title: Bill Murray

text: He is a part-owner of the St. Paul Saints, a Minor League Baseball team of the International League and the Triple-A affiliate of the Minnesota Twins. Bill occasionally travels to Saint Paul, Minnesota to watch the team's games. He also owns part of the Charleston RiverDogs, the Hudson Valley Renegades, and the Brockton Rox. He has invested in a number of other minor league teams in the past, including the Utica Blue Sox, the Fort Myers Miracle, the Salt Lake Sting (APSL), the Catskill Cougars, and the Salt Lake City Trappers. In 2012 he was inducted into the South Atlantic League Hall of Fame for his ownership and investment activities in the league.


title: Bill Murray

text: Being very detached from the Hollywood scene, Murray does not have an agent or manager and reportedly only fields offers for scripts and roles using a personal telephone number with a voice mailbox that he checks infrequently. This practice has the downside of sometimes preventing him from taking parts in films such as "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", "Monsters, Inc.", "The Squid and the Whale", "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", and "Little Miss Sunshine". When asked about this practice, however, Murray seemed content with his inaccessibility, stating, "It's not that hard. If you have a good script that's what gets you involved. People say they can't find me. Well, if you can write a good script, that's a lot harder than finding someone. I don't worry about it; it's not my problem."


title: Bill Murray

text: Murray's popularity has been such that he holds an iconic status in American popular culture. Murray's eccentric style of comedy, both on-screen and in his personal life, has caused him to be seen as a folk hero to many making him a significant meme in various media including books and the Internet. In 2016 he was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor by the Kennedy Center.


title: Bill Murray

text: On his birthday in 2016, Murray, along with his brother Joel, launched an apparel brand called William Murray Golf.


title: Bill Murray

text: In 2022, Murray recited poetry and sang with the cellist Jan Vogler, in a recorded production of "New Worlds: The Cradle of Civilization", which was released in cinemas.


title: Bill Murray

text: During the filming of "Stripes", Murray married Margaret Kelly on January 25, 1981. Later, they remarried in Chicago for their families. Margaret gave birth to two sons, Homer and Luke. Following Murray's affair with Jennifer Butler, the couple divorced in 1996. In 1997, he married Butler. Together, they have four sons: Caleb, Jackson, Cooper, and Lincoln. Butler filed for divorce on May 12, 2008, accusing Murray of domestic violence, infidelity, and addictions to sex, marijuana, and alcohol. Their divorce was finalized on June 13, 2008. Butler died on January 19, 2021.


title: Bill Murray

text: Murray stated in a 1984 interview: "I'm definitely a religious person, but it doesn't have much to do with Catholicism anymore. I don't think about Catholicism as much." In a 2014 interview, Murray expressed affection for the Traditional Latin Mass and expressed concerns about some of the changes within the Mass of Paul VI: "I’m not sure all those changes were right. I tend to disagree with what they call the new mass. I think we lost something by losing the Latin. Now if you go to a Catholic mass even just in Harlem it can be in Spanish, it can be in Ethiopian, it can be in any number of languages. The shape of it, the pictures, are the same but the words aren’t the same."


title: Bill Murray

text: In 2007, Murray was pulled over by Swedish police on suspicion of driving a golf cart under the influence of alcohol.


title: Bill Murray

text: Murray has homes in Los Angeles; Rancho Santa Fe, California; Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts; Charleston, South Carolina; and Palisades, New York. Between 2008 and 2013, Murray maintained a residence in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan.


title: Bill Murray

text: During the 2000 presidential campaign, Murray supported Green Party candidate Ralph Nader. He also donated $1,000 to former Governor of Nebraska Bob Kerrey's successful election to the United States Senate in 1988. In a 2018 interview, Murray praised the Trump tax cuts, opining them to be "fantastic".


title: Bill Murray

text: Murray is a fan of several Chicago professional sports teams, especially the Chicago Cubs, Chicago Bears, and the Chicago Bulls. (He was once a guest color commentator for a Cubs game during the 1980s.) He was in attendance, along with fellow Cubs fans John Cusack, Eddie Vedder, and Bonnie Hunt, during the Cubs' historic Game Seven victory during the 2016 World Series. Murray is an avid Quinnipiac University basketball fan, where his son served as head of basketball operations, and he is a regular fixture at home games. He cheered courtside for the Illinois Fighting Illini's game against the 2004–2005 Arizona Wildcats in the Regional Final game in Chicago. He is a fixture at home games of those teams when in his native Chicago. After traveling to Florida during the Cubs' playoff run to help "inspire" the team (Murray joked with Cubs slugger Aramis Ramírez he was very ill and needed two home runs to give him the hope to live), he was invited to the champagne party in the Cubs' clubhouse when the team clinched the NL Central in late September 2007, along with fellow actors John Cusack, Bernie Mac, James Belushi, and former Cubs player Ron Santo. Murray appears in Santo's documentary, "This Old Cub". In 2006, Murray became the sixth recipient of Baseball Reliquary's annual Hilda Award, established in 2001 "to recognize distinguished service to the game by a fan".


title: Bill Murray

text: As a Chicago native, Murray appeared at the 50th annual Chicago Air & Water Show in August 2008. He performed a tandem jump with the U.S. Army Parachute Team Golden Knights. He was the MC for Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival on July 28, 2007, where he dressed in various guises of Clapton as he appeared through the years. He served as MC again in 2010 and once more in 2019.


title: Bill Murray

text: In 1987, he donated a large amount of money to help build the Nathalie Salmon House, which provides affordable housing for low-income seniors. Michael and Lilo Salmon, the founders of Housing Opportunities and Maintenance for the Elderly (HOME), said Murray performed "miracles" for them.


title: Bill Murray

text: Murray has been known for his mood swings, leading Dan Aykroyd to refer to him as "The Murricane". Murray has said of his reputation: "I remember a friend said to me a while back: 'You have a reputation.' And I said: 'What?' And he said: 'Yeah, you have a reputation of being difficult to work with.' But I only got that reputation from people I didn't like working with, or people who didn't know how to work, or what work is. Jim, Wes and Sofia, they know what it is to work, and they understand how you're supposed to treat people."


title: Bill Murray

text: In the book "Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, as Told By Its Stars, Writers and Guests", Chevy Chase recalls being confronted by Murray shortly before an "SNL" broadcast in 1978, in which Chase had returned to guest host. The issue, likely to do with Chase's insistence on doing the "Weekend Update" segment that had been taken over by Jane Curtin, led to Murray and Chase trading insults, with Murray telling Chase to go have sex with Jacqueline Carlin, Chase's wife at the time, while Chase commented that Murray's face looked "like something Neil Armstrong had landed on". The argument eventually turned physical, with "SNL" cast members Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman, and Gilda Radner witnessing the altercation. Murray later said of the incident, "It was an Oedipal thing, a rupture. Because we all felt mad he had left us, and somehow I was the anointed avenging angel, who had to speak for everyone. But Chevy and I are friends now. It's all fine." The two later starred together in "Caddyshack" in 1980.


title: Bill Murray

text: According to "Den of Geek", Murray did not get along well with Sean Young during the production of "Stripes" and has refused to work with her again.


title: Bill Murray

text: Murray has said in interviews that he and film director Richard Donner did not get along well while filming "Scrooged", stating that they would disagree with each other. Donner said of Murray: "He's superbly creative, but occasionally difficult – as difficult as any actor."


title: Bill Murray

text: Both Murray and Richard Dreyfuss have confirmed in separate interviews that they did not get along with each other during the making of "What About Bob?" In addition, the film's producer Laura Ziskin recalled having a disagreement with Murray that led him to toss her into a lake. Ziskin confirmed in 2003, "Bill also threatened to throw me across the parking lot and then broke my sunglasses and threw them across the parking lot. I was furious and outraged at the time, but having produced a dozen movies, I can safely say it is not common behavior." Dreyfuss later alleged in 2019 that Murray screamed at him while he was intoxicated and told him, "Everyone hates you! You are tolerated!" and then threw an ashtray at him. Although they have not crossed paths since the release of the film, Dreyfuss confirmed in a 2020 interview that he has forgiven Murray.


title: Bill Murray

text: Murray also had a falling out with film director and longtime collaborator Harold Ramis during the production of "Groundhog Day". According to screenwriter Danny Rubin, "They were like two brothers who weren't getting along." Apparently, they had such intense creative differences that one day Ramis grabbed Murray by the shirt collar and threw him against a wall. As a result, "Groundhog Day" ultimately served as the final film collaboration between Murray and Ramis, although they did take part in 2009's "". Murray eventually reconciled with Ramis just before Ramis' death in February 2014.


title: Bill Murray

text: During the making of "Charlie's Angels", Lucy Liu allegedly threw punches at Murray after he told her that she could not act. Murray claims, however, that he and Liu had only an argument rather than a feud and that they have "made peace" since then. Film director McG, who directed "Charlie's Angels", alleged in 2009 that Murray headbutted him. Murray has denied ever doing so.


title: Bill Murray

text: "Lost in Translation" director Sofia Coppola said that the central scene of Scarlett Johansson and Murray lying on the bed together took multiple takes because the actors did not seem to be getting along. She eventually stopped for the day and started again the next morning. Despite this, Coppola stated that Murray was a lot of fun to work with on the production.


title: Bill Murray

text: Anjelica Huston recalled having a feud with Murray during the making of "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou".


title: Bill Murray

text: In April 2022, production of "Being Mortal" was suspended after Murray was accused of unspecified "inappropriate behavior". It was later reported in October that Murray had allegedly straddled a female production assistant and kissed or rubbed her on the mouth while the pair were wearing flu masks as part of COVID-19 protocols. The incident caused her to file an official complaint. Murray acknowledged what had happened, claiming what occurred was “jestful”, while the “much younger” woman said she interpreted his actions as “entirely sexual” and was “horrified”.Murray paid her $100,000 to atone for the complaint.


