107 Fun Facts About Beethoven

Which rock 'n' roll pioneer wrote and first recorded 'Roll Over Beethoven'?

Chuck Berry: he wrote it as a dig at his sister Lucy, who kept the family piano busy with classical music when he wanted to play.

In which country do rubbish trucks play Beethoven's 'Für Elise' to call residents out with their trash?

Taiwan: the tune tells people to bring their rubbish out to the truck, part of the clean-up of a place once nicknamed 'Garbage Island'.

When Leonard Bernstein conducted Beethoven's Ninth to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall, which word replaced 'Joy'?

Freedom: Bernstein leaned on an old, unproven theory that the poem's 'joy' was really code for freedom.

Which composer met the young Beethoven in Bonn, then took him on as a pupil in Vienna?

Joseph Haydn: when Haydn set off for England again in 1794, Beethoven chose to stay in Vienna and never returned to Bonn.

In which Stanley Kubrick film is the violent young Alex devoted to 'Ludwig van'?

A Clockwork Orange: the aversion therapy meant to cure Alex's violence also leaves him sickened by the Beethoven he loves.

Beethoven's father billed him as younger than he really was; why?

To look like a child prodigy: his father hoped to copy the fame Leopold Mozart had won by touring young Wolfgang.

Which teacher, Beethoven's most important in Bonn, helped get his first work published?

Christian Gottlob Neefe: by 11 the boy was playing Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, which Neefe had put into his hands.

Beethoven's grandfather, also named Ludwig, rose to which post at the Bonn court in 1761?

Kapellmeister: he had first been passed over for Touchemoulin, a much younger violinist, before winning the post.

Which pupil of Beethoven joined two princes in promising him a yearly pension to keep him in Vienna?

Archduke Rudolf: he kept paying his share after Prince Kinsky died in a riding accident and Prince Lobkowitz went bankrupt.

From about 1818, how did visitors communicate with the almost totally deaf Beethoven?

Writing in notebooks: about 140 of these 'conversation books' survive, and his secretary Anton Schindler later slipped fake entries into some of them.

Which inventor built ear trumpets for Beethoven, then quarrelled with him over who owned a piece of music?

Johann Nepomuk Maelzel: the piece was 'Wellington's Victory', which Beethoven had first written for Maelzel's mechanical orchestra.

After his brother Kaspar died in 1815, Beethoven fought sister-in-law Johanna over custody of whom?

His nephew Karl: Beethoven won custody, but after years of bitter quarrels Karl tried to shoot himself in 1826.

Beethoven's Fifth is on the golden records carried beyond the planets by which spacecraft?

Voyager 1 and 2: Carl Sagan's team built the records for any spacefaring civilisation that finds them, with greetings in 55 languages beside the music.

Which English piano maker presented Beethoven with one of its instruments in 1818?

Broadwood: Beethoven kept it for the rest of his life and seems to have preferred it to the Érard he had been given in 1803.

What startled the room as Beethoven died, by Hüttenbrenner's account?

Thunder: Beethoven opened his eyes, raised his right hand with his fist clenched, and then died.

Which Peanuts character lives at a house number that matches Beethoven's birth year?

Schroeder: Charles Schulz's own favourite composer was Brahms, but he gave Schroeder Beethoven because the name sounded funnier.

The dying Beethoven murmured 'Pity, pity, too late!' when a gift from Schott of Mainz arrived; what was it?

A case of wine: that remark, not the famous 'Applaud, friends, the comedy is over', was his last recorded line.

To whom did Beethoven originally dedicate his Third Symphony before scratching the name off?

Napoleon Bonaparte: told Napoleon had made himself France's monarch, Beethoven reportedly called him a would-be tyrant and tore the title page in two.

What is the Italian nickname of Beethoven's Third Symphony?

Eroica: that title came only after Beethoven, in a rage, tore up the original title page and had it copied out again, his pupil Ferdinand Ries recalled.

The four-note opening of Beethoven's Fifth resembles the Morse code for which letter?

V: dot-dot-dot-dash is Morse V, for Victory, so in 1941 the motif became the BBC's wartime interval signal.

At Beethoven's marathon 1808 concert, which new work fell apart so badly that he stopped and restarted it?

The Choral Fantasy: it was barely finished in time to rehearse, and some players miscounted their rests.

In which key is Beethoven's Fifth Symphony written?

C minor: the 'Fate knocking at the door' idea is a story from his secretary Anton Schindler, whom experts often doubt.

