a bowl of gravy at him. He had a difficult time retaining house help, and it is no wonder since he did things like whip rotten eggs at his maid when he discovered the eggs were bad while making bread soup, one of his favorite meals. Yet, the composer could also be as critical with himself as he was with others, “Getting away from his temper, Beethoven sat listening for a while during a piano lesson. Finally, he demanded to know who the composer was. ‘It is you.’ was the reply. ‘Such nonsense by me! O Beethoven, what an ass you were!’ fumed the composer” (Beethoven 1).
Beethoven was also driven by other forces which contributed to the duality within him. His father had pretensions of nobility and was largely believe to have noble origins because of the common confusion of the Dutch “van” for the German “von”. When it was discovered he was not of the nobility, Beethoven was crushed, “He knew that he could not prove his nobility, that in a technical sense he had now fallen into the bourgeoisie, which he despised with an aristocrat’s disdain for the lowborn and the money-grubbing” (Walker 53). He was also plagued by dreams which haunted hi
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