Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany, into a family of court musicians. His father, a singer who drank heavily, drilled him hard at the keyboard, hoping to make him a child prodigy like Mozart. At twenty-one he moved to Vienna, where he studied with Haydn and became famous as a pianist, especially for his improvisations. In his late twenties he began to lose his hearing. In 1802, in a letter to his brothers now called the Heiligenstadt Testament, he described thinking of ending his life, but resolved to live for his art. He went on to write his Third Symphony, the Eroica, the opera Fidelio, and the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies. By about 1818 he was almost completely deaf and talked with visitors in conversation notebooks. Yet in these years he wrote the Missa Solemnis, his last piano sonatas and string quartets, and the Ninth Symphony, whose last movement sets Schiller's Ode to Joy for chorus. At its premiere in 1824 he had to be turned to see the applause. He died in Vienna in 1827.

Faith: Born and baptized a Catholic; his personal beliefs are not well documented. Source: Wikipedia