Ludwig van Beethoven
Very little is known about Beethoven’s childhood. He was baptized on December 17, 1770 and was probably born a few days before that. Beethoven's parents were Johann van Beethoven (1740 in Bonn – December 18, 1792) and Maria Magdalena Keverich (1744 in Ehrenbreitstein – July 17, 1787). Magdalena's father, Johann Heinrich Keverich, had been Chief at the court of the Archbishopric of Trier at Festung Ehrenbreitstein fortress opposite to Koblenz. His father was a fairly unimportant musician who worked at the court of the Elector of Cologne. This court was in Bonn and it was here that he lived until he was a young man. His father gave him his first lessons in piano and violin. Beethoven was a child prodigy like Mozart, but while Mozart as a little boy was taken all over Europe by his father, Beethoven never traveled until he was 17. By that time, his piano teacher was a man called Neefe who had learned the piano from Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, the son of Johann Sebastian Bach. Neefe said to the Elector that the young Beethoven should be given the chance to travel, so he was allowed to go to Vienna. There, he might have had one or two lessons from Mozart, but then Beethoven got a letter saying that his mother was dying, so he hurried back to Bonn. Soon his mother died, and Beethoven had to help to look after the family because his father had become an alcoholic. Beethoven played the viola in the orchestra of the Elector, he started to compose, and made many friends. Some of these friends were musicians and others were very important people, many of them were aristocrats who would be able to help him in his career.