Who Are Your Impressions Of Beethoven As A Person?

What are your impressions of Beethoven as a person? Was he a product of his times, a great artist, or a deeply troubled and conflicted individual—or all three? Support your response with specific allusions to his life and music.

Clearly evident throughout his life Beethoven was not only the product of his times but also a great artist and a deeply troubled and conflicted man. Encouraged to achieve child prodigy status, from a very early age Beethoven felt an immense amount of pressure to succeed. However, from childhood Beethoven felt alienated and unloved, creating a fantasy life to compensate for his feelings of lack of love-- declaring himself to be an illegitimate child of the King of Prussia. However, Beethoven 's feelings of alienation, and insecurities continued throughout his adulthood. In many ways, Beethoven 's talent evolved
Beethoven instead outwardly expressed his feelings, whether of love, despair, depression or alienation through his music. Evident and distinctively clear in the years in which he began to lose his hearing. As Beethoven fell into a deep and dark depression, one filled with rage, he felt betrayed and thus, his compositions throughout these years reflect a prolific motivation in composition- especially towards the music which allowed him to experience the "love" he never felt; the music which served as his only outlet for his personal miseries. During the years that Beethoven began to lose his hearing he composed many of his most complex musical arrangements. For Beethoven, composing and performing were therapeutic and when he began to lose his hearing, that one irreplaceable human sense crucial to his survival-- Beethoven fell even deeper into the depression that had long loomed over him since