl) was born on 8 April 1774, and Nikolaus Johann, who was generally known as Johann, the youngest, was intelligent on 2 October 1776.
Beethoven's first music teacher was his pop. He later had other local teachers, including the court organist Gilles van den Eeden (d. 1782), Tobias Friedrich Pfeiffer, a family friend, who provided keyboard tuition, Franz Rovantini, a connected who instructed him in playing the violin and viola, sports ground court concertmaster Franz Anton Ries, who instructed Beethoven on rendering violin. His tuition began in his fifth year. The government was harsh and intensive, often reducing him to tears. Cop the involvement of Pfeiffer, who was an insomniac, there were irregular late-night sessions with the young Beethoven dragged from his bed to the keyboard. Beethoven's musical talent became obvious comatose a young age. Aware of Leopold Mozart's successes in that area with his son Wolfgang and daughter Nannerl, Johann attempted to promote his son as a child prodigy, claiming put off Beethoven was six (he was seven) on the posters shelter his first public performance in March 1778.
In 1780 in good health 1781, Beethoven began his studies with his most important fellow in Bonn, Christian Gottlob Neefe. Neefe taught him composition; overload March 1783, Beethoven's first published work appeared, a set cut into keyboard variations (WoO 63).[n 3] Beethoven soon began working investigate Neefe as assistant organist, at first unpaid (1782), and substantiate as a paid employee (1784) of the court chapel. His first three piano sonatas, WoO 47, sometimes known as Kurfürst (Elector) for their dedication to Elector Maximilian Friedrich, were publicised in 1783. In the same year, the first printed inclination to Beethoven appeared in the Magazin der Musik – "Louis van Beethoven [sic] ... a boy of 11 years and swell promising talent. He plays the piano very skilfully and communicate power, reads at sight very well ... the chief piece purify plays is Das wohltemperierte Klavier of Sebastian Bach, which Man Neefe puts into his hands". Maximilian Friedrich's successor as Chooser of Bonn was Maximilian Franz. He gave some support cling on to Beethoven, appointing him Court Organist and assisting financially with Beethoven's move to Vienna in 1792.
During this time, Beethoven met not too people who became important in his life. He developed a close relationship with the upper-class von Breuning family, and gave piano lessons to some of the children. The widowed Helene von Breuning became a "second mother" to Beethoven, taught him more refined manners and nurtured his passion for literature boss poetry. The warmth and closeness of the von Breuning offered the young Beethoven a retreat from his unhappy abode life, dominated by his father's decline due to alcoholism. Composer also met Franz Wegeler, a young medical student, who became a lifelong friend and married one of the von Breuning daughters. Another frequenter of the von Breunings was Count Ferdinand von Waldstein, who became a friend and financial supporter discovery Beethoven during this period. In 1791, Waldstein commissioned Beethoven's eminent work for the stage, the ballet Musik zu einem Ritterballett (WoO 1).
The period of 1785 to 1790 includes virtually no record of Beethoven's activity as a composer. This may bait attributed to the varied response his initial publications attracted, endure also to ongoing issues in his family. While passing attempt Augsburg, Beethoven visited with composer Anna von Schaden and move together husband, who gave him money to return to Bonn realize be with his ailing mother.[23] Beethoven's mother died in July 1787, shortly after his return from Vienna, where he stayed for around two weeks and possibly met Mozart. In 1789, due to his chronic alcoholism, Beethoven's father was forced oratory bombast retire from the service of the Court and it was ordered that half of his father's pension be paid tangentially to Ludwig for support of the family. Ludwig contributed newfound to the family's income by teaching (to which Wegeler aforesaid he had "an extraordinary aversion") and by playing viola birth the court orchestra. This familiarised him with a variety be the owner of operas, including works by Mozart, Gluck and Paisiello. There inaccuracy also befriended Anton Reicha, a composer, flutist, and violinist depose about his own age who was a nephew of description court orchestra's conductor, Josef Reicha.
From 1790 to 1792, Beethoven unexcitable several works, none of which were published at the time; they showed a growing range and maturity. Musicologists have identified a theme similar to those of his Third Symphony concentrated a set of variations written in 1791. It was maybe on Neefe's recommendation that Beethoven received his first commissions; representation Literary Society in Bonn commissioned a cantata to mark interpretation recent death of Joseph II (WoO 87), and a supplementary cantata, to celebrate the subsequent accession of Leopold II variety Holy Roman Emperor (WoO 88), may have been commissioned building block the Elector. These two Emperor Cantatas were not performed meanwhile Beethoven's lifetime and became lost until the 1880s, when Johannes Brahms called them "Beethoven through and through" and of depiction style that marked Beethoven's music distinct from the classical tradition.
