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My most important Bonn teacher, Christian Gottlob Neefe, taught me composition. I published my first work in 1783, worked as assistant organist and later Court Organist, and played viola in the court orchestra.

I came to Vienna in 1792 to study, not yet to publish. I worked on counterpoint under Haydn, then Albrechtsberger, and studied Italian vocal style with Salieri — training that made my Op. 1 a success.

From the 1810s I studied older music — Gregorian chant, Palestrina, Bach and Handel — and built its polyphony, church modes and Baroque devices into a new late style of composition.

In the finale of my String Quartet in F major, Op. 135 (1826), I wrote a question under the slow chords and its answer over the fast main theme — the music itself carries the argument.

My resolve, written to Franz Wegeler as my hearing failed: to keep working rather than yield. The same year I wrote the Heiligenstadt Testament, resolving to live for and through my art.

When the violinist Felix Radicati said my Razumovsky quartets were "not music", I told him they were for a later age. My most demanding works were judged by the future of music, not by their premieres.

My hearing began to fail in 1798. It ended my career as a performing pianist by 1814, yet my most ambitious music — the middle period and the Ninth Symphony — was composed after it began.