mphony no. 9 m During his teenage years in the 1780s Beethoven composed a large number of piano trios, quartets, sonatas, variations, and rondos—all without opus numbers and during his twenties he became known as a virtuoso pianist, playing concerts in the major private houses of Vienna and also touring to London, Prague, and Dresden. His first public performance in Vienna, in March 1795, featured one of his piano concertos, and later that year his three piano trios were published as opus 1, the first of his publications to received an opus number. His Piano Sonata no. 4 in E-flat Major op. 7 (the “Grand Sonata”) was composed in 1797 and one of his most popular piano works, the Piano Sonata no. 8 in C Minor op. 13 (the “Sonate pathétique”), was completed in 1798. During the 1790s Beethoven also began composing works scored for strings and for chorus. The string works include the two cello sonatas op. 5 in 1796, three violin sonatas op. 12 in 1798, and the string quartets op. 18 between 1798 and 1800. The works for chorus include the Cantate auf den Tod Kaiser Joseph des Zweiten (Cantata on the death of Emperor Joseph II) and Cantate auf die Erhebung Leopold des Zeiten 2ur Kaiserwiirde (Cantata on the accession of Emperor Leopold ID, both composed in 1790 In 1801, at age thirty, Beethoven began to acknowledge his increasing deafness and wrote to his friend Franz Gerhard Wegeler, For almost two years Ihave ceased to attend any social functions because I find it imp empty, like a ghost, and I have had to avoid all human society, being forced to appear a sible to say to people: I am deaf. ... You can scarcely believe what an ad life I have had. ... My poor hearing has haunted me everywhere misanthrope, and yet I am far from being one. In 1802, during a hoped-for therapeutic trip to the small town of Heiligenstadt, he came to terms with the severity of his deafness and wrote an anguished decla- ration to that effect, known as the “Heiligenstadt Testament.” It seemed as if his career was coming to an end. However, when he returned to Vienna he engaged in an intense period of compositional activity, composing his oratorio Christus am Oelberge (Christ on the Mount of Olives) op. 85 in two weeks. Other choral works followed, including the Missa in C Major op. 86 in 1807 and the Fantasie far Klavier, Chor und Orchester c-moll op. 80 (called the “Choral Fantasy") in 1808 Meanwhile, Beethoven had composed two symphonies at the beginning of the decade. The first, in C Major op. 21, was composed in 1800 (which was five years after Haydn's last symphony, the “London,” and twelve years after Mozart's final symphony, the “Jupiter”), and the second, in D Major op. 36, composed between 1801 and 1802. The Symphony no. 1, while basically traditional, exhibits signs of eccentricity and inventiveness that characterize many of Beethoven's later works, including the Ninth. For example, the first movement of the firs symphony opens not with a traditional tonic chord or even a chord in the key of C Major, but with