Bay-Atlantic Symphony Study Guide
Education Concerts—May 2008

“How Music Can Paint"

 Dear New Jersey Educators, 

In 2006, we shifted our education concerts away from March to May, with very favorable response from teachers.   This change was primarily effected to accommodate  scheduling modifications that have occurred in the schools.  By scheduling our concerts in May, we not only avoid March testing, but also the last remnants of the snow season.  It also seems that by May, most teachers feel that they and the students could use a nice, uplifting break from the usual routine, that most educational goals and materials have been covered, and yet, that it is not so late in the year as to be difficult to organize.

 Our 2008 program moves away from  the last three years, where we have been underlining “how music talks.”  This year, we are calling our concerts:  “How Music Can Paint” The emphases in this program are 1) specific sounds and the images they portray especially in orchestration and melody) and 2) how those sounds, those aural pictures, paint a story, or paint feelings.  This year we are performing both an unfamiliar work, and a very familiar work (at least to the teachers), featured in Walt Disney’s Fantasia:  Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, Pastoral.   For our new work, we highlight portions of an American premier. (Time precludes our performing the work in its entirety.)  The work is by Chinese Canadian composer Lee Pui Ming, titled Awakening.  As the title indicates this work is closely allied to the Pastoral Symphony, which Beethoven described as an “awakening of emotions.  For this segment of the program we have invited a very dynamic performer, Jiebing Chen, to awaken our young audience to the sound of the erhu, which is a Chinese 2-stringed folk violin.  The erhu (pronounced arHHU), is a very mysterious and yearning sounding instrument, familiar to most in film scores, with a swooping, plaintive sounds.  Yet in the hands of virtuoso like Jiebing Chen, this instrument reflects many colors, moods, and characters.  In this sense, Ms. Chen is pioneering an awakening as well, of the American people to the great possibilities of this ancient instrument. 

 It may be cliché that music is a universal language.  Cliché or no, we have two vastly differing pieces:  the first is written by a young native Chinese composer, living in North America, for an instrument just now making more Americans’ acquaintance.  In Beethoven’s we have a work written exactly 200 years ago, by a German composer.  But, in both works, we find music as powerful, descriptive expression that awakens our feelings.  At any given moment, various instruments shed different colors and paint different aural scenes.  We will highlight some of these scenes in these two colorful, sumptuous pieces.

 I deeply hope you and your students enjoy these pieces, and this presentation!

 Sincerely,

- Jed

How Music Paints a Picture!

Bay-Atlantic Symphony Education Concerts

May 2008

 Table of Contents

click on colored links to go directly to subject matter

Bay-Atlantic Symphony

Education Concerts: May 2008

Study Guides

PAGE 3: CONCERT PROGRAM ( = ACTIVITIES), AND OBJECTIVES

CONCERTS: Cumberland College—Friday May 2, 2008

                         Stockton College—Tuesday May 6, 2008 

Program (Repertoire):

            Symphony No. 6, Pastoral………………………Ludwig van Beethoven

Movements 3-4-5 (all connected without break)

Awakening for Erhu and Orchestra (brief selections)………Lee Pui Ming

Suggested CD:  Amazon (direct links below):   

1)   Beethoven Symphony No. 1, Symphony No. 6 “Pastoral”, “Egmont” Overture.  Sony Essential Classics.  Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell.  This CD is a superbargain at $6.98, and can also be downloaded via mp3.  If you want to do that, we only need the last three movements from the symphony.  Amazon direct link: http://www.amazon.com/Symphonies-Nos-Ludwig-van-Beethoven/dp/B00005YDLI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1202742024&sr=1-1

2)   There is no CD for this American premiered work.  In fact, since the work was first performed in Canada this past Fall, the work is being extensively revised.  I don’t yet have the score myself!  However, there is a sound sample on wikipedia at the bottom of the article with the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhu  .  You can also by a CD by Jiebing Chen at: http://www.amazon.com/Listening-Soughing-Wind-Pine-Forest/dp/B000QWUE08/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dmusic&qid=1202742712&sr=8-1  but the sample there does not get to the Erhu.

3)   IMPORTANT:  I have used very specific timings  for the in-class discussion that will only apply to Beethoven CD. It is STRONGLY recommended that you use that recording which is a classic.  Though recorded in the 60’s the sound quality is exceptional.           

Concert Objectives:

1)   To expose students to an exciting live performance and rehearsal of great symphonic music, and subtly interweave notions of instrumentation, structure, music history, social studies, ethnomusicology, poetry, and other disciplines.

