16 December: Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was born on this date in 1770 - or at least we think so. 16 December is the best guess seeing as the only record is of his baptism the following day. Here are 10 facts about him:

1. The year of his birth has been disputed as well. Beethoven himself thought for years that he was born in 1772. It's thought this may have been because his father lied about his son's age. Ludwig was a musical prodigy, and Beethoven Senior may well have passed his son off as being two years younger to make him seem even more impressive than he actually was. We do know that Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany.
2. Even as a child, Beethoven would sometimes improvise on the Violin rather than play the music on the score in front of him. This annoyed his father no end and he would scold the boy, calling his improvisations "silly trash" and telling him his "scratchings" would never amount to much.
3. Beethoven's father pushed him hard as a child. A failed singer himself, once he realised he had a talented son, he pushed the boy hard, forcing him to practice for hours every day and beating him when he made a mistake. By the time Beethoven was 18, his father had become an alcoholic and could no longer work, so Beethoven was the family's main breadwinner.
4. We don't know exactly when Beethoven started writing his musical compositions down. The earliest composition to still exist dates to 1782, when Beethoven was 12. It was a set of nine variations for the Piano, in C minor, unusual for the time and very hard to play. By the age of 22, he'd moved to Vienna and was playing concerts for the Austrian nobility.
5. He was just 25 when he started to lose his hearing, and was completely deaf by the time he was 46. He had to ask people to write down anything they wanted to say to him. His deafness meant he had to give up conducting and performing, but he went on composing for the rest of his life. In 1802 he wrote about feeling suicidal, but the fact that he still felt he had music inside him to bring out stopped him from ending his own life.
6. One of his famous pieces that he wrote after this is the Moonlight Sonata, although Beethoven himself never called it that. He gave it the more prosaic title of Piano Sonata No. 14. A few years after he died, a German poet called Ludwig Rellstab commented that the music sounded like moonlight shining on Lake Lucerne, and the name stuck. He wrote one opera, Fidelio. It took him ten years to write.
7. He was an admirer of Napoleon Bonaparte for a while and dedicated his third symphony to him. However, when Napoleon declared himself emperor, Beethoven went right off him and scrubbed his name off the manuscript. Some modern reproductions of this piece of music include Napoleon's name scrubbed out to make it look authentic.
8. Much of what we know about Beethoven's life and what sort of person he was is thanks to him keeping a diary. Deafness wasn't his only health problem - he had a whole raft of ailments and often looked dishevelled. He wasn't particularly handsome, either, but women were attracted to his talent, passion and refinement. He was engaged twice but both engagements fell through. When he died, he left a letter addressed to "Immortal Beloved." Nobody knows who she was.
9. Beethoven died at the age of 56, likely as a result of his heavy drinking. His last words are sometimes quoted as "Applaud, friends, for the comedy is ended" in Latin, a line often used at the end of a play in the theatre. However, it's more likely his last words were "Pity, Pity, too late," to a friend who'd brought him a gift of several bottles of Wine when he was on this deathbed. 20,000 people attended his funeral.
10. Beethoven's music sometimes shows up in quite unexpected places. The film Saturday Night Fever features a disco version of his fifth symphony; The King's Speech features his seventh and Die Hard features Ode to Joy, which was also adopted as the anthem of The EU in 1972. His music has even been sent into space, included on the gold record sent up with the Voyager probe.

Golden Thread

Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.

Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.

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