An Exploration of Beethoven and Haydn Music Careers Essay

An Exploration of Beethoven and Haydn Music Careers - Essay Example Beethoven was born in a place then called Cologne which is the Germany at present. During his youth Beethoven moved to Vienna and stayed there. It is in this phase of his youth that he met another influential icon Joseph Haydn. Beethoven experienced a meteoric rise in his career as a virtuoso pianist although his youth was later plagued by the deterioration of his hearing capabilities. The predicament did not annihilate his career as he continued conducting and performing even when he had gone totally deaf. While Joseph Haydn developed his music career as an isolated musician a condition which as he put it, â€Å"forced him to be original†, Beethoven on the other end stemmed from a musically endowed pedigree. He was named after His grandfather Ludwig by his mother Ludwig Maria. Davies, Peter J, states that,†His grandfather was a musician at Roman Catholic Flemish lineage and was at some point Kapellmeister at the court of Roman Clemens August of Bavaria.† Beethoven’s father was Johann van Beethoven who lived from 1740-1792. Beethoven got his initial orientations into music from his father who was a natural tenor singer at the electoral court at Bonn. The development of Beethoven's music career was later supervised by Tobias Pfeiffer, a friend to Beethoven's father Johann. Like Haydn' Beethoven's music endowments were noted when he was of a tender age and this is well illustrated by the fact that by 1778 the youngster was already learning the organ and the viola upon his piano mastering endeavors. Haydn parents noted that Haydn had a musical endowment and reckoned that he would not get proper training in the place they were living in then Rohrau thus they accepted the offered by a relative Johann Matthias Franck to have Haydn trained as a musician by Franck from his home in Hainburg. On Beethoven's part, one of the most noted mentors of Beethoven was Christian Gottlob Neefe, the court organist. Neefe is particularly remembered for helping Beethoven make inroads into the classical music pedestal by assisting him to get his first compositions published. The compositions were an assortment of some keyboard melodies and variations. Musicians like other artists are custodians of a society's culture and history. This is so owing to the undeniable sensitivity of artists to the influence of various factors that charcterise their place and time settings. Traces of cultural, political, economic and social influences can be identified in an artists work and Beethoven's works are not an exception. A close exploration of His music indicates illuminant influences of values of Enlightenment and the surge of Romanticism which dominated the European society in his time. As Davies, Peter J, (Opcit) concurs this is glowingly illustrated by the composition and dedication of his music piece the Eroica which is Italian term for 'heroic" to the Leader Napoleon whom the musician had admired for his ideals of democracy and republicanism values of the French Revolution. Haydn's mettle in his isolated music career development earned him the label of "father of Symphony' and also father of "String Quartet". Haydn and Beethoven shared similar inclinations to the values of enlightenment in music. Beethoven later retracted the dedication to Napoleon when the Leader shifted into embracing imperial ambitions