Germany is organizing big celebrations to commemorate the 250th birth anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven. Hundreds of music concerts and exhibitions are planned, and the government even views it as a "national duty."
Image: Bundeskunsthalle/Beethoven Haus Bonn
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Major Beethoven exhibit to open in Bonn
The life and work of Ludwig van Beethoven are to be explored in a major exhibition that is set to open next week in Germany, as the country prepares to mark the composer's 250th birthday anniversary.
Image: Bundeskunsthalle/Beethoven Haus Bonn
The famous portrait
The most famous oil painting of Ludwig van Beethoven is a work by Joseph Stieler dating from 1819 and showing the composer at work on his Missa solemnis. The portrait is currently put on display at the exhibition "Beethoven. Welt. Bürger. Musik" (Beethoven. World. Citizens. Music). It's taking place at the Bundeskunsthalle (National Art Gallery) in Bonn.
Image: Bundeskunsthalle/Beethoven Haus Bonn
To the distant loved one
The exhibits include this exquisitely bound autograph copy, in Beethoven's handwriting, of the song cycle "An die entfernte Geliebte" (To the distant loved one). Scholars are still debating who that mysterious person might have been.
Image: Bundeskunsthalle/Beethoven Haus Bonn
Beethoven and Goethe
The composer met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany's most famous man of letters, in 1812. "I have never experienced a more concentrated, energetic and ardent artist," Goethe later wrote. Beethoven, for his part, was less impressed: "Goethe feels more comfortable in courtly society than befits an artist."
Image: Bundeskunsthalle/Beethoven Haus Bonn
Beethoven kitch
The composer was very famous during his lifetime. This glass, on loan from Vienna, dates from Beethoven's time and shows the notes to the "Ode to Joy" from the choral finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Sightreading the song goes along with the risk of spilling the contents, however.
Image: Bundeskunsthalle/Wien Museum
Beethoven House restored
After three years of restoration and renewal at a price of €3.8 million ($4.23 million), the museum at Beethoven's birthplace has attractive exhibits in a historic setting. This is one of the plaster casts with which the composer preserved his likeness in the days before the invention of photography.
Image: David Ertl
Beethoven's last piano
Every room in the house where Ludwig van Beethoven was born is dedicated to a particular theme. One room on the upper floor illustrates his struggle with his art and his work methods. It also houses his last piano.
Image: Bundeskunsthalle/Beethoven Haus Bonn
It's about the music
After all the visual stimulation, visitors at the Beethoven House can step back and experience the composer in his medium of choice, through music.
Image: David Ertl
Beethoven's everyday life
This room brings Beethoven down to earth and gives an impression of what his everyday life was like. He moved from Bonn to Vienna at age 22 and lived in scores of apartments. But despite his many moves, he had a structured, if mostly lonesome, life and stuck to a routine.
Image: David Ertl
Ear trumpet
In those days, ear trumpets were used as amplifiers. This specimen was personally crafted for Beethoven in 1813 by Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, the inventor of the metronom. That was another innovation Beethoven appreciated, as it enabled him to convey his idea of his music's tempos to performers.
Image: Bundeskunsthalle/Beethoven Haus Bonn
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Over €40 million ($44 million) is the price tag for the funds the German government has earmarked for celebrating Ludwig van Beethoven's 250th birth anniversary year. The year of celebrations begins on Monday, December 16 — believed to be his 249th birthday — and ends on December 17, 2020.
Days before the start of the celebrations, visitors were given a preview of the special exhibition "Beethoven. World. Citizen. Music" at the National Art Gallery in Bonn and of the renovated house where the composer was born.
The celebrations start on Monday, with an official opening at the Bonn Opera. Concerts, opera performances, festivals and exhibitions honoring the composer are going to take place nationwide through out the year.
Visit the Beethoven House in Bonn
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'A big birthday bash'
Malte Boecker, director of the Beethoven Anniversary Society, told DW about the need to organize such celebrations and appreciate Beethoven's music. "Only a tiny part of Beethoven's total works are widely familiar," Boecker said. "We've initiated a number of projects that present him in unusual contexts beyond the concert hall."
That includes a nationwide series of house concerts on the weekend preceding the Beethoven year. "We've invited people in Germany to open their houses to private Beethoven-related concerts and events to celebrate Beethoven in their living rooms or in their kitchens. Over 800 private hosts responded. It's a big birthday bash." This format, said Boecker, better fits the composer's intended setting: "His chamber music was not written for concert halls, but for performance at home."
After three years of extensive renovation, Beethoven's home in Bonn is reopening to the public as a museumImage: David Ertl
Beethoven House redone
At the start of the anniversary year and after three years of extensive renovation, Beethoven's home in Bonn is reopening to the public as a museum.
With about 100,000 visitors a year, it is called Germany's most often visited musician museum. And the number of visitors is bound to rise in the anniversary year. The in-house museum has been redone.
Instead of showing artifacts from the composer's life in a chronological manner, each room is now dedicated to a different theme, be it his daily routine, the most important persons in his life, or his work routine and struggle for artistic perfection.
Museum director Nicole Kämpken describes it as an "emotional approach." Would Ludwig van Beethoven have approved? "I certainly hope so," said Kämpken, "because here you can get to know him as a human being. After all, Beethoven longed to be understood. We try to achieve exactly that, from the standpoint of the people who come here from all over the world."
