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His alcoholic father wanted him to be like Mozart. A prodigy. He'd come home late, wake his son in the middle of
the night, and make him practice the piano.
Maybe that's what did it. Oh sure, the kid turned out to be a pretty good musician. But
not till much later. And he had a real nasty attitude. As hard as he tried and as
desperately as he wanted a wife, he never could hold down a romantic relationship.
A famous poet visited him once and came away calling him "an
utterly untamed personality." He was also a slob. His apartments were littered with
music, money, clothes, and heaps of laundry all over the place. He never combed or cut his
hair.
For inspiration, he paced like creative people sometimes do. But he also liked to pour water over his hands and howl the musical scale. It drove his
landlords nuts. Which helps explain why he couldn't keep an apartment. In the last 20 or so
years of his life, he moved more than 60 times.
Once while he was playing for group of royalty, one of them had
the audacity to talk during his performance. With absolutely no regard for social rank,
the man who would change the course of musical history, stopped playing and stood up.
Before storming out of the room, he lashed out at his audience. His final words were
something like:
"Princes like you are born every day. But there's only one Beethoven."
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