2)  To give students the chance to concentrate on something aesthetic, multifaceted, and open-ended without feeling limited by an encounter that is purely quantitative.

3)  To provide the opportunity for students to develop an emotional, aesthetic, or even analytical response to music.

4)   To help students realize the dramatic, narrative, and associative qualities of music, To help provide contexts—rhythmic patterns, metaphors, or language—that foster an engaged response to the works.

5)   To teach students elements of theme (tune), musical meter, musical phrase (sentence) structure, and orchestration to discover simple musical form and expression.

6)   To bring home the idea that “just listening,” concentrating with an interactive imagination and  absorbing, IS participating.  This is how artists, composers, writers synthesize and interact with their environment.  Only after such immersion is “creativity” or the visible, tangible side of the creative act possible.  Oliver Sachs, in his most recent book, Musicophelia, describes in great detail how interactive one’s brain is listening to music well.  It is in no way a “passive” activity.

7)   To give some historical and otherwise factual background to the music being performed.  Other disciplines that are involved in this concert, pre-concert, and post-concert activities include: language, poetry and meter, mathematics, abstraction, written expression, aesthetics, meteorology, Western history, art history, Chinese history, geography, and philosophy.

8)   To give students an understanding of how detailed, specific, and sophisticated, yet enjoyable it is to work together (as an orchestra does) for a simultaneous common goal. 

Bay-Atlantic Symphony

Education Concerts: May 2008

Study Guides

PAGE 5: PRE-CONCERT  ACTIVITIES OVERVIEW (P-CA)

AND OBJECTIVES

Pre-Concert Activities (verbatim:  SEE Pages 8-14).  The script is the primary Pre-Concert Activity.  

 P-CA) PRIMARY Pre-Concert Activity (P-CA 1 - 4)—Script:  Read aloud and discuss  (pages 8 - 14 ).  Feel free to use Background information (pp. 15 - 28), which has some additional historical and geographical information. NB:  OPTIONAL  P-CAs  are my suggestions as to those that you might omit if you are short on time.  Clearly, you as the teacher should pick and choose those P-CAs that you feel are most appropriate (and enjoyable!) for you and your classes.

 NB: The remaining P-CAs are embedded in the text of the script (PAGES 8 -14 ).  You only need to follow the script, which will guide you as to appropriate times to undertake the following  activities .  The script will refer at appropriate moments to activity P-CA2), activity P-CA3), etc.

 OBJECTIVES of pre-concert activities:

1)   To familiarize the students with the music they will hear in the concert.

2)   To highlight narrative and expressions in music.  By highlighting orchestration and unusual sonorities and musical themes, students will gain an understanding of how music can paint a picture, and also how music is structured.

3)    To provide context—artistic, historical, musical, cultural for the music they will hear so the students can more easily relate the music to other disciplines they are studying.  It is also very likely that exposure to this may actually awaken an interest in other areas of study.

4)   IMPORTANT: To allow students the chance to explore the non-quantitative and intuitive side of music, the mysterious, magic of music (and art in general).

5)   To give students an understanding of the most basic building blocks in music, such as:  melody, rhythm, motives, orchestration, and dynamics.

6)   To give students several different ways of listening to the music: open-ended/multi-sensory, instrumentational, structural, comparative (using different building blocks—above #5) as they come up.

7)   To develop students’ ability to discuss music, art, and other non-quantitative subjects. 

8)   To develop students’ ability to write about art and music in a subjective manner.

9)   To develop students' understanding that performing (singing) and listening to orchestral music are just   different facets of the same basic activity.

Bay-Atlantic Symphony Education Concerts: May 2008 Study Guides

PAGE 6: POST-CONCERT  ACTIVITIES AND OBJECTIVES 

Possible Post-Concert Activities could include:

 1)   Asking the students to describe their response to hearing a piece performed.

2)   Asking the students to compare how the orchestra playing a passage helped them understand how music can paint a picture.

3)    Asking the students how the performance differed from hearing the CD in class.  Was there a different mood?  Was it more charged? Was it exciting to know that there would be no interruptions, and that the concert was an “uncorrectable” situation?  Did the  “nowness” of the concert lead to more engagement than the demonstrations or classroom listening?  Less?  Why?

4)   Asking the students how the discipline of musicians’ learning their instruments so well compares to that of a swimmer or football player.  (Again, try to avoid “more” or “less” in favor of what ways musical and athletic discipline might be similar or different.)

