Ludwig van Beethoven

Germany, 1792–1827

German composer whose work spans the Classical and early Romantic periods. The nine symphonies, thirty-two piano sonatas and late string quartets extended the scale and expressive range of instrumental music.

MusicRoots documents 7 artists who influenced Ludwig van Beethoven and 16 artists Ludwig van Beethoven influenced in turn. Every connection cites a published source.

Who influenced Ludwig van Beethoven?

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — Beethoven travelled to Vienna intending to study with Mozart and modelled his early concertos and chamber music on him.
• Johann Sebastian Bach — Beethoven was trained on The Well-Tempered Clavier as a child and could play it entire by age eleven.
• Joseph Haydn — Beethoven moved to Vienna in 1792 expressly to study with Haydn — 'to receive Mozart's spirit from Haydn's hands', as Count Waldstein wrote.
• George Frideric Handel — Beethoven called Handel 'the greatest composer that ever lived' and received the complete edition of his works on his deathbed.
• Antonio Salieri — Beethoven studied Italian vocal composition with Salieri for several years and dedicated his Op. 12 violin sonatas to him.
• Muzio Clementi — Beethoven prized Clementi's sonatas above most piano music and used them as the core of his nephew's training.
• Luigi Cherubini — Beethoven named Cherubini the greatest of his living contemporaries, and Fidelio's rescue-opera form follows Cherubini's model.

Which artists did Ludwig van Beethoven influence?

• Wayne Shorter — Shorter was fascinated by the dramatic architecture of classical symphonies - Beethoven above all - and built that sense of long-form structure into his writing.
• Charles Ives — Beethoven's formal structures were the classical model Ives engaged with, transformed and subverted.
• Nina Simone — Beethoven's music, alongside Bach's, captured Simone's imagination in her classical training and fed her expansive chordal style.
• Franz Schubert — Schubert idolized Beethoven all his life, served as a torchbearer at his funeral and asked to be buried beside him.
• Felix Mendelssohn — Mendelssohn's early chamber works, especially the string quartets, directly engage with late Beethoven's forms and devices.
• Robert Schumann — Beethoven was the symphonic conscience of Schumann's criticism and the model for his own symphonies.
• Franz Liszt — Liszt studied with Beethoven's pupil Czerny, transcribed all nine symphonies for piano and championed Beethoven throughout his career.
• Hector Berlioz — Hearing Beethoven's symphonies at the Paris Conservatoire in 1828 was, in Berlioz's own Memoirs, a revelation that opened 'a new world of music'.
• Richard Wagner — Wagner traced his entire artistic project to Beethoven's Ninth — his 1870 essay 'Beethoven' frames the music drama as its heir.
• Anton Bruckner — Beethoven's Ninth was the formal model for Bruckner's symphonies — the mysterious openings, massive scale and choral aspiration.
• Johannes Brahms — Brahms delayed his First Symphony for two decades under Beethoven's shadow — 'you have no idea how it feels to hear behind you the tramp of a giant like Beethoven'.
• Dmitri Shostakovich — Beethoven's late string quartets were Shostakovich's model for his own cycle of fifteen — the intimate, philosophical counterweight to his symphonies.
• Alexander Borodin — Beethoven was among the canonic German masters Borodin steeped himself in at Heidelberg — the structural backbone beneath his Russian-epic breadth.
• Gustav Mahler — Beethoven's Ninth — the symphony with voices — was the explicit precedent for Mahler's choral symphonies and his conducting repertoire's core.
• Giuseppe Verdi — Verdi kept Beethoven's quartets at his bedside and named him among the masters he studied throughout his life.
• Jean Sibelius — Beethoven remained Sibelius's lifelong symphonic ideal — the model of organic development he named above all others.