title: Bill Murray

text: Shortly after that report, Geena Davis alleged in her memoir "Dying of Politeness" that Murray harassed and yelled at her during the filming of "Quick Change" and that, during their first meeting in a hotel suite, he had pressured her to let him use a massage machine on her back"." She also recalled a dual interview on "The Arsenio Hall Show" during which Murray repeatedly tried to pull down the spaghetti strap of her dress. That same month, Seth Green alleged on "Good Mythical Morning" that when he was nine years old, Murray picked him up off a chair by his ankles and dangled him over a garbage can, before Green fell in after accidentally striking Murray. The incident allegedly occurred backstage on the "Saturday Night Live" set.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical music repertoire and span the transition from the Classical period to the Romantic era in classical music. His career has conventionally been divided into early, middle, and late periods. His early period, during which he forged his craft, is typically considered to have lasted until 1802. From 1802 to around 1812, his middle period showed an individual development from the styles of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and is sometimes characterized as heroic. During this time, he began to grow increasingly deaf. In his late period, from 1812 to 1827, he extended his innovations in musical form and expression.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Beethoven was born in Bonn. His musical talent was obvious at an early age. He was initially harshly and intensively taught by his father Johann van Beethoven. Beethoven was later taught by the composer and conductor Christian Gottlob Neefe, under whose tutelage he published his first work, a set of keyboard variations, in 1783. He found relief from a dysfunctional home life with the family of Helene von Breuning, whose children he loved, befriended, and taught piano. At age 21, he moved to Vienna, which subsequently became his base, and studied composition with Haydn. Beethoven then gained a reputation as a virtuoso pianist, and he was soon patronized by Karl Alois, Prince Lichnowsky for compositions, which resulted in his three Opus 1 piano trios (the earliest works to which he accorded an opus number) in 1795.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: His first major orchestral work, the First Symphony, premiered in 1800, and his first set of string quartets was published in 1801. Despite his hearing deteriorating during this period, he continued to conduct, premiering his Third and Fifth Symphonies in 1804 and 1808, respectively. His Violin Concerto appeared in 1806. His last piano concerto (No. 5, Op. 73, known as the "Emperor"), dedicated to his frequent patron Archduke Rudolf of Austria, was premiered in 1811, without Beethoven as soloist. He was almost completely deaf by 1814, and he then gave up performing and appearing in public. He described his problems with health and his unfulfilled personal life in two letters, his Heiligenstadt Testament (1802) to his brothers and his unsent love letter to an unknown "Immortal Beloved" (1812).


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: After 1810, increasingly less socially involved, Beethoven composed many of his most admired works, including later symphonies, mature chamber music and the late piano sonatas. His only opera, "Fidelio", first performed in 1805, was revised to its final version in 1814. He composed "Missa solemnis" between 1819 and 1823 and his final Symphony, No. 9, one of the first examples of a choral symphony, between 1822 and 1824. Written in his last years, his late string quartets, including the "Grosse Fuge", of 1825–1826 are among his final achievements. After some months of bedridden illness, he died in 1827. Beethoven's works remain mainstays of the classical music repertoire.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Beethoven was the grandson of Ludwig van Beethoven, a musician from the town of Mechelen in the Austrian Duchy of Brabant (in what is now the Flemish region of Belgium) who had moved to Bonn at the age of 21. Ludwig was employed as a bass singer at the court of Clemens August, Archbishop-Elector of Cologne, eventually rising to become, in 1761, Kapellmeister (music director) and hence a pre-eminent musician in Bonn. The portrait he commissioned of himself towards the end of his life remained displayed in his grandson's rooms as a talisman of his musical heritage. Ludwig had two sons, the younger of which (Johann) worked as a tenor in the same musical establishment and gave keyboard and violin lessons to supplement his income.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Johann married Maria Magdalena Keverich in 1767; she was the daughter of Heinrich Keverich (1701–1751), who had been the head chef at the court of Johann IX Philipp von Walderdorff, Archbishop of Trier. Beethoven was born of this marriage in Bonn, at what is now the Beethoven House Museum, Bonnstrasse 20. There is no authentic record of the date of his birth; but the registry of his baptism, in the Catholic Parish of St. Remigius on 17 December 1770, survives, and the custom in the region at the time was to carry out baptism within 24 hours of birth. There is a consensus (with which Beethoven himself agreed) that his birth date was 16 December, but no documentary proof of this.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Of the seven children born to Johann van Beethoven, only Ludwig, the second-born, and two younger brothers survived infancy. Kaspar Anton Karl (generally known as Karl) was born on 8 April 1774, and Nikolaus Johann (generally known as Johann), the youngest, was born on 2 October 1776.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Beethoven's first music teacher was his father. He later had other local teachers: the court organist Gilles van den Eeden (d. 1782), Tobias Friedrich Pfeiffer (a family friend, who provided keyboard tuition), Franz Rovantini (a relative, who instructed him in playing the violin and viola), and court concertmaster Franz Anton Ries for the violin. His tuition began in his fifth year. The regime was harsh and intensive, often reducing him to tears. With the involvement of the insomniac Pfeiffer, there were irregular late-night sessions, with the young Beethoven being dragged from his bed to the keyboard. His musical talent was obvious at a young age. Johann, aware of Leopold Mozart's successes in this area (with his son Wolfgang and daughter Nannerl), attempted to promote his son as a child prodigy, claiming that Beethoven was six (he was seven) on the posters for his first public performance in March 1778.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: In 1780 or 1781, Beethoven began his studies with his most important teacher in Bonn, Christian Gottlob Neefe. Neefe taught him composition; in March 1783 Beethoven's first published work appeared, a set of keyboard variations (WoO 63). Beethoven soon began working with Neefe as assistant organist, at first unpaid (1782), and then as a paid employee (1784) of the court chapel. His first three piano sonatas, WoO 47, sometimes known as (Elector) for their dedication to Elector Maximilian Friedrich, were published in 1783. In the same year, the first printed reference to Beethoven appeared in the "Magazin der Musik" – "Louis van Beethoven [sic] ... a boy of 11 years and most promising talent. He plays the piano very skilfully and with power, reads at sight very well ... the chief piece he plays is "Das wohltemperierte Klavier" of Sebastian Bach, which Herr Neefe puts into his hands". Maximilian Friedrich's successor as Elector of Bonn was Maximilian Franz. He gave some support to Beethoven, appointing him Court Organist and paying towards his visit to Vienna of 1792.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: He was introduced in these years to several people who became important in his life. He often visited the cultivated von Breuning family, at whose home he taught piano to some of the children, and where the widowed Frau von Breuning offered him a motherly friendship. Here he also met Franz Wegeler, a young medical student, who became a lifelong friend (and was to marry one of the von Breuning daughters). The von Breuning family environment offered an alternative to his home life, which was increasingly dominated by his father's decline. Another frequenter of the von Breunings was Count Ferdinand von Waldstein, who became a friend and financial supporter during Beethoven's Bonn period. Waldstein was to commission in 1791 Beethoven's first work for the stage, the ballet "Musik zu einem Ritterballett" (WoO 1).


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: In the period 1785–90 there is virtually no record of Beethoven's activity as a composer. This may be attributed to the lukewarm response his initial publications had attracted, and also to ongoing problems in the Beethoven family. His mother died in 1787, shortly after Beethoven's first visit to Vienna, where he stayed for about two weeks and almost certainly met Mozart. In 1789 Beethoven's father was forcibly retired from the service of the Court (as a consequence of his alcoholism) and it was ordered that half of his father's pension be paid directly to Ludwig for support of the family. He contributed further to the family's income by teaching (to which Wegeler said he had "an extraordinary aversion") and by playing viola in the court orchestra. This familiarized him with a variety of operas, including works by Mozart, Gluck and Paisiello. Here he also befriended Anton Reicha, a composer, flautist and violinist of about his own age who was a nephew of the court orchestra's conductor, Josef Reicha.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: From 1790 to 1792, Beethoven composed several works (none were published at the time) showing a growing range and maturity. Musicologists have identified a theme similar to those of his Third Symphony in a set of variations written in 1791. It was perhaps on Neefe's recommendation that Beethoven received his first commissions; the Literary Society in Bonn commissioned a cantata to mark the occasion of the death in 1790 of Joseph II (WoO 87), and a further cantata, to celebrate the subsequent accession of Leopold II as Holy Roman Emperor (WoO 88), may have been commissioned by the Elector. These two "Emperor Cantatas" were never performed at the time and they remained lost until the 1880s when they were described by Johannes Brahms as "Beethoven through and through" and as such prophetic of the style which would mark his music as distinct from the classical tradition.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Beethoven was probably first introduced to Joseph Haydn in late 1790 when the latter was travelling to London and stopped in Bonn around Christmas time. A year and a half later, they met in Bonn on Haydn's return trip from London to Vienna in July 1792, when Beethoven played in the orchestra at the Redoute in Godesberg. Arrangements were likely made at that time for Beethoven to study with the older master. Waldstein wrote to him before his departure: "You are going to Vienna in fulfilment of your long-frustrated wishes ... With the help of assiduous labour you shall receive Mozart's spirit from Haydn's hands."


