Ludwig van Beethoven statue

Ludwig van Beethoven, born in Bonn in 1770 and active in Vienna from his early twenties until his death in 1827, occupies the pivot of musical history — the bridge between the Classical era of Haydn and Mozart and the Romantic age that would follow. His nine symphonies, sixteen string quartets, thirty-two piano sonatas and the late Missa Solemnis were composed against the encroaching deafness that had reduced him to silence by his last decade. The sculpted likenesses derive from the death mask taken in 1827 and from the contemporary bust by Franz Klein, fixing for posterity the heavy brow and the unruly hair that became the visual emblem of the heroic composer.