litlover12

I got invited to a Beethoven birthday party on Saturday! Such a thing has never happened to me in my whole life. I thought I was the only one (besides classical radio programmers and Schroeder in the comics) who ever remembered Beethoven's birthday. But tonight at my Italian-speaking Meetup group, this couple was inviting everyone for a celebration, complete with Italian food. The woman told me her husband has been doing this since 1967! 

Clearly, I have found my people.

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King's Speech piano book = best thing ever. It's lovely to be able to play some of those pieces from the movie. There's even a really good transcription of the second movement of Beethoven's Seventh!

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.

Just found out -- thanks, tempestsarekind! -- that Ludwig van Beethoven and Jane Austen share a birthday (yes, it's today).

For some obscure reason, this pleases me greatly.