Ludwig van Beethoven

Reference

Picture; [Wikipedia];

Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia

"The artists who expressed the cultural aspirations of the bourgeois century most profoundly, and became, as it were, the voices articulating its ideals, were those like Beethoven, who was seen as the genius who fought through to victory after struggle, whose music overcame the dark forces of destiny, whose choral symphony culminated in the triumph of the liberated human spirit." [Hobsbawm: Empire, p. 339] Or, in Beethoven’s more succinct formulation: ‘Only art and scholarship give us intimations and hopes of a higher life.’" [Blanning: Pursuit of Glory, p. 524]