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Ludwig van Beethoven died on March 26, 1827 in Schwarzspanierhaus, Vienna, Austria

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Ludwig van Beethoven died on March 26, 1827 in Schwarzspanierhaus, Vienna, Austria

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Beethoven was born in December 1770 in Bonn, Germany. 

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Beethoven was born in December 1770 in Bonn, Germany. 

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He composed 722 works that include 9 symphonies, 35 piano sonatas, and 16 string quartets. He also raised instrumental music to the highest section of art. His music was a bridge between classical and baroque. His achievements proved that Deaf people can make music. 

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He composed 722 works that include 9 symphonies, 35 piano sonatas, and 16 string quartets. He also raised instrumental music to the highest section of art. His music was a bridge between classical and baroque. His achievements proved that Deaf people can make music. 

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I'm thankful for being friends with such an amazing artist. I wish his memory will live on in the arts forever. 

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I'm thankful for being friends with such an amazing artist. I wish his memory will live on in the arts forever. 

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Beethoven never got married or had any children. Karl Beethoven, Beethoven's nephew, is the only member of the family to carry the Beethoven last name. 

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Beethoven never got married or had any children. Karl Beethoven, Beethoven's nephew, is the only member of the family to carry the Beethoven last name. 

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Donations can be given in respect to Beethoven's death. All donations are going to The Beethoven Foundation. 

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Donations can be given in respect to Beethoven's death. All donations are going to The Beethoven Foundation. 

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The Beethoven Foundation | Non-profit Organization Supporting Musically Talented Youths

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The Beethoven Foundation is a 501(c)(3) recognized tax deductible foundation aimed at providing instruments and scholarships to musically gifted young individuals. You can help by donating your piano, or if you would like to apply for our support, submit our application.

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Why Beethoven had no family of his own - Google Arts & Culture

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Beethoven's family life was chaotic. That is why the composer was constantly looking for a replacement.

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Ludwig van Beethoven personifies the idea of the creative genius of popular imagination, railing against convention and physical limitations to challenge the boundaries of form and expression in his art. Recognised as one of the greatest and most influential composers of the Western classical tradition, he defied the onset of deafness from the age of 28 to produce an output that encompasses 722 works, including 9 symphonies, 35 piano sonatas and 16 string quartets.
Early life and studies

Beethoven was born in Bonn in December 1770, the son of Johann van Beethoven, a Flemish-German teacher and singer employed in the service of the Elector of Cologne, whose court was located at Bonn. His musical talent was recognised and cultivated from an early age. From the age of 9 or 10, he took lessons from the court organist and composer, Christian Gottlob Neefe, who stated that Beethoven 'would surely become a second Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were he to continue as he has begun'. Beethoven subsequently took on the positions of assistant organist and violist in the court orchestra, and his first publication - a set of three keyboard sonatas - appeared in 1783. In 1787, he was granted leave to visit Vienna, apparently to study with Mozart, but the visit was cut short after his mother fell ill. He returned five years later to take lessons with Joseph Haydn, but this time decided to make the Habsburg capital his home and was resident there for the rest of his life.

Beethoven and the piano

Beethoven's early renown derived from his virtuosity as a pianist, demonstrated in public and private concerts. His first two published opuses in Vienna consisted of piano trios and solo piano sonatas respectively, the latter dedicated to Haydn. A series of five piano concertos followed, between 1795 and 1810, the first four of which Beethoven himself premiered. He also performed works by other composers, such as Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 20 in D minor (K. 466), and was famous for his improvisations. Teaching the piano also formed an important element of his activities in his early career, supplementing his income. Notable aristocratic pupils included Archduke Rudolf of Austria (1788-1831) and Countess Giulietta Guicciardi (1784-1856), to whom Beethoven dedicated the so-called 'Moonlight' piano sonata, op. 27 no. 2.

Because of his increasing deafness, Beethoven was forced to stop playing the piano in public in 1814, but the instrument remained central to his creative life. Describing his compositional practice in a letter to Archduke Rudolf in 1823, Beethoven wrote how it was important to position a small table next to the piano, so that one learns to 'pin down immediately the most remote ideas'. In 1818 he took delivery from London of a new Broadwood fortepiano, which offered a wider compass than the Viennese instruments that Beethoven had been accustomed to. In his late piano sonatas (op. 106, 109, 110 and 111), Beethoven embraced such technical developments to stretch previously accepted boundaries of dynamics, expression, rhythm, and technique.

