Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn to a family of musicians; his alcoholic father drove him relentlessly at the keyboard, hoping for another Mozart. The prodigy emerged, but not the compliant one his father wanted. Beethoven moved to Vienna at 21, studied briefly with Haydn, and conquered the city as a pianist of unprecedented power and improvisation. Then, in his late twenties, the unthinkable: he began to go deaf. The Heiligenstadt Testament (1802), a letter to his brothers never sent, reveals his despair, he considered suicide but resolved to live for his art. 'I will seize Fate by the throat,' he wrote. What followed was a creative explosion: the Eroica Symphony (originally dedicated to Napoleon, until Beethoven furiously scratched out the dedication when Napoleon crowned himself Emperor), the Fifth Symphony with its iconic four-note fate motif, the Emperor Concerto, the opera Fidelio.