IS IT POSSIBLE to be world famous all your life and yet remain completely unknown?
When Ludwig van Beethoven died on 26 March, 1827, nobody knew what to say about him. He had a small handful of life-long friends and a wider circle of musical acquaintances but not even the most fluent or self-advertising among his circle could find words to describe him. “Oh, the great man, the pity of it!” is the general tenor of comment.
It fell to the national poet, Franz Grillparzer, to compose the graveside eulogy and he fell back mostly on poetic cliche. But
