<Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> This article needs additional citations for verification . Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . Unsourced material may be challenged and removed . (November 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) </Td> </Tr> <P> Ludwig van Beethoven is universally viewed as one of the most influential figures in the history of classical music . Since his lifetime, when he was "universally accepted as the greatest living composer", Beethoven's music has remained among the most performed, discussed and reviewed . Scholarly journals are devoted to analysis of his life and work . He has been the subject of numerous biographies and monographs, and his music was the driving force behind the development of Schenkerian analysis . He is widely considered as among the most important composers, and along with Bach and Mozart, his music is the most frequently recorded . </P> <P> Beethoven's stylistic innovations bridge the Classical and Romantic periods . The works of his early period brought the Classical form to its highest expressive level, expanding in formal, structural, and harmonic terms the musical idiom developed by predecessors such as Mozart and Haydn . The works of his middle period were more forward - looking, contributing to the musical language and thinking of the Romantic era, inspiring composers such as Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, and Johannes Brahms . His late period works were characterized by formal, harmonic, and structural experimentation at the highest level, often pointing toward contrapuntal tendencies and microscopic textures, as well as an increasingly introverted compositional outlook . Though rightly credited as a major harbinger of the Romantic era in music that followed, Beethoven never fully abandoned the fundamental formal paradigms and generally objective artistic philosophy characterizing musical Classicism to the same extent that later composers such as Berlioz or even Schubert did . </P> <P> Beethoven's musical output has traditionally been divided into three periods, a classification that dates to the first years after the composer's death in 1827 and was formalised with the publication of Wilhelm von Lenz's influential work Beethoven et ses trois styles (Beethoven and his Three Styles). Lenz proposed that Beethoven's creative output be marked by three periods of distinct stylistic personality and he identified specific compositions as milestones for each period . In Lenz's work, the first period opens with Beethoven's Trio set, Opus 1 and culminates with the performances in 1800 of his first symphony and Septet . The second period spans the period from the publication of his Moonlight Sonata to the Piano Sonata in E minor, Op. 90 in 1814 . The last period covers Beethoven's mature works to his death in 1827 . </P>

Why is beethoven considered a transitional composer between the classic era and the romantic era
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