250th Anniversary of the Birth of Ludwig Van Beethoven.

Beethoven is a genius that requires no introduction and whose music can be heard everywhere. Who has never heard the first movement of Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Opus 67 by Ludwig van Beethoven?.His melodies can be found in the most important Concert Halls and in the ring tones from mobile telephones.The music of  Beethoven is played more than any other musicians, being an example of this, his 9th Symphony, which has been played more than any other piece of music.

Beethoven led an extraordinary evolution at his time. After having taken Classical music to its highest forms, he left behind its forms and proposed new forms based on passion and melancholy ,on the true belief that `Man´ was the force and center of the universe. It was the beginning of the Romantic period in music. Beethoven took a step beyond the rigid forms of Classical composition and let music grow closer to art, literature and theatre. 

Beethoven was born and raised in Bonn. He was baptized on December 17, 1770. He was born into a family of highly respected musicians and composers. Johann van Beethoven, his father, was therefore the first to find musical abilities in his son, becoming his first music teacher. Like in so many cases in history, he became very strict and abusive in what respected to the musical education of his son, Ludwig. At the tender age of seven, performed for the first time in public and at the age of twelve published his first official composition – a set of nine variations for piano. When Beethoven was sixteen years old, he travelled to Vienna to study under Mozart, although there is no documentation of these meetings. Mozart is reported to have said about Beethoven: “Watch this young man; he will yet make a noise in the world”.

His life is marked by an heroic fight to develop his career as a musician and composer, in spite of the fact that from the age of 25 he started to experience a loss of hearing and he became deaf entirely by 46.

When he died in 1827, around 20,000 people attended his funeral. Among them was the musician Schubert who had never met him but was a great admired of the `maestro´ of all times.