60 Fun Facts About Beethoven

In which German city was Beethoven born?

His birthplace at Bonngasse 20 is now the Beethoven-Haus museum, which also displays several of his ear trumpets.

Beethoven's exact birth date is unknown, but his baptism was recorded on which date?

Because babies were usually baptised within a day or two, his birthday is generally celebrated on 16 December.

In November 1792 Beethoven left Bonn for good and settled in the capital of which empire?

He arrived amid rumours of war spilling out of revolutionary France and never returned to Bonn.

On arriving in Vienna, Beethoven studied composition with which celebrated older composer?

Count Waldstein's farewell note promised he would receive "Mozart's spirit from Haydn's hands".

Which physical affliction, which began around 1798, famously did not stop Beethoven composing?

He told the English pianist Charles Neate in 1815 that the trouble had started in 1798, when he was still in his twenties.

How much did Beethoven's father shave off his real age on posters for his first public performance in 1778?

Johann was consciously copying Leopold Mozart, who had toured Wolfgang and Nannerl around Europe as children.

Who was Beethoven's most important Bonn teacher, the man who published his first work in 1783?

Neefe put Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier into the boy's hands and made him assistant court organist while still a teenager.

Beethoven's grandfather, also named Ludwig, rose to which post at the Bonn court in 1761?

The elder Ludwig came from Mechelen in what is now Belgium, which is why the family name carries the Flemish 'van' rather than the German 'von'.

What annual pension did three nobles promise Beethoven in 1809 to keep him in Vienna?

Kinsky was called to military duty, never paid his share and died in 1812 after falling from his horse, so the promised sum arrived only in part.

From about 1818, how did visitors communicate with the almost totally deaf Beethoven?

Around 400 of these 'conversation books' survive; his secretary Schindler destroyed 264 and altered others to protect an idealised image.

Which inventor, better known for patenting the metronome, designed Beethoven's ear trumpets?

Maelzel also built the panharmonicon, the mechanical orchestra for which Beethoven first wrote 'Wellington's Victory'.

After his brother Kaspar died in 1815, Beethoven fought sister-in-law Johanna over custody of whom?

Kaspar's will gave joint guardianship to Beethoven and Johanna, which Beethoven refused to accept; the dispute dragged on for years.

Which pianist-composer gave the first public performance of the Hammerklavier Sonata, in 1836?

The same year Liszt played it in Paris, Berlioz wrote an enthusiastic review; the sonata is still regarded as Beethoven's hardest piano work.

Which London piano maker presented Beethoven with one of its instruments in 1818?

Beethoven had earlier owned an Érard from Paris, which he gave to his brother Johann in 1824 after declaring it no longer of any use.

Beethoven died in Vienna on 26 March 1827. How old was he?

Only his friend Anselm Hüttenbrenner and a 'Frau van Beethoven' were in the room; the funeral three days later drew a crowd of around 10,000.

The Peanuts character Schroeder, who worships Beethoven, lives at a house whose street number is what?

Charles Schulz gave Schroeder the address 1770, the year Beethoven was born, and had him play the composer's music on a toy piano.

What does Beethoven's reported late remark 'Plaudite, amici, comoedia finita est' mean?

Later that same day, when a gift of wine arrived from his publisher Schott, he whispered 'Pity – too late'.

To whom did Beethoven originally dedicate his Third Symphony before scratching the name off?

The nickname 'Eroica' (heroic) replaced it, and the symphony is often called the first Romantic symphony.

What is the Italian nickname of Beethoven's Third Symphony?

Its second movement is a funeral march, and the whole work runs about 50 minutes, roughly twice the length of a typical Haydn symphony.

The four-note opening of Beethoven's Fifth resembles the Morse code for which letter?

Dot-dot-dot-dash is Morse V, for Victory, so the motif became a signature of Allied broadcasts to occupied Europe.

At which Vienna venue did Beethoven's Fifth and Sixth both premiere on 22 December 1808?