Beethoven's five-movement Sixth Symphony backs centaurs and mythological gods in which Disney film?

Fantasia: Disney's myths are far from the scenes Beethoven himself spelled out in his movement titles.

What is the nickname of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, which he called 'more the expression of feeling than painting'?

Pastoral: the programme at its 1808 premiere billed it as Symphony No. 5, with today's Fifth listed as No. 6.

Which movement of Beethoven's Seventh drew an immediate encore at its 1813 premiere?

The Allegretto: the concert raised money for soldiers wounded at the Battle of Hanau.

Which of Beethoven's symphonies did he fondly call 'my little Symphony in F'?

The Eighth: asked why it was less popular than the Seventh, Beethoven reportedly said it was because the Eighth is so much better.

The finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony sets a poem by which German writer?

Friedrich Schiller: yet the first words sung, 'O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!' ('not these sounds!'), are Beethoven's own, not Schiller's.

Who turned the deaf Beethoven around to see the applause at the 1824 premiere of the Ninth Symphony?

Contralto Caroline Unger: the players had been told to follow Michael Umlauf and ignore Beethoven's beat, and he was unaware of the ovation.

The 'Ode to Joy' melody from the Ninth Symphony was adopted in 1972 as the official anthem of which body?

Council of Europe: EU leaders adopted the same melody in 1985, and the official anthem has no words, only music.

German prisoners of war gave which country its first performance of Beethoven's Ninth, now a year-end favourite there?

Japan: the 1918 concert came from the Bandō camp, where the Japanese staff allowed a lively cultural life, and exchanges with local people outlasted the camp.

Which city's Philharmonic Society paid Beethoven for his Ninth Symphony before its 1824 premiere in Vienna?

London: yet Beethoven dedicated the printed score to King Frederick William III of Prussia.

What is the title of Beethoven's only opera?

Fidelio: it opened in November 1805 while French troops occupied Vienna, and Beethoven kept reworking it until 1814.

Under what disguise does Leonore infiltrate the prison in Beethoven's opera?

A guard: the disguise fools the jailer's daughter Marzelline, who falls in love with her.

Which kind of short piano piece is Beethoven's 'Für Elise'?

A bagatelle: it was published only in 1867, forty years after his death, from a manuscript that has never been found.

In which key is 'Für Elise' written?

A minor: its title may be a misreading, since some scholars think the manuscript really said 'Für Therese', for Therese Malfatti.

Which poet and critic inspired the nickname of Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata'?

Ludwig Rellstab: he likened the first movement to moonlight on a lake.

To which pupil did Beethoven dedicate the 'Moonlight' Sonata in 1802?

Countess Giulietta Guicciardi: he probably meant her when he wrote of a girl he loved who, unfortunately, was not of his class.

To whom was Beethoven's 1802 Heiligenstadt Testament, confessing despair over his deafness, addressed?

His brothers: he kept the letter among his papers, and it was published only after his death.

In which spa town, now in Czechia, did Beethoven write his 1812 'Immortal Beloved' letter?

Teplitz: the pencilled love letter turned up among his own papers after his death.

Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto is known in English-speaking countries by what nickname?

Emperor: he finished it in 1809, and when French guns shelled Vienna that May he hid in a cellar with pillows over his head.

Fearing a 'curse of the ninth' that had struck Beethoven, which composer tried to dodge it by not numbering a symphony?

Gustav Mahler: after passing off Das Lied von der Erde as a song cycle, he wrote a Ninth anyway and died with his Tenth unfinished.

Beethoven's 'Wellington's Victory' celebrates a British win over the French at which 1813 battle?

Vitoria: the piece was an instant hit with Vienna's concertgoers when it premiered that December.

Which violinist, the original dedicatee of Beethoven's 'Kreutzer' Sonata, premiered it by sight-reading at a morning concert?

George Bridgetower: after a reported quarrel over a woman, Beethoven moved the dedication to Rodolphe Kreutzer.

Beethoven's 'Hammerklavier' Sonata takes its name from a German word he wanted used instead of which term?

Pianoforte: in a burst of patriotism in 1817 he ordered German terms for his works, but only two sonatas carried the word.

What was Count Ferdinand von Waldstein, namesake of the 'Waldstein' Sonata, to Beethoven?

His friend and patron: ballet music Beethoven wrote for Waldstein in Bonn was credited to the count himself.

Which 12-year-old violinist played Beethoven's Violin Concerto in 1844 with Mendelssohn conducting?

