• Published 9th Jul 2016
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Beethoven's Tenth - CrackedInkWell



One stormy evening in 1825, Ludwig van Beethoven was followed by a mysterious shadow and transported into Equestria.

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Chapter 37: The Forgotten Birthday in D Major.

Over at Sugar Cube Corner, the bakers there were getting into the holiday spirit as creations of sugar and gingerbread villages were being formed on an inside the glass counters where the cash register was. In the kitchen, Pinkie was focused on her work and walls of ginger were pulled out of the oven, cooling, and putting them together with colorful thick icing. She hoof selected the candy in which went into the shingles, the windows, chimneys, doors, doorknobs, the little flags for the mailboxes. Once she set the candy cottage up, she turned her attention to craft each gingerbread pony.

In the middle of making all of this, she paused as both of her ears folded back; tail inflated and got a funny taste in her mouth. To which, she gasped in horror. “What! No! That can’t be!” she rushed over to the counter, “Mrs. Cake, can you take over the kitchen for a sec?”

The blue mare looked over her shoulder, “Sure dearie is something wrong?”

“Yes something is wrong!” she exclaimed, “It’s awful, horrible, and tragically terrible!” she got into the mare’s face and looked at her in the eye, “My Pinkie Sense has told me that somepony didn’t get their birthday they deserved yesterday!”

“Wait, really?” the baker raised her eyebrow, “Funny, I don’t recall somepony’s birthday yesterday.”

“Me neither!” Pinkie said, “I’ve got to find out whose birthday didn’t get celebrated!” With that, she rushed upstairs to her room. The pink mare spotted her pet alligator on her bed, “No time to fool around Gummy,” she said as she let it bite onto her tale, “This is a birthday emergency and I could really use your help.”

She then hopped over to the foot of the staircase and took a moment to pause; looking all around her to make sure that nopony was watching she tapped on the ice cream like post to which it collapsed, triggering the trap door underneath her. With a “Wee,” she slides down the secret slide down to the top secret party planning cave. Pass the mountains of sugary sweeties, cakes, balloons, glitter, disco balls, traffic cones, emergency gifts, wrapping paper, and when she got to the bottom of the slide, she immediately went over to one of the many file cabinets.

“Who’s birthday was it yesterday?” she asked Gummy, who merely blinked. “My Pinkie Sense told me that I’ve forgotten somepony’s birthday, but how can that be?” she pulled open one of the filing cabinets under ‘December.’ “I know everyone’s birthday by heart, so who could I possibly be forgetting?”

Though file after file, the dates on the paper confirmed her knowledge that nopony was having a birthday that week. Yet, in the back of her mind, she knew that she was overlooking someone. “But who can it be? What pony didn’t get to celebrate their…” Then it hit her, “What if…” she turned to another filing cabinet, the one that had a question mark written on the side of it. “What if it isn’t a pony at all?”

From there, she began to narrow down her most likely suspects, “Okay… I know it’s not a gryphon… nor dragon… nor Yak… Buffalo… Deer… Hydra… Draconequus… Haunted Doll…” She narrowed her brow. “And all of them are not in Ponyville, except…” With a realization, she pulled open a drawer and pulled out the only file labeled: Human.

Opening the only thin file she had on that particular species, she looked on the single sheet of paper of Ludwig van Beethoven and saw that her suspicions have been confirmed. Under birthday, she put in, “Unknown.”

Now that she has made her deduction, Pinkie slid back up the slide with a long “eeW” and quickly finding her winter coat, set off to find Mr. Beethoven.

_*_

Ludwig ended up going to Twilight’s library to refresh his mind about the concertos of Bach. To do so, he poured himself into the copied sheet music of the master’s counterpart to look through the harmonic tricks that the composer can use in the symphony. After spending about a few hours going through a couple, Beethoven turned to his composition book to which he would narrow it down a part of the First movement for a violin or two, both the violin sections, viola, cello, and double bass to give it a short concerto of fifty or so bars.

Flipping to the beginning of the symphony, Beethoven reviewed the monk’s theme where the strings all sang in one, sacred voice before that monophonic tone turned into a polyphonic duet in which the sound becomes richer with the winds singing along in their mass. He turned to the last page of it where it ended with the trills of the flutes and clarinets while the violas and cellos seemed to be rising.

It was from there that Beethoven tried to take what he learned from this “Buch,” and wrote out for the two violins a variation of the monk’s theme in the Baroque style. To which the other strings came into play to give grace and momentum to the tiny concerto, not to say that there were mistakes along the way as he accidently wrote in the wrong notes or the rhythm changed the mood he was going for.

Then suddenly, he felt the cold air from behind him and fell out of his seat as Pinkie’s face suddenly popped out from nowhere. The mare jabbered on about something frantic to which Ludwig had no idea what she was talking about. He waved his hand, “Stop! Stop! Let me get out my scroll.” Only after taking out of his breast coat pocket did he permitted her to speak.

“Why didn’t you tell me that yesterday was your birthday!” Pinkie questioned him. “I could have thrown you a party in a heartbeat, so why didn’t you?”

“First of all,” Ludwig started to get back on his feet, “Never come up from behind me. Secondly, I didn’t know it was my birthday.”

The pink mare’s jaw slammed onto the reading desk that Beethoven was working on. “You don’t know when your own birthday is!”

“Birthdays are for the aristocrats. I wasn’t born one, so why bother learning about the day? All I know I was born sometime in December and that’s it. And what did you mean by ‘throwing me a party?’

Pinkie looked at him as if he asked what color the sky was, “As if a birthday party for you, duh. Has anypony ever thrown you one?”