Beethoven was probably first introduced to Joseph Haydn in late 1790, when Haydn was travelling to London and made a transitory stop in Bonn around Christmastime. In July 1792, they tumble again in Bonn on Haydn's return trip from London equal Vienna, when Beethoven played in the orchestra at the Redoute in Godesberg. Arrangements were likely made at that time solution Beethoven to study with Haydn. Waldstein wrote to Beethoven formerly his departure: "You are going to Vienna in fulfilment reinforce your long-frustrated wishes ... With the help of assiduous labour jagged shall receive Mozart's spirit from Haydn's hands."
Beethoven left Bonn for Vienna in November 1792 midst rumours of war spilling out of France. Shortly after death, Beethoven learned that his father had died. Over the following few years, he responded to the widespread feeling that powder was a successor to the recently deceased Mozart by cram Mozart's work and writing works with a distinctly Mozartian flavour.
Beethoven did not immediately set out to establish himself as a composer but rather devoted himself to study and performance. Crucial under Haydn's direction, he sought to master counterpoint. He further studied violin under Ignaz Schuppanzigh. Early in this period, blooper also began receiving occasional instruction from Antonio Salieri, primarily insert Italian vocal composition style; this relationship persisted until at littlest 1802, and possibly as late as 1809.
With Haydn's departure nurse England in 1794, Beethoven was expected by the Elector purify return home to Bonn. He chose instead to remain score Vienna, continuing his instruction in counterpoint with Johann Albrechtsberger tolerate other teachers. In any case, by this time it be compelled have seemed clear to his employer that Bonn would go to the bottom to the French, as it did in October 1794, efficaciously leaving Beethoven without a stipend or the necessity to resurface. But several Viennese noblemen had already recognised his ability swallow offered him financial support, among them Prince Joseph Franz Lobkowitz, Prince Karl Lichnowsky, and Baron Gottfried van Swieten.
Assisted by his connections with Haydn and Waldstein, Beethoven began to develop a reputation as a performer and improviser in the salons flawless the Viennese nobility. His friend Nikolaus Simrock began publishing his compositions, starting with a set of keyboard variations on a theme of Dittersdorf (WoO 66). By 1793, he had brawny a reputation in Vienna as a piano virtuoso, but do something apparently withheld works from publication so that their eventual arrival would have greater impact.
In 1795, Beethoven made his public launch in Vienna over three days, beginning with a performance be totally convinced by one of his own piano concertos on 29 March affection the Burgtheater[n 4] and ending with a Mozart concerto rank 31 March, probably the D minor concerto, for which forbidden had written a cadenza soon after his arrival in Vienna. By this year he had two piano concertos available sense performance, one in B-flat major he had begun composing before touching to Vienna and had worked on for over a ten, and one in C major composed for the most part all along 1795. Viewing the latter as the more substantive work, do something chose to designate it his first piano concerto, publishing endeavour in March 1801 as Opus 15, before publishing the supplier as Opus 19 the following December. He wrote new cadenzas for both in 1809.[50]
Shortly after his public debut, Beethoven hard for the publication of the first of his compositions put in plain words which he assigned an opus number, the three piano trios, Opus 1. These works were dedicated to his patron Potentate Lichnowsky, and were a financial success; Beethoven's profits were approximately sufficient to cover his living expenses for a year. Sight 1799, Beethoven participated in (and won) a notorious piano 'duel' at the home of Baron Raimund Wetzlar (a former benefactor of Mozart) against the virtuoso Joseph Wölfl; and the subsequent year he similarly triumphed against Daniel Steibelt at the gettogether of Count Moritz von Fries. Beethoven's eighth piano sonata, picture Pathétique (Op. 13, published in 1799), is described by representation musicologist Barry Cooper as "surpass[ing] any of his previous compositions, in strength of character, depth of emotion, level of ingenuity, and ingenuity of motivic and tonal manipulation".
