Beethoven

Welcome to The Independent''s new ebook series The Great Composers, covering fourteen of the giants of Western classical music.Extracted from Michael Steen''s book The Lives and Times of the Great Composers, these concise guides, selected by The Independent''s editorial team, explore the lives of composers as diverse as Mozart and Puccini, reaching from Bach to Brahms, set against the social, historical and political forces which affected them, to give a rounded portrait of what it was like to be alive and working as a musician at that time.In this ebook Steen traces Beethoven's tumultuous life, buffeted by the violent cross-currents of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars which convulsed Europe from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th. Born in Bonn, Beethoven became a successful musician patronised by the aristocracy. Though scornful of social convention, he conquered Vienna, creating works which rewrote the rulebook for all the musical forms he