Ludwig van....................

 

      Talking with a nice lady on the phone.  She has a case of the midwinter spiritual rot.  And a terminal cold she's had since September 1.

     "Well," rasps she, "you don't ever get depressed, do you?"

     "Listen," says I, "I get lows it takes extension ladders to get out of."

     "So what do you do?" asks she.  "I mean, what DO YOU DO?"

     Nobody ever pinned me down quite like that before.  They usually ask wat I think they should do.

     My solace is not religion or yoga or rum or even deep sleep.  It's Beethoven.  As in Ludwig van.  He's my ace in the hole.  I put his Ninth Symphony on the stereo, pull the earphones down tight, and lie down on the floor.  The music comes on like the first day of creation.

     And I think about old Mr. B.  He knew a whole lot about depression and unhappiness.  He moved around from place to place trying to find the right place.   His was a lousy love life, and he quarreled with his friends all the time.  A rotten nephew worried him deeply—a nephew he really loved.  Mr. B. wanted to be a virtuoso pianist.  He wanted to sing well, too.  But when he was still quite young, he began losing his hearing.  Which is usually bad news for pianists and singers.  By 1818, when he was forty-eight, he was stone-cold deaf.  Which makes it all the more amazing that he finished his Ninth Symphony five years later.  He never really heard it!  He just thought it!

-Robert Fulghum,  All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten

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It may be as impossible to understand the human person by exploring the evolution of the human animal as it is to discover the significance of a Beethoven symphony be tracing the process of its creation.

-Roger Scruton, On Human Nature

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London Symphony Orchestra.....Beethoven's 9th