Joseph Joachim: Beethoven finished the concerto so late that its first soloist, Franz Clement, reportedly played part of it at sight.

Beethoven's 1827 autopsy found which organ badly shrunken by disease?

His liver: in his final months doctors had operated on him four times to drain the fluid swelling his abdomen.

Beethoven's Egmont overture became an unofficial anthem of which 20th-century uprising?

The Hungarian Revolution of 1956: the revolution's radio played its record again and again during the fighting.

In 1888 Beethoven's remains were moved from Währing to which famous Viennese burial ground?

Zentralfriedhof: Viennese disliked the new cemetery for lying far out of town, so the city added graves of honour to make it more attractive.

Which younger composer, who died just a year later, was among the torchbearers at Beethoven's funeral?

Franz Schubert: the next year he was buried near Beethoven in the village cemetery at Währing.

Which musician was a leading champion of Bonn's Beethoven Monument, unveiled in 1845?

Franz Liszt: when the project was close to collapse for lack of money, he raised funds for it with his concerts.

Which Viennese artist painted the 'Beethoven Frieze' for the 1902 Secession exhibition?

Gustav Klimt: meant to be scrapped after the show, it was saved, bought by the Jewish Lederer family, and seized by the Nazis in 1938.

The 1992 family comedy 'Beethoven' is named after a dog of which breed?

St. Bernard Beethoven is targeted by a vet who tests weapons on dogs and fakes an attack to get him, and the dad who never wanted a dog helps rescue him.

Beethoven's Op. 131 drives the plot of which film?

A Late Quartet (2012) follows a famous ensemble after its cellist, played by Christopher Walken, learns he has Parkinson's and plans Op. 131 as his farewell concert.

Which Beethoven symphony did a Viennese critic call 'a crass ogre, a stabbed, unbound writhing dragon'?

Beethoven wrote it during his 1802 stay in Heiligenstadt, at the same time as his despairing Testament, yet it is one of his sunniest works.

Beethoven's Missa solemnis was first performed in full in 1824 not in Vienna but in which city?

Saint Petersburg got the premiere because Beethoven's Russian patron Prince Nikolai Golitsyn arranged it; Vienna heard only three movements a month later.

Beethoven's Rondo a capriccio, Op. 129, is nicknamed 'Rage Over a Lost' what?

Penny: despite its late opus number, Beethoven wrote the rondo in the 1790s, and it was not published until 1828.

Which 1988 action film uses the 'Ode to Joy' from Beethoven's Ninth as a theme for its villains?

Die Hard director John McTiernan wanted the tune for Hans Gruber's gang, and composer Michael Kamen wove it through the score in lower keys so that it sounded more menacing.

Walter Murphy's disco hit 'A Fifth of Beethoven' features on the soundtrack of which 1977 film?

Saturday Night Fever borrowed the instrumental a year after it had climbed to number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and it remains the only Top 40 hit Murphy ever had.

By a popular story, which music format got its playing time so Beethoven's Ninth would fit on one?

The compact disc holds 74 minutes because, in the official Philips history, Sony's Norio Ohga wanted room for the whole Ninth Symphony; a Philips engineer has since called the tale a myth.

One of the Solar System's largest impact craters is named Beethoven; on which world does it lie?

Mercury is home to the Beethoven basin, which at 630 km across is the third largest crater on the planet, behind only Caloris and Rembrandt.

Scientists sequenced Beethoven's genome in 2023 using which keepsakes collected around his death?

Locks of his hair, cut by visitors as mementos, yielded his DNA, and the tests showed that one famous lock long thought to be his had come from a woman.

What helped turn Beethoven's sketches for a Tenth Symphony into a work premiered in Bonn in 2021?

Artificial intelligence did the drafting for a team that included Walter Werzowa, the composer best known for the Intel 'bong' jingle.

The 'Three Bs' of classical music are Bach, Beethoven and which composer, added by Hans von Bülow?

Brahms took the third seat when the conductor swapped him in for Hector Berlioz, the original third B of a phrase coined by Peter Cornelius in 1854.

Scholars still debate whether the teenage Beethoven met which composer on a 1787 visit to Vienna?

Mozart may have heard the sixteen-year-old improvise, but no document proves it, and Beethoven soon hurried home to Bonn because his mother was gravely ill.

Beethoven's grandfather brought the family name to Bonn from Mechelen, a city now in which country?

Belgium did not yet exist: Mechelen lay in the Austrian Netherlands when the elder Beethoven left at 21 to sing bass at the Bonn court.