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Beethoven left Bonn for Vienna in November 1792, amid rumours of war spilling out of France; he learned shortly after his arrival that his father had died. Over the next few years, Beethoven responded to the widespread feeling that he was a successor to the recently deceased Mozart by studying that master's work and writing works with a distinctly Mozartian flavour.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: He did not immediately set out to establish himself as a composer, but rather devoted himself to study and performance. Working under Haydn's direction, he sought to master counterpoint. He also studied violin under Ignaz Schuppanzigh. Early in this period, he also began receiving occasional instruction from Antonio Salieri, primarily in Italian vocal composition style; this relationship persisted until at least 1802, and possibly as late as 1809.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: With Haydn's departure for England in 1794, Beethoven was expected by the Elector to return home to Bonn. He chose instead to remain in Vienna, continuing his instruction in counterpoint with Johann Albrechtsberger and other teachers. In any case, by this time it must have seemed clear to his employer that Bonn would fall to the French, as it did in October 1794, effectively leaving Beethoven without a stipend or the necessity to return. However, several Viennese noblemen had already recognised his ability and offered him financial support, among them Prince Joseph Franz Lobkowitz, Prince Karl Lichnowsky, and Baron Gottfried van Swieten.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Assisted by his connections with Haydn and Waldstein, Beethoven began to develop a reputation as a performer and improviser in the salons of the Viennese nobility. His friend Nikolaus Simrock began publishing his compositions, starting with a set of keyboard variations on a theme of Dittersdorf (WoO 66). By 1793, he had established a reputation in Vienna as a piano virtuoso, but he apparently withheld works from publication so that their eventual appearance would have greater impact.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: In 1795 Beethoven made his public debut in Vienna over three days, beginning with a performance of one of his own piano concertos on 29 March at the Burgtheater and ending with a Mozart concerto on 31 March, probably the D minor concerto for which he had written a cadenza soon after his arrival in Vienna. By this year he had two piano concertos available for performance, one in B-flat major he had begun composing before moving to Vienna and had worked on for over a decade, and one in C major composed for the most part during 1795. Viewing the latter as the more substantive work, he chose to designate it as his first piano concerto, publishing it in March 1801 as Opus 15, before publishing the former as Opus 19 the following December. He wrote new cadenzas for both works in 1809.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Shortly after his public debut he arranged for the publication of the first of his compositions to which he assigned an opus number, the three piano trios, Opus 1. These works were dedicated to his patron Prince Lichnowsky, and were a financial success; Beethoven's profits were nearly sufficient to cover his living expenses for a year. In 1799 Beethoven participated in (and won) a notorious piano 'duel' at the home of Baron Raimund Wetzlar (a former patron of Mozart) against the virtuoso Joseph Wölfl; and in the following year he similarly triumphed against Daniel Steibelt at the salon of Count Moritz von Fries. Beethoven's eighth piano sonata the Pathétique (Op. 13), published in 1799 is described by the musicologist Barry Cooper as "surpass[ing] any of his previous compositions, in strength of character, depth of emotion, level of originality, and ingenuity of motivic and tonal manipulation".


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Beethoven composed his first six string quartets (Op. 18) between 1798 and 1800 (commissioned by, and dedicated to, Prince Lobkowitz). They were published in 1801. He also completed his Septet (Op. 20) in 1799, which was one of his most popular works during his lifetime. With premieres of his First and Second Symphonies in 1800 and 1803, he became regarded as one of the most important of a generation of young composers following Haydn and Mozart. But his melodies, musical development, use of modulation and texture, and characterisation of emotion all set him apart from his influences, and heightened the impact some of his early works made when they were first published. For the premiere of his First Symphony, he hired the Burgtheater on 2 April 1800, and staged an extensive programme, including works by Haydn and Mozart, as well as his Septet, the Symphony, and one of his piano concertos (the latter three works all then unpublished). The concert, which the "Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung" described as "the most interesting concert in a long time", was not without difficulties; among the criticisms was that "the players did not bother to pay any attention to the soloist". By the end of 1800, Beethoven and his music were already much in demand from patrons and publishers.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: In May 1799, he taught piano to the daughters of Hungarian Countess Anna Brunsvik. During this time, he fell in love with the younger daughter Josephine. Amongst his other students, from 1801 to 1805, he tutored Ferdinand Ries, who went on to become a composer and later wrote about their encounters. The young Carl Czerny, who later became a renowned music teacher himself, studied with Beethoven from 1801 to 1803. In late 1801, he met a young countess, Julie Guicciardi, through the Brunsvik family; he mentions his love for Julie in a November 1801 letter to a friend, but class difference prevented any consideration of pursuing this. He dedicated his 1802 Sonata Op. 27 No. 2, now commonly known as the "Moonlight Sonata", to her.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: In the spring of 1801 he completed "The Creatures of Prometheus", a ballet. The work received numerous performances in 1801 and 1802, and he rushed to publish a piano arrangement to capitalise on its early popularity. In the spring of 1802 he completed the Second Symphony, intended for performance at a concert that was cancelled. The symphony received its premiere instead at a subscription concert in April 1803 at the Theater an der Wien, where he had been appointed composer in residence. In addition to the Second Symphony, the concert also featured the First Symphony, the Third Piano Concerto, and the oratorio "Christ on the Mount of Olives". Reviews were mixed, but the concert was a financial success; he was able to charge three times the cost of a typical concert ticket.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: His business dealings with publishers also began to improve in 1802 when his brother Kaspar, who had previously assisted him casually, began to assume a larger role in the management of his affairs. In addition to negotiating higher prices for recently composed works, Kaspar also began selling some of his earlier unpublished compositions and encouraged him (against Beethoven's preference) to also make arrangements and transcriptions of his more popular works for other instrument combinations. Beethoven acceded to these requests, as he could not prevent publishers from hiring others to do similar arrangements of his works.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Beethoven told the English pianist Charles Neate (in 1815) that he dated his hearing loss from a fit in 1798 induced by a quarrel with a singer. During its gradual decline, his hearing was further impeded by a severe form of tinnitus. As early as 1801, he wrote to Wegeler and another friend Karl Amenda, describing his symptoms and the difficulties they caused in both professional and social settings (although it is likely some of his close friends were already aware of the problems). The cause was probably otosclerosis, perhaps accompanied by degeneration of the auditory nerve.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: On the advice of his doctor, Beethoven moved to the small Austrian town of Heiligenstadt, just outside Vienna, from April to October 1802 in an attempt to come to terms with his condition. There he wrote the document now known as the Heiligenstadt Testament, a letter to his brothers which records his thoughts of suicide due to his growing deafness and records his resolution to continue living for and through his art. The letter was never sent and was discovered in his papers after his death. The letters to Wegeler and Amenda were not so despairing; in them Beethoven commented also on his ongoing professional and financial success at this period, and his determination, as he expressed it to Wegeler, to "seize Fate by the throat; it shall certainly not crush me completely". In 1806, Beethoven noted on one of his musical sketches: "Let your deafness no longer be a secret – even in art."


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Beethoven's hearing loss did not prevent him from composing music, but it made playing at concerts—an important source of income at this phase of his life—increasingly difficult. (It also contributed substantially to his social withdrawal.) Czerny remarked however that Beethoven could still hear speech and music normally until 1812. Beethoven never became totally deaf; in his final years he was still able to distinguish low tones and sudden loud sounds.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Beethoven's return to Vienna from Heiligenstadt was marked by a change in musical style, and is now often designated as the start of his middle or "heroic" period, characterised by many original works composed on a grand scale. According to Carl Czerny, Beethoven said: "I am not satisfied with the work I have done so far. From now on I intend to take a new way." An early major work employing this new style was the Third Symphony in E-flat, Op. 55, known as the "Eroica", written in 1803–04. The idea of creating a symphony based on the career of Napoleon may have been suggested to Beethoven by General Bernadotte in 1798. Beethoven, sympathetic to the ideal of the heroic revolutionary leader, originally gave the symphony the title "Bonaparte", but disillusioned by Napoleon declaring himself Emperor in 1804, he scratched Napoleon's name from the manuscript's title page, and the symphony was published in 1806 with its present title and the subtitle "to celebrate the memory of a great man". The "Eroica" was longer and larger in scope than any previous symphony. When it premiered in early 1805 it received a mixed reception. Some listeners objected to its length or misunderstood its structure, while others viewed it as a masterpiece.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Other middle period works extend in the same dramatic manner the musical language Beethoven had inherited. The Rasumovsky string quartets, and the "Waldstein" and "Appassionata" piano sonatas share the heroic spirit of the Third Symphony. Other works of this period include the Fourth through Eighth Symphonies, the oratorio "Christ on the Mount of Olives", the opera "Fidelio", and the Violin Concerto. Beethoven was hailed in 1810 by the writer and composer E. T. A. Hoffmann, in an influential review in the "Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung", as the greatest of (what he considered) the three Romantic composers (that is, ahead of Haydn and Mozart); in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony his music, wrote Hoffmann, "sets in motion terror, fear, horror, pain, and awakens the infinite yearning that is the essence of romanticism".


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: During this time Beethoven's income came from publishing his works, from performances of them, and from his patrons, for whom he gave private performances and copies of works they commissioned for an exclusive period before their publication. Some of his early patrons, including Prince Lobkowitz and Prince Lichnowsky, gave him annual stipends in addition to commissioning works and purchasing published works. Perhaps his most important aristocratic patron was Archduke Rudolf of Austria, the youngest son of Emperor Leopold II, who in 1803 or 1804 began to study piano and composition with him. They became friends, and their meetings continued until 1824. Beethoven dedicated 14 compositions to Rudolf, including some of his major works such as the "Archduke" Trio Op. 97 (1811) and "Missa solemnis" Op. 123 (1823).


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: His position at the Theater an der Wien was terminated when the theatre changed management in early 1804, and he was forced to move temporarily to the suburbs of Vienna with his friend Stephan von Breuning. This slowed work on "Leonore" (his original title for his opera), his largest work to date, for a time. It was delayed again by the Austrian censor and finally premiered, under its present title of "Fidelio", in November 1805 to houses that were nearly empty because of the French occupation of the city. In addition to being a financial failure, this version of "Fidelio" was also a critical failure, and Beethoven began revising it.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Despite this failure, Beethoven continued to attract recognition. In 1807 the musician and publisher Muzio Clementi secured the rights for publishing his works in England, and Haydn's former patron Prince Esterházy commissioned a mass (the Mass in C, Op. 86) for his wife's name-day. But he could not count on such recognition alone. A colossal benefit concert which he organized in December 1808, and was widely advertised, included the premieres of the Fifth and Sixth ("Pastoral") symphonies, the Fourth Piano Concerto, extracts from the Mass in C, the scena and aria "Ah! perfido" Op. 65 and the Choral Fantasy op. 80. There was a large audience (including Czerny and the young Ignaz Moscheles), but it was under-rehearsed, involved many stops and starts, and during the Fantasia Beethoven was noted shouting at the musicians "badly played, wrong, again!" The financial outcome is unknown.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: In the autumn of 1808, after having been rejected for a position at the Royal Theatre, Beethoven had received an offer from Napoleon's brother Jérôme Bonaparte, then king of Westphalia, for a well-paid position as Kapellmeister at the court in Cassel. To persuade him to stay in Vienna, Archduke Rudolf, Prince Kinsky and Prince Lobkowitz, after receiving representations from Beethoven's friends, pledged to pay him a pension of 4000 florins a year. In the event, Archduke Rudolf paid his share of the pension on the agreed date. Kinsky, immediately called to military duty, did not contribute and died in November 1812 after falling from his horse. The Austrian currency destabilized and Lobkowitz went bankrupt in 1811 so that to benefit from the agreement Beethoven eventually had recourse to the law, which in 1815 brought him some recompense.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: The imminence of war reaching Vienna itself was felt in early 1809. In April, Beethoven completed writing his Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat major, Op. 73, which the musicologist Alfred Einstein has described as "the apotheosis of the military concept" in Beethoven's music. Archduke Rudolf left the capital with the Imperial family in early May, prompting Beethoven's piano sonata "Les Adieux" (Sonata No. 26, Op. 81a), actually entitled by Beethoven in German "Das Lebewohl" (The Farewell), of which the final movement, "Das Wiedersehen" (The Return), is dated in the manuscript with the date of Rudolf's homecoming of 30 January 1810. During the French bombardment of Vienna in May, Beethoven took refuge in the cellar of the house of his brother Kaspar. The subsequent occupation of Vienna and the disruptions to cultural life and to Beethoven's publishers, together with Beethoven's poor health at the end of 1809, explain his significantly reduced output during this period, although other notable works of the year include his String Quartet No. 10 in E flat major, Op. 74 (known as "The Harp") and the Piano Sonata No. 24 in F sharp major op. 78, dedicated to Josephine's sister Therese Brunsvik.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: At the end of 1809 Beethoven was commissioned to write incidental music for Goethe's play "Egmont". The result (an overture, and nine additional entractes and vocal pieces, Op. 84), which appeared in 1810, fitted well with Beethoven's heroic style and he became interested in Goethe, setting three of his poems as songs (Op. 83) and learning about the poet from a mutual acquaintance, Bettina Brentano (who also wrote to Goethe at this time about Beethoven). Other works of this period in a similar vein were the F minor String Quartet Op. 95, to which Beethoven gave the subtitle "Quartetto serioso", and the Op. 97 Piano Trio in B flat major known, from its dedication to his patron Rudolph as the "Archduke Trio".


