Ludwig van Beethoven

German composer who wrote the 9 symphonies, the late string quartets, and the piano sonatas — becoming deaf before completing his greatest works — making him the archetypal example of the artist whose suffering is inseparable from the transcendence of their art.

Expanded the expressive range of Western music beyond anything previously conceivable — the Ninth Symphony's choral finale, the late quartets' introspective complexity — while demonstrating that the greatest art is not made despite suffering but, in some profound sense, through it.