He came from a musical family. His father was a court tenor, His grandfather was a kapellmeister, the top job. But while his grandfather was a great musician, his father was a failed musician. His mother had a strange relationship towards him. She knew he was a different child, a strange child. She found it difficult to relate to him. He was withdrawn. His father knew from the start that Ludwig was a very specially talented child musically. And he saw him as a way of making money for the family. After all, Mozart’s father had done the same with him as a child, he had taken the young Wolfgang abroad to London and so on and earned money through the child and Ludwig's father said, I can do the same. I can really make money out of this child. And to do that, he kept him practicing. According to the children that Ludwig grew up in the same house said, the father would beat him across the hands, if he didn’t practice. He would keep him there until dawn.

 

The one thing that Ludwig wanted to do was improvise, whether he was on the piano or the violin which he was learning as well. He would improvise. He wouldn’t read what was written on the paper. And his father would say, stop all this bashing around, stick to the notes that are there, (be）cause he couldn’t understand that improvisation was in any way important or special.

 

Beethoven appeared to be neglected, isolated and this may have had a great artistic importance because Beethoven’s interested in the problems of human communication and separation. I think the first evidence that Beethoven was going to be a great musician surfaced in his ability under his teacher Christian Neefe to learn by memory and play, in a very impressive fashion, all of the prelude and fugues of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, and this was a cornerstone of Beethoven’s musical development.

 

Mozart, of course, he adored. And when a new Mozart opera would come out in Vienna, the score would soon reach Bonn, and the young Ludwig would devour it.

 

In 1787, Ludwig was 16 and a half years of age, he finally achieved his childhood ambition—go to Vienna and meet Mozart. He played a piece of Mozart, he specially prepared. And Mozart said, no, no, any one can play that. Play something else. So Beethoven did what he did best. He asked Mozart to give him a theme anything and he improvised on it. Mozart said, watch out for him. One day, he will give the world something to talk about. And it was a tragedy for Ludwig. Because while he was there, he received a note from his father in Bonn saying, come home immediately. Your mother is dying, you cannot stay in Vienna. And he had to leave and, of course, the time he got back to Vienna which was 5 years later, Mozart was dead.