Ludwig van Beethoven

Composer who bridged the Classical and Romantic eras.

Ludwig van Beethoven worked from the late eighteenth into the early nineteenth century, moving from Bonn to Vienna and composing amid revolution, war, changing patronage, and progressive hearing loss. His works expanded inherited sonata, symphonic, chamber, piano, and vocal forms through motivic development, large-scale tension, rhythmic force, and revised models of artistic autonomy.