Which 1989 comedy has two time-travelling teenagers abduct Beethoven for a school history report?

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure drops him in present-day San Dimas with Joan of Arc, Genghis Khan and Abraham Lincoln, where the visitors cause mayhem at the local mall and get arrested.

Beethoven's music drove the shift from the Classical period to which style that followed it?

Romantic composers inherited the forms he had stretched to new sizes, above all the symphony, the piano sonata and the string quartet.

Bonn, the city where Beethoven was born and raised, stands on the banks of which European river?

The Rhine and Beethoven's birthplace are two of Bonn's main tourist draws; he left the city at 21 for Vienna, which became his base.

Which British actor played Beethoven in the 1994 biographical film Immortal Beloved?

Gary Oldman starred opposite Isabella Rossellini and Jeroen Krabbé, and one reviewer called him the perfect actor to portray the arrogant, irascible musician.

Which Russian novelist named an 1889 novella about jealous rage after Beethoven's 'Kreutzer' Sonata?

Leo Tolstoy has a wife and a violinist perform the piece together, tipping her husband into a jealous fury, and Russian censors promptly banned the book.

Beethoven's Violin Sonata No. 5 in F major, Op. 24, is commonly known by the name of which season?

Spring is a name apparently given only after his death; he dedicated the sonata to Count Moritz von Fries, who received two more of his works that same year.

Beethoven set the play Egmont to music, then met its author at a Bohemian spa in 1812; who was he?

Goethe admired his talent but found him an utterly untamed personality, while Beethoven grumbled that the poet enjoyed the court atmosphere far too much.

Beethoven's Bonn employer Maximilian Franz was the youngest sibling of which queen of France?

Marie Antoinette received a visit from him at the French court in 1775; as ruler in Bonn he later helped pay for Beethoven's move to Vienna.

The Beethoven Peninsula, 100 km long, is part of Alexander Island off which continent?

Antarctica keeps the composers together here: the Bach Ice Shelf props up the peninsula's south side, and inlets named for Mendelssohn and Verdi cut into it.

To support his family, the young Beethoven played which instrument in the Bonn court orchestra?

Viola playing let him get to know operas by Gluck and Paisiello from the inside, at a time when his father's drinking had ended the older man's court career.

Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D opens not with strings but with five beats on which instrument?

Timpani strokes give the opening a martial air borrowed from French music of the day, before oboes, clarinets and bassoons bring in the first theme.

Which pupil of Beethoven wrote the books of piano studies still widely used to train students?

Carl Czerny auditioned for him at the age of ten, playing the Pathétique Sonata at Beethoven's request, and went on to produce over a thousand works of his own.

Which Italian composer in Vienna gave Beethoven lessons in vocal composition?

Antonio Salieri gave him occasional lessons in the Italian vocal style until at least 1802, and as a teacher he charged all but his wealthiest pupils nothing.

Which visiting Italian composer said Beethoven told him to stick to comic opera?

Rossini had been so moved by hearing a Beethoven symphony in Vienna that he insisted on a meeting, though deafness and the lack of a shared language made talk difficult.

Which Russian ambassador in Vienna commissioned the three Beethoven string quartets named after him?

Count Razumovsky got a compliment in return: Beethoven worked a Russian folk theme into each of the first two quartets, marking it 'Thème russe' in the score.

Beethoven's only full-length ballet, first staged in 1801, tells of the creatures of which Titan?

Prometheus, who in myth stole fire from Zeus, here leads ignorant mankind to science and the arts, a plot that suited Beethoven's support for the Enlightenment.

Beethoven's popular Turkish March comes from his music for a play about the ruins of which city?

Athens is the setting of August von Kotzebue's play, staged to open a new theatre in Pest; Beethoven had already used the march tune in a set of variations in 1809.

Beethoven's Piano Trio in D, Op. 70 No. 1, takes which nickname from its eerie slow movement?

Ghost suits music that may have grown out of sketches for a Macbeth opera Beethoven was contemplating at the time, and the name has stuck ever since.

Which band opened its 1973 cover of 'Roll Over Beethoven' with a quote from the Fifth Symphony?

Electric Light Orchestra stretched the rock and roll standard to eight minutes on the album ELO 2, threading passages from the symphony's first movement through it.

What did sculptor Franz Klein take from Beethoven in 1812 that became the model for later busts?

A life mask needed two attempts: the first failed when Beethoven, his face covered in wet plaster, thought he might suffocate.

Beethoven was the first notable composer to mark his scores for which newly patented device?

