Beethoven

I don’t believe any person’s life is lived to be “interpreted,” by strangers, for money. Every person’s life is ultimately a mystery, even to him- or herself. That is the moral source of the humility with which I write biography. But art is created to be enjoyed, to move, to excite, to soothe and provoke, to teach, to be discussed, indeed to be interpreted.

Before the Third Symphony, symphonies and concertos had largely been considered public and in some degree popularistic pieces written to be put together in a hurry, sometimes more or less sight-read in performance.

What is emotionally profound and universal in Beethoven’s music is what he observed in himself.

The reality of being an artist, for most artists, is that it must be on the order of a life-and-death matter or it will not succeed at the highest level a given creator can achieve, whatever that may be. An artist needs to cling to art like a survivor clings to a spar in the middle of the ocean.

with op. 28, in D major, Beethoven added another whose regular form belied another complete departure.

Sonata quasi una fantasia of op. 27, no. 2, eventually misnamed the Moonlight, ascended quickly to feverish popularity, on its way to becoming one of the most famous pieces ever written.

Published next would be the two of op. 27, both of them titled Sonata quasi una fantasia. By that he implied that they were in the style of a relatively free-form improvisation.25 Variation and improvisation remained at the core of his creativity, now highlighted in pieces that helped give birth to the New Path.

Yet even as a teenager Beethoven somehow radiated an aura of a great and noble nature that marked not only his music but him personally.

Through Mozart, Beethoven began to discover himself.

He must never forget that music that expresses no kind of passion or sentiment in a comprehensible language is nothing but sheer noise.