 Hello everybody. I hope you are doing well. Thanks for joining me on this. It's really lovely to see you all. Some of you I know as students, some of you I know as parents and when your kids were here we came to lots of concerts and when your kids graduated I didn't see you anymore and I missed you but it's awesome to see you in this setting. I hope you are doing well and staying healthy. We are going to get started with our conversation. As I mentioned earlier there's that form in Google and I would say about 50 of you kind of took that little quiz and I'm going to share the results and we can start our conversation from there. So bear with me as you hopefully, can somebody, yes you can see the form that I'm referring to? Awesome. I just wanted to make sure that that is happening. Okay and I'm going to click on the responses so we can get a sense of what that looks like and you guys can all get a sense of kind of where your mutual attendees are answering, how your mutual attendees are answering. Okay so one month was Beethoven born in overwhelming majority when you said December and that is correct. Beethoven was born I think why is it that we think? So here's the thing, Beethoven was baptized on December 17th and back in those days because there was such a high infant mortality rate, the kids were usually baptized a day or two days right after they were born. Hence we think it's December 16th but December 15th is also accepted as Beethoven's birthday as well and obviously back then people, the church records were probably more accurate than governmental records since the church kind of served as government entity in some ways. So Beethoven was most likely born on December 16th. Now if he was born on December 16th he also shares a birthday with a very prominent literary figure. Jane Austin was also born on December 16th. Jane Austin was born five years after Beethoven and died 10 years before Beethoven which is a bit of a shame so she lived a rather short life. So that brings us to our next question. By 2021 how old would Beethoven be? So here's the thing, since his birthday was in December if we're counting it right now it's still his 250th birthday but by December 16th or 17 then it would definitely be his 251st birthday. All right so which city was Beethoven born in? Now the overwhelming answer is Bonn. 30% think it's Leipzig, smaller percentage think it's Berlin and then 16% think it's Vienna. Now I can totally understand why people think it might be Vienna because it is understood as the musical capital of the classical music world back in those days and Berlin is now the capital of what we know is Germany so completely understandable that people think it's that. Leipzig is all affiliated with a music as a musical city thanks to Bach who spent the latter half of his life as a teacher at the St. Thomas School there and also Mendelssohn as well so who was also affiliated with the city but Beethoven was actually born in Bonn. Bonn is probably not as well known nowadays as it was back in those days. Back in those days it was kind of considered a city a thorough fair. A lot of people travel there and the city was very much like any other city at that time. The center of town life was around the city square and the city church or the cathedral. Beethoven's grandfather shared the same name Leipzig van Beethoven and he was a composer. The grandfather was a composer so you could say that music ran in his family and in some ways you know that's similar to a lot of other composers of the time. Bach's family was musical when Bach was young he was sent as an apprentice to you know some of the extended families. The way he learned music was by copying a lot of the music that he kind of stole from his cousin's covers and that's actually also how he lost his sight later in life because he spent a lot of time in not very great light copying little notes. He also had four sons which he promptly put to work as soon as they could hold a pen in their hands because they were copying all parts for him. So Beethoven grew up you could say he had music in his blood. His grandfather was very well respected in Bonn. His father was also a musician. His father was a tenor in the cathedral choir though his father nearly as well respected partly because he wasn't as good of a musician but the other part was also because his father was a drunk and abusive so not a good guy to be dealing with. As many of you know Beethoven went deaf later in his life and some have attributed that deafness to the fact that his father knocked him around a lot when he was young. Beethoven was the eldest of three sons and a little girl that was later died before all the other brothers and when Beethoven was young he definitely showed musical promise so his dad wanted to make him like the second Mozart. At that time Mozart was touring Europe you know Mozart died in 1791 and Beethoven was born in 1770 so as Beethoven was growing up he surely would have heard about Mozart. His father would have heard about Mozart and you know Mozart was going around with his dad and his sister performing for all the big royal houses in Europe and in the process gaining wealth and fame and his dad actually wanted Beethoven to do the same and made Beethoven lie about his age which also explains why Beethoven later in life was actually kind of confused about his own age. His father made him tell other people that he was younger than he actually was like told people he was six when he was actually eight trying to make him look more impressive but Beethoven was not having it. Beethoven was pretty stubborn and from a very young age and had a temper from a very young age he would rather take the abuse from his dad than to play on command by his dad so yes you can I think if I'm sure you know some of his music so you can probably hear that in some of his music. All right so which one was a portrait