Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist whose music stands at the transition from the Classical period to nineteenth-century Romanticism. Born in Bonn in 1770, he moved to Vienna in 1792 and spent the rest of his life there. He established an international reputation through works for piano, chamber ensembles, orchestra, chorus, and the stage. His major output includes nine symphonies, the opera Fidelio, piano sonatas and concertos, string quartets, the Mass in C, and the Missa solemnis. Progressive hearing loss increasingly restricted his public performance; by 1818 written conversation books had become necessary for ordinary communication.

Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, first performed in Vienna on May 7, 1824, is especially important to later hymnody because its finale incorporates Friedrich Schiller's poem on joy. The well-known melodic theme from that finale was not composed as a congregational hymn tune, but nineteenth-century church musicians adapted it for sacred texts. It eventually became widely identified in hymnals as HYMN TO JOY or ODE TO JOY. Beethoven died in Vienna in 1827, leaving a body of work whose influence extends across symphonic, chamber, keyboard, sacred, and choral music.