Beethoven's creativity

Beethoven's surviving sketches provide one of the most striking and powerful examples of any creative artist's struggle with the blank page. Notorious for the chaotic appearance of his handwriting, often being crammed full of deletions, amendments and scribbles, the manuscripts offer a powerful visual representation of his creativity and feed popular perceptions of the composer's irascible temperament.

A sketch for a symphonic movement in C minor dating from his Bonn years shows that Beethoven engaged with the symphonic form from an early age ( Add. MS 29801, folio 70v). His nine completed symphonies form the backbone of his compositional output, spanning the years 1800 to 1824, each of them distinctive in character and innovative in different ways.

In 1809, a coalition of three of Beethoven's patrons led by Archduke Rudolf agreed to pay the composer a salary of 4000 florins per year on the understanding that he would remain in Vienna and not take up an invitation to become Kapellmeister at Kassel. The intention was to assuage Beethoven's financial concerns and give him greater autonomy as a composer. In return, Beethoven dedicated 14 works to Rudolf, including the piano sonata op. 81a ( Les Adieux), the 'Archduke' piano trio op. 97 (1811), and the Missa Solemnis op. 123 (1819-23).

Chamber music formed another enduring element of Beethoven's output, notably the 16 string quartets composed between 1800 and 1826, the last four of which explored new sound worlds arising from a tremendous final burst of creativity in 1825 and 1826.

Beethoven's music encompasses many other genres, including songs, canons, cantatas, variations, bagatelles, overtures, dances, opera, incidental music, and marches, reflecting the diversity of his interests and opportunities as a composer.

Revolutionary context

More than any other composer, Beethoven's music has come to be identified with transcendental notions of struggle, revolution and the sublime. Ideals of freedom and emancipation from tyranny permeate works such as his only opera, Fidelio, and the Ninth Symphony, which are often interpreted in relation to the wider cultural and political landscape of early 19th century Europe. The French Revolution and the subsequent French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars certainly represent a momentous backdrop to Beethoven's life between 1789 and 1815. The first performance of the Third Symphony ( Eroica) in April 1805 came six months before Vienna fell to Napoleon's army for the first time, while Fidelio received its first performance on 20 November 1805 to an audience made up mostly of the occupying French military. During the Siege of Vienna of 1809, Beethoven sought refuge in the cellar of the home of his brother Kaspar, and his earlier admiration for Napoleon gave way to contempt.

It was a measure of Beethoven's emerging status that his music featured prominently at the Congress of Vienna, which in 1814 and 1815 redrew the map of Europe after the downfall of Napoleon. The Congress saw not only the premieres of the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies and Wellingtons Sieg ('Wellington's Victory', op. 91), but also the cantata Der glorreiche Augenblick ('The glorious moment', op. 136), which Beethoven composed for a grand gala concert attended by many European Heads of State in the Redoutensaal in Vienna on 29 November 1814. By the time of his death in 1827, Beethoven was celebrated throughout Europe, his funeral procession in Vienna attracting many thousands of onlookers.

Beethoven's legacy

Beethoven's legacy resides principally in the extent to which his music is performed, recorded and studied in countries around the world. Perceptions of his music have not been static over the past two centuries, but have shifted dramatically in response to different tastes and social contexts. It is a measure of Beethoven's power to stimulate and provoke that his music has been appropriated by diverse political and social movements over time.

Beethoven's music exerted a powerful creative influence on successive generations of composers, from Berlioz, Wagner and Mahler to Shostakovich, Tippett and Thea Musgrave. His legacy also looms large in literature (e.g. E. M. Forster, Anthony Burgess), the visual arts (e.g. Gustav Klimt's Beethoven Frieze) and popular music, as well as in the extensive use of his music in popular culture more generally: in films (e.g. A Clockwork Orange, Saturday Night Fever, The King's Speech), TV commercials, comics and Manga, and video games.

Unlike many composers, Beethoven was careful to preserve much of his sketch material, not least because they often contained a great deal of material that was not absorbed into the finished work. Some 30 volumes of Beethoven's sketches survive in libraries around the world, together with draft or full score manuscripts of many of his completed works. Deciphering and analysing this material has become almost a scientific discipline in itself, and started as long ago as the second half of the 19th century. The British Library holds a significant collection of this physical legacy, all of which is now digitised and available online via the Digitised Manuscripts portal. The Library's holdings also extend to extensive collections of early Beethoven editions, secondary literature, and sound recordings.

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Ludwig van Beethoven | The British Library

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Ludwig van Beethoven personifies the idea of the creative genius of popular imagination, railing against convention and physical limitations to challenge the boundaries of form and expression in his art.

