Beethoven Composes Essay

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Nakeadlia Mitchell Beethoven Composes When asked to find a historical event that has significance to me, I immediately thought of Beethoven composing. He came to mind because of my love and passion for music. Beethoven's First Symphony, dedicated to Baron Gottfried Van Swieten, came at age 29. Fittingly, it was the dawn of a new century. It appeared late in what scholars define as the first period of Beethoven's career, just a year or two before the crisis brought about by his gradual loss of hearing. By the mid-1790s, Beethoven had tried most of the important instrumental genres, save for symphony and string quartet. Those were the pieces in which his teacher Haydn had made his greatest mark and enjoyed his most significant successes. When Beethoven did come forward with his first symphonies, he built on the achievements of Haydn and Mozart while not hiding his debt to them. Contemporaries reacted to the work of Beethoven by using the word "masterpiece" repeatedly and praising its "originality." But it took even Beethoven some time to become BEETHOVEN, symphonic master and role model. The idea of dividing his career into three stages began during his lifetime and has never been abandoned. The First Symphony dates, of course, from his early, "Classical" era. More precisely, it comes from late in his first period, just a year or two before the personal crisis brought about by Beethoven’s gradual loss of hearing that is so powerfully reflected in the "Heiligenstadt Testament" and the "Eroica" Symphony. By the mid-1790s, Beethoven had essayed most of the important instrumental genres, but had held off tackling the symphony and string quartet, perhaps because these were the kinds of pieces in which his teacher Haydn had made his greatest mark and enjoyed his most significant successes. When he did finally write, perform, and publish his first two symphonies

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