Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and the predominant musical figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras. He was widely considered the greatest of all time, whose innovative compositions combined vocals and instruments, widening the scope of sonata, symphony, concerto and quartet. He is the crucial transitional figure connecting the Classical and Romantic ages of Western music. Beethoven’s personal life was marked by a struggle against deafness, and some of his most important works were composed during the last 10 years of his life, when he was quite unable to hear. He died at the age of 56.
Some of Beethoven’s best-known compositions include Symphony No. 3, which in 1804, only weeks after Napoleon Bonaparte proclaimed himself Emperor of France, Beethoven debuted it in Napoleon's honor. Beethoven, like all of Europe, watched with a mixture of awe and terror; he admired, abhorred and, to an extent, identified with Napoleon, a man of seemingly superhuman capabilities, only one year older than himself and also of obscure birth. Later renamed the "Eroica Symphony" because Beethoven grew disillusioned with Napoleon, it was his grandest and most original work to date. Because it was so unlike anything heard before it, the musicians could not figure out how to play it through weeks of rehearsal. A prominent reviewer proclaimed "Eroica" as "one of the most original, most sublime, and most profound products that the entire genre of music has ever exhibited."
At the same time as Beethoven was composing some of his most immortal works, he was struggling to come to terms with a shocking and terrible fact, one that he tried desperately to conceal: He was going deaf. By the turn of the 19th century, Beethoven struggled to make out the words spoken to him in conversation.
Beethoven revealed in a heart-wrenching 1801 letter to his friend Franz Wegeler, "I must confess that I lead a miserable life. For almost two years I have ceased to attend any social functions, just because I find it impossible to say to people: I am deaf. If I had any other profession, I might be able to cope with my infirmity; but in my profession it is a terrible handicap." At times driven to extremes of melancholy by his affliction, Beethoven described his despair in a long and poignant note that he concealed his entire life.
Ludwig van Beethoven is widely considered the greatest composer of all time. Beethoven's body of musical compositions stands with Shakespeare's plays at the outer limits of human accomplishment. And the fact Beethoven composed his most beautiful and extraordinary music while deaf is an almost superhuman feat of creative genius, perhaps only paralleled in the history of artistic achievement by John Milton writing Paradise Lost while blind. Summing up his life and imminent death during his last days, Beethoven, who was never as eloquent with words as he was with music, borrowed a tagline that concluded many Latin plays at the time. "Plaudite, amici, comoedia finita est," he said. "Applaud friends, the comedy is over."
Tickets to the concert are available from Computicket outlets as follows:
Adults R150
Block bookings of 10 and more people R100
Children 3 to 18 years R50
Adults R150
Block bookings of 10 and more people R100
Children 3 to 18 years R50
#Beethoven #Bizet #ConradVanAlphen #CatherineFoxcroft
#FSSO #SymphonyForLife #YearOfThePiano
#FSSO #SymphonyForLife #YearOfThePiano
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