Poor Mr. Beethoven

[litlover12]

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.

Comments

[goldvermilion87.livejournal.com]

I've seen the film and heard the tape.

My favorite in that series is Vivaldi's Ring of Mystery, though. :-)

[litlover12.livejournal.com]

I do want to see the rest of the books/tapes in the series. Though I was a little surprised by the title "Vivaldi's Ring of Mystery" -- it made me think, "Wait, a ring? Shouldn't that be Wagner?" :-)

[goldvermilion87.livejournal.com]

Nope. No Wagner. It makes sense when you listen to it.

I have no idea waht I'd think of it now that I'm 23, but when I was a little girl, I had SUCH a crush on the gondolier. :-P

The other ones are Mr. Bach Comes to Call (which is slightly lame) and Mozart's Magic Fantasy, which is a really really really lame version of Die Zauberflote (which is slightly lame to begin with...).