Ludwig van Beethoven

Beethoven on the bank of a stream.
By PITTS SANBORN
NEW YORK Grosset & Dunlap PUBLISHERS
Copyright 1939 and 1951 by The Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York
The late Pitts Sanborn wrote this booklet under the title Beethoven and his Nine Symphonies and stated in a short preface that it made “no claim to originality and no secret of its indebtedness to the masterly treatises on the same subject.” I have left Mr. Sanborn’s pages on the symphonies virtually intact and have only expanded the work a little by incorporating here and there matter about other major works of Beethoven’s, especially some of the concertos, overtures, piano and vocal works, besides certain of the greater specimens of his chamber music. Even if this procedure probably lends the booklet a patchy character, I have followed it in order to supply a rather fuller picture of the composer’s creative achievements. No more than my predecessor do I make the slightest claim to originality of matter or treatment, or deny my indebtedness to Thayer and Paul Bekker.
Herbert F. Peyser
Printed in the United States of America
Ludwig van Beethoven was born on December 16, 1770, at Bonn, then one of the most important cities on the lower Rhine. Though Bonn was German and Beethoven’s mother and his father’s mother were both Germans, he was of Flemish descent through his father’s father, a native of the country that eventually became Belgium, whence the “van” in the name. Louis van Beethoven, a tenor singer, went to Bonn in his youth and promptly became a court musician to the resident archbishop-elector. His son Johann, Beethoven’s father, was also a singer in the Elector’s employ, but he was a worthless fellow, who was fortunate, however, in having as wife a woman of character. Realizing that his son Ludwig had been born with uncommon musical talent, he had the child begin to study violin and piano very early with the idea of putting him forward as a prodigy, as Mozart’s father had done. But the young Ludwig was less precocious than Mozart and rebelled strenuously against the enforced training. However, he did appear at a concert on March 26, 1778.