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: In the spring of 1811, Beethoven became seriously ill, having headaches and high fever. His doctor Johann Malfatti recommended him to take a cure at the spa of Teplitz (now Teplice in the Czech Republic), where he wrote two more overtures and sets of incidental music for dramas, this time by August von Kotzebue – "King Stephen" Op. 117 and "The Ruins of Athens" Op. 113. Advised again to visit Teplitz in 1812 he met there with Goethe, who wrote: "His talent amazed me; unfortunately he is an utterly untamed personality, who is not altogether wrong in holding the world to be detestable, but surely does not make it any more enjoyable ... by his attitude." Beethoven wrote to his publishers Breitkopf and Härtel that "Goethe delights far too much in the court atmosphere, far more than is becoming in a poet." But following their meeting he began a setting for choir and orchestra of Goethe's "Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt" "(Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage)" (Op. 112), completed in 1815. After this was published in 1822 with a dedication to the poet, Beethoven wrote to him: "The admiration, the love and esteem which already in my youth I cherished for the one and only immortal Goethe have persisted."


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: While he was at Teplitz in 1812 he wrote a ten-page love letter to his "Immortal Beloved", which he never sent to its addressee. The identity of the intended recipient was long a subject of debate, although the musicologist Maynard Solomon has convincingly demonstrated that the intended recipient must have been Antonie Brentano; other candidates have included Julie Guicciardi, Therese Malfatti and Josephine Brunsvik.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: All of these had been regarded by Beethoven as possible soulmates during his first decade in Vienna. Guicciardi, although she flirted with Beethoven, never had any serious interest in him and married Wenzel Robert von Gallenberg in November 1803. (Beethoven insisted to his later secretary and biographer, Anton Schindler, that Gucciardi had "sought me out, crying, but I scorned her".) Josephine had, since Beethoven's initial infatuation with her, married the elderly Count Joseph Deym, who died in 1804. Beethoven began to visit her and commenced a passionate correspondence. Initially, he accepted that Josephine could not love him, but he continued to address himself to her even after she had moved to Budapest, finally demonstrating that he had got the message in his last letter to her of 1807: "I thank you for wishing still to appear as if I were not altogether banished from your memory". Malfatti was the niece of Beethoven's doctor, and he had proposed to her in 1810. He was 40, she was 19 – the proposal was rejected. She is now remembered as the recipient of the piano bagatelle "Für Elise".


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Antonie (Toni) Brentano (née von Birkenstock), ten years younger than Beethoven, was the wife of Franz Brentano, the half-brother of Bettina Brentano, who provided Beethoven's introduction to the family. It would seem that Antonie and Beethoven had an affair during 1811–1812. Antonie left Vienna with her husband in late 1812 and never met with (or apparently corresponded with) Beethoven again, although in her later years she wrote and spoke fondly of him. Some speculate that Beethoven was the father of Antonie's son Karl Josef, though the two never met.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: After 1812 there are no reports of any romantic liaisons of Beethoven; it is, however, clear from his correspondence of the period and, later, from the conversation books, that he would occasionally meet with prostitutes.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: In early 1813 Beethoven apparently went through a difficult emotional period, and his compositional output dropped. His personal appearance degraded—it had generally been neat—as did his manners in public, notably when dining.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Family issues may have played a part in this. Beethoven had visited his brother Johann at the end of October 1812. He wished to end Johann's cohabitation with Therese Obermayer, a woman who already had an illegitimate child. He was unable to convince Johann to end the relationship and appealed to the local civic and religious authorities, but Johann and Therese married on 8 November.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: The illness and eventual death of his brother Kaspar from tuberculosis became an increasing concern. Kaspar had been ill for some time; in 1813 Beethoven lent him 1500 florins, to procure the repayment of which he was ultimately led to complex legal measures. After Kaspar died on 15 November 1815, Beethoven immediately became embroiled in a protracted legal dispute with Kaspar's wife Johanna over custody of their son Karl, then nine years old. Beethoven had successfully applied to Kaspar to have himself named the sole guardian of the boy. A late codicil to Kaspar's will gave him and Johanna joint guardianship. While Beethoven was successful at having his nephew removed from her custody in January 1816, and had him removed to a private school in 1818 he was again preoccupied with the legal processes around Karl. While giving evidence to the court for the nobility, the Landrechte, Beethoven was unable to prove that he was of noble birth and as a consequence, on 18 December 1818 the case was transferred to the civil magistrate of Vienna, where he lost sole guardianship. He only regained custody after intensive legal struggles in 1820. During the years that followed, Beethoven frequently interfered in his nephew's life in what Karl perceived as an overbearing manner.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Beethoven was finally motivated to begin significant composition again in June 1813, when news arrived of Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Vitoria by a coalition led by the Duke of Wellington. The inventor Mälzel persuaded him to write a work commemorating the event for his mechanical instrument the Panharmonicon. This Beethoven also transcribed for orchestra as "Wellington's Victory" (Op. 91, also known as the "Battle Symphony"). It was first performed on 8 December, along with his Seventh Symphony, Op. 92, at a charity concert for victims of the war, a concert whose success led to its repeat on 12 December. The orchestra included several leading and rising musicians who happened to be in Vienna at the time, including Giacomo Meyerbeer and Domenico Dragonetti. The work received repeat performances at concerts staged by Beethoven in January and February 1814. These concerts brought Beethoven more profit than any others in his career, and enabled him to buy the bank shares that were eventually to be the most valuable assets in his estate at his death.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Beethoven's renewed popularity led to demands for a revival of "Fidelio", which, in its third revised version, was also well received at its July opening in Vienna, and was frequently staged there during the following years. Beethoven's publishers, Artaria, commissioned the 20-year old Moscheles to prepare a piano score of the opera, which he inscribed "Finished, with God's help!" – to which Beethoven added "O Man, help thyself." That summer Beethoven composed a piano sonata for the first time in five years, his Sonata in E minor, Opus 90. He was also one of many composers who produced music in a patriotic vein to entertain the many heads of state and diplomats who came to the Congress of Vienna that began in November 1814, with the cantata "Der glorreiche Augenblick (The Glorious Moment)" (Op. 136) and similar choral works which, in the words of Maynard Solomon "broadened Beethoven's popularity, [but] did little to enhance his reputation as a serious composer".


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: In April and May 1814, playing in his "Archduke" Trio, Beethoven made his last public appearances as a soloist. The composer Louis Spohr noted: "the piano was badly out of tune, which Beethoven minded little, since he did not hear it ... there was scarcely anything left of the virtuosity of the artist ... I was deeply saddened." From 1814 onwards Beethoven used for conversation ear-trumpets designed by Johann Nepomuk Maelzel (a number of these are on display at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn).


