During the composition of his Second Symphony, Beethoven was much different from the man who would come to epitomize the Romantic artist. For the first time, he had disclosed his secret of ...

The Second Symphony sets up some concepts the composer had already begun to think about in his early string quartets, in particular the Op 18 ones. His chamber music at this time – the piano sonatas, ...

Beethoven was 19 in 1790, when he was commissioned to write a cantata on the death of the enlightened Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II. He delivered it late, the musicians found it too difficult to play, ...