of Beethoven and let me go back to the pictures so this number one is Beethoven. Number two is actually a picture of Rossini for those of you that opera fans I am sure you have heard Rossini for those of you that are not opera fans I'm sure you would have heard some of this music if you know the yeah that's by Rossini. It's from his William Tell opera and that's from the Overture to the opera. Number three is a picture of young Felix Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn was also a bit of a prodigy himself except he had a very different dad. Mendelssohn came from a fairly wealthy family actually a pretty wealthy family so when he was composing you know like when he was 13 and he was writing his octets his dad was like oh you're writing this okay I'll hire a orchestra to play your music not exactly the kind of condition that Beethoven had it so somebody who definitely grew up slightly differently. Picture number four is probably the least familiar to you all and probably to most people this is Hummel. Hummel is probably nowadays most known for a trumpet sonata sorry trumpet concerto that he wrote even though in his day he's a contemporary of Beethoven and he was more known as a pianist back in those days more than anything else but his lasting legacy is that trumpet concerto. Okay going back to our responses most of you got that it was picture number one some of you pick Hummel and some of you pick Mendelssohn okay so was Haydn a teacher of Beethoven it's a little complicated so the official answer is yes the unofficial answer though is it's complicated so when Beethoven showed a lot of promise the rich people in a lecture on who was kind of the prince of the town you know said okay we're going to get something together we're going to send this very talented young man to Vienna so he could study with Haydn and said that you know the electors to him from the hands of Haydn you shall receive the spirit of Mozart so they have hopes for Beethoven so the first time Beethoven left Bond to go to Vienna he was supposed to go and study with Haydn except as soon as he got to Vienna his dad his mother and his little sister passed away very suddenly so then he went back and the elector was not happy because you know he didn't have anything to show for except for death that the elector had to pay but then when Beethoven went back again later he did quote unquote study with Haydn by that I meant he did go and have composition lessons with Haydn the problem was Haydn by this time was fairly well known very prominent definitely consider a great composer in his own time he kind of considered himself Papa Haydn you know kind of this elder statesman who is about to help these young composers and he was from a different era a different tradition his idea of composition at the root of it the philosophical root of it was different than what Beethoven wanted to achieve so he wanted Beethoven to write these things and Beethoven didn't want to write them so the two of them kind of they butted heads a great deal shall we say so while you know this was happening Beethoven also lied to Haydn which is not a good thing to do to anybody at least of all your teacher because he gave Haydn these compositions which he claimed that he wrote while he was studying Haydn so Haydn then sent it back to Bond to the people who made Beethoven all of this money to go study in Vienna to be like oh look at what he's been doing and of course the people in Bond recognized these work as in oh he wrote these when he was here so Beethoven was caught in the live Haydn was not happy with him to Haydn's credit though Haydn did not blow his cover shall we say Haydn still gave him all of his access to like the Vienna salons these were you know living rooms of people who were wealthy people who were hosting concerts he connected Beethoven to a lot of the prominent musicians and to the prominent patrons in Vienna to help Beethoven get started in his career so to Haydn's credit he didn't hold it against him um Beethoven was perhaps not nearly as gracious when Beethoven was publishing some of his first works Haydn wanted him to include the lying student of Joseph Haydn and Beethoven was like no I'm not doing that so relationship wise I mean I think you see that streak of stubbornness continue as Beethoven grow into his young adulthood that hasn't changed but like I said Haydn was actually very gracious and didn't quite hold that against them thankfully so what instrument did Beethoven play overwhelmingly you all picked the piano which I totally understand Beethoven wrote 32 piano notas which pianists of today consider the New Testament uh we consider the 48 well-tempered players by Bach to be Old Testament and Beethoven's Sonata to be the New Testament. Beethoven also wrote ten not for piano and violin now these are not works that work for the viola uh for the violin but a company won the true chamber music by the name of Sonata for piano and violin they're meant to be equal partners in these works Beethoven himself wrote the viola so the notes are actually and whenever people whenever notes are played for music actually that play the viola part of the house so just a bit of a question is he can play all or he can play the piano he played the violin he played the viola and he played the horn few horn back in when you bond because obviously when your parent is a musician you probably have musician friends who showed up to the house and if you are a curious young person who wanted to learn it wasn't hard to get somebody to teach you and back in those days the horn as an instrument was what we call not velled so nowadays when you see a horn player play their left hand would move and there would be three actually technically the problem there would be four keys there that they could move so they could get different pitches back in the days of Haydn and Beethoven and