Must it be? It must be! in my last quartet
Aphorism
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Expanded the symphony's scale and scope
4 milestones
German composer in Bonn and Vienna who widened symphonic form; works remain central to Western repertoire.
Letters (c.1801) reveal determination and creative resolve during early professional growth.
1793–1808: built income from publishing, patrons and public concerts at major Viennese theaters.
1786–1825: commissioned and used progressively louder, richer pianos, shaping piano composition.
I compose, conduct and play the piano. I trained in the Classical style and my music drove the move into Romantic music, expanding the symphony, the piano sonata and the string quartet.
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.