During the composition of his Second Symphony, Beethoven was much different from the man who would come to epitomize the Romantic artist. For the first time, he had disclosed his secret of ...

The Second Symphony sets up some concepts the composer had already begun to think about in his early string quartets, in particular the Op 18 ones. His chamber music at this time – the piano sonatas, ...

Beethoven was 19 in 1790, when he was commissioned to write a cantata on the death of the enlightened Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II. He delivered it late, the musicians found it too difficult to play, ...

Beethoven's symphony's form one of the most important bodies of work in musical history. The third, the fifth and the ninth get all the headlines and are generally the most well-loved, but the first ...

The beginning of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is known the world over, yet the opening motif is only four notes long. Music researchers have long wondered — is fate really knocking on the door at the ...

Although the Fifth Symphony is considered one of Beethoven's greatest musical works, at the time of its premiere the composer's contemporaries were still smitten with his Third Symphony (the "Eroica") ...

To celebrate the genius’ work almost two centuries after his death, a team of experts warmed up to add the final note to Beethoven’s unfinished opus. In 2020, Ludwig van Beethoven would have turned ...