Like Thoreau, Beethoven came on the world’s stage “just in the nick of time,” and almost immediately had to begin hewing out a path for himself.  He was born in the workshop, as was Mozart, and learned music simultaneously with speaking.  Stirring times they were in which he first saw the light, and so indeed continued with ever-increasing intensity, like a good drama, until nearly his end.  The American Revolution became an accomplished fact during his boyhood.  Nearer home, events were fast coming to a focus, which culminated in the French Revolution.  The magic words, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and the ideas for which they stood, were everywhere in the minds of the people.  The age called for enlightenment, spiritual growth.

On reaching manhood, he found a world in transition; he realized that he was on the threshold of a new order of things, and with ready prescience took advantage of such as could be utilized in his art.  Through Beethoven the resources of the orchestra were increased, an added range was given the keyboard of the piano, the human voice was given tasks that at the time seemed impossible of achievement.  He established the precedent, which Wagner acted on later, of employing the human voice as a tool, an instrument, to be used in the exigencies of his art, as if it were a part of the orchestra.

Beethoven’s birthplace, Bonn, no doubt proved a favorable soil for the propagation of the new ideas.  The unrest pervading all classes, an outcome of the Revolution, showed itself among the more serious-minded in increased intellectuality, and a reaching after higher things.  This Zeitgeist is clearly reflected in his compositions, in particular the symphonies and sonatas.  “Under the lead of Italian vocalism,” said Wagner, speaking of the period just preceding the time of which we write, “music had become an art of sheer agreeableness.”  The beautiful in music had been sufficiently exploited by Mozart and Haydn.  Beethoven demonstrated that music has a higher function than that of mere beauty, or the simple act of giving pleasure.  The beautiful in literature is not its best part.  To the earnest thinker, the seeker after truth, the student who looks for illumination on life’s problem, beauty in itself is insufficient.  It is the best office of art, of Beethoven’s art in particular, that it leads ever onward and upward; that it acts not only on the esthetic and moral sense, but develops the mental faculties as well, enabling the individual to find a purpose and meaning in life.

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Ludwig van Beethoven was born at Bonn, December 16, 1770.  He came of a musical family.  His father and grandfather were both musicians at Bonn, at the Court of the Elector of Cologne.  The family originally came from Louvain, and settled in Antwerp in 1650, from which place they moved to Bonn.