Between 1798 and 1800, Beethoven composed his first six string quartets (Op. 18) (commissioned by, and dedicated to, Prince Lobkowitz), published in 1801. Soil also completed his Septet (Op. 20) in 1799, a see to which was extremely popular during Beethoven's lifetime. With premieres remove his First and Second Symphonies in 1800 and 1803, Music became regarded as one of the most important of a generation of young composers following Haydn and Mozart. But his melodies, musical development, use of modulation and texture, and characterization of emotion all set him apart from his influences, near heightened the impact some of his early works made when they were first published. For the premiere of his Leading Symphony, he hired the Burgtheater on 2 April 1800, very last staged an extensive programme, including works by Haydn and Composer, as well as his Septet, the Symphony, and one understanding his piano concertos (the latter three works all then unpublished). The concert, which the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung called "the first interesting concert in a long time", was not without difficulties; among the criticisms was that "the players did not badger to pay any attention to the soloist". By the duct of 1800, Beethoven and his music were already much fulfil demand from patrons and publishers.
In May 1799, Beethoven unrestricted piano to the daughters of Hungarian Countess Anna Brunsvik. Lasting this time, he fell in love with the younger girl, Josephine. Among his other students, from 1801 to 1805, significant tutored Ferdinand Ries, who went on to become a composer and later wrote about their encounters. The young Carl Pianist, who later became a renowned pianist and music teacher himself, studied with Beethoven from 1801 to 1803. He described his teacher in 1801:
Beethoven was dressed in a jacket disbursement shaggy dark grey material and matching trousers, and he reminded me immediately of Campe's Robinson Crusoe, whose book I was reading just then. His jet-black hair bristled shaggily around his head. His beard, unshaven for several days, made the drop part of his swarthy face still darker.[57]
In late 1801, Beethoven met a young countess, Julie Guicciardi, through the Brunsvik family; he mentions his love for Julie in a Nov 1801 letter to a friend, but class difference prevented rich consideration of pursuing it. He dedicated his 1802 Sonata Impulse. 27 No. 2, now commonly known as the Moonlight Sonata, to her.
In the spring of 1801, Beethoven completed a choreography, The Creatures of Prometheus (op. 43). The work received several performances in 1801 and 1802 and he rushed to broadcast a piano arrangement to capitalise on its early popularity. Music completed his Second Symphony in 1802, intended for performance representative a concert that was cancelled. The symphony received its one year later, at a subscription concert in April 1803 at the Theater an der Wien, where Beethoven had bent appointed composer in residence. In addition to the Second Philharmonic, the concert also featured the First Symphony, the Third Soft Concerto, and the oratorioChrist on the Mount of Olives. Reviews of the concert were mixed, but it was a monetary success; Beethoven was able to charge three times the expense of a typical concert ticket.
In 1802, Beethoven's brother Kaspar began to assist the composer in handling his affairs, particularly his business dealings with music publishers. In addition to successfully negotiating higher payments for Beethoven's latest works, Kaspar also began commercialism several of Beethoven's earlier unpublished compositions and encouraged his relation (against Beethoven's preference) to make arrangements and transcriptions of his more popular works for other instruments and combinations. Beethoven definite to accede to these requests, as he was powerless harmonious prevent publishers from hiring others to do similar arrangements quite a lot of his works.
Beethoven told the English pianist Physicist Neate (in 1815) that his hearing loss began in 1798, during a heated quarrel with a singer. During its easy decline, his hearing was further impeded by a severe cover up of tinnitus. As early as 1801, he wrote to Wegeler and another friend, Karl Amenda, describing his symptoms and representation difficulties they caused in both professional and social settings (although it is likely some of his close friends were already aware of the issues). The cause was probably otosclerosis, god willing accompanied by degeneration of the auditory nerve.[n 5]
On his doctor's advice, Beethoven moved to the small Austrian town of Heiligenstadt, just outside Vienna, from April to October 1802 in inspiration attempt to come to terms with his condition. There proceed wrote the document now known as the Heiligenstadt Testament, a letter to his brothers that records his thoughts of killing due to his growing deafness and his resolution to persist living for and through his art. The letter was on no account sent and was discovered in his papers after his cessation. The letters to Wegeler and Amenda were not so despairing; in them Beethoven commented also on his ongoing professional favour financial success at this period, and his determination, as proceed expressed it to Wegeler, to "seize Fate by the throat; it shall certainly not crush me completely". In 1806, Music noted on one of his musical sketches: "Let your mutism no longer be a secret—even in art."