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: His 1815 compositions include an expressive second setting of the poem "An die Hoffnung" (Op. 94) in 1815. Compared to its first setting in 1805 (a gift for Josephine Brunsvik), it was "far more dramatic ... The entire spirit is that of an operatic scena." But his energy seemed to be dropping: apart from these works, he wrote the two cello sonatas Op. 102 nos. 1 and 2, and a few minor pieces, and began but abandoned a sixth piano concerto.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Between 1815 and 1819 Beethoven's output dropped again to a level unique in his mature life. He attributed part of this to a lengthy illness (he called it an inflammatory fever) that he had for more than a year, starting in October 1816. His biographer Maynard Solomon suggests it is also doubtless a consequence of the ongoing legal problems concerning his nephew Karl, and of Beethoven finding himself increasingly at odds with current musical trends. Unsympathetic to developments in German romanticism that featured the supernatural (as in operas by Spohr, Heinrich Marschner and Carl Maria von Weber), he also "resisted the impending Romantic fragmentation of the ... cyclic forms of the Classical era into small forms and lyric mood pieces" and turned towards study of Bach, Handel and Palestrina. An old connection was renewed in 1817 when Maelzel sought, and obtained, Beethoven's endorsement for his newly developed metronome. During these years the few major works he completed include the 1818 "Hammerklavier" Sonata (Sonata No. 29 in B flat major, Op. 106) and his settings of poems by Alois Jeitteles, "An die ferne Geliebte" Op. 98 (1816), which introduced the song cycle into classical repertoire. In 1818 he began musical sketches that were eventually to form part of his final Ninth Symphony.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: By early 1818 Beethoven's health had improved, and his nephew Karl, now aged 11, moved in with him in January (although within a year Karl's mother had won him back in the courts). By now Beethoven's hearing had again seriously deteriorated, necessitating Beethoven and his interlocutors writing in notebooks to carry out conversations. These 'conversation books' are a rich written resource for his life from this period onwards. They contain discussions about music, business, and personal life; they are also a valuable source for his contacts and for investigations into how he intended his music should be performed, and of his opinions of the art of music. His household management had also improved somewhat with the help of Nannette Streicher. A proprietor of the Stein piano workshop and a personal friend, Streicher had assisted in Beethoven's care during his illness; she continued to provide some support, and in her he finally found a skilled cook. A testimonial to the esteem in which Beethoven was held in England was the presentation to him in this year by Thomas Broadwood, the proprietor of the company, of a Broadwood piano, for which Beethoven expressed thanks. He was not well enough, however, to carry out a visit to London that year which had been proposed by the Philharmonic Society.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Despite the time occupied by his ongoing legal struggles over Karl, which involved continuing extensive correspondence and lobbying, two events sparked off Beethoven's major composition projects in 1819. The first was the announcement of Archduke Rudolf's promotion to Cardinal-Archbishop as Archbishop of Olomouc (now in the Czech Republic), which triggered the "Missa solemnis" Op. 123, intended to be ready for his installation in Olomouc in March 1820. The other was the invitation by the publisher Antonio Diabelli to fifty Viennese composers, including Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Czerny and the 8-year old Franz Liszt, to compose a variation each on a theme which he provided. Beethoven was spurred to outdo the competition and by mid-1819 had already completed 20 variations of what were to become the 33 "Diabelli Variations" op. 120. Neither of these works was to be completed for a few years. A significant tribute of 1819, however, was Archduke Rudolf's set of forty piano variations on a theme written for him by Beethoven (WoO 200) and dedicated to the master. Beethoven's portrait by of this year, which was one of the most familiar images of him for the next century, was described by Schindler as, despite its artistic weaknesses, "in the rendering of that particular look, the majestic forehead ... the firmly shut mouth and the chin shaped like a shell, ... truer to nature than any other picture".


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Beethoven's determination over the following years to write the "Mass" for Rudolf was not motivated by any devout Catholicism. Although he had been born a Catholic, the form of religion as practised at the court in Bonn where he grew up was, in the words of Maynard Solomon, "a compromise ideology that permitted a relatively peaceful coexistence between the Church and rationalism". Beethoven's "Tagebuch" (a diary he kept on an occasional basis between 1812 and 1818) shows his interest in a variety of religious philosophies, including those of India, Egypt and the Orient and the writings of the Rig-Veda. In a letter to Rudolf of July 1821, Beethoven shows his belief in a personal God: "God ... sees into my innermost heart and knows that as a man I perform most conscientiously and on all occasions the duties which Humanity, God, and Nature enjoin upon me." On one of the sketches for the "Missa solemnis" he wrote "Plea for inner and outer peace".


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Beethoven's status was confirmed by the series of "Concerts sprituels" given in Vienna by the choirmaster Franz Xaver Gebauer in the 1819/1820 and 1820/1821 seasons, during which all eight of his symphonies to date, plus the oratorio "Christus" and the Mass in C, were performed. Beethoven was typically underwhelmed: when in an April 1820 conversation book a friend mentioned Gebauer, Beethoven wrote in reply "Geh! Bauer" (Begone, peasant!)


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: It was in 1819 that Beethoven was first approached by the publisher Moritz Schlesinger who won the suspicious composer round, whilst visiting him at Mödling, by procuring for him a plate of roast veal. One consequence of this was that Schlesinger was to secure Beethoven's three last piano sonatas and his final quartets; part of the attraction to Beethoven was that Schlesinger had publishing facilities in Germany and France, and connections in England, which could overcome problems of copyright piracy. The first of the three sonatas, for which Beethoven contracted with Schlesinger in 1820 at 30 ducats per sonata (further delaying completion of the Mass), was sent to the publisher at the end of that year (the Sonata in E major, Op. 109, dedicated to Maximiliane, Antonie Brentano's daughter).


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: The start of 1821 saw Beethoven once again in poor health, having rheumatism and jaundice. Despite this he continued work on the remaining piano sonatas he had promised to Schlesinger (the Sonata in A flat major Op. 110 was published in December), and on the Mass. In early 1822 Beethoven sought a reconciliation with his brother Johann, whose marriage in 1812 had met with his disapproval, and Johann now became a regular visitor (as witnessed by the conversation books of the period) and began to assist him in his business affairs, including him lending him money against ownership of some of his compositions. He also sought some reconciliation with the mother of his nephew, including supporting her income, although this did not meet with the approval of the contrary Karl. Two commissions at the end of 1822 improved Beethoven's financial prospects. In November the Philharmonic Society of London offered a commission for a symphony, which he accepted with delight, as an appropriate home for the Ninth Symphony on which he was working. Also in November Prince Nikolai Galitzin of Saint Petersburg offered to pay Beethoven's asking price for three string quartets. Beethoven set the price at the high level of 50 ducats per quartet in a letter dictated to his nephew Karl, who was then living with him.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: During 1822, Anton Schindler, who in 1840 became one of Beethoven's earliest and most influential (but not always reliable) biographers, began to work as the composer's unpaid secretary. He was later to claim that he had been a member of Beethoven's circle since 1814, but there is no evidence for this. Cooper suggests that "Beethoven greatly appreciated his assistance, but did not think much of him as a man".


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: The year 1823 saw the completion of three notable works, all of which had occupied Beethoven for some years, namely the "Missa solemnis", the Ninth Symphony and the "Diabelli Variations".


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Beethoven at last presented the manuscript of the completed "Missa" to Rudolph on 19 March (more than a year after the archduke's enthronement as archbishop). He was not however in a hurry to get it published or performed as he had formed a notion that he could profitably sell manuscripts of the work to various courts in Germany and Europe at 50 ducats each. One of the few who took up this offer was Louis XVIII of France, who also sent Beethoven a heavy gold medallion. The Symphony and the variations took up most of the rest of Beethoven's working year. Diabelli hoped to publish both works, but the potential prize of the Mass excited many other publishers to lobby Beethoven for it, including Schlesinger and Carl Friedrich Peters. (In the end, it was obtained by Schotts).


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Beethoven had become critical of the Viennese reception of his works. He told the visiting Johann Friedrich Rochlitz in 1822:You will hear nothing of me here ... "Fidelio"? They cannot give it, nor do they want to listen to it. The symphonies? They have no time for them. My concertos? Everyone grinds out only the stuff he himself has made. The solo pieces? They went out of fashion long ago, and here fashion is everything. At the most, Schuppanzigh occasionally digs up a quartet. He, therefore, enquired about premiering the "Missa" and the Ninth Symphony in Berlin. When his Viennese admirers learnt of this, they pleaded with him to arrange local performances. Beethoven was won over, and the symphony was first performed, along with sections of the "Missa solemnis", on 7 May 1824, to great acclaim at the Kärntnertortheater. Beethoven stood by the conductor Michael Umlauf during the concert beating time (although Umlauf had warned the singers and orchestra to ignore him), and because of his deafness was not even aware of the applause which followed until he was turned to witness it. The "Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung" gushed, "inexhaustible genius had shown us a new world", and Carl Czerny wrote that the Symphony "breathes such a fresh, lively, indeed youthful spirit ... so much power, innovation, and beauty as ever [came] from the head of this original man, although he certainly sometimes led the old wigs to shake their heads". The concert did not net Beethoven much money, as the expenses of mounting it were very high. A second concert on 24 May, in which the producer guaranteed him a minimum fee, was poorly attended; nephew Karl noted that "many people [had] already gone into the country". It was Beethoven's last public concert. Beethoven accused Schindler of either cheating him or mismanaging the ticket receipts; this led to the replacement of Schindler as Beethoven's secretary by Karl Holz, the second violinist in the Schuppanzigh Quartet, although by 1826 Beethoven and Schindler were reconciled.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Beethoven then turned to writing the string quartets for Galitzin, despite failing health. The first of these, the quartet in E♭ major, Op. 127 was premiered by the Schuppanzigh Quartet in March 1825. While writing the next, the quartet in A minor, Op. 132, in April 1825, he was struck by a sudden illness. Recuperating in Baden, he included in the quartet its slow movement to which he gave the title "Holy song of thanks (Heiliger Dankgesang) to the Divinity, from a convalescent, in the Lydian mode". The next quartet to be completed was the Thirteenth, op. 130, in B♭ major. In six movements, the last, contrapuntal movement proved to be very difficult for both the performers and the audience at its premiere in March 1826 (again by the Schuppanzigh Quartet). Beethoven was persuaded by the publisher Artaria, for an additional fee, to write a new finale, and to issue the last movement as a separate work (the Grosse Fugue, Op. 133). Beethoven's favourite was the last of this series, the quartet in C minor Op. 131, which he rated as his most perfect single work.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Beethoven's relations with his nephew Karl had continued to be stormy; Beethoven's letters to him were demanding and reproachful. In August, Karl, who had been seeing his mother again against Beethoven's wishes, attempted suicide by shooting himself in the head. He survived and after discharge from hospital went to recuperate in the village of Gneixendorf with Beethoven and his uncle Johann. Whilst in Gneixendorf, Beethoven completed a further quartet (Op. 135 in F major) which he sent to Schlesinger. Under the introductory slow chords in the last movement, Beethoven wrote in the manuscript "Muss es sein?" (Must it be?); the response, over the faster main theme of the movement, is "Es muss sein!" (It must be!). The whole movement is headed "Der schwer gefasste Entschluss" (The difficult decision). Following this in November Beethoven completed his final composition, the replacement finale for the op. 130 quartet. Beethoven at this time was already ill and depressed; he began to quarrel with Johann, insisting that Johann made Karl his heir, in preference to Johann's wife.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: On his return journey to Vienna from Gneixendorf in December 1826, illness struck Beethoven again. He was attended until his death by Dr. Andreas Wawruch, who throughout December noticed symptoms including fever, jaundice and dropsy, with swollen limbs, coughing and breathing difficulties. Several operations were carried out to tap off the excess fluid from Beethoven's abdomen.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Karl stayed by Beethoven's bedside during December, but left after the beginning of January to join the army at Iglau and did not see his uncle again, although he wrote to him shortly afterwards: "My dear father ... I am living in contentment and regret only that I am separated from you." Immediately following Karl's departure, Beethoven wrote a will making his nephew his sole heir. Later in January, Beethoven was attended by Dr. Malfatti, whose treatment (recognizing the seriousness of his patient's condition) was largely centred on alcohol. As the news spread of the severity of Beethoven's condition, many old friends came to visit, including Diabelli, Schuppanzigh, Lichnowsky, Schindler, the composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel and his pupil Ferdinand Hiller. Many tributes and gifts were also sent, including £100 from the Philharmonic Society in London and a case of expensive wine from Schotts. During this period, Beethoven was almost completely bedridden despite occasional efforts to rouse himself. On 24 March, he said to Schindler and the others present "Plaudite, amici, comoedia finita est" ("Applaud, friends, the comedy is over"). Later that day, when the wine from Schott arrived, he whispered, "Pity – too late."


