Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) is known in our days as one of the greatest composers throughout history with W.A. Mozart and J.S. Bach at his side. Among his works you can find “The Moonlight Sonata” and “Für Elise”. He did not write as many works as Mozart or Bach, but that is only because he was a perfectionist; he re-wrote his works several times before he was happy. He had his first performance at an age of 7, at Cologne in Köln, Germany. As his father wanted to create a “new Mozart”, a wonder child, he announced the boy as 6 years old instead. It is kind of ironic, because even Ludwig himself believed in his father, and through the rest of his life he thought he was one year younger than he actually was. In 1787 he went to Vienna and met Mozart, and became a pupil to Joseph Haydn among other famous composers.
Beethoven died in 1827, after a cold had taken other life-long health problems up to the surface. It is estimated that somewhere between 10000 and 30000 came to his funeral. If you compare it to Mozart’s funeral, where the few people that came fled from the rain before he was lowered into the ground, it was quite respectful and it shows that he was not only appreciated after his life, as many artists are, but during his life as well.
The reason Beethoven is so special among many composers in history is that he had a reduction of his hearing half of his life. In 1801 he felt it for the first time and during a period of 17 years he became almost completely deaf. During some time he thought about taking his own life, but chose to keep going, as he had so much more within music to discover. It is a great accomplishment to be recognized as one of the greatest within music history and being deaf. He had to know how every note sounded, without hearing it, to write anything, and I think he managed pretty well.
Within music the quote “It was better back then” fits right in. You may be disagreeing with me on that point, but think about it. The music we have today might sound better to you, but if you look at how it is performed classical music is the clear winner. In today’s music you use our modern technology to make it sound right, and any kid with some money can record a song and then autotune it to make it sound better. They did not have anything like that back then. All they had was hard work and raw talent. Therefore, the music was better back then.
What do you think? Is it right to compare there greatest works with ours?
/Sebastian Carlshamre
Well in one way i can agree with you but many songs nowadays is actually pretty advanced...maybe not hole songs but I'am mostly thinking about different guitar-solon in for example hard rock...but while I'am not a big fan of that kind of music does I agree with you.
good entry!
Great job, great entry!
I totally agree with you when you mention that they had to have raw talent because they couldn't remix a song or have their piano performances on playback but I think that this is a whole different genre of music. Although I think that they had more talent back then, I would not listen to this kind of music, so if you ask me if this kind of music is better than modern music, I would say no but I think that they had more talent. When you say that they had to work harder I don't really agree with you because it is so much more that is included in performances nowadays. For example I went to a Lady Gaga concert and she danced for the entire four hours, and each dance had a different choreography, that is pretty hard work!
Really good and interesting article!
This is like apples and oranges in my mind. I don't think classical music should be compared with the popular music of today, there is too much difference. The most obvious and biggest difference being the human voice. Rather compare it to the likes of Hans Zimmer who's doing orchestra music, and are often heared in the movies. (i.e. The Lion King) However there has been some great music geniuses since Beethoven, John Lennon, David Bowie and Paul Simon to name a few.
Once again, nicely written!
Very nice article!
I think that these two genres are very different as Kimia said, although i presume that you mean hard work to make the song(or composition)? If that is the case then I clearly think that the classical music was harder to create. If you look at the structure of the music there are so many more complex things to find in a classical composition, the combination of many different chords and scales etc., but i also agree with Jakob that the solos in hard rock for example are also very tough.
