Beethoven's Contemporaries

Other composers of the classical to romantic transition, 1800 - 1830:


Giovanni Battista Viotti  (1755 - 1824)  Italian violinist and composer who influenced Beethoven's Kreutzer violin sonata using Viotti bowing.

Luigi Cherubini  (1760-1842)  Composed early romantic operas and sacred music.  Beethoven considered him the best composer of his contemporaries.  He influenced Beethoven's orchestra composing in Fidelio.

Johann Hummel  (1778-1837)  A piano virtuoso, child prodigy and composer, Hummel's compositions influenced young Chopin and Liszt, but he remained too close to the neoclassical tradition and found himself out of fashion in the 1830s.

John Field  (1782 - 1837)  Developed the romantic nocturne that Chopin would further develop.  Born in Ireland, Field spent most of his life in St. Petersburg, Russia. 

Niccoló Paganini  (1782 - 1840)  Early Romantic  composer and most famous violin virtuoso of his time, his compositions inspired many later romantics including Franz Liszt and Robert Schumann. 

Carl Maria von Weber  (1786-1826)  Founded German Romantische Oper in the 1820s.  His operas influenced many composers, including Richard Wagner, his instrumental compositions influenced Chopin, Liszt, Gustav Mahler and Claude Debussy.  

Ignaz Moscheles  (1794 - 1870)  The son of a wealthy Bohemian Jewish merchant, Moscheles' idol was Beethoven whom he met at the Congress of Vienna, 1814 - 15, where his Alexander Variations were a hit.  Beethoven entrusted him with the piano score to his opera Fidelio.  Moscheles was a longtime friend of the better known Jewish composer Felix Mendelssohn.   He composed well into the Romantic era. 


Franz Schubert  (1797-1828)  Barely known in his short lifetime, Schumann, Liszt, Brahms and others championed his works posthumously.  Schubert wrote nearly 1,000 compositions in his short career.  He died at age 31.

Gioachino Rossini (1792 - 1868), known mostly for his operas like The Barber of Seville (1816) and Guillaume Tell (1829), attained a level of fame in the 1820s that equaled, if not surpassed, Beethoven's. Rossini retired wealthy in 1829 at the age of 38 after writing 39 operas. Gaetano Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini were two other well known Italian opera composers in Beethoven's final years.


Stories about Beethoven and his Contemporaries