In addition to Mozart, the composer whose work is most popular today may be Ludwig van Beethoven. Unlike many other great composers who wrote huge amounts of music, Beethoven wrote relatively little. He wrote only nine symphonies (compared to Mozart who wrote 42, and Haydn, one of Beethoven’s teachers, who wrote 106), and one opera (Mozart wrote 20, Rossini wrote more than 40). Despite having such a limited output, Beethoven wrote some of the most passionate and beautiful music in history, and his work was the inspiration for a new style known as “Romantic” music. Rather than writing two or three pieces every day, the way Bach or Mozart would, Beethoven would sometimes work on the same piece for years, erasing and revising until every note was in the right place.

 

Much of Beethoven’s career was spent as a pianist, and he became famous for his ability to improvise at the piano - creating beautiful and complex works on the spot. The piano music that he wrote, especially his sonatas, are often considered among the best pieces ever composed.

 

As beautiful as his music is, Beethoven’s personality could be equally unpleasant. He was often arrogant and rude, and frequently wore dirty clothing for days at a time. One of the reasons for his abrasive attitude was that when he was 28 years old, Beethoven developed a disease in his ears, and began to lose his hearing. By the end of his life, he was completely deaf. Beethoven’s enormous talent allowed him to keep composing, even when he could only hear the things he wrote in his imagination. Much of his best and most revolutionary music was written near the end of his life, maybe because his deafness allowed him to compose without caring what people thought about his work.