Beethoven Symphony 2

Beethoven's Symphony 2 was composed in 1802 while he was staying in Heiligenstadt (a small municipality just outside Vienna, Austria). Beethoven retreated to Heiligenstadt upon realizing that his gradual hearing loss and eventual deafness was most likely incurable.

BEETHOVEN'S RESIDENCE WHILE IN HEILIGENSTADT

Initially, Beethoven's personal crisis led him to contemplate suicide. Instead, Beethoven resolved to reinvent himself as an artist and, in his own words, "seize fate by the throat".  The result was a new musical path in which self-expression was Beethoven's highest priority.

Although Beethoven's Symphony 2 is considered his final composition written in the "classical style" before his groundbreaking Third Symphony altered music forever, the Second Symphony contains many innovations which reveal the new path his future music would take.


VIDEO WALKTHROUGH