As a     1     (gift) child, Beethoven was pushed by his father to study music. Not long after, he began to be appreciated     2     his piano performances. Many important figures like Mozart made     3     (predict) about Beethoven’s future.     4    , life took a sharp turn. He started to lose his hearing. The loss of hearing made him     5     (depress). Despite his hearing loss, he was determined     6     (continue) a life full of music. Although he was able to continue composing music, it became     7     (increasing) difficult to perform in public. Since he presented Symphony No.9 in 1824, the piece has become famous. He died less than three years after the concert in Vienna, aged 56. For his amazing     8     (achievement) and for his determination in     9     (he) darkest days, Beethoven     10     (regard) as one of the most remarkable musicians who ever lived.

Born in 1853, Vincent Willem van Gogh was a 19th century Dutch painter. When he was a young man, van Gogh     1     (travel) to France, England, and Belgium, but near the end of his life he moved to France. Although van Gogh began to draw when he was a child, he did not start painting     2     his late twenties. And many of his best paintings     3     (do) in the last two years of his life, before his     4     (die) at the age of 37. His first really good paintings were dark and serious. When he moved to France, van Gogh saw new kinds of art, with new, brighter colors. He liked what he saw so much that he started to paint with brighter colors right away. Later, he moved to the south of France,     5     the sunlight was very strong and bright. The     6     (beautiful) and color of the place he lived inspired him to paint it, and his artwork got even more colorful—full of new intensity, and also full of emotion.

If he had lived longer, van Gogh might have sold many pieces of art,     7     (become) a very famous painter,     8     unfortunately he died in 1890. Vincent Willem van Gogh’s distinctive style makes     9     easy to recognize his paintings. Because of his paintings, a new form of art,     10     (call) Expressionism, was invented, and his work still influences artists today.