And none of them have anything to do with him being deaf.
By Tom Rizzuto
The world needs heroes, everybody. We need people to look up to and say, “Look at all those great things he did…maybe I can do great things too.”
Sadly though, sometimes it seems like the world is running short on people who deserve our admiration. Especially for those of us in the arts, our heroes mostly seem to fall into one of two categories: “People who were born with a gigantic head start in either their family’s finances or connections,” and “People who are so crazy gifted that it seems like they never had to work at anything, it just came to them naturally.”
Luckily for us history is full of the kinds of rags to riches stories that we need to keep us going, and for me personally, the guy on the top of that list is none other than Ludwig van Beethoven.
Man, you better ask somebody.
Before we even get started, at no point in this list am I even going to mention the fact that he went deaf and still managed to write some of the most enduring music ever composed. Why? Because you know that already. It’s been done.
This list of Beethoven facts is about Beethoven the man, not Beethoven the medical case study. It’s about the other things he overcame and the struggles he went through to become as ubiquitous as he is. In a world where it’s easy to feel like you have the odds stacked against you, Beethoven stands as undeniable proof that you can make it if you work hard enough. Here’s some reasons why:
- His childhood and family life were terrible.
As we know, nobody has the power to hold you back like your family. Beethoven’s family was so bad that if he hadn’t gone into music and pursued say a career in serial killing, I doubt many psychologists would have been surprised. His mother was usually depressed or sick (medical science at the time often didn’t distinguish between the two) and his father was an abusive alcoholic who was fixated on making his son the next Mozart. He set out to attain these goals by beating the hell out of him until he played better. By the time Beethoven was a teenager, he was essentially supporting his family financially and, as the oldest son, probably emotionally as well.
- He was an extremely gifted child, but he was no Mozart.
Beethoven obviously had a gift for music. He’s Beethoven after all. However, it’s worth mentioning that while other composers, most notably Mozart, seemed to have come out of the womb ready to put on a show, Beethoven had to work at his craft constantly. He practiced so much, and was under so much pressure, that it’s hard to tell how much of Beethoven’s success was due to inspiration and how much was due to perspiration.
- He was ugly.
I don’t know about you guys, but I’m sick of seeing beautiful people everywhere. Even female MMA fighters…women who get punched in the face for a living are all hot nowadays. Beethoven, by all accounts was ugly as sin. He was short, had scars all over his face from a childhood battle with smallpox, he never quite learned how to groom himself due to a childhood marked by considerable neglect, and his complexion was dark and uneven.
This is image that most of Beethoven's friends agreed best captured how he really looked.
- He bounced back from so many disappointments it’s ridiculous.
When he was a teenager, he got the opportunity to study with Mozart. Then his mom died and he had to go home to get his family in order. By the time he was ready to go back to Vienna, Mozart was dead too. His next teacher, Haydn, barely had any time for him. He looked up to Napoleon, but the Napoleonic Wars caused all of his benefactors to flee Vienna and virtually destroyed his career for years. He was constantly underpaid, he could never maintain a relationship, and in his darkest moments, people ridiculed him in the streets. Oh yeah, and he lost his hearing.
- Besides music he was bad at just about everything.
He was so bad with numbers, and was so confused by simple math, some people think he was dyslexic. He never learned how to shave properly, which contributed to his slovenly appearance. He couldn’t dance, and apparently had trouble sharpening pencils. He was constantly unlucky in finding love despite the fact that he was one of the most famous and eligible bachelors in Vienna. He had no fashion sense or manners for that matter, and had such a bad temper that he once broke a chair over a benefactor's head. And, if scholars are to be believed, he seemed to be constantly falling in love with Italian women, which take it from your old pal Tom Rizzuto, may not be a character flaw but certainly won’t make your life any easier.
Deaf to the haters.
Tom Rizzuto is a freelance musician and writer working in New York. He has also taught guitar and music history at several local universities. He's sorry if he hurt the feelings of any Italian Beethoven fans, but he calls them how he sees them and Italian women are nuts.
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