Short answers, pulled from the story.
Ludwig van Beethoven, baptised on the 17th of December 1770 and dead on the 26th of March 1827, was a German composer, conductor, and pianist. His musical style was a key driver of the transition from the Classical period to Romantic music, and he expanded popular forms such as the symphony and string quartet.
Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, at what is now the Beethoven House Museum at Bonngasse 20. No authentic record of his birth date survives, but his baptism is registered in the Catholic Parish of St. Remigius on the 17th of December 1770, and there is consensus that he was born on the 16th of December.
Beethoven originally titled his Third Symphony Bonaparte out of sympathy for the revolutionary leader. When Napoleon declared himself Emperor in 1804, a disillusioned Beethoven scratched the name from the manuscript's title page, and the symphony was published in 1806 as the Eroica, subtitled to celebrate the memory of a great man.
Beethoven told the pianist Charles Neate in 1815 that his hearing loss began in 1798, probably caused by otosclerosis. It made performing in concerts increasingly difficult, drove his social withdrawal, and by early 1818 forced him to use written conversation books, though he never became totally deaf and could still distinguish low tones and sudden loud sounds in his final years.
The Immortal Beloved was the unnamed recipient of a ten-page love letter Beethoven wrote at Teplitz in 1812 but never sent. The musicologist Maynard Solomon argued the intended recipient was Antonie Brentano, while other candidates included Julie Guicciardi, Therese Malfatti, and Josephine Brunsvik.
Beethoven died on the 26th of March 1827 at the age of fifty-six after several months of illness that left him bedridden. He was attended by Andreas Ignaz Wawruch, who noted fever, jaundice, and dropsy, and an autopsy revealed significant liver damage and considerable dilation of the auditory nerves.
Beethoven's late period, from 1812 to 1827, included the Missa solemnis and the Ninth Symphony, both premiered in 1824, with the Ninth being the first major example of a choral symphony. It also produced the Diabelli Variations, the Hammerklavier and other late piano sonatas, and the late string quartets including the Grosse Fuge of 1825 and 1826.