this notion that we still have with us today of the artist as genius.
As we'll see from the following quotes embedded in a couple of slides here.
So this is one about how the artist suffers for his art.
Quote, the undersigned Beethoven, and this is Beethoven talking.
The undersigned Beethoven has been concerned not merely
with earning his daily bread, but rather, with his art.
With the ennoblement of taste, and the impulse of his genius, in order
to rise to greater heights searching for the ideal and for perfection.
Consequently he has had to sacrifice
his material gains to his music to his art to his muse.
The artist, again, who is something above the common herd,
who's cut from a cloth different from others, Beethoven certainly
held himself in very high esteem here in 1798 at the age of 28.
Nobody's had ever heard of Beethoven at this time.
He compares himself already to the famous von and
the equally famous Frederick Handel.
No lack of self confidence there.
1803 he refuses to play for the King of Prussia, a year or
two later he refused an invitation to play for the empress in Vienna.
He sent her a note back saying I'm busy today but I might stop by tomorrow.
1804, he says to Prince Carl Lichnowsky,
Prince, what you are you are by accident of birth.
What I am I am through myself.
There have been and still will be thousands of princes.
There's only one Beethoven.
But Beethoven didn't realize, I think, that he owed his talents and
his accomplishments to natural gifts.
Just like the Prince, to genetics.
Beethoven came from a long line of musicians.