Richard Todd writes:

>If Beethoven, instead of opening up the symphonic vocabulary with a bold
>but evolutionary step in the Eroica symphony, had invented an alternate
>tonality or had taken a few basic musical elements and repeated them ad
>nauseum, he would have ended up selling pencils on the streets of Vienna
>(or whatever the indigent did in those days.)

And if Beethoven did not have wealthy and musically sophisticated patrons,
he still probably would have been in financial straits.  Somehow I do not
believe that the late quartets were big crowd pleasers.

Professor Bernard Chasan
Physics Department, Boston University