Beethoven ‘died a virgin’

31 January 2023

Ludwig van Beethoven died a virgin, a new biography has claimed.

Beethoven died a virgin

The late music legend – who died at the age of 56 in 1827 – never married and now author Norman Lebrecht has claimed in new book ‘Why Beethoven’ that it is “absolutely certain” that the ‘Moonlight Sonata’ composer “never” had a sexual relationship, nor did he ever make love at all.

He said: “We can be absolutely certain Beethoven never had sex within a relationship. We can be 98 per cent certain that he never had sex at all. He needed love as a stimulus for creation but he avoided intimacy, regarding it as tantamount to a sin, a violation of shining ideals.”

The biographer did go on to claim that Beethoven “serially fell in love” but believes that his upbringing had an impact on his personal life as an adult, noting that his father’s violence towards his mother led him to believe that women needed to be “protected” from men.

He added: “Beethoven comes from two generations of alcoholics. His father was quite brutal and violent both towards him and his mother. Beethoven felt protective of his mother. His mother was an untouchable ideal as a female who has to be protected from male violence – and of course part of male violence can be sex.

“One finds tracings of earlier fumblings, nothing more. The point is he is way over the top in the horror of his own conduct. It was Sodom and Gomorrah. One of Beethoven’s contemporaries could only have sex with his wife if they visited a brothel. When Beethoven was invited by a friend to a brothel, he makes it clear that he has no intention of attending.

“He falls in love serially in his late 20s, then sort of forgets about it.

‘Then, as he turns 40, he starts falling in love again serially both because he needs it as a romantic stimulus for the work he is doing and because he realises he doesn’t have family. He is alone in the world. But by this stage he is a man who is 41, shabby and malodorous.”