Beethoven: The Relentless Revolutionary

by John Clubbe,
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 28, 2019

On March 26, 1827, a storm dropped snow and hail on Vienna. Ludwig van Beethoven roused himself, shook his fist at the heavens, muttered “Applause, friends! The comedy is over,” and died. The thunder, lightning and raised fist, John Clubbe suggests, can serve as symbols of a man who supported freedom and liberty, respected power, and who, like Napoleon Bonaparte, was a conqueror.