Despite his father's hopes, Beethoven made little impact on the musical
        world until he was 11, when he left school and became assistant organist to
        Christian Gottlob Neefe at the court of Bonn, receiving instruction from him
        and other musicians. In 1783 he became the continuo player for Bonn opera,
        and accompanied their rehearsals on the keyboard. In 1787 he was sent to
        Vienna to receive further instruction, and took some lessons from Mozart.
        However, he returned in two months, called back by the death of his mother.

        In 1789 he started to play the viola in the Opera Orchestra, while also
        composing and teaching. In 1790 he met Haydn, who agreed to teach him in
        Vienna, and Beethoven moved to Vienna permanently. There he also studied
        with Albrechtsberger and, possibly, Salieri. He was befriended by Prince
        Karl Lichnowsky (to whom he dedicated his Piano Sonata in C Minor, the
        Pathétique ). Lichnowsky was the first of many friends to give him financial
        support throughout his working life. In 1795 he performed in public in
        Vienna for the first time, and published his Op.1 trios and Op.2 piano
        sonatas. Subsequent appearances in Prague, Dresden, and Berlin brought
        him growing fame as a pianist, and especially as an improviser.

        Beethoven's creative life is traditionally divided into three periods. In the
        first (1792--1802), the individuality of his style gradually developed, and
        he composed mainly for the piano. Among these works were his Symphony
        no.1 in C (1800) and Symphony no.2 in D (1802), his first six quartets, and
        the Pathétique (1799). The Moonlight Sonata in C Sharp Minor (1801)
        heralded the begining of the second period.

        In 1802 Beethoven suffered seriously from depression, brought about by a
        realization that his hearing problems, first noticed in 1796, were becoming
        critical and would lead to incurable deafness. Deafness did not effect his
        ability to compose, but it curtailed his ability to perform and teach (as all
        communication with him had to be through written notes). In his despair he
        wrote a will-like document to his two brothers, known as the
        "Heliegenstadt Testament", in which he confessed his misery and indicated
        that he felt close to death. He recovered, however, and the works of this
        middle period, known as his "heroic period', show him determined to strive
        creatively in the face of despair - in his own words "seizing fate by the
        throat'.

        His third symphony (twice the then normal length for a symphony) was
        originally dedicated to Napoleon Bonaparte, whom he saw as a
        revolutionary hero and liberator. But when Beethoven heard Napoleon had
        proclaimed himself emperor, he defaced the title page in disillusionment
        and called the work Eroica (1803). Other works during this period include
        the Kreuzer Sonata (1803), symphonies 3--7, the Violin Concerto in D
        Major (1806), the Razumovsky Quartets (1806), the Emperor Concerto
        (1809), and the Archduke Trio Op.97 (1811).

        In his only opera, Fidelio (written 1805, revised 1806 and 1814), the
        dominating themes are fidelity, personal liberation, and a symbolic passage
        from darkness into light. That married infidelity is central to the opera
        probably reflects Beethoven's desire to marry. At the time of the
        composition he was deeply in love with a socially unattainable pupil,
        Josephine von Brunsvik. In 1801 he had wanted to marry Countess Giulietta
        Guicciardi, also a pupil, to whom he had dedicated the Moonlight Sonata,
        but she eventually married someone else in 1803. Beethoven always
        regretted not marrying, but even his love for Therese Malfatti in 1810 ended
        without marriage. On his death a letter, written in 1812, was found among
        his belongings. It was addressed to his "Immortal Beloved", and various
        suppositions have been made about the identity of the recipient (if, indeed,
        it had ever been sent). It seems, however, that despite his yearning for
        marriage Beethoven was probably too absorbed in his music and too
        emotionally high-charged to sustain such a relationship.

        From 1813 (the beginning of his third period, also known as the "silent
        period') he composed less, and his domestic life became increasingly
        chaotic. He lived in squalor and dressed negligently, although he was
        always a prolific bather, and theories about the cause of his deafness
        stemming from rheumatic inflammation centre around his habit of pouring
        cold water over his head while composing, to refresh himself, and then not
        drying his plentiful hair, but impatiently working or walking with it wet in
        all weather.

        He became increasingly argumentative and irascible as he became more and
        more tormented by his deafness. In 1812, Goethe described him as "an
        utterly untamed personality', whose aggressive attitude to life was perhaps
        understandable but not easy to live with. However, despite his difficult
        personality and anti-social eccentricities, the poet Franz Grillparzer, who
        wrote a funeral address for Beethoven, summed up the feelings of
        Beethoven's friends with these words: "despite all these absurdities, there
        was something so touching and ennobling about him that one could not help
        admiring him and feeling drawn to him'.

        Beethoven gave his last public performance on the piano in 1814, but
        continued to be respected as an important composer by Viennese society,
        despite his unkemptness and arrogance. His achievements in the last decade
        of his life include the Diabelli Variations (1820--3), the last piano sonatas,
        the last six string quartets, the Mass in D Major, Missa solemnis (1823),
        and the Choral Symphony, no. 9 (1824) - in which he set An die Freude
        (Ode to Joy) by Friedrich von Schiller in the final movement. (Beethoven
        greatly admired the work of Schiller and Goethe; the emotion of Sturm und
        Drang.