Word: beethovens
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...death prompted an emotional crisis that ebbed when a wealthy widow hired Beethoven as a private music tutor. He was drawn to the widow’s 16-year-old daughter Eleonore, whom he taught piano—but the love was unrequited. He never had much luck with the fairer sex, and he nevera married despite interest in a number of women. Prudishness and shyness are partial explanations: when one woman made passes at him in a tavern, “He was at first cold, and then violent, giving her head a sharp smack,” Morris...
...family problems. Beethoven’s father was chronically short of money, and he found too much comfort at the end of the bottle. His mother, who saw seven of her 10 children die young, suffered from depression, and she neglected Beethoven’s dress and hygiene. Nevertheless, Beethoven loved her deeply. He cut short his stay in Vienna – where he was studying under Mozart – when he learned that his mother was dying...
...didn’t forge friendships any more easily than he lured ladies. In 1792, Beethoven moved to Vienna to study under the aging composer Joseph Haydn in an all-star match-up of historical heavyweights akin to Alexander and Aristotle, or Rocky and Tommy Gunn. The teacher and pupil never clicked though, and Beethoven was soon free to pursue his own devices. His skills were a key to the world of the privileged, and he picked up many friends among the aristocracy. By the age of 25, he had performed before the king of Prussia...
...Beethoven’s celebrity was rising against the backdrop of unprecedented upheaval in Europe, and Napoleon Bonaparte captured the composer’s imagination. In 1804, Beethoven wrote a symphony meant to be dedicated to Bonaparte. But after Napoleon shed all pretenses of democracy and crowned himself emperor, the Third Symphony was renamed the “Sinfonia Eroica”—to heroism...
...then, Beethoven had already realized that the worst fate imaginable for a musician had befallen him. In June 1801, he admitted to a friend, “For the last three years my hearing has become weaker and weaker. The trouble is supposed to have been caused by the condition of my abdomen.” Doctors suggested that swimming in the Danube River would assuage the pain of his chronic diarrhea, and that infusions of oil would soften the buzzing in his ears. “In all biography, there are few images more grotesquely sad than that...