section_path: Music/Late period
section_name: Late period
paragraph_text: Late period
  
  Beethoven's late period began in the decade 1810–1819. He began a renewed study of older music, including works by Palestrina, Johann Sebastian Bach, and George Frideric Handel, whom Beethoven considered "the greatest composer who ever lived". Beethoven's late works incorporated polyphony and Baroque -era devices. For example, the overture The Consecration of the House (1822) included a fugue influenced by Handel's music. A new style emerged, as he returned to the keyboard to compose his first piano sonatas in almost a decade; the works of the late period include the last five piano sonatas and the Diabelli Variations, the last two sonatas for cello and piano, the late string quartets (including the massive Große Fuge), and two works for very large forces: the Missa solemnis and the Ninth Symphony. Works from this period are characterised by their intellectual depth, their formal innovations, and their intense, highly personal expression. The String Quartet, Op. 131 has seven linked movements, and the Ninth Symphony adds choral forces to the orchestra in the last movement.