What instruments did Beethoven play?

What instruments did Beethoven play?

As it was common in those times, Beethoven was a piano and violin player, although what hardly anyone knows is that he also played the viola and in this page you’ll read about his life, his works and how he used the viola in his chamber music and symphonic works.

What instrument did Beethoven play the best?

Despite being taught violin and piano by his father from a young age, his true love and the instrument he played the best was the piano. Even at a young age, Beethoven showed formidable gifts of improvisation when playing the piano, and most of his composition was written for himself to play.

What kind of piano did Beethoven play?

Beethoven possessed and played on pianos from Stein, Böhm, Graf, close friends and piano makers Streicher and a French brand Érard. Finally, his most beloved and cherished piano a Broadwood from London.

Was Beethoven deaf or blind?

Beethoven first noticed difficulties with his hearing decades earlier, sometime in 1798, when he was about 28. By the time he was 44 or 45, he was totally deaf and unable to converse unless he passed written notes back and forth to his colleagues, visitors and friends. He died in 1827 at the age of 56.

Was Beethoven really deaf?

Beethoven tried to keep news of the problem secret from those closest to him. Beethoven could apparently still hear some speech and music until 1812. But by the age of 44, he was almost totally deaf and unable to hear voices or so many of the sounds of his beloved countryside.

Was Beethoven’s music loud?

In 1813, Beethoven wrote a symphonic work so noisy and trite that most scholars consider it an embarrassment. Afterward, someone remarked that Beethoven had written a piece seemingly designed to make the listener as deaf as its composer.

Did Beethoven break his pianos?

Yes, he was losing his hearing, but he was also writing challenging music. And he broke a lot of pianos, too, by pounding away at them. In spite of their loudness advantage, Beethoven preferred the lighter action of the Viennese instruments; he thought the English pianos were unplayable.

Did Beethoven go deaf?

Did Beethoven cut the legs off his piano?

The deafness began in 1798 and Beethoven had lost 60% of his hearing by 1801 at age 31. At 46 in 1816 he was completely deaf. In his later years, when the deafness affected his ability to compose properly, Beethoven sawed the legs off his piano, and used the floor as a sounding board.

Did Beethoven go deaf from syphilis?

There is little clinical or autopsy evidence that Beethoven suffered from syphilis. On autopsy, his Eustachian tube was narrowed and the auditory nerves were atrophied. The latter finding confirms that he had nerve deafness, but does not indicate what caused it.

Who built Beethoven piano?

Nannette Streicher, a woman previously believed to be a mother figure for Beethoven and a ‘fine pianist’, has had her true talents diminished by music scholars and was actually the one building young Ludwig’s pianos – a journalist for the New York Times argues. Here’s how the story goes.