Beethoven

In Our Time: Culture

BBC

History

4.5 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 21 December 2017

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great composers, who was born into a family of musicians in Bonn. His grandfather was an eminent musician and also called Ludwig van Beethoven. His father, who was not as talented as Beethoven's grandfather, drank heavily and died when Beethoven was still young. It was his move to Vienna that allowed him to flourish, with the support at first of aristocratic patrons, when that city was the hub of European music. He is credited with developing the symphony further than any who preceded him, with elevating instrumental above choral music and with transforming music to the highest form of art. He composed his celebrated works while, from his late twenties onwards, becoming increasingly deaf.

(Before the live broadcast, BBC Radio 3's Breakfast programme played selections from Beethoven, with Essential Classics playing more, immediately after, on the same network.)

With

Laura Tunbridge Professor of Music and Henfrey Fellow, St Catherine's College, University of Oxford

John Deathridge Emeritus King Edward Professor of Music at King's College London

And

Erica Buurman Senior Lecturer in Music, Canterbury Christchurch University

Producer: Simon Tillotson.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the BBC.
0:02.0	Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time.
0:05.0	There's a reading list to go with it on our website and you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC in our time.
0:12.0	I hope you enjoy the programs.
0:14.0	Hello Ludwig Van Beethoven as one of the greatest composers is often considered the
0:18.7	greatest, a defining figure in Western classical music. He was born in Bonn in 1770 and moved to Vienna the hub of
0:25.6	European music in his early 20s and there he flourished. Yet still in his 20s he noticed
0:30.4	he was losing his hearing and had to find a way to keep going to create even
0:34.1	greater works rather than give up.
0:36.6	His output loomed over the rest of the 19th century as it does today.
0:40.3	In particular he popularised music without words, transcending language, and he changed the way that
0:45.8	audiences valued music, making it something that could be engaged with and thought about rather
0:50.8	than played in the background and talked over.
0:52.8	Would me to discuss Beethoven are Laura Tunbridge, Professor of Music and
0:56.6	Henry Fellows and Catharines College University of Oxford.
0:59.8	John Deathridge, Emeritus King Edward Professor of Music at Kings College London, and
1:04.0	Erica Bruhman,
1:05.6	Senior Lecture in Music Canterbury Christiich University.
1:09.2	So here we go, Beethoven without the music.
1:11.3	John Deathridge. What signs were there in Bonn that
1:14.2	Beethoven might become a composer? There are plenty of signs. He was there from
1:20.0	1770 to 1792, 22 years in a very active musical place and met a very great number of
	...

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