Beethoven’s Daily Routine: 5 Practices That Helped Make Him a Musical Titan

Beethoven’s life proves how routine fuels creative and personal achievement.
Beethoven’s Daily Routine: 5 Practices That Helped Make Him a Musical Titan
This late 19th-century engraving illustrates Beethoven's alleged meeting with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Vienna, Austria, in 1787.ZU_09/Getty Images
Walker Larson
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In the list of the greatest musical geniuses of all time, the German composer and pianist Ludwig van Beethoven takes a high place, if not the highest. With his innovative and poignant symphonies, sonatas, and quartets, Beethoven played a pivotal role in Western music’s transition from the Classical to Romantic ages.

Not only did Beethoven widen the scope of what was possible in music—he did it while battling against growing deafness, even composing some of his greatest works after his hearing was gone. And he accomplished all this as history’s first freelance composer, unbeholden to any form of court patronage.
Walker Larson
Walker Larson
Author
Prior to becoming a freelance journalist and culture writer, Walker Larson taught literature and history at a private academy in Wisconsin, where he resides with his wife and daughter. He holds a master's in English literature and language, and his writing has appeared in The Hemingway Review, Intellectual Takeout, and his Substack, The Hazelnut. He is also the author of two novels, "Hologram" and "Song of Spheres."