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// Chapter 19: Corrections in E b Major 
// Story: Beethoven's Tenth 
// by CrackedInkWell 
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It was early September when schools all across of Equestria had once again opened their doors. The heat of Celestia’s summer was starting to cool down; yet, the trees have not changed themselves into the colors of autumn. And adults across the country now found themselves more time devoted to work and pleasure now that the children were with their teachers, reading their books.

For Ludwig, leaning up against a birch tree in the Whitetail Woods, he was busy composing the third movement of his symphony while finishing the second. Surprisingly for him, composing that said second movement wasn’t difficult at all since he reviewed his early symphonies to recapture the sounds he heard as a teenager. To him, writing in such a style wasn’t difficult to do that imitated his heroes of Mozart and Haydn. In fact, by the time he wrote the final cords, he flipped the pages to the very beginning of the movement, to dedicate it to them.

Tapping against a rock, the orchestra in his imagination stood ready at attention. Looking up from the score, he could see the strings in their powdered wigs lift up their bows. The violins and violas take the lead first in elegance and symmetry while the cellos and double basses kept up the beat. A few bars later after establishing the main theme, the wind and brass provide the answer. As Ludwig held the score in one hand and conducted with the other, he saw a memory between the notes. In his mind's eye, he saw the dancers to his minuet where the famous and influential danced on a cold New Year's Eve. That night, among the gold leafing and the talented musicians, he still remembered her face. Like many other women he'd met, he fell in love almost instantly during that happy time. The violins and flutes played as a counterpoint to that memory of her as they danced to the tune of his masters of Haydn and Mozart. He heard the clarinets laugh, the horns boasted, the violas spoke of intellectual things as the drums swelled up with excitement at the crescendos. Then suddenly, just before it ended, a pause as if Time itself has ceased for an instant. Now the winds, gently now, bowed to one another as he did with her on that night. Then the orchestra picked up again for the final variation before they harmonized to an end.

“One down, three to go,” he muttered as he reviewed what he’s been writing since June. The first Movement has a beginning, but the canon and fugue have yet to be written. For the third, however, he still needed to figure out a beginning and ending. However, as he flipped through the last movement, it was still in sketches with all of it was scratched out. 

Another sigh, Beethoven looked up at the leaves that were light up by the sun like a stain glass ceiling. Then from the corner of his eye, he thought he saw something moved, but as he looked at the trees, nothing was there. After rubbing his eyes, he concluded that since it's been at least two hours since he worked on the symphony, that he was tired and he needed to give himself a break from working on a mammoth of a piece. Something a little bit easier to work with.

While he took out another piece of paper, his thoughts turned to what he was missing. Of home. In the silence of his isolation, he thought back on all the relationships he'd ever made in his life up to this point. It's been almost three months since he even tried writing to anyone he knew personally from Vienna. Had his heart gone cold before he was taken? Did he do something so wicked that this is meant to be a punishment for some sin he committed?

He shook his head, 'No,' he thought. 'I'm not the one at fault! It was the shadow that brought me here! I didn't ask to be his plaything to be held hostage here in this strange world. Perhaps that thing was sent by the devil to torment me. Yes! That must be it, the demon has summoned me here to work like a slave and threaten to leave me in this unfamiliar land. Why would the creature had me pushed into a place like then when I didn't even want to leave anyway?'

But then, his mind went still, 'But what if... What if this is a kind of punishment? If so, what did I do wrong?' Unless... Karl? But why would that be? I did everything to protect him from that whore of a mother from poisoning his soul. I'm the very candidate of virtue! But from the back of his mind, he heads his own replay. 'Say's the man who gained guardianship of him when your own brother was on his deathbed, and then went to court for years to ban Karl from so much as speaking to his mother. Face it, you're paying for the unhappiness you've caused. You get to tell him what friends to have, what he should study, what hobbies and interests are valid, or how to run his life as Napoleon did with France. Hypocrite! You deserve to be alone!'

