Page 23 - Quantum Times 2020 Summer Edition
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QUANTUM TIMES
attend a strict boarding school that trained by playing in an orchestra at a very young
students for Jingxi -- Chinese Opera. He started age. 21
learning acrobatics from the age of 7 old until In 1781, at the age of ten, Beethoven
he was 17 years old. In those 10 years, he was started taking lessons with Christian Gottlob
also learning singing, martial art, and mime. Neefe, the newly appointed Court Organist,
He has a son, Jaycee Chan. He has a daughter, who was impressed by Beethoven and gave
Etta Ng Chok Lam. Jackie Chan had him formal musical education. At the age of
36
participated in more than 200 films and had 12, Beethoven published his first
been awarded around 60 awards. composition “Dressler” and produced a set
of piano variations on the theme.
One of the World’s To promote his musical development, the
Famous Pianists court sent Beethoven to Vienna, the cultural
and musical capital of Europe in 1787, where
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he hoped to study with Mozart. He settled
On a cold winter day -- December 16, 1770, in Vienna and briefly studied with Joseph
one of the greatest musical geniuses was born Haydn and quickly gained a reputation as a
in the city of Bonn in the Electorate of Cologne, great pianist. He is considered to be one of
Germany, a principality of the Holy Roman the greatest composers in the history of
Empire. His name was Ludwig van Beethoven. music, and the main composer in the
His father Johann van Beethoven, who was transition period between the classical and
very strict and extraordinarily meticulous, romantic eras.
gave Beethoven his very first music lessons. On Only a few weeks after Vienna, Beethoven
a near daily basis, Beethoven was flogged, noticed that his mother had fallen ill, so he
locked in the cellar, and deprived of sleep for returned to Bonn. Staying there, Beethoven
extra hours of practice, it was all because his continued to build his reputation as the
father wanted to make Beethoven a child city's most promising young court musician.
prodigy like Mozart. Therefore, Beethoven was In 1792, the French revolutionary forces
forced to practice piano and the violin to meet swept the Rhineland into the Cologne
his father’s ambitions. The family was constituency, and Beethoven decided to
unhappy; his father was a violent, alcoholic, leave his hometown again to Vienna. Mozart
and irresponsible man, so Beethoven had to died a year before that, making Joseph
support his mother and two younger brothers Haydn the greatest composer without a
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