“Never in my life.”

The mare let out a horrified gasp, “WHAT!! And you’re how old?”

Ludwig shrugged, “I don’t know.”

“W… Well do you know when you were born?”

“Seventeen-hundred-and-seventy.”

“Okay, and what year do you think this is?”

“Eighteen-hundred-and-twenty-five, why?”

“Give me a sec,” Pinkie pulled out a small chalkboard from her mane. “Let’s see… one thousand seven hundred and seventy minus one thousand eight hundred and twenty-five is…” When she solved her problem, she was surprised, “You never had a birthday party thrown for you in all of the… fifty-five years you’re alive!”

“Never.”

Pinkie’s eye twitched at the straightforward response. The very idea that was being presented that someone like Mr. Beethoven go on for fifty-five years of life and never once had a birthday party was not only impossible to conceive, but it was, “Unacceptable!” she cried. “I will not let someone like you to go on with life to never celebrate their birthday! No need to worry, Mr. B! I cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye promise that I will give you the best birthday party that has been long overdue!”

“Pinkie!” Twilight’s voice could be heard from the room upstairs, “Would you mind keeping your speech about through Mr. Beethoven a party down, I can hear you from all the way up here!”

Sorry!” she called back in a whisper.

“Who were you talking to?” Ludwig asked.

“Never mind that, I really need to get to work on putting together your-”

“I thought I told you that I don’t like parties,” the old man interrupted.

“But not the kind with a large group of ponies?” she inquired. “Well that’s okay, I’ll make it small then, in which I can have it ready to go in no time.”

“I have to work,” the composer held up his music.

“Then we can have it after. After all, you haven’t had anypony celebrating your birthday for over fifty years for crying out loud! Well, today that’s gonna change, I’ll have everything set up in a hour-” just then she felt her right hind hoof itch, her tail swapped left, and her pupils dilated a bit. “On second thought, come within two. See you then.”

“Now wait a-” Ludwig began, but the pink mare had already hopped away, out of the library door. Beethoven shook his head as he put the scroll down on the reading table, “I’ll never understand these ponies.”

_*_

Hours later, the old man reviewed the music in his head. The double violins played around like children with the theme while the rest of the strings tried their best to try to catch the rowdy young ones. Ducking under the lights and garlands, Ludwig hummed and played games with the tune as he decided to head home. Since the mare didn’t say exactly where his supposed birthday party was to be held, he figured that it might be at Sugar Cube Corner, but since he didn’t feel like it, he just went on towards the apartment instead.

After walking over the icy streets, trying not to slip, Beethoven arrived at his apartment. Crouching down, he opened the door and crawled up the stairs to the other door to the studio. After pulling out the key to unlock it, the room suddenly lit up to find that space was occupied.

Above the smiling ponies, the cakes and presents, he saw a banner overhead that read: “Surprise! Happy Late Birthday Beethoven!”

“What is this?” Ludwig asked as he stood up. His answer came when a familiar pink pony hopped up to him, “Oh, never mind,” he added.

True to Pinkie’s word, the party itself was a rather small affair. The guests consisted of Princess Twilight, her assistant, friends and their siblings, his neighbors along with Octavia and Vinyl. After the cake was passed around, the ponies grabbed their wrapped gifts.

Sweetie Belle was the first in line that offered up her gift to the composer. “I’ve… just… finished… it… today.” She spoke slowly as in her light green aura she had with her a rather thin present. Curious, Ludwig took hold of the gift to unwrap it to find neatly written sheet music. He was taken aback at what was written at the very top.

Impression of a Swan by Sweetie Belle. Dedicated to Mr. Beethoven.

“You wrote this little Fräulein?” she nodded with a smile. Looking over, it was a simple duet between piano and violin. Even the notes didn’t seem complicated for the piano part, and neither was the violin. He followed along the simple tune, going over to see if there were any mistakes. Only between the flowing water of the piano and the slow dance of the violin, he couldn’t find anything wrong with it. “Simple… very simple but this piece has promise. There is movement, grace, and emotion at the very end. It has great strength in its simplicity.” He looked up to see the filly’s sister step forward as he was giving her praise, “Fräulein, I’m afraid I’ve been mistaken. You must keep an eye on her because I can hear one day that she might give the world something to talk about.”

After the young unicorn thanked him, the next in line to give him his present was the Cellist and the DJ. He was offered up a box in which, inside he found a pair of black headphones with a single white eighth note on the circular earpiece.

Octavia waved for Ludwig to take out the scroll so she could explain, “We wanted to give you this as part of your Hearths Warming present, but since it’s your birthday yesterday, Vinyl figured that we give you the other half on that day. She hoof picked this specifically for you so you don’t have to borrow hers, and has a reasonably long cord.”

“Well thank you, both of you,” he said as he set the present on the bed. “Since you’re here, how is the orchestra coming along?”

“I think that our first few rehearsals are going splendidly now that we have marked our hoof positions in the string section. The winds are struggling but we think we should be ready in time.”

“Excellent, one of these days I should come up to Canterlot to hear it myself.”

Vinyl wrote down a message on a chalkboard before showing it to Ludwig.

‘You know, just out of curiosity about the new symphony thingy you guys are gonna play, does the next one have a name?’” Beethoven read out loud, “Yes, it does, but after spending half a year here, I’m thinking of renaming it.”

The gray mare raised an eyebrow, “To what?”

“I don’t want to give away the surprise.”

Author's Note:

Coming up next, the Sixth Symphony.:pinkiehappy:

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