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Beethoven's achievement

Beethoven's greatest achievement was to raise instrumental music, hitherto considered inferior to vocal, to the highest plane of art. During the 18th century, music, being fundamentally nonimitative, was ranked below literature and painting. Its highest manifestations were held to be those in which it served a text-that is, cantata, opera, and oratorio-the sonata and the suite being relegated to a lower sphere. A number of factors combined to bring about a gradual change of outlook: the instrumental prowess of the Mannheim Orchestra, which made possible the development of the symphony; the reaction on the part of writers against pure rationalism in favour of feeling; and the works of Haydn and Mozart. But, above all, it was the example of Beethoven that made possible the late-Romantic dictum of the English essayist and critic Walter Pater: "All arts aspire to the condition of music."

After Beethoven it was no longer possible to speak of music merely as "the art of pleasing sounds." His instrumental works combine a forceful intensity of feeling with a hitherto unimagined perfection of design. He carried to a further point of development than his predecessors all the inherited forms of music (with the exception of opera and song), but particularly the symphony and the quartet. In this he was the heir of Haydn rather than of Mozart, whose most striking achievements lie more in opera and concerto.

Three periods of work

It was his biographer Wilhelm von Lenz who first divided Beethoven's output into three periods, omitting the years of his apprenticeship in Bonn. The first period begins with the completion of the Three Trios for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Opus 1, in 1794, and ends about 1800, the year of the first public performance of the First Symphony and the Septet. The second period extends from 1801 to 1814, from the Piano Sonata in C-sharp Minor ( Moonlight Sonata) to the Piano Sonata in E Minor, Opus 90. The last period runs from 1814 to 1827, the year of his death. Though the division is a useful one, it cannot be applied rigidly. A composition begun in one period may often have been completed in another, hence the existence of such transitional works as the Third Piano Concerto, which belongs partly to the first period and partly to the second. Again, the tide of Beethoven's maturity advanced at a rate that varied according to his familiarity with the medium in which he happened to be writing. The piano was his home ground; therefore, it is in the piano sonatas that the middle-period characteristics first make their appearance, even before 1800. The mass, on the other hand, was unfamiliar territory, so that the Mass in C Major, written during the same period as the Fourth Piano Concerto and the Razumovsky string quartets, sounds in many ways like an early work.

First period

The works of the first period, apart from the first two piano concerti, the Creatures of Prometheus, and the First Symphony (some accountings include the Second Symphony as a first-period work as well), consist almost entirely of chamber music, most of it based on Beethoven's own instrument, the piano. All show a preoccupation with craftsmanship in the 18th-century manner. The material, for the most part, has a family likeness to that of Haydn and Mozart but, in keeping with the contemporary style, is slightly coarser and more blunt. Beethoven's treatment of the forms in current use is usually expansive, schematically somewhat closer to Mozart than to Haydn; thus, the expositions are long and polythematic, while the developments are relatively short. Slow movements are long and lyrical with copious decoration. The third movement, though sometimes called a scherzo, remains true to its minuet origins, though its surface is often disturbed by un-minuet-like accents and its tempo is at times quite brisk. Finales are at once high-spirited and elegant. Two characteristics, however, mark Beethoven out strongly from other composers of the time: one is an individual use of contrasted dynamics and especially the device of crescendo leading to a sudden piano; the other, most noticeable in the piano sonatas, is the gradual infiltration of techniques derived from improvisation-unexpected accents, rhythmic ambiguities designed to keep the audience guessing, and especially the use of apparently trivial, almost senseless material from which to generate a cogent musical argument.

Second period

The second period may be said to begin in the piano music with two sonatas "quasi una fantasia," Opus 27, of 1801, but in the symphony and concerto it is not fully apparent before the Eroica (1804) and the Fourth Piano Concerto (1806). Here the use of improvisatory material is more and more marked; but, whereas in the earlier period Beethoven was more concerned to show how it could fit naturally into a traditional 18th-century framework, here he explores in greater detail the logical implication of every departure from the norm. His harmony remains basically simple-much simpler, for instance, than much of Mozart's. What is new is the way it is used in relation to the basic pulse. From this Beethoven creates in his main themes an infinite variety of stress and accent, out of which the form of each movement is generated. The result is that, of all composers, Beethoven is the least inclined to repeat himself; all his works, but especially those of the middle and late period, inhabit their own individual formal world. Other characteristics of the middle period include shorter expositions and longer developments and codas; slow movements too become much shorter, sometimes vanishing altogether. The third movement is now always a scherzo (although not always so named), not a minuet, with frequent use of unexpected accents and syncopation. Finales tend to take on much more weight than before and in certain cases become the principal movement. Decoration begins to disappear as each note becomes more functional, melodically and harmonically. Another feature of these works is their immediacy. Here Beethoven's power is most evident; and the majority of the repertory works belong to this period.