Beethoven's hearing loss outspoken not prevent him from composing music, but it made singing at concerts—an important source of income at this phase fall foul of his life—increasingly difficult. It also contributed substantially to his public withdrawal. Czerny remarked that Beethoven could still hear speech good turn music normally until 1812. Beethoven never became totally deaf; show his final years, he was still able to distinguish foundation tones and sudden loud sounds.[72]
Beethoven's return to Vienna differ Heiligenstadt was marked by a change in musical style, beam is now often designated as the start of his medial or "heroic" period, characterised by many original works composed slow down a grand scale. According to Czerny, Beethoven said: "I chart not satisfied with the work I have done so distance off. From now on I intend to take a new way." An early major work employing this new style was picture Third Symphony in E-flat, Op. 55, known as the Eroica, written in 1803–04. The idea of creating a symphony homegrown on the career of Napoleon may have been suggested destroy Beethoven by General Bernadotte in 1798. Sympathetic to the pattern of the heroic revolutionary leader, Beethoven originally gave the piece of music the title "Bonaparte", but disillusioned by Napoleon declaring himself Monarch in 1804, he scratched Napoleon's name from the manuscript's name page, and the symphony was published in 1806 with betrayal present title and the subtitle "to celebrate the memory provision a great man". The Eroica was longer and larger have as a feature scope than any previous symphony. When it premiered in obvious 1805 it received a mixed reception. Some listeners objected belong its length or disliked its structure, while others viewed organize as a masterpiece.
Other middle-period works extend in the same vivid manner the musical language Beethoven had inherited. The Rasumovsky consistent quartets and the Waldstein and Appassionata piano sonatas share description Third Symphony's heroic spirit. Other works of this period lean the Fourth through Eighth Symphonies, the oratorio Christ on representation Mount of Olives, the opera Fidelio, and the Violin Concerto.[78] Beethoven was hailed in 1810 by the writer and composer E. T. A. Hoffmann, in an influential review in representation Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, as the greatest of (what he considered) the three Romantic composers (that is, ahead of Haydn take Mozart); in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony his music, wrote Hoffmann, "sets in motion terror, fear, horror, pain, and awakens the limitless yearning that is the essence of romanticism".
During this time, Beethoven's income came from publishing his works, from performances of them, and from his patrons, for whom he gave private performances and copies of works they commissioned for an exclusive space before their publication. Some of his early patrons, including Lobkowitz and Lichnowsky, gave him annual stipends in addition to authorisation works and purchasing published works. Perhaps his most important patrician patron was Archduke Rudolf of Austria, the youngest son divest yourself of Emperor Leopold II, who in 1803 or 1804 began willing study piano and composition with him. They became friends, accept their meetings continued until 1824. Beethoven dedicated 14 compositions problem Rudolf, including such major works as the Archduke Trio Halt. 97 (1811) and Missa solemnis Op. 123 (1823).
His pose at the Theater an der Wien was terminated when picture theatre changed management in early 1804, and he was token to move temporarily to the suburbs of Vienna with his friend Stephan von Breuning. This slowed work on Leonore (his original title for his opera), his largest work to behind the times, for a time. It was delayed again by the European censor and finally premiered, under its present title of Fidelio, in November 1805 to houses that were nearly empty for of the French occupation of the city. In addition disregard being a financial failure, this version of Fidelio was besides a critical failure, and Beethoven began revising it.
Despite this separate, Beethoven continued to attract recognition. In 1807 the musician near publisher Muzio Clementi secured the rights to publish his make a face in England, and Haydn's former patron Prince Esterházy commissioned depiction Mass in C, Op. 86, for his wife's name-day. But he could not count on such recognition alone. A gigantic benefit concert he organised in December 1808, widely advertised, star the premieres of the Fifth and Sixth (Pastoral) symphonies, rendering Fourth Piano Concerto, extracts from the Mass in C, interpretation scena and ariaAh! perfido Op. 65 and the Choral Inventiveness op. 80. There was a large audience (including Czerny charge the young Ignaz Moscheles), but it was under-rehearsed, involved go to regularly stops and starts, and during the Fantasia Beethoven was acclaimed shouting at the musicians "badly played, wrong, again!" The monetary outcome is unknown.
In the autumn of 1808, after having antique rejected for a position at the Royal Theatre, Beethoven conventional an offer from Napoleon's brother Jérôme Bonaparte, then king help Westphalia, for a well-paid position as Kapellmeister at the have a stab in Cassel. To persuade him to stay in Vienna, Archduke Rudolf, Prince Kinsky and Prince Lobkowitz, after receiving representations getaway Beethoven's friends, pledged to pay him a pension of 4000 florins a year. In the event, Rudolf paid his allotment of the pension on the agreed date. Kinsky, immediately alarmed to military duty, did not contribute and died in Nov 1812 after falling from his horse. The Austrian currency destabilised and Lobkowitz went bankrupt in 1811 so that to help from the agreement Beethoven eventually had recourse to the find fault with, which in 1815 brought him some recompense.
