Keep your eye on him; he will make the world talk about him some day. —Mozart, in a letter to his father dated 1787, after meeting Beethoven.

Beethoven was the pillar of smoke that led to the Promised Land. —Franz Liszt.

Beethoven’s time was one of revolutions and wars, terror and reform, poverty and extravagance and in many ways his music reflects the turbulence of the age in which he lived. Austria was at war with Ottoman Turkey, the French were in dispute with Austria, and England with France. The fall of the Bastille in 1789 was a sign of the end of the old order, extinguished forever. The period brought wide cultural changes, changes in political philosophy and society, and in the arts. Beethoven is seen as the bridge from the restraint and preoccupation with form of the Classical era, to the wildly personalized and emotional Romantic era.
Beethoven had a remarkable musical output. Just to name a few: 32 piano sonatas, 16 string quartets, 6 piano concerti plus a fragment (of which only 5 remain in the repertoire), 10 violin sonatas, 4 cello sonatas, 172 folk song arrangements, 60 canons and “musical jokes,” at least 2 ballets, an opera (“Fidelio”), and a large number of other works for chamber ensembles, choir, voice … and 9 great symphonies that still represent the highest consistent level of symphonic output by any composer in history.
Ludwig van Beethoven was born in the provincial court city of Bonn, Germany, probably on December 16, 1770. Beethoven's talent was such that, at the age of 12, he was already assistant to the organist Christian Gottlob Neefe, with whom he studied. Attempts to establish him as a prodigy in the mold of Mozart had little success, however.
In 1787 Beethoven was sent to Vienna, but his mother fell ill, and he had to return to Bonn almost immediately. She died a few months later, and in 1789 Beethoven himself requested that his alcoholic father be retired, a move that left him responsible for his two younger brothers. Beethoven left Bonn for Vienna a second time in November of 1792, in order to study with Haydn.
In 1794 French forces occupied the Rhineland; consequently, Beethoven's ties with and support from the Bonn court came to an end. His father had died a month after his departure from Bonn, and his brothers joined him in Vienna. He remained there the rest of his life, leaving only for holidays and concerts in nearby cities. His only extended journey was to Prague, Dresden, and Berlin in 1796. Beethoven never held an official position in Vienna. He supported himself by giving concerts, by teaching piano, and increasingly through the sale of his compositions. Members of the Viennese aristocracy were his steady patrons, and in 1809 three of them—Prince Kinsky, Prince Lobkowitz, and the Archduke Rudolph—even guaranteed him a yearly income with the sole condition that he remain in Vienna.
The last 30 years of Beethoven's life were shaped by a series of personal crises, the first of which was the onset of deafness. The early symptoms, noticeable to the composer already before 1800, affected him socially more than musically. His reaction was despair, resignation, and defiance. Resolving finally to "seize fate by the throat," he emerged from the crisis with a series of triumphant works that mark the beginning of a new period in his stylistic development.
A second crisis a decade later was the breaking off of a relationship with an unnamed lady (probably Antonie Brentano, the wife of a friend) known to us as the "Immortal Beloved," as Beethoven addressed her in a series of letters in July 1812. This was apparently the most serious of several such relationships with women who were in some way out of his reach, and its traumatic conclusion was followed by a lengthy period of resignation and reduced musical activity.
During this time Beethoven's deafness advanced to the stage that he could no longer perform publicly, and he required a slate or little notebooks (now known as "conversation books") to communicate with visitors. The death of his brother Caspar Carl in 1815 led to a 5-year legal struggle for custody of Caspar's son Karl, then 9 years old, in whom Beethoven saw a last chance for the domestic life that had otherwise eluded him. His possessiveness of Karl provoked a final crisis in the summer of 1826, when the young man attempted suicide. Shortly thereafter, Beethoven's health began to fail, and he died on March 26, 1827 in Vienna.
Biographers and annotators cannot be blamed for waxing lyrical over the Symphony No. 4 in B-Flat Major, op. 60. Few can resist reading a romance in its pages, and some even believe it is a testament of passion to the infamous “Immortal Beloved” in Beethoven’s famous undated and unaddressed letter.
Who was the “Immortal Beloved”? A subject of much conjecture! There was the Countess Theresa von Brunswick, whom Beethoven wooed and won … for a while. Another likely suspect is Theresa’s cousin, Countess Giulietta Guicciardi. While there is no way to know for certain if Theresa or Giulietta inspired the symphony, facts and circumstances seem to favor Theresa. And yet, there is very little to connect the symphony directly to romance. What is beyond question is that the spring and summer of 1806, when the symphony was written, were one of the happiest times in Beethoven’s stormy career. The spring had been almost purely holiday, spent in Hungary on the estate of Count Brunswick. There he had reveled in the beautiful natural surroundings and courted the Count’s sister, Theresa. And there, in May, he apparently became engaged to her … or so Theresa said. Customary to Beethoven’s love life, the affair came to nothing.
The official dedication of the Fourth Symphony is to Count Franz von Oppersdorf, to whom Beethoven had been introduced by his friend and patron, Prince Lichnowsky. Oppersdorf’s private orchestra performed Beethoven’s Second Symphony, much to Beethoven’s delight, and the Count decided to commission a symphony of his own. The delighted Beethoven pocketed an advance of five hundred florins. However, when the Fourth Symphony finally arrived, the Count was anything but pleased; by the time he received it, the Fourth Symphony had already been sold and published. No further commissions came from the Count.
The Fourth Symphony is unique for its dark, mystic introduction—a look ahead to the opening measures of the Ninth Symphony, at least in concept. The first, third, and fourth movements are all rather lively, quick, and technically challenging for the orchestra. The second movement, however, stands out from the rest, with its charming metronomic rhythmic accompaniment, lengthy yet simple phrases, and a curiously loud tonic/dominant ending where one would expect a peaceful resolution.