Ludwig van Beethoven.

He frequently worked as a musical tutor to members of the aristocracy.

Leonard Bernstein considered him the greatest composer who ever lived.

His Ninth Symphony places the scherzo as the second movement and the adagio as the third, a radical departure from the common slow-second-movement practice.

The first four notes of his Fifth Symphony coincidentally form Morse code for the letter V, the Roman numeral for five.

He usually worked on several compositions at once and often altered a passage as many as 20 times to achieve perfection.

He is generally regarded as the first romantic composer; his third symphony was a radical departure from anything written up to that time.

There is no actual record of Beethoven’s birth. He is traditionally assumed to have been born on December 16, 1770 because his baptism was recorded the following day. As an adult, he considered himself two years younger and avoided the question of his birth date.

He became very dissatisfied with lessons from Joseph Haydn, saying I never learned anything from Haydn. Haydn, once an admirer, later became critical of Beethoven’s now-acclaimed compositions.

He was a student of Antonio Salieri.

He was the first composer to imitate the calls of a quail, a cuckoo, and a nightingale all in one symphony, his sixth Pastoral, which appears abridged in Disney’s Fantasia.

In a musical duel, Beethoven humiliated rival Daniel Steibelt by playing Steibelt’s music upside down, parodying his grandiosity. Steibelt stormed out and never returned to Vienna while Beethoven lived there.

He was planning a tenth symphony at the time of his death.

His final words are subject to debate: one report says Friends, applaud. The comedy is over. Another says I shall hear in Heaven. Others include I feel as if up to now I had written no more than a few notes and Is it not true, Hummel, that I have some talent after all?

A first movement and allegro for his 10th Symphony were realized by Barry Cooper in 1989 from Beethoven’s sketches.

He was perhaps the first composer to use brass instruments as part of the orchestral texture; previously they had been used only as solos or at special moments.

He used the harp in only one composition, his ballet The Creatures of Prometheus.

Moonlight Sonata’s first movement was written in low notes not to set an eerie mood, but because Beethoven could not hear the higher ones.

He was the first composer to use the piccolo in a symphony.

He dedicated the C sharp minor sonata Moonlight to Countess Giulietta Guicciardi.

He has been depicted in films such as Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure 1989, Immortal Beloved 1994 with Gary Oldman, Copying Beethoven 2006 with Ed Harris, and Napoleon 1955 with Erich von Stroheim.

Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony was sampled in Walter Murphy’s disco hit A Fifth of Beethoven.

During his time in Vienna, he lived in 36 different apartments, sometimes moving more than once a year or renting two simultaneously. They were usually dirty because he could never keep domestic help.

He never learned to shave properly, his face often marked by cuts. As an older man, he would let his beard grow for days before shaving.

Every morning he ground and brewed his own coffee, exactly 60 beans per cup. He kept rye bread, salami, and Stracchino cheese in his room for snacking, often forgetting meals when composing.