If we stop idolising Beethoven we might understand him better

Ludwig von Beethoven belongs among those men whom not only Vienna and Germany, but Europe and our entire age revere. With Mozart and Haydn he makes up the unequalled triumvirate of more recent music. The ingenious depth, the constant originality, the ideal in his compositions that flows from a great soul assure him… of the recognition of every true admirer of the divine Polyhymnia.

Originality, nobility, greatness, genius – when it comes to Beethoven, we all know the score. It was a beatification that happened early, as this paean from Germany’s deliciously titled Morning Paper for the Educated Classes reminds us.

Published in 1823, a few years before Beethoven’s death, it starts the process of polishing up a living man into a musical god, ready for his eternal altar. Whether conscious or unconscious, that subtle substitution of the aristocratic German ‘von’ for the workaday Dutch ‘van’ in Beethoven’s name is revealing — part of the glossing and gilding, the retouching that, over the centuries, has become indistinguishable from the man beneath.

Beethoven was one of the earliest figures to be commemorated by a statue — supported by no lesser champions than Franz Liszt and Frédéric Chopin.