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Beethoven died on 26 March 1827 at the age of 56; only his friend Anselm Hüttenbrenner and a "Frau van Beethoven" (possibly his old enemy Johanna van Beethoven) were present. According to Hüttenbrenner, at about 5 pm there was a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder: "Beethoven opened his eyes, lifted his right hand and looked up for several seconds with his fist clenched ... not another breath, not a heartbeat more." Many visitors came to the death-bed; some locks of the dead man's hair were retained by Hüttenbrenner and Hiller, amongst others. An autopsy revealed Beethoven had significant liver damage, which may have been due to his heavy alcohol consumption, and also considerable dilation of the auditory and other related nerves.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Beethoven's funeral procession in Vienna on 29 March 1827 was attended by an estimated 10,000 people. Franz Schubert and the violinist Joseph Mayseder were among the torchbearers. A funeral oration by the poet Franz Grillparzer was read by the actor Heinrich Anschütz. Beethoven was buried in the Währing cemetery, north-west of Vienna, after a requiem mass at the church of the Holy Trinity (Dreifaltigkeitskirche) in Alserstrasse. Beethoven's remains were exhumed for study in 1863, and moved in 1888 to Vienna's Zentralfriedhof where they were reinterred in a grave adjacent to that of Schubert.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: The historian William Drabkin notes that as early as 1818 a writer had proposed a three-period division of Beethoven's works and that such a division (albeit often adopting different dates or works to denote changes in period) eventually became a convention adopted by all of Beethoven's biographers, starting with Schindler, F.-J. Fétis and Wilhelm von Lenz. Later writers sought to identify sub-periods within this generally accepted structure. Its drawbacks include that it generally omits a fourth period, that is, the early years in Bonn, whose works are less often considered; and that it ignores the differential development of Beethoven's composing styles over the years for different categories of work. The piano sonatas, for example, were written throughout Beethoven's life in a progression that can be interpreted as continuous development; the symphonies do not all demonstrate linear progress; of all of the types of composition, perhaps the quartets, which seem to group themselves in three periods (Op. 18 in 1801–1802, Opp. 59, 74 and 95 in 1806–1814, and the quartets, today known as 'late', from 1824 onwards) fit this categorization most neatly. Drabkin concludes that "now that we have lived with them so long ... as long as there are programme notes, essays written to accompany recordings, and all-Beethoven recitals, it is hard to imagine us ever giving up the notion of discrete stylistic periods."


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Some forty compositions, including ten very early works written by Beethoven up to 1785, survive from the years that Beethoven lived in Bonn. It has been suggested that Beethoven largely abandoned composition between 1785 and 1790, possibly as a result of negative critical reaction to his first published works. A 1784 review in Johann Nikolaus Forkel's influential "Musikalischer Almanack" compared Beethoven's efforts to those of rank beginners. The three early piano quartets of 1785 (WoO 36), closely modelled on violin sonatas of Mozart, show his dependency on the music of the period. Beethoven himself was not to give any of the Bonn works an opus number, save for those which he reworked for use later in his career, for example, some of the songs in his Op. 52 collection (1805) and the Wind Octet reworked in Vienna in 1793 to become his String Quintet, Op. 4. Charles Rosen points out that Bonn was something of a backwater compared to Vienna; Beethoven was unlikely to be acquainted with the mature works of Haydn or Mozart, and Rosen opines that his early style was closer to that of Hummel or Muzio Clementi. Kernan suggests that at this stage Beethoven was not especially notable for his works in sonata style, but more for his vocal music; his move to Vienna in 1792 set him on the path to develop the music in the genres he became known for.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: The conventional first period begins after Beethoven's arrival in Vienna in 1792. In the first few years he seems to have composed less than he did at Bonn, and his Piano Trios, op.1 were not published until 1795. From this point onward, he had mastered the 'Viennese style' (best known today from Haydn and Mozart) and was making the style his own. His works from 1795 to 1800 are larger in scale than was the norm (writing sonatas in four movements, not three, for instance); typically he uses a scherzo rather than a minuet and trio; and his music often includes dramatic, even sometimes over-the-top, uses of extreme dynamics and tempi and chromatic harmony. It was this that led Haydn to believe the third trio of Op.1 was too difficult for an audience to appreciate.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: He also explored new directions and gradually expanded the scope and ambition of his work. Some important pieces from the early period are the first and second symphonies, the set of six string quartets Opus 18, the first two piano concertos, and the first dozen or so piano sonatas, including the famous "Pathétique" sonata, Op. 13.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: His middle period began shortly after the personal crisis brought on by his recognition of encroaching deafness. It includes large-scale works that express heroism and struggle. Middle-period works include six symphonies (Nos. 3–8), the last two piano concertos, the Triple Concerto and violin concerto, five string quartets (Nos. 7–11), several piano sonatas (including the "Waldstein" and "Appassionata" sonatas), the "Kreutzer" violin sonata and his only opera, "Fidelio".


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: This period is sometimes associated with a "heroic" manner of composing, but the use of the term "heroic" has become increasingly controversial in Beethoven scholarship. The term is more frequently used as an alternative name for the middle period. The appropriateness of the term heroic to describe the whole middle period has been questioned as well: while some works, like the Third and Fifth Symphonies, are easy to describe as heroic, many others, like his Symphony No. 6, "Pastoral" or his Piano Sonata No. 24, are not.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Beethoven's late period began in the decade 1810-1819. He began a renewed study of older music, including works by Palestrina, Johann Sebastian Bach, and George Frideric Handel, whom Beethoven considered "the greatest composer who ever lived". Beethoven's late works incorporated polyphony and Baroque-era devices. For example, the overture "The Consecration of the House" (1822) included a fugue influenced by Handel's music. A new style emerged, as he returned to the keyboard to compose his first piano sonatas in almost a decade; the works of the late period include the last five piano sonatas and the "Diabelli Variations", the last two sonatas for cello and piano, the late string quartets (including the massive "Große Fuge"), and two works for very large forces: the "Missa solemnis" and the Ninth Symphony. Works from this period are characterised by their intellectual depth, their formal innovations, and their intense, highly personal expression. The String Quartet, Op. 131 has seven linked movements, and the Ninth Symphony adds choral forces to the orchestra in the last movement.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Beethoven's earlier preferred pianos included those of Johann Andreas Stein; he may have been given a Stein piano by Count Waldstein. From 1786 onwards there is evidence of Beethoven's cooperation with Johann Andreas Streicher, who had married Stein's daughter Nannette. Streicher left Stein's business to set up his own firm in 1803, and Beethoven continued to admire his products, writing to him in 1817 of his "special preference" for his pianos. Amongst the other pianos Beethoven possessed was an Érard piano given to him by the manufacturer in 1803. The Érard piano, with its exceptional resonance, may have influenced Beethoven's piano style – shortly after receiving it he began writing his Waldstein Sonata – but despite initial enthusiasm he seems to have abandoned it before 1810, when he wrote that it was "simply not of any use any more"; in 1824 he gave it to his brother Johann. In 1818 Beethoven received, also as gift, a grand piano by John Broadwood & Sons. Although Beethoven was proud to receive it, he seems to have been dissatisfied by its tone (a dissatisfaction which was perhaps also a consequence of his increasing deafness), and sought to get it remodelled to make it louder. In 1825 Beethoven commissioned a piano from Conrad Graf, which was equipped with quadruple strings and a special resonator to make it audible to him, but which failed in this task.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: There is a museum—the Beethoven House, the place of his birth—in central Bonn. The same city has hosted a musical festival, the Beethovenfest, since 1845. The festival was initially irregular but has been organised annually since 2007.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: The Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies, in the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library, in the campus of San Jose State University, California, serves as a museum, research center, and host of lectures and performances devoted solely to Beethoven's life and works.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: The Beethoven Monument in Bonn was unveiled in August 1845, in honour of the 75th anniversary of his birth. It was the first statue of a composer created in Germany, and the music festival that accompanied the unveiling was the impetus for the very hasty construction of the original Beethovenhalle in Bonn (it was designed and built within less than a month, on the urging of Franz Liszt). Vienna honoured Beethoven with a statue in 1880.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: The third-largest crater on Mercury is named in his honour, as is the main-belt asteroid 1815 Beethoven.


title: Ludwig van Beethoven

text: Beethoven's music features twice on the Voyager Golden Record, a phonograph record containing a broad sample of the images, common sounds, languages, and music of Earth, sent into outer space with the two Voyager probes.


title: Jack Harlow

text: Jackman Thomas Harlow (born March 13, 1998) is an American rapper from Louisville, Kentucky. He started his career in 2015 and released several EPs and mixtapes before he was signed to Don Cannon and DJ Drama's record label Generation Now in 2018, an imprint of Atlantic Records.


title: Jack Harlow

text: Harlow's first major breakthrough came with the release of his 2020 single, "Whats Poppin." Aided by its popularity on TikTok, and following a remix with rappers DaBaby, Tory Lanez, and Lil Wayne, it peaked at number two on the US "Billboard" Hot 100 and went on to receive a Grammy Award nomination. Harlow was included on "XXL" magazine's "2020 Freshman Class" before he released his debut studio album, "Thats What They All Say" (2020), which was certified platinum in the US. In 2021, Harlow released a collaboration with Lil Nas X, "Industry Baby," which reached number one on the Hot 100, becoming Harlow's first chart-topper. Harlow released his second album "Come Home the Kids Miss You" in 2022, and its single, "First Class," became his second number one on the Hot 100 and first to debut atop the chart.


