Diabelli Variations / Variations on Rule Britannia / Variations on God Save the King

Beethoven's father, described after his death as a considerable loss to the profits of the wine trade, became increasingly inadequate both as a singer and as a father and husband, with his wife always ready to draw invidious comparisons between him and his own father. Beethoven, however, was trained as a musician, however erratically, and duly entered the service of the Archbishop, serving as an organist and as a string-player in the archiepiscopal orchestra. He was already winning some distinction in Bonn, when, in 1787, he was first sent to Vienna, to study with Mozart. The illness of his mother forced an early return from this venture and her subsequent death left him with responsibility for his younger brothers, in view of his father's domestic and professional failures. In 1792 Beethoven was sent once more to Vienna, now to study with Haydn, whom he had met in Bonn.

Beethoven's early career in Vienna was helped very considerably by the circumstances of his move there. The Archbishop was a son of the Empress Maria Theresa and there were introductions to leading members of society in the imperial capital. From Haydn he claimed to have learned nothing and his teacher must have been dismayed at times by his pupil's duplicity, but he went on to take lessons also from Albrechtsberger, well known for his mastery of counterpoint, and from the Court Composer Antonio Salieri, and was able to establish an early position for himself as a pianist of remarkable ability, coupled with a clear genius in the necessarily related arts of improvisation and composition.

The onset of deafness at the turn of the century seemed an irony of Fate. It led Beethoven gradually away from a career as a virtuoso performer and into an area of composition where he was able to make remarkable changes and extensions of existing practice. Deafness tended to accentuate his eccentricities and paranoia, which became extreme as time went on. At the same time it allowed him to develop an aspect of his music that some critics already regarded as academic or learned, that of counterpoint, an art in which he had acquired great mastery. He continued to develop forms inherited from his predecessors, notably Haydn and Mozart, but expanded these almost to bursting-point, introducing innovation after innovation as he grew older. To following generations his music offered a challenge. For some he seemed to have brought the symphony, in particular, to a final climax, and composers like Brahms, who drew on earlier tradition, were faced with the daunting task of continuing on a path that, for some, at least, seemed already to have reached its height.

Beethoven died in 1827, leaving a body of work that has continued to provide subsequent generations with an essential heart to their repertoire, whether in the concertos and symphonies or in the sonatas and chamber music.