Beethoven's Impact on Music

            Ludwig van Beethoven, one of the most instantly recognizable names in classical music, was a hailed virtuoso pianist in addition to conductor. Beethoven was attracted to the ideals of the Enlightenment and by the growing Romanticism in Europe. His main contribution to the piano oeuvre, his 32 piano sonatas, spans his entire career from his early days in Vienna to after his onset of total and complete deafness. When Beethoven was in Vienna he often lived with members of the nobility who also secured his income and provided him opportunities to perform his new works (Biography). "Beethoven is regarded as one of the greatest masters of musical construction, sometimes sketching the architecture of a movement before he had decided upon the subject matter. He was one of the first composers to systematically and consistently use interlocking thematic devices, or "germ-motives," to achieve inter-movement unity in long compositions. Equally remarkable was his use of "source-motives," which recurred in many different compositions and lent some unity to his life's work. He made innovations in almost every form of music he touched. For example, he diversified even the well-crystallized form of the rondo, making it more elastic and spacious, which brought it closer to sonata form" (Nationmaster). .
             From Beethoven's famous "moonlight sonata" to the rather extroverted 3rd symphony, Beethoven is considered as the crucial figure in the transition of classical music into the romantic era. Chopin is considered as one of the most influential composers of romantic music. There are some good arguments to show Beethoven as one of the most related composer to Chopin. Beethoven worked from the ideology of sonata form and motif development that he had inherited from Haydn and Mozart, but greatly expanded them, writing longer and more ambitious movements. Beethoven developed an intriguing creation of movements in one of his sonatas.