After reading Sebastian Mitchell’s “Beethoven Biography: Life of Ludwig Van Beethoven”, I suddenly realized that I actually felt really bad for Beethoven. I thought, “Man, that dude totally rocked, but his life was so unnecessarily and so freaking sad.” And here’s why:
First of all, Beethoven’s father wasn’t really that cool. He was like, “Hey, my dude, Beethoven, look at how awesome that Mozart guy was! He started musical training at like four and also he made a lot of money by touring and doing concerts!” Essentially, he just wanted to make money off of Beethoven. So Beethoven started playing piano at four, too, and his father started getting a lot of money as well. I don’t think this is a really good thing to do as a parent, unless you want your child to be like “MONEY MONEY MONEY” in the future… OR unless you just want to teach your child how to manage their money really early in life so that they don’t grow up to be another broke Mozart. I mean, that would be a good idea… But I guess his father really wanted money, so… Beethoven must’ve been quite sad. Just imagine: Beethoven working his butt off at the piano and then suddenly, his dad bursts into the room with a rich-guy look on his face and orders him to perform ten more new concerts all over town just for the money. I would’ve cried.
Secondly, Beethoven totally rocks, but when he was around twenty, he started turning deaf. To you, it might be really really sad, but Beethoven… he’s a MUSIC PRODIGY. A PRODIGY. In MUSIC. So turning deaf was definitely devastating to him. He shut himself in his room and started writing a very depressed letter (Something along the lines of this):
Hey bro, I seriously can't keep doing this. Like, I'm deaf, how am I going to hit 93,843,785,468,954,985,934 subscribers on my YouTube channel if I can't even make music, I hate people, I don't wanna come out of my house anymore, and you totally understand that, right? But..... I'm just..... WAY. TOO. GENIUS. Like, dude, have you seen my symphonies?? They're, like, SO sick. The world needs me and I can't let the people who actually think I'm super awesome down, can I? So I'm officially not quitting my musician job anymore! From, Your buddy Beethoven
I mean, like, if I were a musician and I was turning deaf, then I would’ve kicked and screamed my head off! Beethoven was so awesome about it that at the end, he decided to actually keep composing! He created so many different pieces that we still play today.
Lastly, throughout his whole life, a lot of people also made him really really sad. For example, when he first started traveling and starting his music career, his mom got so sick that he actually had to travel back to his home to see her. And then after she died, his dad started being an alcoholic. Here are the main reasons why alcoholics are bad (Totally not copied from my last Mozart essay):
- Alcoholics drink alcohol.
- Then they really really want more.
- Then when they drink too much,
- They get drunk and sleepy and happy at the same time.
- Don’t drunk people tend to do weird things and say weird things?
And if you still don’t believe me, here:
- You have to be a freaking 21 year-old to be able to drink.
- A lot of sources on the internet also say that drinking is bad for your health: www.healthline.com, www.bbc.com, and www.health.harvard.edu, just to name a few.
- Why do you think everybody else doesn’t like alcoholics??
So his mom died and his dad drank. It gets worse from here: Beethoven was in an awesome relationship with this student of his. But the problem was, back then, it was the weirdest thing ever for a super-cool person to marry a not-so-highly-ranked person. So Beethoven and his student just eventually gave up. There may have been another important person in his life named Elise (Dude, everybody plays that trendy Für Elise piece), but that’s not for sure… but Beethoven did write a whole lot of mushy gushy letters to her, so you decide. Basically, Beethoven wasn’t able to get a wife either, and he was really sad about that. So Beethoven tried to win his nephew over from his nephew’s mother after his brother died. He probably just wanted someone to live with to not be lonely or he just wanted someone to carry on his musical ability and legacy for him, since he didn’t have any children. But unfortunately for him, he lost against his nephew’s mother. I’m feeling really bad for him at this point. Mother died, father drinking, no wife, no family to live with, and don’t forget, still deaf?
If I were him, I would’ve definitely given up all hope. But he kept on persevering and kept on making great music for all of us present people to play and enjoy. Despite his deafness, he still made an attempt to conduct at some concerts. I still feel pretty bad for his losses throughout life, but I think he coped with it well and–he’s just an absolutely amazing musician.