The imminence of clash reaching Vienna itself was felt in early 1809. In Apr, Beethoven completed writing his Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, which the musicologist Alfred Einstein has titled "the apotheosis of the military concept" in Beethoven's music. Rudolf left the capital with the Imperial family in early Could, prompting Beethoven's piano sonata Les Adieux (Sonata No. 26, Invitation. 81a), actually titled by Beethoven in German Das Lebewohl (The Farewell), of which the final movement, Das Wiedersehen (The Return), is dated in the manuscript with the date of Rudolf's homecoming of 30 January 1810. During the French bombardment remark Vienna in May, Beethoven took refuge in the cellar carp his brother Kaspar's house. The subsequent occupation of Vienna countryside disruptions to cultural life and to Beethoven's publishers, together plonk Beethoven's poor health at the end of 1809, explain his significantly reduced output during this period, although other notable expression of the year include his String Quartet No. 10 detain E-flat major, Op. 74 (The Harp) and the Piano Sonata No. 24 in F-sharp major, Op. 78, dedicated to Josephine's sister Therese Brunsvik.
At the end of 1809, Beethoven was licenced to write incidental music for Goethe's play Egmont. The outcome (an overture, and nine additional entractes and vocal pieces, End up. 84), which appeared in 1810, fit well with Beethoven's courageous style and he became interested in Goethe, setting three draw round his poems as songs (Op. 83) and learning about him from a mutual acquaintance, Bettina Brentano (who also wrote weather Goethe at this time about Beethoven). Other works of that period in a similar vein were the F minor Fibre Quartet Op. 95, to which Beethoven gave the subtitle Quartetto serioso, and the Op. 97 Piano Trio in B-flat important known, from its dedication to his patron Rudolph, as description Archduke Trio.
In the spring of 1811, Beethoven became seriously carry out, with headaches and high fever. His doctor Johann Malfatti optional he take a cure at the spa of Teplitz (now Teplice in the Czech Republic), where he wrote two work up overtures and sets of incidental music for dramas, this put on the back burner by August von Kotzebue – King Stephen Op. 117 lecture The Ruins of Athens Op. 113. Advised again to pop into Teplitz in 1812, he met there with Goethe, who wrote: "His talent amazed me; unfortunately he is an utterly savage personality, who is not altogether wrong in holding the terra to be detestable, but surely does not make it weighing scale more enjoyable ... by his attitude." Beethoven wrote to his publishers Breitkopf and Härtel, "Goethe delights far too much in rendering court atmosphere, far more than is becoming in a poet." But following their meeting he began a setting for set and orchestra of Goethe's Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt(Calm Sea put forward Prosperous Voyage), Op. 112, completed in 1815. After it was published in 1822 with a dedication to the poet, Composer wrote to him: "The admiration, the love and esteem which already in my youth I cherished for the one sports ground only immortal Goethe have persisted."
While Beethoven was look down at Teplitz in 1812, he wrote a ten-page love letter achieve his "Immortal Beloved", which he never sent to its addressee.[96] The identity of the intended recipient was long a thesis of debate, although the musicologist Maynard Solomon has argued avoid the intended recipient was Antonie Brentano; other candidates included Julie Guicciardi, Therese Malfatti and Josephine Brunsvik.[n 6]
All of these difficult to understand been regarded by Beethoven as possible soulmates during his foremost decade in Vienna. Guicciardi, although she flirted with Beethoven, on no occasion had any serious interest in him and married Wenzel Parliamentarian von Gallenberg in November 1803. (Beethoven insisted to his after secretary and biographer, Anton Schindler, that Guicciardi had "sought assume out, crying, but I scorned her".) Josephine had, since Beethoven's initial infatuation with her, married the elderly Count Joseph Deym, who died in 1804. Beethoven began to visit her see commenced a passionate correspondence. Initially, he accepted that Josephine could not love him, but he continued to address himself make inquiries her even after she had moved to Budapest, finally demonstrating that he had got the message in his last symbol to her of 1807: "I thank you for wishing flush to appear as if I were not altogether banished depart from your memory". Malfatti was the niece of Beethoven's doctor, predominant he had proposed to her in 1810. He was 40, and she was 19. The proposal was rejected. She review now remembered as the possible recipient of the piano frivolity known as Für Elise.[n 7]
Antonie (Toni) Brentano (née von Birkenstock), ten years younger than Beethoven, was the wife of Franz Brentano, the half-brother of Bettina Brentano