The metronome had only been patented in 1815, and two years later the man behind it sought and won Beethoven's endorsement.

Beethoven works published without an opus number are listed under which catalogue abbreviation?

WoO stands for 'Werke ohne Opuszahl', German for works without opus number, a catalogue that Georg Kinsky and Hans Halm prepared in 1955.

Beethoven's 1816 work 'An die ferne Geliebte' introduced which form to the classical repertoire?

The song cycle, here six linked songs for voice and piano on poems by Alois Jeitteles, set a pattern that Schumann and Loewe went on to follow.

Beethoven earned his first salary, as a teenager at the Bonn court, assisting on which instrument?

Organ duties came through his teacher, whom he had assisted unpaid from 1782 before the court chapel put him on the payroll two years later.

Which touring pianist challenged Beethoven to a duel at a Vienna salon in 1800 and lost?

Daniel Steibelt had won fame with a Storm Rondo full of tremolos, but by a later account Beethoven improvised on a theme from his rival's own quintet until Steibelt walked out.

Beethoven's publisher had him replace a string quartet's finale; what is the original called?

Grosse Fuge was poorly received at its first performance in March 1826, yet the piece, published on its own as Op. 133, now counts among his greatest achievements.

Beethoven's only oratorio portrays Jesus in turmoil, before his crucifixion, on which hill?

Mount of Olives is the setting because the garden of Gethsemane lies there; a tenor sings Jesus, and Beethoven later criticised both the libretto and the premiere.

Which secretary and early biographer of Beethoven was later shown to have forged documents?

Anton Schindler added spurious entries to the composer's papers after 1827 and inflated his years of service, so scholars now want his claims backed by other evidence.

Which leading Viennese playwright wrote the funeral oration for his friend Beethoven in 1827?

Franz Grillparzer, remembered as the leading dramatist of his country in the 19th century, walked in the procession too and later wrote the epitaph for another composer friend.

Beethoven's unsent 'Immortal Beloved' letter, found in his estate, was written with what?

A pencil covered ten small pages, and because he gave no year, it took a 1950s study of the paper's watermark to date the letter to 1812.

Beethoven's numbered piano sonatas, written between 1795 and 1822, add up to how many works in all?

32 is the count of his mature sonatas, although he also wrote three as a boy and left one more unfinished.

Hans von Bülow called Beethoven's sonatas the piano's 'New Testament'; which Bach work is the 'Old'?

The Well-Tempered Clavier was also the chief piece the boy Beethoven played in Bonn, where his teacher put it into his hands.

To understand his Piano Sonata No. 17, Beethoven reportedly advised reading which Shakespeare play?

The Tempest duly became the sonata's nickname, though never in his lifetime, and the associate who reported the remark is widely distrusted by scholars.

Which revolutionary leader called Beethoven's 'Appassionata' Sonata his favourite piece of music?

Vladimir Lenin told the writer Maxim Gorky as much, adding that he could not listen to music often because it affected his nerves.

Which singer credited Beethoven as co-writer of 'This Night', whose chorus borrows the 'Pathétique'?

Billy Joel listed him as 'L.v. Beethoven' on the sleeve of the album An Innocent Man, having built the chorus on the sonata's slow movement.

In the sonata form that Beethoven mastered, which section follows the exposition and development?

Recapitulation completes a three-part design that had been in wide use since the middle of the 18th century, typically in the first movement of a piece.

Which pianist made the first complete recording of Beethoven's piano sonatas, between 1932 and 1935?

Artur Schnabel made the set for the label His Master's Voice, and in 2018 the Library of Congress chose the recordings for its National Recording Registry.

Which novelist's Doktor Faustus has a music teacher lecture on Beethoven's last piano sonata?

Thomas Mann drew the lecture's musical detail from the philosopher Theodor Adorno, who played the sonata, Op. 111, for him in person.

Which composer modelled his own funeral march sonata on Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 12?

Chopin repeated its sequence of scherzo, funeral march and perpetual-motion finale in his B-flat minor sonata; Beethoven's march was played at his own funeral procession in 1827.

Beethoven's first three piano sonatas, from about age twelve, are named after which rank of ruler?

Elector is 'Kurfürst' in German, so the set dedicated to Maximilian Friedrich, who then ruled in Bonn, is known as the Kurfürstensonaten.

Which band, known for its Christmas rock operas, released the album Beethoven's Last Night in 2000?

Trans-Siberian Orchestra open the tale with Mephistopheles arriving to collect the composer's soul, and the bargaining that follows fills the album.