# 'Beethoven had a lot of worries, and did he give it all up? No. He wrote more, an...'



## kartikeys (Mar 16, 2013)

A lesson for me: you can have worries, yet make beautiful things. And the inspiration comes from Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), a composer who inspired music itself.

Not just me, Beethoven's life inspired another popular composer between 1898 and 1899, the Englishman Edward Elgar. Persist despite worries; here's what happened:



> "'I was very down in the dumps; everything seemed to be going wrong. I was feeling very wretched... and told him (his friend Jaegar) I was going to give it all up and write no more music.' Jaegar had leapt to the defence: 'He said that Beethoven had a lot of worries, and did he give it all up? No. He wrote more, and still more beautiful music--"And-that-is-what-you-must-do"'" [Edward Elgar: A Creative Life]
> "Jaeger... sang the theme of the second movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 8 Pathétique. Elgar disclosed to Dora (a close friend) that the opening bars of 'Nimrod' were made to suggest that theme. 'Can't you hear it at the beginning? Only a hint, not a quotation.'" [wikipedia]


August Jaeger was Edward's close friend. They loved
Beethoven.

You can listen to Beethoven's second movement that inspired Edward as you read further...
Rest of the story here

(I hope posts such as these are acceptable.
They are from my blog.)


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