For Beethoven: One Day Late

His birthday was yesterday but I'm thinking about him today. Remembering the Beethoven extravaganza on the radio: the measured cadences of the Seventh Symphony's second movement (the one popularized in the film "The King's Speech"), the off-stage trumpet of the Leonore Overture No. 3, the slow movement of the Third Piano Concerto. 

Years ago, on a shoestring student trip to Europe, I drug my friend Nancy into at least a half-dozen decrepit Viennese apartment buildings, each one of them places the composer was believed to have  lived. They were not pretty or in a nice part of town. They were often up a flight or two of poorly lit stairs. They made clear that Beethoven's personal life was unsettled and on the edge.

But yesterday these places were the furthest thing from my mind. What remains of Beethoven, of course, is the music — timeless, placeless, soaring above it all.