Ludwig Van Beethoven

Around minute 40, it is interesting how Beethoven's death is described. I opened this topic in the past:

www.pianoconcerto.it/forum/index.php?/topic/1532-la-morte-di-beethoven

It answers my curiosity in a different way

I think it is one of those usual highly romanticized documentaries whose ultimate goal is to renew and perpetuate the Beethoven myth.

There is incorrect information: Neefe arrived in Vienna in 1779 and thus, two years after the child's performance took place. He became a court master in 1782 and it was only in that year that he became Beethoven's teacher.

There is no proof that the meeting between Mozart and Beethoven actually occurred, and the phrase attributed to him regarding the boy's abilities is almost certainly fake.

It is not true that Guicciardi was the first woman Beethoven was interested in: before her, there were quite a few others.

The part ranging from the guardianship of his nephew to his death is very confusing. Many things are not in the exact chronological order of events.

The composition of the Missa Solemnis began as early as 1819 - and not in 1823, which is the year the work was completed - and it was not due to Beethoven's rapprochement with the church, but was dictated by a request from Archduke Rudolph, his friend, pupil, and patron, to celebrate his appointment as Archbishop of Olomouc on March 9, 1820. Beethoven set out to compose the Mass with enthusiasm but, soon after, as can be seen from the Conversation Notebooks of those years, there were great signs of suffering in him in carrying out this commitment which, not for nothing, was completed only in 1823, with a delay of well 3 years but with the results we know all too well.

Other small things that I will not dwell on.

Regarding Beethoven's death and his funeral, I take the liberty of suggesting to Fenice to get this book. On a lock of Beethoven's hair and on its posthumous history up to the present day: this one.

But how can one know that Beethoven raised a fist to the sky before dying?

Tiger wrote:

But how can one know that Beethoven raised a fist to the sky before dying?

Testimonies?

Tiger wrote:

But how can one know that Beethoven raised a fist to the sky before dying?

The story of Beethoven seemingly "shaking his fist against the sky" in a final gesture of defiance before oblivion has been rejected as a romantic fiction by most of Beethoven's biographers. However, it is true—if one accepts that this was the cause of death—that those who die of liver failure often respond excessively to sudden stimuli such as a bright light. This is due to the accumulation of toxic waste substances normally eliminated by the liver. Beethoven's gesture can be considered a mechanical reflex of the cerebral irritation that accompanies liver failure, rather than a conscious act.

Beethoven died around 5:15 PM on March 26; only his housekeeper Sali and the composer Anselm Hüttenbrenner were around his bed: it is from a testimony he confided to Tayer in a letter on August 20, 1860, that this story is derived, but Beethoven had been in a coma since 5:00 PM on March 24. It therefore seems somewhat unlikely that, on the threshold of passing toward death, he could have seen the flash of lightning and raised his fist toward the sky so explicitly. I would therefore lean towards thinking that it was probably just a small gesture made in that last moment of life, which the romantic mentality present at his death wanted to emphasize.