Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven; baptised 17 December 1770 – 26 March 1827) was a German composer. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential of all composers. His best-known compositions include 9 symphonies, 5 piano concertos, 1 violin concerto, 32 piano sonatas, 16 string quartets, his great Mass the Missa solemnis and an opera, Fidelio...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionComposer
Date of Birth16 December 1770
CityBonn, Germany
CountryGermany
In the world of art, as in the whole of creation, freedom and progress are the main objectives.
Recommend to your children virtue; that alone can make them happy, not gold.
I would rather write 10,000 notes than a single letter of the alphabet.
Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.
This is the mark of a really admirable man: steadfastness in the face of trouble.
You ask me where I get my ideas. That I cannot tell you with certainty. They come unsummoned, directly, indirectly - I could seize them with my hands - out in the open air, in the woods, while walking, in the silence of the nights, at dawn, excited by moods which are translated by the poet into words, by me into tones that sound and roar and storm about me till I have set them down in notes.
I have never thought of writing for reputation and honor. What I have in my heart must come out; that is the reason why I compose.
Even in poverty I lived like a king for I tell you that nobility is the thing that makes a king
Artists who have won fame are often embarrassed by it; thus their first works are often their best.
What will be the judgment a century hence concerning the lorded works of our favorite composers today? Inasmuch as nearly everything is subject to the changes of time, and - more's the pity- the fashions of time, only that which is good and true will endure like a rock and no wanton hand will ever venture to defile it. Then, let every man do that which is right, strive with all his might towards the goal which can never be obtained, develop to the last breath the gifts with which the gracious Creator has endowed him, and never cease to learn. For life is short, art eternal.
I change many things, discard others, and try again and again until I am satisfied; then, in my head, I being to elaborate the work in its breadth, its narrowness, its height, its depth...I hear and see the image in front of me from every angle as if it had been cast and only the labour of writing it down remains.
Music is mediator between spiritual and sensual life.
It seemed unthinkable for me to leave the world forever before I had produced all that I felt called upon to produce
From the glow of enthusiasm I let the melody escape. I pursue it. Breathless I catch up with it. It flies again, it disappears, it plunges into a chaos of diverse emotions. I catch it again, I seize it, I embrace it with delight... I multiply it by modulations, and at last I triumph in the first theme. There is the whole symphony.