Alone... from that one word, he drew up another piece of paper from his pocket while his mind called out for a string quartet to be played over his ringing ears. With a pencil, he first called for a hollowed viola at its lowest notes. Then a second violin, it too was humming softly, before the first violin, with the cello making its presence known. With the quartet assembled, Beethoven recounted all the times he was lonely though the mournful, first violin.

He remembered his days of school as a child where he wouldn’t talk or play with the other children. After all, why would he go near them? They wouldn’t understand about the way music that continually plays in his head, or that his father keeps him from sleeping at night to practice the piano. After all, they were normal, and he wasn’t.

Or the day that his mother was ill that he had to cancel his lessons with Mozart that he had to ride back to Bonn. By the time he got there, his sympathetic mother was on her deathbed, and when she passed… It would seem that the world had become a much darker place without her.

There were other times when he moved to Vienna permanently that he was seeking for someone to love him. All those aristocratic women that he had fallen in love with: the Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, Amalie Sebald, Thérèse, and Joséphine von Brunsvik, Antonie Brentano, Countess Anna Marie Erdödy, and Countess Almerie Esterhazy. All of them he had the potential of marrying, he remembered that he purposed to three of them, however, each of them turned him down.

By the time he started to hear ringing in his hears, his hope of finding someone who could love him back had chipped away with each passing girlfriend. With all the sonatas that were dedicated to them, the improvised piano he would serenade them with, or the lessons he would flirt with, he had no such luck. Back then, he wondered if anyone would want to marry him. But now at the age of fifty-five, he already knew the answer.

He remembered all those parties he’d been invited to where they would chat and dance happily while he stays back in a corner of the room. With the exception of the food, going to such events was a waste of his time. He never liked anyone asking him to play for them, even if they begged for it because all they wanted was for him to play background music… back when he had his hearing.

But then, the buzzing and humming in his eardrums were getting louder, he remembered times when he couldn’t hear soft voices… than higher notes… or distant sounds… Yet, the silence would prove to be the worst of it all. In a world that screamed, shout, rang bells, fired cannons, armies marched, carriages passed, women greeted, men welcomed, children teased, or when the wind whistled, the water babbled, the birds sang and the trees waltzed – all of that was growing fainter until there was nothing to be heard.

“Mr. Beethoven?”

Then he remembered the walk home after he embarrassed himself from that fateful night that he performed in public for the last time.  He not only threw off the other performers completely, but he didn’t notice that the room was laughing until he was done with the first movement. His reputation of a pianist on that day crumbled underneath his feet that he flees from the room. And there was not a friend to comfort him afterward.

“Hey, Mr. Beethoven? Up here?”

But among his swirling thought, the one that stood out as being in this land. Sure he was able to make a few friends, and he’s getting more recognition throughout the country. However, he was missing many things from his home city of Vienna. This world, with having some advanced technology that was only dreams of inventors were now everyday realities here. But as such, it made it all the more alien to him. Lights that burn without fire, trains that could carry passengers from one end of the country to the other in a matter of hours, or even that he could somewhat hear to something called headphones, home might as well be a world away.

“Ludwig?”

But worst of all, he remembered Karl, or at least, the last time he saw him. He remembered getting angry when he read that his nephew wanted to join the military. His words were as harsh as a storm, full of bitter wind and roaring thunder to the point where he saw in Karl's eyes pure devastation. He saw tears running down like rivers, and before Ludwig could apologize, he left. All he could feel after that was a failure as both a father and the good man he tried to-

Suddenly Ludwig felt a poke by his leg. Jerking up, he saw the bright pink pony with a tone of camping equipment on her back. “Wait… I think I know you.” She nodded with a smile, “You’re that crazy baker with the weird magic.”

“Eh, close enough,” Pinkie said. “Actually, what are you doing way out here in the middle of-”

“Ach, stop, I can’t understand you,” here, Beethoven pulled out the scroll that the sun princess gave him. “Say it again.”

“Well, I was going to ask what are you doing out here in the Whitetail Woods. Are you camping like us?”

“Us?”

“The Crusaders, they’re right over there,” Ludwig looked up to where she was pointing at. He saw three fillies that were trailing up behind the pink mare, one of them being Applebloom.