Third period

The third period is marked by a growing concentration of musical thought combined with an increasingly wider range of harmony and texture. Beethoven's enthusiasm for the work of George Frideric Handel began to bear fruit in a much more-thoroughgoing use of counterpoint, especially notable in his frequent recourse to fugue and fugal passages. But he never lost touch with the simplicity of his earliest manner, so that the range of expression and mood in these last works is something that has never been surpassed. Indeed, an interest in folklike material seems, as in the Ninth Symphony, to offer redemption to the growing complexities of his art, much as his beloved Schiller found an incipient nationalistic redemption in Arcadia. A form to which he gave increasingly more attention at this time was that of the variation. As an improviser, he had always found it congenial, and, though some of the sets he had published in earlier years are merely decorative, he had created such outstanding examples of the genre as the finale of the Eroica and the Prometheus variations, both on the same theme. It is this type of variation that Beethoven began to pursue in his final period. A unique feature of the sets that occur in his last string quartets and sonatas is the sense of cumulative growth, not merely from variation to variation but within each variation itself. In the quartets, everything in the composer's musical equipment is deployed-fugue, variation, dance, sonata movement, march, even modal and pentatonic (five-tone) melody.

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Ludwig van Beethoven - Composer, Innovator, Genius

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Ludwig van Beethoven - Composer, Innovator, Genius: Beethoven's greatest achievement was to raise instrumental music, hitherto considered inferior to vocal, to the highest plane of art. During the 18th century, music, being fundamentally nonimitative, was ranked below literature and painting.

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Abstract

Ludwig van Beethoven is undoubtedly one of the most important and influential composers of Western art music. From a young age, he exhibited considerable talent, independence, and willful nonconformity. Over the course of his life, these themes came through both in his compositions, and in his attitude towards social norms regarding music. Composing symphonies, sonatas, string quartets, concertos, and one opera, Beethoven shattered musical boundaries and set the stage for how musicians and listeners would think about music for the next 200 years, up to modern day. This afternoon I will explore various ways in which Beethoven's conception of music continues to influence our thinking about music, even rock, through analysis of The Beatles' "A Day in the Life," off their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Recommended Citation

David, Avi, "Beethoven's Influence on Modern Musical Thought" (2007). Undergraduate Research Symposium (UGRS). 11.
https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/ugrs/11

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Beethoven's Influence on Modern Musical Thought

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Ludwig van Beethoven is undoubtedly one of the most important and influential composers of Western art music. From a young age, he exhibited considerable talent, independence, and willful nonconformity. Over the course of his life, these themes came through both in his compositions, and in his attitude towards social norms regarding music.

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Beethoven's terminal illness and death - PubMed

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There is dispute about the cause of Beethoven's death; alcoholic cirrhosis, syphilis, infectious hepatitis, lead poisoning, sarcoidosis and Whipple's disease have all been proposed. In this article all primary source documents related to Beethoven's terminal illness and death are reviewed. The docum ...

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The museum at Ludwig van Beethoven's birth place is one of the most frequented music museums worldwide and one of the 100 most popular sights in Germany. Since December 17, 2019, the museum has been hosting a new and enlarged permanent exhibition. It provides a new approach to experiencing Beethoven as an artist and fellow human being in a modern, inspiring and exciting way. New rooms are the vault with manuscripts, a music room for regular concerts on historic keyboards and a special area for temporary exhibitions. You can find more information here.

Wednesday to Monday 10 am - 6 pm (last admission at 5:30 pm),
on Tuesdays, the museum opens exclusively for pre-booked groups.

The museum is also closed on: New Year's Day, Mardi Gras, Shrove Monday, from 24 to 26 December and New Year's Eve.

From April, the treasury is open Wednesday to Monday 11:30 am - 3:30 pm. Outside these times, the treasury can only be visited as part of a guided tour.
Please note:

The museum is a historic listed building with low ceiling beams and railings, unusual distances between steps and different floor levels. For your own safety, please move through the building and the exhibition with appropriate caution.

As parents or adult companions, please ensure that the underage children behave appropriately and fulfil your duty of supervision.

The museum rooms are not air-conditioned.

Visitor regulations

The Beethoven-Haus (Bonngasse 20 und 24-26) is situated in the centre of Bonn on the edge of the pedestrian zone, not far from the river Rhine.
Bonngasse is within easy walking distance of the main station. Trams and buses stop at the nearby Bertha-von-Suttner-Platz, where taxis can also be found. The city car parks offer parking facilities: the closest are Stiftsgarage, Marktgarage and Friedensplatzgarage.

