Poor Mr. Beethoven

Attended a lovely little show at the Kennedy Center, Beethoven Lives Upstairs, based on one of my favorite children's books. I was quite startled to find myself in tears several times. It's not like any of the facts were new to me -- the deafness, the loneliness, the wretched childhood, any of it. I knew all of that backwards. And yet . . . there was something about seeing it all through a child's eyes that made me weep.

His sad story is perhaps one of the reasons I've always felt so drawn to Beethoven, even though I might have found his personality unbearable in real life. (I find that several of my favorite historic figures are like that.) I love many classical composers, but Beethoven reaches me in a way that none of the others do. To write music like that in spite of fear and misery and the worst physical handicap that could afflict a composer . . . I'm about to get choked up all over again just thinking about it.