“Fräulein Apple?”

“Oh, hey Mr. Beethoven,” the filly waved. “How’ve ya been?”

Ludwig looked at the scroll, “My health is improving at least, and the new maid is much more efficient. Who are these other two?”

The two introduced themselves as Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle; one was an orange pegasus, the other a white unicorn. “You might know of my older sister,” said Sweetie, “she’s the one that made your clothes.”

“Ah yes, the tailor,” Beethoven sat up a little.

“What are ya doing out here?” Scootaloo asked the giant. “Are you camping out here too?”

“No, I’m working,” he picked up the string quartet. “You may go now.”

Pinkie tapped his arm, holding up the scroll. “Why do you write like you’re running out of time? That’s almost all I’ve seen you do ever since you got here.”

“It’s partly because I must write if I want to go back to my world. Besides, with you who finds amusement in hopping around either scaring everyone else half to death or throwing them a party with too many sweets, I find mine in composing.”

“I do not scare everypony for fun!” Pinkie objected.

“No? You come out of nowhere, pull items out of nowhere, and throw parties out of nowhere.”

“Sir,” Sweetie Belle spoke, “That’s just Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie. You don’t have to be so rude about it.”

“I’m only speaking the truth little one.”

The unicorn walked around, peering over to the sketched out quartet Beethoven has written. “Excuse me, but that’s supposed to be a D-flat.”

When Beethoven saw what the scroll had transcribed, he said “What?”

“That bar in the cello section,” she pointed to the offending note. “It won’t work as a D-flat on that double step; it has to be an A-flat. I mean, harmonically it makes more…”

Ludwig narrowed his gaze and frowned, “Do you have someplace to be, wenig Stutfohlen?”

“Sorry,” Sweetie Belle backed up, “It’s just something I’ve noticed. But the rest of it looks good.”

Beethoven raised an eyebrow, “You like it?”

She nodded.

“How old are you?”

“Eleven,” the unicorn answered.

“Eleven years old,” Ludwig mused, “I can just imagine you at the very creation of this world, just barely a decade old. Saying to the very divine creator of this place, ‘I think you’ve done a wonderful job with the world. I especially like what you’ve done with these woods that are near the Smoky Mountains. Nicely balanced with the contrast of rocky mountains with the green forests below it. The Neighagra Falls, beautiful shape! The southern deserts, on the other hand, are a bit too wide and dry for my taste. Mount Everhoof is completely out of proportion. I’m afraid, your holiness, you need to do it all over again.’”

Sweetie, like the other ponies, looked nervous, “Um… is that a bad thing?”

When Beethoven read what she asked, he laughed. “If I were that divinity, I would be impressed that you had the guts to tell me at all. Especially,” he took a pencil to scratch out the offending notes and replace it with the suggested one. “That you seemed to be correct.” He paused for a moment, “Since I assume that you can read music, do you see anything wrong with this quartet.”

“May I?”

He handed over the quartet, in which the filly held it in her hooves. Picking up a pencil with her mouth, she crossed out some of the notes to replace the corrected ones beside them. Luckily, there were only very few when she gave it back to him.

Ludwig looked over the sketched out score with one hand and conducted it in the other, humming loudly. “You’ve didn’t change much,” he said at last.

“Well, it just had some misplaced notes here and there,” she replied.

“I see,” Ludwig then got up, “Well, I think it’s almost time for my dinner. I’ll be heading back into town, good evening,” with that, he rolled up the scroll and left.

“He’s more of an oddball then I am,” Pinkie commented, “And I didn’t think that was possible! But anyway, come on girls, we’re almost to the campsite.” She hopped forward into the woods, “Just keep following your Auntie Pinkie!”

Sweetie Belle looked over her shoulder, at the giant that was walking away before following her friends after them.

“We’re lucky he’s in a somewhat good mood today,” Applebloom commented.

“Why’s that?” the little unicorn asked.

“Well, durin’ his time at the farm, if anypony touches his music the wrong way he’d get really angry. I suppose whatever Y'all did back there, must be somethin’ right.”