Beethoven & Michael Jackson

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Beethoven's most famous work was probably his ninth symphony. I taught my students this year that somebody paid 1.3 million for the original manuscript of Beethoven's 9th. Upon further research I've found that the working document recently sold for more than 2.1m pounds.

Growing up I heard stories about Beethoven's temper and crazy antics. This year when I taught my students about Beethoven I learned a thing or two myself.

Sure, he was eccentric and harsh. Yes, he cut the legs off of his pianos and threw cold buckets of water over his head. He wrote music on the window shades and walked around saying things like: "there are, and have been thousands of princes, but there is only one Beethoven."

What I didn't know until recently was that his father would go around lying to people about Beethoven's age, telling people that he was younger than he actually was so that he would seem like a child prodigy. What I didn't know was that his father would also wake Beethoven up at midnight, lock him in a cold cellar and make him play the piano until the sun was rising in the sky and tears were streaming down his little face.

Not only that, but music was Beethoven's life. It meant everything to him. Hearing was the most important of the five senses to him, and then he even lost that. Imagine how sad and alone he must have felt when he could not even hear his own masterpieces being played.

Beethoven never really had a childhood. He lost so many family members. He was an incredibly gifted individual, but a misunderstood man. There are always reasons why people might act the way they do.

I believe there are some similarities to be drawn between Beethoven and Michael Jackson, crazy as that sounds. I'm aware that many people shudder at the very thought of MJ and that to many he is already a criminal (though, let's not forget, he was never convicted of anything).

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No matter what you believe about whether or not he was a creep, Michael Jackson was also a very talented guy who was deprived of a childhood and then misunderstood as a man. I cannot make any judgments about him - I have no idea how he actually chose to live his life. Though, I can think of a number of reasons why someone might think it would be a good idea to take someone like MJ to court - he did pretty well for himself financially there for awhile. And the fact that the families accusing him dropped the lawsuits for money says something to me. No amount of money would appease me or my family if the horrible things he was accused of was done to someone we love.

But I'm not really writing this to speculate about what MJ did or didn't do. It's more about how easy it is to look at somebody and paste a label on them, shove them into our comfortable little categories without ever really thinking about the fact that we're all a result of where we came from - what we've been through.

I'm glad that Beethoven lives on as a legend despite his unkind persona. I'm glad that MJ lives on as a legend despite his sometimes strange behaviour here on Earth. I hope that now these tortured souls can finally find rest.