5)   Asking the students to draw to an excerpt (playing it again on CD) they heard, free-form.  (IMPORTANT:  Though it seems we have been repeating music over and over again, it is usually during exactly this kind of reinvestigation that true discovery—artistic, athletic, scientific—occurs.  Illustrious examples who have documented this process include Einstein, Da Vinci, Tolstoy, Scott Hamilton, Beethoven, etc.)  Asking them if they had a different sense of the music, now after hearing it more and in concert.  Asking them, if so, how it is reflected in their drawings.

6)   Asking the students to draw pictures of the orchestra, soloist, and/or conductor.

7)   Asking the students to write about any or any combination of the following—Probably better to give them lots of time for a couple questions, rather than too many questions and no time:

            a) How does this piece make you feel?

            b) What sounds did you hear?

            c) How do the musicians of the orchestra communicate with each other?  with the                                 audience?  with the conductor? 

d) How different is it seeing the orchestra live, from listening to the music on the CD?

            e) Why do you think the composer wrote for so many instruments?

f)  Which instrument(s) is/are your favorite?  Why?

            h) Why do we need to have music?  art?  concerts?  dance? plays?  film?

            I) Which was your favorite piece?  Why?

            j) Why do we need to have audiences?

k) Which would you most want to be: a composer, a conductor, orchestral musician? soloist?  Why?

l) Contemporary Playwright Bridget Carpenter described in an interview the fact that people did not understand that a large part of her “work” was just sitting and thinking, absorbing, letting ideas come.  Then the other half her time she spends writing after she has slowed her thinking down so she can really hear her thoughts.  What do you think of that idea?  Is listening to music like that?

m) After hearing this music, how would you describe the world of the symphony? Do you think Beethoven’s symphony sounded the same to them, living in Europe in 1808  as it does to us in the US today in 2008?  How about the Erhu for people who live in China?    

 OBJECTIVES of post-concert activities:

      1)   To reinforce the excitement of an engaging live performance of great symphonic music.

2)   To give students an understanding of the rigors and joys of musical performance, and, by extension, any application to a group discipline. 

3)   To unlock the notion of ideas in art.

4)   To give students further chance to concentrate on something aesthetic, multifaceted, and open-ended without feeling limited by purely quantitative encounter.

5)   To provide the opportunity for students to deepen an emotional, aesthetic, or even analytical response to music they have heard and studied.  To deepen their budding relationship to these pieces.

6)   To deepen the students’ contexts and facility with the language with which music talks.

7)   To bring home the idea that “just listening,” concentrating with an interactive imagination, absorbing, IS participating.  This is how artists, composers, writers synthesize and interact with their environment.  Only after such immersion is “creativity” or the visible, tangible side of the creative act possible.

8)   To gently reinforce some cultural or historical background to the music being performed.  Such points, I think, are most effective when lightly scored.  The students will probably respond well to question m (above), which should accomplish this objective. 

Bay-Atlantic Symphony

Education Concerts: May 2008

Study Guides

PAGE 8: PRIMARY PRE-CONCERT  ACTIVITY (P-CA1-PCA9):

Script

Background, musical examples,

(To be read to students and discussed)

One note: These pre-concert activities could  fill 2-3 full @45-minute class periods. However, one could pick and choose if necessary, or do one segment of it in less time.  It is a more detailed version of the script I will use for the concerts.  We will probably deviate somewhat from this script.  You will be the best judge as to how much class time you have to devote to this, and how much you will need.  It will work most effectively with the suggested CD mentioned (p. 1) under repertoire

IP-CA1 :  Even before you mention Beethoven or the Symphony, play the beginning of the third movement (Band 7). You should play it until you think the class is getting a good sense of the mood, or you could play the whole thing (5:34) if they seem into it right away. 

 P-CA2) :   “Today we are going to explore how symphony orchestras can paint a picture.  In fact we will listen to a piece of music that paints a picture, but without paper, paints, or brushes.  The paper in fact, is your imagination.  The paint is the sounds you will hear.  And the brushes are the instruments of the orchestra.  The piece is by music’s most famous composer, ‘Beethoven.’  Can you all say ‘Beethoven?’”  Have them repeat it until they are comfortable.  “His whole name was ‘Ludwig van Beethoven’.  Does anyone know what countries he lived in, and where he was from?  That’s right, Germany and Austria, in the city especially of Vienna.  So ‘Ludwig’ is just the German name for ‘Louis.’   Beethoven wrote many famous pieces.  One of his great pieces for orchestra is his 6th Symphony.  This piece was featured in the movie Fantasia.  It is also called the ‘pastoral’ Symphony.  Does anyone know what ‘pastoral’ means?  Pastoral means something having to do with nature.  He could have called it the ‘nature’ Symphony, or the ‘countryside’ Symphony.  But the word pastoral  also hints at something having to do with people living in the country, too.  People farming or attending to animals.

