=Latter Years of His Life=.—The latter part of Beethoven’s life, after 1815, was spent in Vienna, in a state of despondency from his troubles which his general recognition as the foremost musician of his day could scarcely alleviate. His many friends placed him, by their efforts, in comfortable pecuniary circumstances; yet he constantly imagined himself struggling with poverty. Sensitive to his affliction, he made himself exceedingly inaccessible, and passed his days in unceasing labor upon those works which eclipsed, in profundity and individuality, all of his former compositions, and which were an index to the conflicting struggles in his mind. Stone-deaf, he yet revelled in a spiritual world of tone, hearing his greatest compositions only in the realms of his imagination. An attack of pneumonia in 1826 left effects which proved lasting, and which caused his death on March 26, 1827. In his last illness he was surrounded by his circle of unfailing friends, among whom the modest Schubert was admitted; and a proof of his hold upon his countrymen is shown in the fact that 20,000 persons are said to have attended his funeral. =Last Great Works=.—The greatest fruit of these later years was his last symphony, the Ninth, or “Choral,” in which, for the first time, he introduced voices as an aid to the instrumental climax. The free vent which he gave to his radical tendencies in this symphony, its unheard-of boldness of harmonic progressions, and its defiance of all conventional rules, aroused a storm of protest from his critics which was only lulled after succeeding generations had placed the stamp of unmistakable approval upon the work, and had recognized it as a monument of genius. Near to this in importance stands his “Solemn Mass” in D, a work imbued with all the religious fervor of his declining years. =Sonatas of Third Period=.—Other notable achievements, in the line of chamber music, mark this period; and the last five piano sonatas, extending from opus 101 to opus 111, exhibit the same undaunted freedom that is found in the Ninth symphony. Enormous in their demands upon the pianist, they are food for none but virtuosi; but analyzed, they show a _compendium of_ all known _musical resources_, from the choral fugue to the most daring flights of harmonic expression.