The under-rehearsed programme ran more than four hours in an unheated hall and consisted entirely of Beethoven premieres.

In which key is Beethoven's Fifth Symphony written?

C minor was Beethoven's key for storm and struggle; the Pathétique sonata and the Coriolan overture use it too.

How many movements does Beethoven's Sixth Symphony have, one more than was usual at the time?

The extra movement is the thunderstorm, which is interrupted only when the shepherds' song of thanksgiving arrives.

Beethoven described his Sixth Symphony as 'more the expression of feeling than painting'. What is its nickname?

He was a devoted country walker who regularly left Vienna to compose in rural villages such as Heiligenstadt.

Which movement of Beethoven's Seventh drew an immediate encore at its 1813 premiere?

The concert was a charity benefit for soldiers wounded at the Battle of Hanau, and the orchestra included Spohr, Hummel, Meyerbeer and Salieri.

Which of Beethoven's symphonies did he fondly call 'my little Symphony in F'?

It is his shortest symphony, written in just four months in 1812 and unusually carries no dedication.

The choral finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony sets a poem by which German writer?

Schiller wrote 'An die Freude' in 1785; Beethoven had wanted to set it since his Bonn years, decades before the symphony.

Who turned the deaf Beethoven around to see the applause at the 1824 premiere of the Ninth Symphony?

Umlauf officially conducted while Beethoven shared the stage; the singers had been told to follow Umlauf and ignore the composer's beat.

The 'Ode to Joy' melody from the Ninth Symphony was adopted in 1972 as the official anthem of which body?

The European Communities, now the EU, followed in 1985; the anthem is played without words so no one language is favoured.

Legend says the CD's 74-minute playing time was chosen to hold which Beethoven work?

Sony's Norio Ohga is usually credited with the story; whatever the truth, the Ninth was among the first works pressed on CD.

Beethoven's Ninth Symphony premiered on 7 May 1824 at which Vienna theatre?

The same evening also gave the Viennese their first hearing of three movements from the Missa solemnis, conducted by the composer.

What is the title of Beethoven's only opera?

Its heroine Leonore disguises herself as a prison guard to rescue her husband Florestan from a political prison.

Under what disguise does Leonore infiltrate the prison in Beethoven's opera?

The 'Prisoners' Chorus', in which the inmates are briefly let into the sunlight, is one of the opera's most famous numbers.

'Für Elise' was published in 1867, how many years after Beethoven's death?

The scholar Ludwig Nohl found and transcribed the manuscript, which has since been lost, so nobody knows for certain who Elise was.

In which key is 'Für Elise' written?

Its catalogue number is WoO 59, meaning 'work without opus number', because Beethoven never published it.

Which poet and critic coined the nickname 'Moonlight Sonata' after Beethoven's death?

Rellstab likened the first movement to moonlight on Lake Lucerne; Beethoven's own heading was 'Sonata quasi una fantasia'.

To which pupil did Beethoven dedicate the 'Moonlight' Sonata in 1802?

Guicciardi is one of many women proposed as the 'Immortal Beloved', though scholars now favour Antonie Brentano or Josephine Brunsvik.

To whom was Beethoven's 1802 Heiligenstadt Testament, confessing despair over his deafness, addressed?

He kept it hidden among his papers; Schindler and Stephan von Breuning found it only after his death in 1827.

In which spa town, now in Czechia, did Beethoven write his 1812 'Immortal Beloved' letter?

The pencilled ten-page letter names neither year nor place; a 1950s watermark analysis of the paper finally fixed the date.

Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto is known in English-speaking countries by what nickname?

Beethoven, who despised Napoleon's imperial ambitions, would probably have hated the name, which may have been coined by his London publisher Cramer.

Why was Beethoven absent from the keyboard at the 1811 premiere of his Fifth Piano Concerto?

Friedrich Schneider played it in Leipzig instead; the concerto is dedicated to Beethoven's patron and pupil Archduke Rudolf.

