Both brothers were to play important parts in Beethoven’s life. Of five children subsequently born to the couple only two survived infancy: Caspar Anton Carl (bap. 2 April 1769) lived only six days their second, also called Ludwig and the subject of this narrative, was baptized on 17 December 1770. The couple took lodgings in Bonn at 515 Bonngasse.
In November 1767 he married Maria Magdalena ( 1746–87), daughter of Heinrich Keverich, ‘overseer of cooking’ at the electoral summer palace of Ehrenbreitstein, and already the widow of Johann Leym, valet to the Elector of Trier she was not yet 21. He was also proficient enough on the piano and the violin to be able to supplement his income by giving lessons on those instruments as well as in singing. He, too, entered the elector’s service, first as a boy soprano in 1752, and continuing after adolescence as a tenor. Johann van Beethoven ( c 1740–1792) was a lesser man than his father. With his wife Maria Josepha Poll, whom he had married in 1733, and who later took to drink, he had only one child that survived. In 1761 he was appointed Kapellmeister, a position which – although he seems not to have been a composer, unlike other occupants of such a post – carried with it the responsibility of supervising the musical establishment of the court. The composer’s grandfather, Ludwig (Louis) van Beethoven ( 1712–73), the son of an enterprising burgher of Mechelen (Belgium), was a trained musician with a fine bass voice, and after positions at Mechelen, Leuven and Liège accepted in 1733 an appointment as bass in the electoral chapel at Bonn. Three generations of the Beethoven family found employment as musicians at the court of the Electorate of Cologne, which had its seat at Bonn.
Membranophones (Stretched Membrane Percussion) Music Business, Institutions and Organizations