 P-CA 3 (hearing the CD):   “First, let’s listen to the tune for one of the livelier parts that Beethoven has written for us.  It is lively, but starts quietly, so you’ll have to listen carefully”  (CD BAND 7, 00:00 – 00:56)

 “Did the music stay quiet the whole time?” (no.)  How does the music sound to you?”  You might steer them to anything playful, dance-like, peasant-like, pastoralish, cheerful, etc.  Dance and folk dance (maybe even “River Dance” is an especially good starting point for the rest of the discussion.

 “Let’s hear the third movement of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony.  A ‘movement’ of a symphony is like a chapter in a book. It tells a large chunk of the story.  This movement, or chapter is about 5 minutes long.  It is in fact a dance and Beethoven has given this movement the following description:  ‘cheerful to be with the country-folk.’  Every 8 counts new people are involved in the dance.  It’s as though there are two lines in the country dance, and each group salutes or plays off the other

Play CD and narrate below: band 7 (entire) and allow it to move into band 8 (starts just at 5:34 of band 7).  Narrate the various sounds as you go.  You probably do not need to do much stop and start, but can just use times on the to flag elements in the musical landscape of the story, as the CD is playing.  Feel free to leave out some of the signposts I have provided, if you feel it is too much talk, or that the class is getting it.

00:00               “The beginning of the dance.

00:05               “The second group of dancers

00:10               “The first group again

00:15               “The 2nd group

00:20               “The first

00:25               “The 2nd, and now all together

00:54               “Now it quiets down for a solo dancer; you will hear the oboe.

01:16               “The clarinet takes over; there is more than one showoff!

01:23               “And the horn, each one more lively than the last

01:43               “Now the whole crowd joins in—a very vigorous foot stomping dance”
                           (music teachers only: you can show the difference between a fast one and this
                                 more deliberate 2/4 if you like here)

02:25               “A complete break, things got a little out of hand, people falling

 down…so let’s begin all over, calm again

02:32               “2nd group of dancers

02:37               “The first group again

02:42               “The 2nd group

02:47               “The first

02:52               “The 2nd, and now all together

03:22               “Now it quiets down for a solo dancer; you will hear the oboe.

03:43               “The clarinet takes over; there is more than one showoff!

03:50               “And the horn, each one more lively than the last

04:08               “Now the whole crowd joins in—a very vigorous foot stomping dance,

just as before”

04:52               “again a complete stop, it’ll all begin a 3rd time, but with a difference

05:04               “an interruption…you see, this movement leads directly into the next,

the Storm, so the people are moving quickly to avoid the downpour

05:34/Band 8—00:00

                        “The beginning of the 4th movement, storm” (allow to play till 01:00).

 Then STOP AND:

1) IF YOU HAVE TIME, repeat the third movement, when get to the storm, go to the narration below   You might leave out some description this time, or let the students add some. 

2) IF YOU DO NOT HAVE TIME, start again at band 8 and use the following narration.

00:03               “light rain drops”

00:06               “a menacing breeze

00:12               “the wind kicking up

00:17               “raindrops again, in the violins

00:25               “Here comes the full storm, and full orchestra

00:45               “Thunder and lightening

00:59               “more lightening

02:06               “the piccolo as the highest screeching wind of the storm”

02:31               “final blasts

02:42               “the storm moves out

03:07               “thunder in the distance

03:27               “a rainbow in the oboe

03:34               “and more colors to the rainbow….leads to ….the fifth movement

 03:47/Band 9—00:00

                        “5th movement: The clarinet offers a melody, from one hilltop

00:09               “The horn replies from another hilltop

00:20               “violins begin the main tune

00:40               “it’s repeated, more fully with more instruments

00:57               “finally the horns sing it out in full glory

01:12               STOP and Pause

“Beethoven called this last movement: Shepherd’s Song: Happy and thankful Feelings after the storm”  It is in fact a hymn.  We can add some words—these are NOT Beethoven’s—to this hymn.  Something like this:  (sing to demonstrate with the main tune we have just heard) 

“Thank You, we thank You

The Storm has blown away.