title: Jack Harlow

text: Harlow has received several award nominations from various institutions, including Top New Artist at the 2021 "Billboard" Music Awards. In the same year, he was named "Variety"’s "Hitmaker of the Year" and was included in "Forbes" 30 Under 30. In 2022, it was announced that Harlow will make his acting debut in a remake of the 1992 film "White Men Can't Jump" directed by Calmatic.


title: Jack Harlow

text: Jackman Thomas Harlow was born on March 13, 1998, in Louisville, Kentucky. He is the son of Maggie (née Payette), a businesswoman, and Brian Harlow, and was raised on a horse farm near Shelbyville. He has one younger brother, Clayborn Harlow. He is of French and Irish descent.


title: Jack Harlow

text: Harlow moved from Shelbyville to Louisville with his family as a child and began rapping at age 12. He and his friend Copelan Garvey used a "Guitar Hero" microphone and a laptop to record rhymes and songs. They made a CD, "Rippin' and Rappin", and sold copies at their school, Highland Middle School. When he was in seventh grade, Harlow acquired a professional microphone and made his first mixtape, "Extra Credit", using the moniker Mr. Harlow. He formed a collective, Moose Gang, with various friends; during this time, he worked on two mixtapes that were ultimately never released, "Moose Gang" and "Music for the Deaf". He attended Atherton High School, where he played on the boys' varsity soccer team.


title: Jack Harlow

text: In November 2015, Harlow released his first commercial record, the EP "The Handsome Harlow". It was released on Gill Holland's sonaBLAST! record label. Throughout high school, he often played sold-out shows at Louisville venues like Mercury Ballroom, Headliners, and the Haymarket Whiskey Bar. In March 2016, he opened for Vince Staples in Louisville.


title: Jack Harlow

text: In June 2016, less than a month after graduating from Atherton High School, he released the mixtape "18", which was the first album on his label and music collective, Private Garden. The collective also features Harlow's frequent collaborators, the Homies, composed of Louisville rappers and producers Ace Pro, 2forWoyne, Shloob, Quiiso, and Ronnie Lucciano. Over the course of the next year, Harlow performed at South by Southwest, Bonnaroo Music Festival, and the Forecastle Festival.


title: Jack Harlow

text: In the summer of 2017, Harlow released the single "Routine". In October of that year, he released another single, "Dark Knight", with an accompanying music video. He credits Cyhi the Prynce with helping him work through his writer's block and finish the song. "Dark Knight" became the lead single on Harlow's mixtape "Gazebo", which was released in November 2017. Harlow went on a 14-city Gazebo Tour in support of the album. The Homies opened for Harlow, and the tour ended in January 2018. In May 2018, Harlow opened for indie rock band Portugal. The Man on select tour dates. The next month, he was featured alongside Lil James and Sixteen on the Skeme song "Get Sumn".


title: Jack Harlow

text: After moving to Atlanta, Harlow worked at the Chick-fil-A in the Georgia State University cafeteria to supplement his income. A month after working at the cafeteria he was introduced to DJ Drama at Mean Street Studio.


title: Jack Harlow

text: In August 2018, it was announced that Harlow had signed to DJ Drama and Don Cannon's Generation Now record label, in conjunction with Atlantic Records. He also released a video for his single "Sundown" on the day of the announcement. On August 17, Harlow released his major label debut mixtape, "Loose". The album featured guest verses from CyHi the Prynce, K Camp, 2forWoyne, and Taylor. In November 2018, Harlow embarked on a North American tour in support of "Loose" which ended in December. That month, he also released a video for the song "PickYourPhoneUp", featuring K Camp. "Loose" was nominated for Best Mixtape at the 2019 BET Hip Hop Awards. On August 21, 2019, Harlow released the single "Thru the Night" featuring fellow Louisville native Bryson Tiller. He then released the 12-track mixtape "Confetti", which features Tiller, 2forWoyne and EST Gee.


title: Jack Harlow

text: On January 21, 2020, Harlow released the single "Whats Poppin", as the lead single from his second extended play (EP), "Sweet Action". The song was widely shared on the TikTok social media platform, and the Cole Bennett-produced video has surpassed 135 million views as of May 2021. On Harlow's 22nd birthday, March 13, 2020, he released the EP. On April 29, 2020, Harlow released a collaboration with G-Eazy, "Moana". On June 24, 2020, Harlow released the remix of "Whats Poppin", which features DaBaby, Tory Lanez, and Lil Wayne. The remix propelled the song to reach number two on the Hot 100. On August 11, Harlow was included in "XXL"s 2020 Freshman Class. On October 22, 2020, Harlow released the single "Tyler Herro", the lead single from his debut studio album, "That's What They All Say". The song received a music video that stars Harlow and the NBA player of the same name. The song was praised for the "easy, weightless charisma" of Harlow's lyrics and delivery. On December 2, 2020, Harlow announced the album. The second single, "Way Out", which features Big Sean, was released on December 9, 2020. The album was released on December 11, 2020. It also includes "Whats Poppin" and its remix. On March 27, 2021, Harlow appeared as the musical guest on the 46th season of "Saturday Night Live". He performed a medley of "Tyler Herro" and "Whats Poppin" for his first set and performed "Same Guy" with Adam Levine for his second set. He also appeared and performed a verse in the pre-recorded NFT-themed parody of Eminem's 2002 single, "Without Me". On March 30, 2021, "Already Best Friends", which features Chris Brown, was sent to urban contemporary radio as the third and final single from "That's What They All Say".


title: Jack Harlow

text: On May 28, 2021, Harlow released a collaboration with Eminem and Cordae for the remix of Eminem's 2020 single, "Killer". On July 23, 2021, he released a collaboration with Lil Nas X, "Industry Baby". The song reached number one on the Hot 100, giving Harlow his first number-one single on the chart. On August 3, 2021, he released a collaboration with Pooh Shiesty, "SUVs (Black on Black)".


title: Jack Harlow

text: On February 18, 2022, Harlow released the single "Nail Tech", the lead single from his upcoming second studio album and his first release in six-and-a-half months. The song performed well on the Hot 100 with a number 18 debut and peak and also received praise from Kanye West, who previously was involved in the production of "Industry Baby". On February 24, Harlow was featured in West's song "Louie Bags" on his album, "Donda 2".


title: Jack Harlow

text: On March 16, 2022, Harlow announced that his second studio album is titled "Come Home the Kids Miss You", it was released on May 6. The second single, "First Class", became his second number-one on the "Billboard" Hot 100, and the year's first hip-hop song to reach that position.


title: Jack Harlow

text: On September 3, 2022, Harlow performed at the 2022 college football season opener of the No. 2 Ohio State Buckeyes, which was a 21–10 win against the No. 5 Notre Dame Fighting Irish.


title: Jack Harlow

text: In March 2022, it was announced that Harlow will make his acting debut in a reboot of the 1992 film "White Men Can't Jump" directed by Calmatic.


title: Jack Harlow

text: In October 2022, Harlow appeared on "Saturday Night Live" as both host and musical guest for the Halloween episode.


title: Jack Harlow

text: Harlow's craft has been characterized by critics as blending playful confidence with emotional sincerity in both his music and lyrics, which often explore themes such as sexuality, partying, and drug use. Harlow's music has been categorized broadly as hip hop. Publications have further tagged his music as blending trap beats with instruments such as pianos and uilleann pipes.


title: Jack Harlow

text: In 2020, Kate Hutchinson of "The Guardian" opined that Harlow's most interesting songs are his more introspective ones, dealing with topics such as being uncomfortable with his acclaim, and his white privilege. Thomas Hobbs, another writer for "The Guardian", wrote that Harlow embraces "being a dorky outsider", while additionally having "enough charisma" to pull off "using language that is usually cringeworthy coming from suburban white people". He has described his own music as emphasizing rhythm, and his lyricism as being "personal but fun", and geared toward "connect[ing] with people". In 2022, following Harlow's surge in popularity, Terry Nguyen of "Vox" also described his music as breezy, comparing it to Drake. Nguyen praised Harlow's lyricism for its wise wordplay and for its introspective content.


title: Jack Harlow

text: Harlow cites a range of influences across multiple genres, including Eminem, Drake, Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Outkast, Paul Wall, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Hall & Oates, Fergie, and Jesse McCartney, among others. Harlow has also identified cinema as an influence, aiming for his songs to be "like short films". His favorite filmmakers are Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, and Alfred Hitchcock.


title: Jack Harlow

text: Harlow supports the Black Lives Matter political movement, having attended a rally to protest the killing of Breonna Taylor, which occurred in his hometown. Harlow has stated that, being white, he "can never truly know what [the experience of racism] is like", and that it is his responsibility as a white rapper to approach his work with that knowledge in mind.


title: Jack Harlow

text: In October 2021, Harlow donated to five Louisville-based organizations: AMPED, the Center for Women and Families, the Grace M. James Academy of Excellence, Louisville Urban League and Metro United Way. Citing the spirit and pride he holds for his hometown, Harlow stated that "People need hope, they need love", when announcing his donation plans. KFC and Instagram pledged to match up to $50,000 of what Harlow raises through the social media platform's fundraising tool.


title: Jack Harlow

text: In December 2021, Harlow teamed up with KFC and its parent company Yum! Brands to donate a joint $250,000 to the American Red Cross to support those impacted by a deadly tornado in the western region of Kentucky


title: Joey King

text: Joey Lynn King (born July 30, 1999) is an American actress. She first gained recognition for portraying Ramona Quimby in the comedy film "Ramona and Beezus" (2010) and has since gained wider recognition for her lead role in "The Kissing Booth" (2018) and its two sequels. King received critical acclaim for her starring role in the crime drama series "The Act" (2019), for which she was nominated for both a Primetime Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award.


title: Joey King

text: King has also appeared in the films "" (2011), "Crazy, Stupid, Love" (2011), "The Dark Knight Rises" (2012), "The Conjuring" (2013), "White House Down" (2013), "" (2016), "Bullet Train" (2022) and "The Princess" (2022), as well as the first season of the FX black comedy crime drama series "Fargo".


