Before being the large musician of the romantic century, Beethoven seems the incarnation even genius, of which it carries the mark in his flesh: its deafness signs its image of solitary prophet. Folded up on itself, it excites the individual, of which it greeted all the metamorphoses, of the Utopia rousseauist to the seraphic sublimation of “the Anthem to the joy”, via the ambiguous adventure of the Napoleonean destiny.

Impregnated faith in the man and spirit of the Lights, the music of Beethoven falls under the classicism inherited Haydn and Mozart. In spite of its new impetuosity and its contrasts, it remains faithful at the same time to the traditional rules and the requirement for balance of the composition.

Born from a father musician of court with the service of the prince-bishops, just like his grandfather, Ludwig are already able, at twelve years, to assist the organist Christian Gottlob Neefe, his professor of music. He however never becomes the child prodigy of which his/her father had dreamed.

Sent to Vienna in 1787, it must return soon in its birthplace because of the disease of his mother, who dies a few months later. The guard of his/her two young brothers, Kaspar Karl and Nikolaus Johann, is entrusted to him in 1789, at the time of retirement of his/her father, become alcoholic. Three years later, it since it is necessary to new Bonn for Vienna, where he studies at Joseph Haydn and of Albrechtsberger.

In 1794, the occupation of the Rhineland by the French forces breaks the last bonds which attach it to this area, and deprives it of the subsidies granted by the court. Beethoven will not leave any more Vienna, if it is not for some concerts in the cities close or for long stays to summer in the countryside; in 1796, the only long voyage which he undertakes will lead it in Prague, Dresden and Berlin.

Not occupying any official function in Austria, Beethoven provides for his requirements by giving concerts, by teaching the piano and by selling some of his works. The aristocracy Viennese opens her living rooms with this exceptionally gifted pianist for the improvisation and brings its assistance to the stripped composer: in 1809, princes Kinsky and Lobkowitz and the Rodolphe archduke guarantee an annual income to him.

The thirty last years of its life are however remembered by a series of personal dramas, of which the first is the appearance of deafness. As of before 1800, the symptoms of this evil affect it in its life more than in its work. Despair then resignation which seizes him appear clearly in its correspondence and the “Will of Heiligenstadt”, a document addressed to his/her brothers towards the end of 1802. The composer overcomes however this difficult moment and composes in the following years a series of particularly innovative triumphal works (3rd, 5th, 6th symphonies).

Ten years later, another crisis is born from the rupture of its relations with “the immortal beloved” (probably Amalie Sebald or Therese Brunswick), never identified exactly by its biographers; it is however there the female passion most intensely lived by Beethoven, with whom them women appeared often inaccessible. The apathy in which this episode plunges reduces its creative activity considerably. Who more is, his deafness worsens: to play in public becomes impossible to him and, to communicate with its interlocutors, it needs a slate or paper (its “books of conversation”). Then in 1815, with the death of his/her brother Kaspar Karl, five years of legal battles start: Beethoven wants to see himself entrusting the guard of his Karl nephew, then nine years old, in whom it places his last hope of family life. When, during the summer 1826, Karl tries to commit suicide, the composer saw an ultimate drama: its health starts to decline and it dies out in Vienna, on on March 26th, 1827.

Raised between a sick mother and an alcoholic father, Beethoven hoped for all his life to create the plain family of which it had been deprived, child. The absence of a shared love and the precariousness of its financial position undoubtedly contributed to forge this figure of fighter to torrential vitality: “I never yet saw an artist more strongly concentrated, more energetic, more interior”, Goethe in this connection will acknowledge after their first meeting.

Impulsive, irritable, but liking the joke, the jokes and the puns, the composer at every moment affirms his intense need for freedom: he hates to exploit order, refuses to be useful or to like, its sympathy to the French revolution and the English democracy posts.

During all its life, he endeavors to control his sensitivity on the surface of skin: “The artists are of fire, they do not cry.” Beethoven, whom one sometimes believed, wrongly, misanthropist, is obsessed by the idea of a fraternal world, of a peaceful humanity: “All the men are brothers”, his message in the Ode with the joy of Schiller protests, which it puts in music in the final one of its 9th Symphony.

The first period of the career of the composer, who extends from the end of the year 1780 up to 1802, testifies to a progressive control of the traditional style, marked previously by Haydn and Mozart. Since 1792, it forges its language, in addition to the lessons of its Masters, by the reading of the most beautiful partitions of this time. During these years, he writes mainly piano compositions and works of room and does not approach whereas with prudence great kinds: its first six string quartets go back to 1798-1800, its first symphony of 1800 and its single oratorio, Christ with the 1802-1803, Mount of Olives.

The second period is marked by some partitions of a great dramatic value: the 3rd symphony (known as “heroic”, 1803-1804), an opera (Fidelio, 1803-1805, whose two versions are known under the title of Léonore) and, for the piano, the sonatas Waldstein (1804) and Appassionata (1806). In works of the following years, this passion moderates of a quasi Olympian serenity: at this point in time see the day 4th (1806), 5th (1805-1807) and 6th (1807-1808) symphonies, 4th (1804-1808) and 5th (1809) concertos for piano, the Concerto for violin (1806), the Quartets Razoumovski (1806), the opening of Coriolan (1807), the made up music for Egmont de Goethe (1810) or the trio With the archduke (1811).

After 1812, year of 7th and 8th symphonies, Beethoven gives up the monumental style which characterizes its period of maturity; as from 1815, its music is done even less dramatic and more interior. This third manner marks the vocal cycle With the remote beloved (1816), the last sonatas for piano and the ultimate string quartets. He then forsakes often the traditional forms, particularly is fond of the running away and the variations which make it possible to reveal little by little the hidden virtues of its topics. It however sometimes happens to him to return to the heroic style of the former years (sonata Hammerklavier, 1817-1818; Missa Solemnis, 1813-1823; 9th Symphony, 1823); but it can find there, in a very personal synthesis, always renewed modes of expression.

The music of Beethoven always appeared in the repertory of the full orchestras. Its works had even a direct influence on the romantic generation which succeeded to him: the Great Symphony in major “C” of Schubert, the Italian Symphony of Mendelssohn, the Symphony in “C” of Wagner or the 1st symphony of Brahms are dependant on these models among which 6th and 9th symphonies undoubtedly caused the most echoes. The descriptive character of this 6th symphony (“pastoral”) indeed deeply marked works with program of Berlioz, even the later symphonic poems. As for the association of the voices and instruments of the 9th symphony, it caused a series of orchestral compositions marked by the same variety of the forms of expression: of Romeo and Juliette de Berlioz with the gigantic partitions mahlériennes.

Its many innovations, in particular the increase in the instrumental manpower of the symphony - that Beethoven defined as his natural elements (“When I hear something in me, it is the full orchestra”), the new importance given to the development and the variation, the innovative language of its last works, which were hardly understood before 1850, fertilized the imagination of the creators during several decades.

But Beethoven became especially a powerful symbol, the prototype of the modern artist, contrasting with the musician craftsman of prerevolutionary Europe. Its savage independence and its painful fight against the adversity - particularly in the compositions of the intermediate period - made of him the model of the composers who, like Wagner later, reflect the musical art with the service of the Idea.