actually almost all the way up to drums as well horn players would have to carry this box of tubing there were different lengths because in order to play different keys you would have to stick in different lengths of tubing to get the different notes you want so if you are looking at scores by Mozart or by Beethoven the horn part would be horn in G or horn in D and what happens the horn players see that then they pull out their D tubing they stick in the horn and they would play in that key so this is before they have bells but yes so Beethoven actually knows how to play all four so in his middle life overwhelming and starting in his mid 30s this would be when he had gotten to Vienna got to Vienna in his late 20s early 30s he was starting to gain a reputation for himself as a pianist back in those days battle of the pianist was a big thing you know you would go to somebody's house and you would show each other off in the salons and Beethoven was a very good pianist he showed a lot of prowess and a lot of people were very impressed by what he was able to do he was also gaining reputation for himself as a composer he was publishing his first opus you know opus number two he just finishes symphony number one and two and then he started to get this ringing in his ear and it's similar to what people probably nowadays call tintinitis where you hear this ring in your ears the problem was that nobody back then quite knew what it was and all of the doctors who treated him prescribed things like oh put almond oil down your ear or go take a bath in the Daniel and obviously medical technology back in those days were not nearly what they are today and Beethoven's condition it did not improve it got progressively worse and i'm actually reading the book right now it's called hearing Beethoven in which they explore exactly what it was that he might have been dealing with the problem was that you know you're a young person who is you can say at the end of the line of your curve and are losing the one sense that one can say is perhaps the most important to you it's like somebody who is starting to become a prominent painter and they're losing their sight or they're starting to become colorblind so for Beethoven this was incredibly frightening incredibly discouraging and he was driven into depression and he was even suicidal we have um a last will and testament from him that he wrote around this time that he wrote in a place called Helgestof that is a syrup outside of Vienna so back in those days in Vienna if you had any money you would leave the city in the summer because the city stank in the summer there was no refrigeration and you can imagine all the lovely rotting whatever plus the body odors so if you had any money people left the city in the summer and Helgestof was a place that Beethoven went to this summer to compose to take walks in the country and while he was there he wrote this last will and testament to his two younger others basically explaining you know I think it was almost like a suicide note he didn't quite mail it though and it wasn't found until after his death and in the letter he talks about having to hide the fact that he was going deaf he said you know I walked down the street and people would think that I crank I don't say hello back when they say hello and he talks about how do I explain to the word you know I am a musician and I can't hear you how can I say to them you know speak louder and he was in the middle of the letter or the testament he it sounded like he was ready to commit suicide you know he was somebody who believed in his own destiny he believed that he was put on earth to write music so I think we can probably all relate to how this might be devastating I think losing one's hearing or losing any sense that a person half will be devastating to anyone at any age but it's even more so when you feel like this is the one sense you need in order to do the work that you feel like you're destined to do now in the middle of the letter it kind of turned around and he basically said here's the thing though I don't I'm not done yet he's saying I have a lot to say I have more to do and I'm not done yet so I'm going to go and pretty much people started to know that he was going deaf because he started in the tools to help himself Mazzell is a guy who nowadays is known for he people say he invented the metronome he's more like somebody who perfected the metronome but he also made what they called the ear trumpet for Beethoven so it was a tube that looked like a backwards you know there was old gramophones with the bell and not nearly as large but it was something like that in which Beethoven was sticking to one ear and people would try to speak into that so maybe he could hear them so ear trumpet is something you can find at the Beethoven museum in Bond and conversation books it got to the point where Beethoven could only converse with people if the other people wrote down they wanted to say to him I mean he could speak to them but they couldn't speak to him and have themselves be understood so we have stacks and stacks of these conversation books that Beethoven had with other people you also carry or he also had a slate one of those chalk slates so you could write something really quick erase it you know and write something again so these were the ways that you know he did to his new environment there's actually a really cool documentary about Beethoven's hearing machine what happened later was he actually had um Robert was a really London piano company based on Beethoven and then he built this home shape over it basically trying to get as much as as much sound as he could out of the instrument is um which is kind of fascinating because we try to let that light and make recordings of what I could possibly have sounded like so if you're interested in anything I say go check that it's fun to know let's plan on