Beethoven in Vienna, 1793 - 1800

Hofburg Palace, Vienna, where Beethoven

 premiered his first symphony on April 2, 1800

Beethoven moved from Bonn to Vienna in December of 1792, arriving the week of his 22nd birthday.  About a half of Beethoven's living expenses were covered in his first year by a grant from the Electorate of Cologne in Bonn, where the court had employed him as assistant organist at the age of 13.  His employer, the Elector of Cologne,  was Maximilian Francis ("Max Franz"), a Habsburg, the youngest brother of holy Roman Emperor Joseph II and French Queen Marie Antoinette. 

Beethoven had been given contact names of well-placed Freemasons in Vienna by Freemasons of Bonn (Freemasons were believers in Enlightenment ideals).  Beethoven met with these people and soon impressed them with his highly developed piano skills.  He spent much of his first year teaching the children of Vienna's aristocratic families and his reputation grew quickly.  For several months he took lessons from Josef Haydn and began playing with other talented musicians in the city.  He soon received patronage from several of the aristocrats.  His most generous patron was Prince Lichnowsky. 


The Plan:

During the first two years in Vienna Beethoven began sketching ideas for compositions but published nothing, fearing a weak work would damage his reputation.  Beethoven carefully laid out a plan for entering the composing field in Vienna, which was the major music center in Europe.

Knowing that the symphony and the string quartet were the most respected composing formats in instrumental music, and knowing Haydn's and Mozart's famous mastery of these idioms, Beethoven instead chose choose to work on string trios, piano trios, piano concertos and piano sonatas to develop his composing skills.  Although by this time the piano had mostly replaced the harpsichord for keyboard performance, the piano was still not very well developed and Haydn and Mozart had not taken composing for it as seriously as they had symphonies and string quartets.  Unlike those two, Beethoven had been raised playing the piano and thought it was capable of more expression than previous composers had gotten from it.  He saw piano composing as his path for making his initial mark in Vienna. 


The First Compositions:

Beethoven's first publication (his Opus 1) was a set of three piano trios published in 1795.  The first two trios largely acquiesced to the restrained temperament of the day, but the third, in C minor, with a moody opening movement and a visceral fourth movement, give a glimpse of what would follow.  The next year he published a set of three piano sonatas (Opus 2) the following year, with Piano Sonata No. 1 in F minor continuing the ferocity of Piano Trio No. 3.


By the end of 1799 Beethoven had published ten piano sonatas, five string trios, four piano trios, three sonatas for violin and piano, two sonatas for cello and piano, and a septet in Eb for three winds and four strings had proved wildly popular (now largely ignored, it provided Beethoven the biggest payday of his whole career).  He had also performed his first two piano concertos but they would not be published until 1801.


In 1800, Beethoven premiered and published his first symphony along with his 11th piano sonata.  
   

By 1800, Beethoven had not only gained confidence but had also found some of the key components that would make him a unique composer.  He had written Piano Trio No. 3 in Opus 1 in the key of C minor.  He would use the ominous sounds of that key nine more times in his career, 3 times before 1800 including Piano Sonata 8, the enduring "Pathetique."  Other compositions in C minor include his third piano concerto, his final piano sonata, and most famously, his Symphony No. 5.

The Pathetique sonata was also noteworthy because of its dramatic silences and dissonant harmonies.  And while previous composers had long reintroduced previous melodies in variations within a movement to give it continuity, Beethoven began using variations on melodies across movements to give the whole piece continuity.

But Beethoven's rise to popularity did not go smoothly.  While many embraced the originality of his new works, the old vanguard dismissed them, and sometimes quite harshly.  Many critics  condemned his third (1805) and fifth (1808) symphonies, and many of his later innovative works.