He was born on December 16th, 1770 (Bonn, Germany)

Son of Johann van Beethoven and Maria Magdalena Keverich.

At age 12 he was assistant organist Christian Gottlob Neefe, with whom he studied. In 1787 he traveled to Vienna, but his mother fell ill and returned to Bonn almost immediately. His mother died in 1787 due to tuberculosis and lack of proper nutrition.

Johann, her husband, after the death of his father, started drinking and getting little money into alcohol leaving his family literally was spent in misery.

Travel to Vienna for the second time in November 1792 to study with Joseph Haydn. His father died a month later and in 1795 his two brothers joined him.

He earned his living giving concerts, teaching piano and sales of his compositions. The members of the Viennese aristocracy were their employers and in 1809, Prince Kinsky, Prince Lobkowitz and Archduke Rudolph guaranteed him an annual income with the only condition that they resided in Vienna.

His first six string quartets, op.18, dating from 1798 to 1800, the symphony of 1800 and 1801 and an oratorio, Christ on the Mount of Olives, en1802-1803. A general increase in the proportions of rhetorical power in the works of Beethoven in the 1798-1802 period culminates with the highly dramatic compositions mark the beginning of the Middle period in 1803. The first of these -The Third Symphony (Eroica, 1803) the Fidelio (1803-1805) and the Waldstein (1804) Appassionata sonatas and opera (1804) - have a heroic touch that seems to respond to the emotions provoked by Beethoven's deafness.

In the works composed of about 1806-1812, this heroic character alternates with an Olympic serenity. The symphonies and chamber works from this period features are the Fourth (1806), Fifth (1805-1807) symphonies, and Sixth (1807-1808); the number Fourth Piano Concertos (1805-1806) and Fifth (Emperor, 1809); Violin Concertos (1806); the Rasumovs; Coroliana Overture (1807); and incidental music for Goethe's drama called Egmont (1810). This monumental style of the middle period began to lose its appeal to Beethoven after 1812, the year of the Seventh and Eighth symphonies. The years 1813 and 1814 are not rich in new jobs and at the beginning of 1815 his music became generally less dramatic and introspective. In particular, he favored the procedures of variation and fugue in which the hidden implications of these issues emerge gradually.

High quality expressive of all music of Beethoven inspired and encouraged poetic interpretations in a century of instrumental works with programmatic romantic overtones. Beethoven himself a powerful symbol, the prototype of the modern hero-artist as opposed to the artist-craftsman became pre-revolutionary Europe. His fierce independence and success over personal adversity, especially in dramatically conceived work the middle period made him a model for those later composers such as Wagner who taught or shown through art.

His last 30 years of life was marked by a series of personal crises, the first was his deafness. The first symptoms, notable for the composer and before 1800, affected him socially musically. His despair two friends appear in letters in 1801 and in a document addressed to his brothers in late 1802 and now known as the "Heiligenstadt Testament". A second crisis was a decade after the break with a woman (probably Antonie Brentano, the wife of a friend). There were several Loves Beethoven including Giucciardi Giulietta, Countess of sixteen, student of Beethoven, was a stormy love, she dedicated the immortal "Moonlight" sonata. Nevertheless, it was rejected in all marriage proposals he made. He never married and left descendants.

On March 26th, 1827, Ludwig Van Beethoven died in Vienna.