it okay um so did away from politics maybe what if you say false and correct so obviously looks like falling off right here let's see she'll hopefully come back if she just timed out were you guys getting some scratchiness with her audio yes okay so I was hearing that and wondering what we can do to help that I'll see if she can take out her earbuds I didn't know for just on my end we'll see oh you know I think it's my internet I keep getting the system my internet is unstable so if there's anything you need me to repeat let me know uh I'm assuming I am not sharing my screen anymore no and sometimes Ruth if you shut your video off it sometimes improves the audio as well oh I can do that um Zach please do speak up if you're losing me okay we'll do okay screen looks great okay okay so did we get the politics question so Beethoven perfect okay so did Beethoven stay away from politics uh not not quite so here's a thing about Beethoven um he did not march down the street like everybody like you know what you may think of it is involvement in politics he did not write pamphlets like Wagner did what Beethoven did was um he showed it in personal ways shall we say so there is an anecdote that's recounted by Goethe the famous German literary figure um him and Beethoven were in one of the gardens on a day on a very fine day in Vienna and back in those days you know gardens were where you went to be seen if you were a wealthy person you would take drives in the park if you were a wealthy person you might show off your new clothes at the park and this is also where people of all classes might have gathered you would have the aristocrats and you would also have people who may not quite be the aristocrats but the growing middle class so Goethe and Beethoven were one day walking in this garden and you know Goethe sees a group of aristocrats walking their way um and there were people usually that you would quote unquote defer to so this was people that you know you might move aside for you make a path for them you show your deference and Goethe said while he was you know come up from a bow to these people Beethoven had charged like a bull through the crowd you know straight through this group of aristocrats and I think you can gather what Beethoven thinks of the class system based on this one anecdote now did that mean that he didn't take money from them oh no he was quite happy to take money from them and we'll get to that in a little bit but here's the thing when Napoleon came on the scene you know 1770 is when Beethoven was born 1776 is when you have the american revolution then 13 years later you have the french revolution that went on and off for about 10 years and out of that you get some guy named Napoleon who is a corsican nowadays part of Italy but back in the back then part of France who is basically going through France talking about and conquering different parts of Europe talking about liberty fraternity you know and and freedom and so Beethoven was a fan you like the ideas that Napoleon was espousing so at first he actually dedicated his third symphony to Napoleon now when Napoleon declared himself an emperor Beethoven was pissed he was very very mad and he actually scratched out the dedication on the score and instead wrote to the memory of a hero so it's dedicated to the memory of a hero instead so Beethoven was definitely not somebody who shied away from letting people know about his personal opinions and politics even though he didn't quote unquote actively take part shall we say so was Beethoven revered in his lifetime and the short answer is yes Beethoven did not die a pauper he actually at the end of his life accumulated a substantial amount of wealth that he was able to give and pass on to his brothers and nephews and he himself you know at one point thought of moving away from Vienna because the cost of living at Vienna became too high and all of these aristocrats got together and basically said we can't let Beethoven leave Vienna because what would Vienna be without Beethoven how can we call ourselves the city of music so they decided to give Beethoven a deal they would give him an annuity a certain set of money every year where it would cover his living expenses and all Beethoven had to do was stay in Vienna and Beethoven took the deal and the steel fluctuated a little bit there were times when we didn't get paid the full amount or there were huge inflations at certain other times but when you think about it that is a fantastic deal for any artist I mean nowadays there are very few artists that have this kind of deal artists tend to compliment their artistic endeavors or teaching and or performing and nowadays you know you might have the McArthur grant or the Guggenheim that might give you a certain set of money for a year to say go work on your creative endeavors so you don't have to worry about living expenses but this was incredibly rare and I think it shows to a certain degree how well known Beethoven was in his lifetime and also how much he was a reviewer as a composer during his time here's the thing though Beethoven then went through another bout of depression later in his life and it has to do with his brother's death one of his younger brother passed away and he was in a custody battle with his sister-in-law for his nephew and this kind of set him into a whole depression and it was I don't think he was probably a good person to be raising a child but in some ways because he didn't have one of his own I think he wanted to raise this nephew to you know kind of pass on his legacy things were so bad that the nephew attempted suicide actually so Beethoven was went into another bout of depression and he stopped caring about himself he was not taking care of himself he was drinking a bottle of wine with every meal and he was not taking care of himself in terms of personal hygiene at one point he even slept on the