Ludwig van Beethoven was born on December 16th in 1770.
We are so lucky to know this composer’s music.
"The moral law in us, and the starry heavens above us." Beethoven wrote this quote by the philosopher Immanuel Kant in his conversation book in 1820. Both were visionaries and rebels.
(the website has lovely photos of the museum's inside and the garden)
In the summer of 2019, my Austrian friend Peter, a music and breath teacher, introduces me to the intimate and beautiful Beethoven Museum in Heiligenstadt, a small village just outside of Vienna. Not a crowded tourist attraction, this small gem of a museum is where Beethoven lived and worked at a most challenging time in his life. He started to lose his hearing. Part of the permanent exhibition is Beethoven's letter to his brothers. It is honest, starting like a suicide note, so full of utter despair. Even though I am familiar with the "Heiligenstadt Testament," I start to cry as I read. The original in the glass vitrine – written on October 6 in 1802 – exudes the real lived pain of Beethoven. As his deafness increased, he was treated differently by people. Life became a double exile: from hearing his music played and from people. But his inner "vision" kept him hearing the most amazing music he still was to create. The letter ends with him expressing the fervent desire to overcome the physical and emotional ailments as to fulfill his destiny as composer.
And to my surprise, while meandering through the creative exhibition in this restored residents' house, I am flooded by memories. I am back to being 15 years old, locked in my tiny room, listening to Beethoven’ symphonies on LPs – singing, dancing, crying to the music. Over & over. I know it by heart. Just me and Beethoven. The artist knew suffering and he knew joy, and the sublime. He inhabited the whole range. And this is what life is about. Beethoven and his music give us this permission, possibility to feel it all – what a gift.
The first photo above I took through a "viewer" that the museum created: out into the garden focusing on the wooden spiral sculpture which also produces sound.
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