Dating back to the Renaissance, the arts have been reconceived as ways of exploring the universe, complementary to the sciences. Beethoven was perhaps the "first composer for whom the exploratory function of music prevailed over all others: pleasure, education and even, at times, expression" (Rosen). This approach to composition and music theory is one of the many early aspects of Beethoven's talent that sets him apart from any other artist of the time. As already mentioned, Beethoven had some serious social problems: some authors consider him to have a very defined personality. "Jekyll and Hyde" relationship with himself. “The really important thing about Beethoven – his music – is largely purely Jekyll” (Schauffler). Unfortunately, at the beginning of 1798, the young master suffered a shock that almost nipped his career in its tracks; with rapidly growing concern, Beethoven noticed that something was wrong with his hearing. The “novelty and intensity of the tragic note now suddenly sounded in his music makes it reasonable to suppose that this note was caused by the loss of hearing and the resulting conflict with himself” (Schauffler). Immediately after this discovery Beethoven wrote some of the most sublime and heartbreaking music the world had ever heard: the Largo e mesto of his Piano Sonata in D major (Op. 10, no. 3), the first movement of the Sonate Pathétique (Op . 13). ), and the Adagio affectionate and passionate from his first string quartet (Op. 18), which he associated in particular with the tomb scene of Romeo and Juliet (Newman, W). That famous association is in fact «music eternally suited to the tragic separation of lovers, to the separation of the musician from his noblest senses» (Schlauffer). While it is now clear that Beethoven transmits his......middle of paper......Revolution. New York: International, 1974. Print.Lockwood, Lewis. Beethoven: Music and life. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003. Print.Newman, Ernest. The Beethoven unconscious: an essay in musical psychology. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1927. Print.Newman, William S. Beethoven on Beethoven: Playing Piano Music His Way. New York: Norton, 1988. Print.Rosen, Charles. The classical style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997. Print.Schauffler, Robert Haven. Beethoven, the man who liberated music. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran &, 1929. Print.Schindler, Anton. Beethoven as I knew him; a biography. Ed. Donald W. MacArdle. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1966. Print.Schonberg, Harold C. The Lives of the Great Composers. New York: W.W. Norton &, 1970. Print.Solomon, Maynard. Beethoven. New York: Schirmer, 1977. Print.