Google Maps
Width: 50°44'12.67"N
Lenght: 7° 6'4.50"E

Tram: 62, 65, 66 and 67
Bus: 529, 537, 540, 550, 551, 600, 601, 602, 603, 604, 605, 606, 607, 608, 609, 640
Stop: Bertha-von-Suttner-Platz / Beethoven-Haus

Prices:

Beethoven-Haus, Bonngasse 21, opposite the entrance of the museum

Online booking, possible until the day before your visit

Mediaguides:
Museum concerts: Guided tours: Tickets:
Smartphone app "Beethoven-Haus Bonn" per free download at Apple Store and Google Play in German, English, French, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Korean.
Please also bring your own headphones.
If you do not have your own device at hand, please ask for a loaner.

On many weekends visitors can listen to "Music in Beethoven's time" on historical keyboard instruments. Pianists explain the special features of the instruments. The concerts last 40 minutes and take place on fixed dates on Saturdays at 4 p.m. and Sundays at 12 a.m. in the music room of the museum. Tickets for 5 Euro (plus admission to the museum) can be bought in the Beethoven-Haus shop (always from Monday before the concert). These concerts are for individual visitors of the museum only.

Birthplace

Beethoven's birthplace and dwelling

The house at Bonngasse 20, where composer Ludwig van Beethoven was born in December 1770, is one of the few remaining houses in Bonn built in the 18th century. Its baroque stone facade was erected over cellars dating back to the 12th or 13th century. The ground floor accommodated a kitchen and a utility room, underneath which was a cellar. On the first floor, there were two smaller rooms and a somewhat larger room. The bedrooms were in the attic.

Beethoven's parents, electoral court singer Johann van Beethoven and his wife Maria Magdalena, née Keverich, moved into the garden wing in November 1767. Other electoral court musicians lived nearby, among them Johann Peter Salomon in the front building, electoral court musical director Ludwig van Beethoven (grandfather) opposite of the street and hornist Nikolaus Simrock.

In 1774 the Beethoven family left their first house and moved to a place at the Auf dem Dreieck square. From 1776 on they lived for ten years with interruptions at Rheingasse in a house known as "Zum Walfisch", the so-called Fischer house, and from 1787 onwards at Wenzelgasse. None of the later Beethoven houses has survived.

The building in the 19th and 20th century
The house "Im Mohren"

Permanent exhibition

Beethoven's birthplace and dwelling

On stepping into the inner courtyard, the historical atmosphere takes visitors back to Beethoven's times. A tour through the twelve rooms in the Museum afford deeper insight into the life and work of the great composer. Over 100 original exhibits reflect Beethoven's thoughts and emotions, work and influence.

Guided virtual tour
Virtual tour to discover

Our temporary exhibitions cover exciting topics on Beethoven, the historical background or reception history. The Beethoven-Haus has around three temporary exhibitions a year, often in cooperation with other museums and collections. Many of them are accompanied by books or catalogues.

Temporary exhibition
Future exhibitions
Past exhibitions

Internet exhibitions

As an accompainment to special exhibitions at the Beethoven-House several internet exhibitions were created. Certain topics can be accessed for further information:

The manuscripts, pictures, musical instruments and mementos displayed in the exhibitions form the core of the museum's collection. In the early years following the foundation of the Beethoven-Haus Association in 1889, important items such as Beethoven's last pianoforte (an instrument made by the Viennese piano manufacturer Conrad Graf), or the original manuscript of the "Moonlight" sonata and the "Pastoral" symphony were acquired. Today it is the largest and most diverse Beethoven collection in the world. It includes manuscripts, letters, pictures, busts, coins and medallions, musical instruments, furniture and everyday items used by Beethoven. The museum's collection is complemented by the library's holdings.

The collection is kept in a safe, built with conservation requirements in mind, which is under the stage in the chamber music hall. Many performers feel particularly inspired by this architectural symbolism.

Most of the Beethoven collection has been digitised. In the Digital Archives it is available to everyone. There are also catalogues for additional research.

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Das Beethoven-Haus in Bonn ist Gedächtnisstätte, Museum und Kulturinstitut mit vielfältigen Aufgaben. 1889 vom Verein Beethoven-Haus gegründet, verbinden sich hier die Person von Ludwig van Beethoven mit der Pflege seiner Musik und der Erforschung von Leben und Werk des Komponisten.