The Tragic Real-Life Story Of Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven is famous. He's so famous that even people who've never listened to classical music in their lives know his name. And the first four notes of his famous Fifth Symphony make up the most famous musical motif in history (come on, you totally know the notes). It might be hard for modern audiences to appreciate just how revolutionary Beethoven's work was in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Prior to Beethoven, music was usually seen as simply a framework for written works such as opera. Beethoven's complex, emotionally-charged symphonies changed that forever, proving that music alone could be an incredibly powerful and artistic experience. 

While his intense persona has endured throughout the years and kept his name in the zeitgeist, even passionate fans of his work usually don't know that his life was filled with tragedy and sorrow — tragedy and sorrow that directly influenced his music, fueling the drama, the emotion, and the sheer energy that it's rightfully famous for. Here are some of the unhappy details of the tragic real-life story of Beethoven.

Although the learning disorder wasn't clinically identified until long after his death, it's very likely that Beethoven suffered from dyslexia. Beethoven's education was cut tragically short when his mother died in 1786. And at the age of 16, the future musical legend was forced to drop out of his schooling and take over the running of the household because his father, Johann, was sinking into alcoholism and his younger brothers needed to be cared for. That crippled his formal learning, but it goes much deeper than that. 

As writer Edmund Morris noted in his biography of the composer (via NPR), despite Beethoven's precise and complex musical arrangements he "couldn't multiply and couldn't divide. And he frequently transposed digits when he was writing the date." He also reportedly had trouble spelling. While it's impossible to diagnose someone from scraps of biographical detail and anecdotal evidence, most biographers suspect Beethoven suffered from some sort of learning disability, which is doubly tragic because these conditions weren't recognized at the time. Even in his musical studies, Beethoven had to fight against the impression that he wasn't very bright. Dr. Christopher Neck relates that one of Beethoven's early teachers said, "As a composer, he is hopeless."

When Beethoven's mother died in 1787 of what was probably tuberculosis, the family was in dire straits. Beethoven's two brothers, Kaspar and Nikolaus, were too young to be on their own, but his father, Johann, was rapidly sinking into full-blown alcoholism. The loss of his mother hurt Beethoven deeply (writer and historian Jim Powell notes that the young composer wrote of her, "She was such a good loving mother, my best friend!"), but he had little time for mourning, because he had to return home and become head of the household. 

This meant he had to put his education on hold. He'd been attending lectures at the University of Bonn, but that all had to stop because Johann couldn't be relied upon to provide and income for the family or to take any interest in the younger boys. Beethoven was forced to give private music lessons to anyone who would hire him simply to put food on the table. This set a pattern for the rest of Beethoven's life, as he would always try to protect his brothers (and even their children), which usually took the form of trying to control them and dictate their behavior, all while pouring his own time and money into their care.

Beethoven clearly used his tumultuous personal life — a life filled with unrequited love, tragic loss, and personal challenges — to fuel his creativity. That life might've been more tumultuous and tragic than we know, if Beethoven scholar Susan Lund is correct. She believes (via The Guardian) that Beethoven fathered an illegitimate child with a woman named Antonie Brentano (pictured), and that his inability to be part of the boy's life inspired some of his most powerful and emotional work. 

Lund argues that Brentano was the subject of Beethoven's famous "Immortal Beloved" letter, in which the composer poured out a passionate love for an unnamed woman he couldn't be with. Brentano was locked in a loveless marriage to a wealthy aristocrat, and the year after that letter's composition, 1813, she gave birth to a child named Karl Josef. Four years later, Karl Josef became ill, and he lost much of his capacity for speech and movement. It's no coincidence, Lund believes, that Beethoven entered an unusual period of inactivity and depression, because he was unable to see or help his alleged son or claim him publicly. Lund goes on to claim that Beethoven wrote some of his most religious-themed music — despite being an atheist — as a way of supporting the deeply religious Brentano, communicating with her the only way he could, through his music.

By October 1802, Beethoven, then 32 years old, had been trying to find a cure for his encroaching deafness for several years. Having found nothing that would help, he'd begun to despair. He sat down on October 6 and wrote a letter to his brothers, Kaspar and Johann, that he never sent. It was discovered among his possessions after his death and opened decades later. Journalist Meridee Duddleston writes that the letter, known today as the Heiligenstadt Testament, "depicts his pain and struggle." 

It's a raw document that he never sent and perhaps never intended to send, maybe seeing writing the letter as a form of therapy, of working through his emotions and dealing with his pain and frustration. In his growing isolation, he admits to having contemplated suicide, but he closes the letter on a powerfully optimistic note, declaring, "It was Virtue alone which sustained me in my misery; I have to thank her and Art for not having ended my life by suicide." It was a turning point in Beethoven's life, Duddleston notes, and marks a division in musical style and ambition as he headed into what scholars refer to as his Middle Period. Ultimately, the letter is a testament to a man who'd stepped up to the edge of despair but decided to keep going.

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

Beethoven spent much of his energy alternately caring for his brothers and meddling in their lives. In 1812, when Kaspar became ill with tuberculosis, historian Jan Swafford writes that "from that point on, a good deal of Ludwig's earnings would go to ... doctors and family support" (which was awkward, because Beethoven and Kaspar's wife, Johanna, hated each other). In fact, historian Barry Cooper estimates that Beethoven spent the equivalent of three years' salary on medical care and other expenses associated with Kaspar's illness, a truly incredible sum for the time that Beethoven funded by taking on personal loans he had little hope of paying back in a timely manner. 

The real tragedy, of course, is that owing to the state of medicine at the time, tuberculosis meant certain death eventually. The question wasn't whether Kaspar would die from it, but when he would die. Despite his brother's tireless efforts, Kaspar died in November 1815. After their mother nearly three decades before, this was the second important loved one that the disease had taken from Ludwig, leaving him a little more isolated and lonelier than he'd been.

As The Daily Telegraph observes, by the time Beethoven was in his late 50s, he was deaf and "afflicted by extremely bad breath, chronic, foul body odors, and painful colic from his grossly distended belly." He lay in excruciating pain while his doctors repeatedly pierced his belly to drain fluid. This did little to help, and his suffering was likely incredible towards the end, especially when you consider the long list of problems found at his autopsy.

For example, there was the atrophy of the brain, a fibrotic liver (Beethoven, like his father, was a heavy drinker who reportedly loved to drink fortified wine, and according to physicians Adam K. Kubba and Madeleine Young, he began drinking more in his later years as a way to deal with increasing abdominal pain), an enlarged pancreas, and abnormal kidneys. Later studies revealed elevated lead levels suggesting he was also suffering from lead poisoning — possibly from the instruments his own doctors were using — which likely stressed his liver to the breaking point. For a man who brought so much beauty into the world, his final hours were incredibly unpleasant and painful.