street and got woken up by a policeman who thought he was homeless until they then realized that it was actually Beethoven so I think from this you can see that Beethoven was incredibly human he wasn't but it was pristine all the time he let his personal feelings be known and he has some pretty public you know we can say meltdowns I think these days if we want to call it that so was Beethoven a good businessman yes he was he actually hired his two younger brothers to be his secretaries and he was one of the first composers to start negotiating different contracts for his published works in different countries to make sure that he was getting the most out of his contracts and as I mentioned he had no problem taking money from the aristocrats if you look at his pieces in the title page of his pieces they will often be dedications and who are they dedicated to dedicated to they were not dedicated to you know family members they were usually dedicated to a kind to a prince to a archduke or to a prince and why because these people gave him money um sometimes it wasn't quite nearly as quick pro quo as I give you this money and you must give me the dedication sometimes it was but most of the time it's because Beethoven realized that these people have helped him substantially in giving him the musical opportunities he needs to build his reputation let me give you an example um back in these days there was no such thing as a professional orchestra you know these societies and these professional orchestras did not come in tell the earliest I want to say was 1850 and if you are a composer and you have a new piece that and you want to premiere to the public you would have to hire players to come rehearse and perform and it's expensive when you think about how many people are in an orchestra so what happened was that he would hire people who were sometimes playing in bars playing in coffee shops and these people will come together for a day long rehearsal and then they will perform in the evening I mean that's insanely long day and also these weren't the best players either and that actually contributed to a lot of why Beethoven did not receive good reviews of a lot of his music during his own lifetime especially at the premieres because oftentimes they were poorly played I mean these people rehearse all day then they will perform at night that's barely enough for a person to do anything and it was hard to play you know and it was a show me there is actually one of the piano of course than aria but that was probably like a three hour concert okay and probably more and these people had just that day to rehearse and he was you know in his journal he was talking about Prince Prince one of the princes that he knew I want to say it's Nishtowsky even though I'm not completely sure don't quote me on that have brought over food for the musicians you know and he could never have funded these ventures without the help of these patrons and these patrons sometimes you know in addition to giving him food giving him money also gave him a place to stay when he was in Vienna there was a period of time where he was staying with one of these aristocrats and one of these aristocrats asked him you know when he had visitors ask if Beethoven will play for his visitors Beethoven got super upset and he left in a huff because he's like I am not your servant and I think from that you could see Beethoven's great objection to the class system at the time he was not a fan of that and he does not believe that an artist should be somebody who submits themselves to working for a church or working for like the aristocrats he believed that I am just as good as you are and you don't get to boss me around so I think in all of that it paints hopefully a better picture of who Beethoven was definitely Plex definitely somebody who had his own ideals and he stuck to them but only when it was being important in some ways and he was also a person who went through a great struggle of his own internally and also he went through a struggle during his time when you think about Europe at that time you had millennia of kings you know the idea that you were ruling by divine right and all of a sudden that was changing now people are thinking that maybe everybody's equal maybe not quite everybody you know not not because of who you were born to that you are better than somebody else so definitely somebody who was going through a turmoil time outside but also inside as well ah so now we get to aha did Beethoven like coffee the short answer yes yes it was known that Beethoven would count up 60 60 beans every day grind them up himself then make himself a cup of coffee there are coffee shops nowadays that have figured out that that's about the ratio of how you might make an espresso shop so if you're ever interested in trying the Beethoven group you just need to count up 60 beans grind them yourself and see what that might taste like it's probably going to be a very strong cup of coffee and lastly Beethoven never married that is true he never married and he was very unlucky in love shall we say he was always looking for love but he was very unlucky in love most of the time he set his sights on women that were beyond reach in terms of his social standing he was reaching for people that he could never have and there is a movie that's actually pretty well done with gary omen playing Beethoven and it's called immortal beloved and it's based off of a letter that Beethoven wrote speaking about this person as the immortal beloved and how he was to be with this person and the movie kind of recounts Beethoven's life through the search who this is the book and the movie comes to different conclusions about who that is but it makes for this story and i will say for the other parts they actually in my opinion capture who Beethoven was as a person relatively well so i encourage you to check that movie