title: Joey King

text: King was born in Los Angeles, California, to Terry and Jamie King. King began acting professionally at the age of 4, starting with a commercial for Life Cereal. She has also been in commercials for AT&T, Kay Jewelers, and Eggo. King attended Phoenix Ranch School in Simi Valley. As a child, King sang a cappella for a talent show at the Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center. She also performed with the Stage Door Children's Theatre in Agoura. She has two older sisters, actresses Kelli King and Hunter King. King has stated, "I'm Jewish, but I'm not really, really religious."


title: Joey King

text: King voiced the yellow fur ball Katie in the animated feature "Horton Hears a Who!" (2008). She also appeared in "Quarantine" (2008). In 2010, she guest-starred in the series "Ghost Whisperer". She was also featured in "The Suite Life of Zack & Cody" as Emily Mason in two episodes. Other television appearances include "Entourage", "", "Medium"., and Life in Pieces.


title: Joey King

text: King's first lead role was in the 2010 film "Ramona and Beezus", an adaptation of the Beverly Cleary book series, starring as Ramona Quimby. She also released a single for the movie called "Ramona Blue". Her role in the film won her a Young Artist Award.


title: Joey King

text: King was featured in "", where she played a girl named Kirsten. Also in 2011, she co-starred in "Crazy, Stupid, Love". As well, she appeared in Taylor Swift's "Mean" music video as a young student at the school cafeteria rejected by her peers.


title: Joey King

text: King had a role in Christopher Nolan's third Batman film, "The Dark Knight Rises" (2012), as a young Talia al Ghul. She also filmed the short-lived comedy series "Bent", had guest appearances in "New Girl" and was on the final episode of "", "Goodwill Towards Men." In 2013, King appeared in "Oz the Great and Powerful", "Family Weekend", and "The Conjuring". In 2014, she appeared in "Wish I Was Here", as well as in "Fargo" as Greta Grimly, daughter of police officer Gus Grimly.


title: Joey King

text: In 2016, King was cast in the coming-of-age drama film "The Possibility of Fireflies". She played the lead character Clare in the 2017 horror-thriller film "Wish Upon". She also had a role in Slender Man which was released in 2018.


title: Joey King

text: In 2018, she starred as Elle Evans in Netflix's teen romantic comedy "The Kissing Booth". She reprised the role in the sequel "The Kissing Booth 2", released in 2020, and in "The Kissing Booth 3", which was released on August 11, 2021.


title: Joey King

text: In 2019, she starred in the true crime anthology television series "The Act" on Hulu. King was cast as Gypsy Rose Blanchard, a role which required King to shave her head for the third time in her career. It earned her nominations for Emmy, Golden Globe, SAG and Critics' Choice awards. She also appeared on the fourth season of CBS comedy "Life in Pieces" as Morgan.


title: Joey King

text: King is represented by talent agent Dan Spilo. In August 2020, she signed a deal with Hulu to produce television content for its service. In July 2021, her All The King's Horses production company struck a deal with Netflix.


title: Joey King

text: King began a relationship with producer and director Steven Piet in September 2019 after they met on the set of "The Act"; they became engaged in February 2022.


title: Joey King

text: At the 2015 Vancouver International Film Festival, the Canadian Images features jury made an honourable mention recognizing King as an Emerging Actress for her performance in "Borealis".


title: Serie A

text: The Serie A (), also called Serie A TIM for national sponsorship with TIM, is a professional league competition for football clubs located at the top of the Italian football league system and the winner is awarded the Scudetto and the Coppa Campioni d'Italia. It has been operating as a round-robin tournament for over ninety years since the 1929–30 season. It had been organized by the Direttorio Divisioni Superiori until 1943 and the Lega Calcio until 2010, when the Lega Serie A was created for the 2010–11 season. Serie A is regarded as one of the best football leagues in the world and it is often depicted as the most tactical and defensively sound national league. Serie A was the world's strongest national league in 2020 according to IFFHS, and is ranked fourth among European leagues according to UEFA's league coefficient – behind the Bundesliga, La Liga and the Premier League, and ahead of Ligue 1 – which is based on the performance of Italian clubs in the Champions League and the Europa League during the previous five years. Serie A led the UEFA ranking from 1986 to 1988 and from 1990 to 1999.


title: Serie A

text: In its current format, the Italian Football Championship was revised from having regional and interregional rounds, to a single-tier league from the 1929–30 season onwards. The championship titles won before 1929 are officially recognised by FIGC with the same weighting as titles that were subsequently awarded. Similarly, the 1945–46 season, when the round-robin was suspended and the league was played over two geographical groups due to the ravages of World War II, is not statistically considered, even if its title is fully official.


title: Serie A

text: The league hosts three of the world's most famous clubs as Juventus, AC Milan and Inter Milan, all founding members of the G-14, a group which represented the largest and most prestigious European football clubs from 2000 to 2008, with the first two also being founding members of its successive organisation, European Club Association (ECA). More players have won the Ballon d'Or award while playing at a Serie A club than any league in the world other than Spain's La Liga, although La Liga has the highest total number of Ballon d'Or winners. Juventus, Italy's most successful club of the 20th century and the most winning Italian team, is tied for sixth in Europe and twelfth in the world with the most official international titles with eleven. Prior the first Europa Conference League final in 2022, it was also the only one in the world to have won all the historical five official confederation competitions, an achievement reached after its triumph in the 1985 Intercontinental Cup and revalidated after winning a sixth tournament, the UEFA Intertoto Cup, fourteen years later. Milan is joint third club overall for official international titles won with eighteen. Inter, following their achievements in the 2009–10 season, became the first Italian team to have achieved a seasonal treble. It is also the team to have competed uninterruptedly for the most time in the top flight of Italian football, having seen its debut in 1909. All these clubs, along with Lazio, Fiorentina, Roma and Napoli, are known as the "seven sisters" () of Italian football.


title: Serie A

text: Serie A is one of the most storied football leagues in the world. Of the 100 greatest footballers in history chosen by "FourFourTwo" magazine in 2017, 42 players have played in Serie A, more than any other league in the world. Juventus is the team that has produced the most World Cup champions (25), with Inter (19), Roma (15) and Milan (10), being respectively third, fourth and ninth in that ranking.


title: Serie A

text: Serie A, as it is structured today, began during the 1929–30 season. From 1898 to 1922, the competition was organised into regional groups. Because of ever growing teams attending regional championships, the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) split the CCI (Italian Football Confederation) in 1921, which founded in Milan the Lega Nord (Northern Football League), ancestor of present-day Lega Serie A. When CCI teams rejoined the FIGC created two interregional divisions renaming Categories into Divisions and splitting FIGC sections into two north–south leagues. In 1926, due to internal crises and fascist pressures, the FIGC changed internal settings, adding southern teams to the national division, ultimately leading to the 1929–30 final settlement. Torino were declared champions in the 1948–49 season following a plane crash near the end of the season in which the entire team was killed.


title: Serie A

text: The Serie A Championship title is often referred to as the "scudetto" ("small shield") because since the 1923–24 season, the winning team will bear a small coat of arms with the Italian tricolour on their strip in the following season. The most successful club is Juventus with 36 championships, followed by Inter Milan and AC Milan with 19 championships. From the 2004–05 season onwards, an actual trophy was awarded to club on the pitch after the last turn of the championship. The trophy, called the Coppa Campioni d'Italia, has officially been used since the 1960–61 season, but between 1961 and 2004 was consigned to the winning clubs at the head office of the Lega Nazionale Professionisti.


title: Serie A

text: In April 2009, Serie A announced a split from Serie B. Nineteen of the twenty clubs voted in favour of the move in an argument over television rights; the relegation-threatened Lecce had voted against the decision. Maurizio Beretta, the former head of Italy's employers' association, became president of the new league.


title: Serie A

text: In April 2016, it was announced that Serie A was selected by the International Football Association Board to test video replays, which were initially private for the 2016–17 season, allowing them to become a live pilot phase, with replay assistance implemented in the 2017–18 season. On the decision, FIGC President Carlo Tavecchio said, "We were among the first supporters of using technology on the pitch and we believe we have everything required to offer our contribution to this important experiment."


title: Serie A

text: For most of Serie A's history, there were 16 or 18 clubs competing at the top level. Since 2004–05, however, there have been 20 clubs in total. One season (1947–48) was played with 21 teams for political reasons, following post-war tensions with Yugoslavia. Below is a complete record of how many teams played in each season throughout the league's history;


title: Serie A

text: During the season, which runs from August to May, each club plays each of the other teams twice; once at home and once away, totalling 38 games for each team by the end of the season. Thus, in Italian football a true round-robin format is used. In the first half of the season, called the "andata", each team plays once against each league opponent, for a total of 19 games. In the second half of the season, called the "ritorno", the teams play another 19 games, once more against each opponent, in which home and away matches are reversed. The two halves of the season had exactly the same order of fixtures until the 2021–22 season, when an asymmetrical calendar was introduced, following the format of the English, Spanish, and French leagues. Since the 1994–95 season, teams are awarded three points for a win, one point for a draw, and no points for a loss. Prior to this, teams were awarded two points for a win, one for a draw, and none for a loss. The three lowest-placed teams at the end of the season are relegated to Serie B, and three Serie B teams are promoted to replace them for the next season.


title: Serie A

text: As of 2022, Serie A is ranked as the fourth-best league by UEFA coefficient, therefore the top four teams in the Serie A qualify straight to the UEFA Champions League group stage. The team finishing fifth, along with the Coppa Italia winner (if the Coppa Italia winner finishes outside the top five) or the team finishing sixth (if the Coppa Italia winner finishes inside the top five), qualify for the UEFA Europa League group stage. The sixth or the seventh ranked club, depending on the Coppa Italia winner's league performance, joins the final qualification round of the UEFA Europa Conference League.


title: Serie A

text: If after all 38 games there are two teams tied on points for first place, the team that wins the scudetto is decided by a single-legged play-off game of 90 minutes and penalties (no extra time), to be held at a neutral venue. If more than two teams are tied for one of those spots then the two teams to play in the match is decided by a mini table between the teams involved. For a tie in any other position the deciding tie-breakers are as follows: