Beethoven wasn’t just history’s greatest composer but also one of its greatest human beings

Ludwig van Beethoven isn’t just my favourite composer: he’s my household god. There’s a bust of him on my mantelpiece. It took ages to find something that did him justice. This one was made in Italy about 100 years ago; it’s painted to look like black marble, his features are modelled on his life mask and it gets his hair right. (This mattered to Beethoven: when August von Kloeber painted him in 1818, the composer ‘expressed delight at the treatment of his hair’.) Above my stereo system there’s a Victorian copy of another portrait of Beethoven; it’s striking but undistinguished. As for the statuette in my bathroom, I should really throw it out, but consigning an image of Beethoven to a black rubbish sack seems like sacrilege — especially in the year that is the 250th anniversary of his birth, which the German government has ponderously declared to be ‘a matter of national importance’.