Along the strem’s bank, you

Can now come out—it’s Okay!”

 Have the students sing this, as many times as you can.
 “Beethoven will play this tune a lot in the beginning, as we heard, and then he will alternate it with other melodies and detours in the orchestra.  But the tune comes back.  Here’s the catch:  when it comes back it’s usually varied, or changed.  That means that you can ‘hear’ the tune—kind of—in the background, and Beethoven hints at it and keeps the harmony the same, so you ‘feel’ the tune, but he doesn’t usually give it to us as we have heard it.  This is very much how a jazz musician improvises.  A jazz musician will play music that fits in with the tune that he or she is improvising on.  Sometimes, Beethoven will hint at the tune and then abandon it.  It’s as though he is teasing us, reminding us about it, but saying, ‘no don’t really mean it—yet.’  Then, when the real tune comes back it’s even more satisfying.  Let’s hear the movement, and we can lightly sing along when the tune (we call it a ‘theme’ in music) returns.”  (play all of Band 9 with the guide below, telling you when to have the class lightly sing the tune, with lyrics, along with the CD.

00:00                           “Clarinet introduction

00:09                           “Horn replies.

00:18                           “Here’s the theme.” (sing lyrics:  Thank you, etc.)

00:40                           2nd time

00:57                           3rd time

02:20                           “The theme” (sing with them)

02:40                           sing again, but it stops after, “Thank you we thank you the storm

has blown away.”                               

02:58                           “Now Beethoven takes us to a more cheerful tune, in the

clarinets.

03:40                           “A hint of the theme”

04:18                           “A variation! Follow the tune.”   (sing along if you can)

04:37                           Again

04:54                           Again

05:09                           “From here the variations turn away more and more.  It’s as though we have given
                                     our hymn of thanks, and then we go about our lives, still having those
                                     feelings as we move along in our day.”

08:44                           “Here, Beethoven gives us a final moment of calm and thought
                                     enjoying the peace and beauty of a nature restored to quiet after the playful
                                     dance and fierce storm.”
 

 P-CA 4:   Play all three interconnected movements through.  Sign-post various elements as indicated above, but maybe only highlighting the biggest moves, such as the return to the original dance music in the 3rd movement, the beginning of the storm (4th movement), thunder and lightening, and the rainbow.  Also highlight the beginning of the 5th movement and the hymn theme.

OPTIONAL P-CA 5:  “Beethoven himself said about the Pastoral Symphony that it was ‘more an expression of moods than painting.’  Yet the program you will be attending is called, ‘how music can paint.’  Do you think music can ‘paint pictures?’  How about just paint moods?  Certainly we can with our modern technology give a more ‘exact’ impression of the sounds of a storm.  Beethoven could probably, even with the instruments in his orchestra made the orchestra sound more ‘realistic.’  Why do think he chose not to?  What is gained by showing something exactly?  Why do painters not always want to make their paintings look just like a photograph?  Is art supposed to always try to be as close to ‘real life’ as possible?  Why not?”

             NB:  If skipping the following 2 optional p-ca’s go to page 13

 for a p-ca 8 about the erhu.

 OPTIONAL P-CA 6: (advanced) Hymn Meter:  “Beethoven uses ‘hymn meter’ for his theme in the last movement of the Pastoral Symphony.  In poetry we talk about ‘stresses.’  A stress simply means a word that receives a little extra umph when you say it. Hymn meter alternates a line with four stresses, and a line with three stresses.  Then this pattern repeats.  Here is our ‘poem,’ our words that we fit to Beethoven’s music.  I will show you with my hand the ‘stresses.’

             THANK  YOU  we THANK YOU

                        1      2                3           4

            The STORM  has BLOWN  a-WAY.

                        1                      2                  3

            a-LONG THE stream’s BANK, YOU

                     1         2                        3         4

            can NOW come OUT—it’s O-kay!

                        1                 2               3

“Another poem that is hymn meter, not surprisingly, is the hymn, Amazing Grace.  Most poems by the famous American writer Emily Dickinson is in hymn meter.  Here is a particularly beautiful one that, except for the first line follows that pattern:

             Hope is the thing with feathers

            That perches in the soul,

            And sings the tune without words,

            And never stops at all,

 
            And sweetest in the gale is heard;

            And sore must be the storm

            That could abash the little bird

            That kept so many warm.

