Chicken Scratches

We think of great composers of the past as some sort of superhuman artists and that alone makes them a bit unapproachable.  We need to think of them as just like us; messy, scribbly, tending to wear socks two days in a row.

I was listening to the Internet radio a minute ago and caught the last movement of Beethoven's second symphony. He wrote it about 1802-03, about the time Jefferson was president here and just before Napoleon got a little crazy.

Beethoven was something of a mess. He was deaf. His handwriting was, well, not in keeping with his brain; or maybe it was.  Whatever.  An example of his chicken scratches on paper is above.  The sound of his passion and genius is below. Makes me wonder what or which was important.