Bro -
I just discovered that Beethoven died 184 years ago yesterday and that, when he was buried three days later, over 20,000 people attended his funeral.
Imagine if they all sang the vocal parts of his Ninth right there? Woulda'
been a helluva ceremony, no?
This is what happens when I can't get to sleep!
Your sleepless Bro
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
This is because Beethoven became very famous when he won the "Vienna's Got Talent" competition. After that he went on "Dancing with the Composers" and became even more famous.
Playing off his celebrity from these highly popular programs, he won lucrative endorsement contracts from the Schliegenhheimer Music Paper Company, Viertekrassen Ink ("These notes don't run") and Flabschmeier pianos ("Come, tickle our ivories").
He then got his own weekly program at the MusikVerein which quickly grew into such a phenomenon that celebrity guests were cutting each others'
throats to appear on it. (It is said that von Weber put arsenic in Schubert's coffee so he wouldn't have to appear on the same program with him. No proof of, course. Recent scholarship indicates that Shubert's cancellation was due to diarrhea caused by a tainted Linzertort.)
Soon after he started the immensely popular "B" magazine that became a trend setter and arbiter of culture whose influence still echoes to the present day. (Hey, they're still playing his stuff, right?)
No wonder all those people turned out.
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