It is hard to admire Beethoven's Fur Elise or Moonlight Sonata because they are so frequently played in commercials, on cell phones, and by piano students everywhere. But it is equally difficult not to admire the composer, who wrote so many other powerful and memorable pieces.

Before Beethoven, musicians were considered inferior in status to the rich and the powerful, but Beethoven asserted that he was not merely their equal, that he was in fact better than them. Goethe wrote about Beethoven: "Never have I met an artist of such spiritual concentration and intensity, such vitality and great-heartedness. I can well understand how hard he must find it to adapt to the world and its ways." It wasn't hard in fact, because Beethoven didn't try. The world had to adapt to him.

Like most other geniuses, Beethoven was not known for being a pleasant, nice person. His apartment was incredibly messy. One visitor, Baron de Tremont, described it as "the darkest, most disorderly place imaginable -- blotches of moisture covered the ceiling; an oldish grand piano, on which the dust disputed the place with various pieces of engraved and manuscript music; under the piano (I do not exaggerate) an unemptied chamber pot..."

Beethoven was clearly gifted from a very early age. He was born on December 16, 1770, and raised by a musician-father, who hoped to make him into a second Mozart. But Ludwig would not agree to being anyone other than himself. He had supreme confidence in his abilities, and though he had a few lessons with Haydn and possibly Mozart, he did not play by anyone else's rules.

He became famous through his revolutionary piano playing. Instead of maximizing the elegantness of style he played with force, shocking and wowing the audience simultaneously. Beethoven's genius was his passport to high society, but he was not at all impressed by it. And though he would always sit at the host's side and not at the servants' table like Mozart and Haydn before him, women from high society would not consider marrying him. Though Beethoven talked about getting married, he always fell in love with women who were above him in class and were, hence, unattainable.

In his early days in Vienna everything was going swimmingly. Beethoven had more commissions than he could handle, and was getting very good prices from the publishers. But then he began to lose his hearing. He wrote to a friend in Bonn: "In the theater I must get very close to the orchestra in order to understand the actor. If I am a little too distant I do not hear the high notes of the instruments, singers, and if I am a little further back I do not hear at all." Beethoven continued to write music, play piano and conduct, all despite his deteriorating hearing. Composing and playing solo did not suffer much from his deafness -- he could hear the music perfectly in his head. But his conducting confused the orchestra, since it is impossible to figure out quickly where all the musicians are unless you can hear them play. So the musicians learned to take cues from the first violinist instead of looking at Beethoven.

Beethoven's best music was actually written after he began to lose his hearing. He wrote the Eroica symphony between 1803 and 1804, and the symphony is considered to mark the birth of Romantic music. The work was much longer and much more difficult to play than any symphony written before. It was incredibly daring - "a symphony with complex harmonies; a symphony of titanic force; a symphony of fierce dissonances; a symphony with a funeral march that is paralyzing in its intensity." (Schonberg) Originally dedicating the work to Napoleon, Beethoven became disillusioned when Napoleon declared himself emperor and tore out the dedication page.

Today the Eroica symphony is considered one of the best symphonies ever written, but in the early nineteenth century things were different. Some critics thought that it was simply a failed attempt at originality. Many people said that Beethoven should go back to writing "nice" music like his first two symphonies -- calm and Classical in style. Beethoven, of course, refused to budge. He said: "If I write a symphony an hour long, it will be found short enough." He did suggest that it is played in the beginning of a concert, when the audience is not yet tired.

In the next seven years Beethoven wrote a lot of great music, and it was similar to Eroica, not to the first two symphonies like the critics wanted. He wrote the famous Violin Concerto and equally famous Piano Concertos Nos. 4 and 5. Also came symphonies 4-8 and piano sonatas, including Appassionata. But around 1811 he virtually stopped writing music as he became expremely introverted due to his deafness. Then from 1815 to 1820 he was engaged in a custody battle for his nephew Karl. Uncle Ludwig was not a very good guardian because he had no idea how to raise children. Karl was driven out of his mind. Finally, in 1826 he tried to commit suicide. He failed, but he wanted nothing to do with his uncle upon recovery. This incident really hurt Beethoven - his friends said he aged twenty years in a week.

From 1818 Beethoven worked on Missa Solemnis and the Ninth Symphony, finishing the former in 1823 and the latter in 1824. The Ninth Symphony contains some of the world's most powerful, amazing music, but the premier in 1824 was a disaster. It was given after just two rehearsals! Some singers could not sing the higher notes, so they simply ommitted them. Still, the public was impressed by the scherzo. At the end, Caroline Unger, the contralto soloist, turned Beethoven around so he could see the applause.

For decades afterwards every new symphony would be compared against Beethoven't Ninth. Some composers simply decided not to write symphonies at all because they could not invent something equally good.

Beethoven died on March 26, 1827 after a lengthy illness. His funeral was attended by 20,000 people.

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