Mike Leghorn:

>Yes, Wellington's Victory is not my favorite piece of music either.  Did
>Beethoven write any other bad pieces?

As a matter of opinion, yes.  Beethoven wrote some stuff to pay bills and
nothing more.  However, none of it gets regularly played.  We hear mainly
the great Beethoven pieces, and thus we fall into the habit of thinking
everything was at least at a certain level.  However, I would always judge
an artist by his best, not his worst.  Beethoven may have written something
as sappy as the Bundeslied, which any hack could have come up with, but he
also wrote the Missa Solemnis, something noone, including Bach, has
bettered.

Steve Schwartz, rehearsing for a performance of the Missa Solemnis