Beethoven's 'Wellington's Victory' celebrates a British win over Joseph Bonaparte at which 1813 battle?

The score calls for muskets and cannon effects and quotes 'Rule, Britannia!' and 'God Save the King' against a French marching tune.

Beethoven's Op. 120 is a set of how many variations on a little waltz by Anton Diabelli?

Diabelli had asked every notable Austrian composer for a single variation; Beethoven ignored the brief and delivered a 50-minute masterpiece.

Which violinist, the original dedicatee of Beethoven's 'Kreutzer' Sonata, premiered it at 8 a.m. after sight-reading it?

Beethoven withdrew the dedication after a drunken quarrel; Kreutzer, the new dedicatee, disliked the piece and refused to play it.

How many mature piano sonatas did Beethoven write, a cycle Hans von Bülow called the 'New Testament' of the piano?

Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier was the 'Old Testament'; Bülow was also the first pianist to play the whole cycle in concert.

Who chose the name of Beethoven's 'Pathétique' Sonata, unusually given during his lifetime?

Beethoven approved of the title; the sonata was written in 1798 when he was 27 and dedicated to Prince Karl von Lichnowsky.

What was Count Ferdinand von Waldstein, namesake of the 'Waldstein' Sonata, to Beethoven?

Waldstein backed Beethoven from his early years and wrote the famous farewell wishing him 'Mozart's spirit from Haydn's hands'; this is the only work Beethoven dedicated to him.

Which 12-year-old violinist rescued Beethoven's Violin Concerto in 1844 under Mendelssohn?

Beethoven finished the solo part so late that the first soloist, Franz Clement, reportedly had to sight-read some of it.

Beethoven's Triple Concerto is written for which three solo instruments?

It is the only concerto he completed for more than one soloist and the only one he wrote for the cello.

Beethoven's 1808 Choral Fantasy, uniting piano, chorus and orchestra, is regarded as a precursor to which later work?

Beethoven improvised the opening piano solo at the premiere; the melody of the choral theme clearly foreshadows the 'Ode to Joy'.

Beethoven's Egmont overture became an unofficial anthem of which 20th-century uprising?

The music was written for Goethe's play about a 16th-century count executed for resisting Spanish oppression, a theme that resonated in 1956.

In 1888 Beethoven's remains were moved from Währing to which famous Viennese burial ground?

Schubert, who had been a torchbearer at Beethoven's funeral, was moved to the same cemetery and lies beside him.

Which younger composer, who died just a year later, was among the torchbearers at Beethoven's funeral?

Estimates of the crowd that lined the streets range from 10,000 to 30,000, in a city of roughly 300,000 people.

Which musician rescued the funding for Bonn's Beethoven Monument, unveiled in 1845?

It was unveiled for the 75th anniversary of Beethoven's birth; Vienna, where he lived for 35 years, did not get a statue until 1880.

Which Viennese artist painted the 'Beethoven Frieze' for the 1902 Secession exhibition?

The four-ton frieze was painted directly on the walls and meant to be temporary, but it survives in the Secession Building today.

The 1992 family comedy 'Beethoven' is named after a dog of which breed?

The puppy earns the name when he barks along to the Fifth Symphony played on the family piano; the film grossed $147 million.

Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 131 unusually has how many movements played without a break?

Schubert is said to have asked, after hearing it, 'After this, what is left for us to write?'

Which Beethoven symphony did a Viennese critic call 'a crass ogre, a stabbed, unbound writhing dragon'?

Beethoven wrote it during his 1802 stay in Heiligenstadt, at the same time as his despairing Testament, yet it is one of his sunniest works.

Beethoven's Missa solemnis was first performed in full in 1824 not in Vienna but in which city?

Prince Nikolai Golitsyn arranged the Russian premiere; Vienna heard only three movements a month later, at the Ninth Symphony's premiere concert.

Beethoven was born about how many years after Mozart?

Whether the two ever met in Vienna in 1787 remains unproven; Beethoven nonetheless modelled several early works directly on Mozart's.