if you want some good entertainment it's called immortal beloved and the music in it is recorded by the london symphony orchestra with sir george v and i think it's lovely so i encourage you all to check that out i think um i am good i think i come to a good stopping play in the lecture and i invite questions if you have any and i'm gonna stop sharing my finger perfect thank you ruth yeah if you have any questions put them in the chat or feel free you can unmute yourselves now if you have some questions about Beethoven i personally learned a lot um i'm not as well versed with composers and great that this is our time so that was great to hear a little bit about him so if you have any questions please unmute yourself you can do so now if it was resentful the class of how society saw his family ah okay so when you think about back in these days um as a musician before Mozart before Beethoven the best that you can hope for is to find a steady job either as the cappell meister for you know a some aristocrat which is what heiden did heiden was the cappell meister for princess ester hazy in nowadays kind of hungry checklist locket area or what Mozart's dad did and Mozart's dad worked for the church i think was working for archbishop in solzburg back then that was the most stable job that you could possibly have bach was working for leipzig um the saint thomas church and school there so Mozart wanted to break out on his own most of his dad had actually lined up a great job for him he's like no i want to go to vienna i want to be a freelance musician i want to put together own concerts and Beethoven kind of was following in that fista you had the growth of the middle class which means more people were able to afford to pay for a ticket to go to a concert and i think people of Beethoven's time knew about his family background they knew that he came from a musical family they respected him as an artist he was kind of that archetype of your romantic artist somebody who isn't afraid to you know let people know what they think or and people and somebody who was a romantic in terms of expressing his views in a very um direct way so as you know the princess and the aristocrats i think respected him this is not that all of them did there were definitely people in there who thought he was you know too good for himself or he thought too well of himself so there were definitely people who were not a fan of him and part of it is because he wasn't shy about letting people know his opinions either so he didn't like a politician people knew about it other questions i wanted to know this is jenny leppard thank you so much for this wonderful presentation i wanted to know if you know anything more about all the media hype there was a few years ago about Beethoven died of lead poisoning from the river or something like that did you read about that at the time i don't think i read that although hearing there are so many about why he died or how he died or why he went deaf um back in those days obviously the cemetery conditions in europe was not good and this actually ties into the coffee thing so before coffee was kind of a thing in europe most people in europe actually drank beer because it wasn't safe to drink water without boiling it and most people weren't boiling their water or didn't know that they were supposed to boil their water and when drinking to europe and the new world because coffee is an equatorial up um people all of a sudden were going wow we get a lot more done drinking coffee rather than drinking beer and you know Beethoven wasn't the only composer that loved coffee uh bach also loved coffee bach actually was a whole coffee cantata which is between a daughter and a dad and the daughter was just like just give me coffee i don't care you marry me off to a dense version of that story um Beethoven most likely died from some sort of um most likely this is once again a theory from something that was digestive like internal bad digestion and based by the last day of his stomach was also to like he had bloated the fluids i'm not sure exactly what was in the coffee but it would not suffice me if at the time was huge lepo all around europe at that time hello i've heard another theory i'm Matthew from the luth a very retired physician that uh because there was deafness he got depressed and so he drank too much so he got cirrhosis of the liver and ascites that is huge collection of fluid and at abdomen and he attempted to drain it and of course in those days he got infected and that is what wiped him out another thing about him that uh male clinic geneticist named Jaime Gordon uh expounded on uh was that he had a tertiary that is third degree syphilis and that is in an unusual way presented with his hearing loss i don't know how accepted that is or documented but uh that's propounded by a pretty authoritative non-musician anyone who is easy to imagine getting syphilis in those days which isn't very nice but you gotta be realistic i heard about the liver and the cirrhosis of the liver i actually believe that was part of his autopsy um as the syphilis one i am not sure i have also heard that rumor as well though and he would now have been the first um romantic composer to be associated with that disease Schuber died of it and it's most likely that Schumann went crazy because of it so unsurprising i would not be surprised if he did have syphilis other questions our idea how radical was his music in those days uh that's what the impression i had is just used to um the Bach and Haydn and Mozart and then Beethoven came along with this dramatic music was it pretty shocking yes so let me give you a quick example of what made his music so shocking so up to now up to when Beethoven wrote his first and second symphony people tended to start a symphony with this slow action then would be a little bit more lively called the Allegro and Beethoven decided