“Just as Italy has its Naples, France its revolution, England its navy, the Germans have their Beethoven symphonies. With his Beethoven, the German forgets that he has no school of painting; with Beethoven, he imagines that he has turned round the outcomes of the battles lost to Napoleon; he even dares place him on the same level as Shakespeare.” (Robert Schumann)
“Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of bags of nails, with here and there an also dropped hammer.” (John Ruskin)
When Napoleon entered Vienna in 1809, Joseph Haydn lay dying, and with him the old world aristocracy. The young Ludwig van Beethoven, however, embodied the triumph of a new era. Both enjoying the protection of culturally sophisticated nobles and despising them, Beethoven was one of the first middle-class...
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Citation: Starkman, Ruth. "Ludwig van Beethoven". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 January 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5598, accessed 14 December 2025.]