            I’ve heard it in the chillest land,

            And on the strangest sea:

            Yet, never, in extremity,

            It asked a crumb of me. 

OPTIONAL P-CA 7:   Play the first movement of the Pastoral Symphony (or if you prefer the same three, or one of the three movements you have been working on..  Ask students to write or discuss further their reactions to the music.  Questions can be direct (with clear choice) as well as open-ended.  Also, please feel free to point out any observations that will help them remember and have closer contact with the music.  Here is a chance to really show enthusiasm for the music, too.  Here are some questions, but please feel free to explore others as they arise:

Direct: I) Is this piece generally

                                    a) loud or soft?

                                    b) fast or slow

c) (if applicable) bumpy or smooth (or both, at different times)?, awkward or graceful?

                                    d) beautiful?  scary? grand (big) or secretive (private, mysterious)?

Open-ended:   II) How else does the music make you feel?

Open-ended:   III) When you shut your eyes, do you see anything in particular?  (I wouldtry NOT to
                               steer them towards any specific image.)

Direct:             IV) What instruments do you hear? 

Open-ended:   V) In what other ways do you do think each of these pieces are like each other? 
                                  How are they different?  VI) Why is harmony important in music?  Rhythm? Instrumentation (using different instruments)? 
                               How do different kinds of harmony change the mood of the music?
                               (There is really more than one “right” answer for this) 
                                Does all music tell a story?  (No right answer!) 

P-CA 8:  The Erhu: “The erhu (pronounced arHHU) is a Chinese two-stringed violin, dating back about 1000 years.  It is older than the violins that you are used to hearing.  It has a very haunting sound.  It is very common to hear slides, or swooping sounds on the erhu, which makes it a very expressive instrument.”  (play an example from the Wikipedia article on page 27)  “How does the instrument sound to you?  Does it sound similar to the violin you are used to?  How so?  How not?  Have you heard it before?  Have any of you played the erhu, or know someone who does?  The erhu has the bowed threaded between two strings.”  (Show picture, from Wikipedia article or elsewhere.)  “Until recently, the erhu has been mostly just a folk instrument.  Because of great performers, virtuosos as we call them in music, the instrument is being discovered as having many different kinds of expression.  It can paint more moods that we used to think.  You will hear some in the concert.  Because the piece you will hear in the concert is new, written by a modern composer, we cannot hear the piece in advance.  But you will get to hear some of it at the concert.”

P-CA 9 (very optional):  CLOSING:   “We have spent some time in class now becoming familiar with two beautiful pieces of music.  You will get to hear the music played live by the Bay-Atlantic Symphony.  Nothing that you hear on a CD can compare to the excitement of hearing a live orchestra and being a part of a live audience that actively listens!  We can have more discussions about the orchestra and the pieces you hear after the concert.  I can’t wait to hear the concert myself, because being part of an audience in a concert is one of the most magical experiences in life!”

Ludwig van Beethoven

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Beethoven" redirects here. For other uses, see Beethoven (disambiguation).

  A portrait by Joseph Karl Stieler, 1820

Ludwig van Beethoven (December 16, 1770 [1] – March 26, 1827) was a German composer and virtuoso pianist. He was an important figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western classical music, and remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.

Born in Bonn, Germany, he moved to Vienna, Austria, in his early twenties and settled there, studying with Joseph Haydn and quickly gaining a reputation as a virtuoso pianist. Beethoven's hearing gradually deteriorated beginning in his twenties, yet he continued to compose masterpieces, and to conduct and perform, even after he was completely deaf.

Contents

 Biography

Further information: Life and work of Ludwig van Beethoven and Van Beethoven Family

Early life and talent

 Kurfürstliches Schloss (Electoral Prince's Castle) in Bonn, where the Beethoven family had been active since the 1730s

Beethoven's parents were Johann van Beethoven (1740 in Bonn –1792) and Maria Magdalena Keverich (1744 in Ehrenbreitstein–1787). Magdalena's father Johann Heinrich Keverich had been Chef at the court of the Archbishopric of Trier at Festung Ehrenbreitstein fortress opposite to Koblenz.[2] Beethoven was, like their first child Ludwig Maria, named after his father's father Lodewijk van Beethoven (1712–1773), a musician of Roman Catholic Flemish ancestry who was at one time Kapellmeister at the court of Clemens August of Bavaria, the Prince-Archbishop-Elector of Cologne, and who married Beethoven's grandmother Maria Josepha Ball (1714–1775) in 1733.

Beethoven was born in Bonn,