to start his third symphony with these two quick booms i mean he just jumped right into the Allegro and that was considered unprecedented and people were just like what is he doing you know while we get our slow introduction anymore so this was definitely something that the audience considered shocking at the time and also what Beethoven did was he put the emphasis of the symphony he shifted he slowly shifted to the last movement rather than the first movement first movement used to be where kind of the meat and potato was of the symphony the second movement is usually something slow something lovely something graceful third movement is usually a minuet that was based on a french dance and the fourth movement was just supposed to be like dessert you know it's supposed to be something light and frothy that you can then go home kind of maybe singing the tune with but what Beethoven did was he slowly shifted kind of a lot of the important things into the fourth movement and the fourth movement became longer and longer and longer and much more substantial so these are just two of the things that kind of shock the audience at the time that's great i believe art did you have a question art yes can you hear me yeah we can hear you oh good uh i'm wondering i know at least i believe Mozart wrote the ninth symphony when he was totally deaf did he write any other symphonies or music when he was totally deaf so here's the where the definition gets a little tricky with idea of totally deaf because Beethoven could still feel vibrations and even when he was writing those last pieces he was still doing them at these piano with that hearing machine he would build this huge comb that would go over you know where the piano kind of where the lid is nowadays in a grand piano so i don't think he was completely deaf ever i think he could still kind of hear things but he could never hear in the spectrum that probably we can hear to does that make sense at all yes okay thank you no problem and we've got time for a couple more questions i saw lindsay had a question if you have any book or documentary recommendation yes um here is one about Beethoven nine and i believe it's called let me do a quick search but i think it's something called following in the steps of Beethoven nine uh following the ninth the step the first step of Beethoven's final symphony it's a documentary and it's about how oh to joy especially has made an impact worldwide i mean this was what was hanging in tanman square when those students were protesting in tanman square in 1989 this is what was playing you know at the berlin wall when it came down every year now in japan around christmas time around the end of the year you would have thousands of singers that learned that oh to joy and hire an orchestra just so they can sing oh to joy so this is talking about kind of the power of that ninth symphony the oh to joy is the eu's anthem so it's got a lot of power so i definitely recommend that one yes thank you jack for putting that yep the other one if you're curious about finding out more about the hearing machine i think it's just called if you put in Beethoven's hearing machine it's free on bimio it's a video that's free right there the movie i would definitely recommend immortal beloved because i think that they actually do a good job of trying to tell his story and you know it's by a good director with very good actors there was a movie i think called copying Beethoven with ed harris i'm not so crazy about that one but that's a personal opinion let me think books wise there's a really famous biography written by manar Solomon and it's about Beethoven so that is also something that's worth checking out and that book definitely i think is where the movie got some of their ideas in terms of thinking about the immortal beloved was the last things you wrote the string quartets i'm sorry what was the question about the string quartet was with the last things that he composed the string quartets i believe so yes and those string quartets are amazing and i would encourage everyone to go check them out they will feel a little strange i can't remember whether the misa salamis was the last thing he wrote or not but definitely worth checking out the misa salamis can feel very strange at times and you're like wait this is a mass and wait what is he doing so you know like a lot of other composers Beethoven as he got older got more and more into studying box fugues and his music became more and involved with fugue writing as he grew older so you know one of the famous string quartet has a gross fugue in it a lot of the piano sonata towards the end also had this idea of the fugue and you hear that a little bit in the ninth symphony as well not a full blown fugue but the fugue like let's see everyone just for a time sake here we're going to give everybody off at one o'clock so if any further questions please reach out to roof via email i put it in the chat there i want to thank everybody for tuning into our virtual alumni college lecture series it's been a great lecture there worked nicely for us so you're a lot about Beethoven in the history i certainly learned a lot and if you're interested on february 22nd it is the anniversary of the miracle on ice and we have someone from our office actually bruce bergland presenting on the miracle on ice and we have a future and further events about life on mars i'm getting into the sciences a little bit we have an astronomy lecture in the works as well so lots of great stuff lots of great alumni college lecture presenters so keep tuning in for those lectures thank you ruth that was amazing like i said i learned a lot and i'm sure a lot of our alums and current students of yours will reach out with some further questions and comments so thanks everybody for tuning in thank you ruth land great job have a good day everybody thanks everybody for coming