My dear mother had a passion for music, and Beethoven and Bach were her favorite composers.

Beethoven was no exception to the rule, that only a great man can be a great artist.

This Beethoven (in case you don't know it), was an Italian or an Englishman, I'm not sure whichone of those fellows who makes music up out of his head for people to play in theatres or for lunatics like Moreno to amuse themselves with.

And it is as reasonable for a man who knows no French to assume that Villon was a good poet as it would be for a man who has no ear for music to assume that Beethoven was a good musician.

Beethoven, however, was a thinker in tones and often in words.

Thayer takes a middle ground,that, in the Vienna of his time and his social grade, it was impossible that Beethoven should have been a Puritan, while he was, however, a man of distinctly clean mind.

In distinction from his predecessors, who were merely musicians, Beethoven was a man first and a musician second, and the lasting vitality in his works is due to their broad human import; they evidently came from a character endowed with a rich and fertile imagination, from one who looked at life from many sides.