Beethoven's Tenth

by CrackedInkWell

Chapter 5: Moving in D b Major

Author's Note:

I don't know how good it is but... here you go.

Breaking off a branch from a tree and using that as an impromptu walking stick, Ludwig leads the pony known as Twilight along with a crowd of curious ponies behind them. A few of them brought carts while others had baskets or light brown boxes on their backs. The lilac Alicorn, meanwhile, had a stack of scratch paper ready to communicate.

The moving party was following the giant into the Whitetail Woods, listening to the deaf man’s ramblings.

“So where was I?”

Twilight handed him a note.

You were going to talk about who you are.

“Ah, yes,” he nodded. “As I’ve said before, my full name is Ludwig van Beethoven. I was born in the year of our Lord, seventeen-hundred-and-seventy in the cold month of December. The place I was born into is in a little town called Bonn. My father was Johann, who married my mother who was Maria, while I was the eldest of six children, and most talented too.

“When I was a very little boy, my father was the first to teach me the piano. I think I might have been… oh… four, probably five years when he started teaching me. And believe me, I was good at it. Well… maybe not always. To this day I can still remember that if he was sober, that even if I played something flawlessly, he would say, ‘It’s still not good enough Ludwig.’” Here he shook his head, “In fact, the only time I remember him giving praises to me was when he was drunk. That he would come home in the middle of the night with a friend of his; drag me out of bed saying, ‘Get up! Play something beautiful for us!’ So I would play all night until dawn. But in the first few minutes of improvising, he would turn to his other drunken friend to say, ‘You see! It is beautiful! I tell you, my lovely boy is the next Mozart. You see! Just listen to that! Genius!’ Huh?”

He felt a tug on his sleeve to find Twilight passing a note to him.

That’s awful! Didn’t your mother help you at all?

He laughed, “Mother? As much as she thought it was wrong, bless her soul, we knew that she couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t blame her too much for it, father was a tyrant growing up. He would strike fear in all of us.

“But that’s not important. As years went by, I picked up a by a few other teachers that taught me more than piano. I’ve learned how to play the violin, the organ, and I’ve taught myself to play the viola when I was appointed as a court musician. I’ve learned how to compose music for the piano too so that I didn’t have to follow the boring instruction books or someone else’s work.

“You might say that father had gotten me so obsessed with music, that when I was very young, my father had made me drop out of school altogether.”

Another, more frantic tug got his attention, following with a note.

He made you drop out of school!!!

“When your father, the breadwinner, is the one who’s getting drunk every night, I’d say that you too would have to focus more on your family to protect then learning math. So yes, I took up jobs, even my father’s, just to keep the Beethoven family afloat. Besides, I was never good with addition or subtraction anyway.

“But as I was saying, when father couldn’t provide for us, I had to step in since I’m the eldest. And believe me; I worked hard in what I do best. I gave concerts, giving piano lessons, and was at one point an organist for our church. Eventually, my efforts were rewarded when I was invited to go study in Vienna, city of musicians. Home to Herr Haydn, Salieri, and Mozart,” Here he laughed to himself from his nostalgia, “Actually, I played for him once.”

Twilight wrote down one word.

Who?

“Herr Mozart, when he was alive.”

Twilight was stunned; even the moving party did a double take. She trotted in front of him, waving to stop.

“What?” he questioned as the librarian quickly wrote down her message.

Moztrot? You’ve actually played for Moztrot? As in the same one who had started writing his music when he was four; who wrote “A Little Night Music;" along with the “Magic Flute,” that Moztrot?

“No, not Moztrot, Mozart, and yes, the very same man, but I fail to understand why you seem so surprised about this fact.”

That’s because the Moztrot that we know has been dead for over two hundred years! How can you know him if he died centuries ago?

“Wait a minute,” Beethoven said, “I thought you said you never heard of Europe before.”

There isn’t.

“Well, how do you who Mozart was?” Then a thought came to him, “But have you heard of Bach?” She nodded, “Or Herr Haydn?” Again she nodded. “Or what about… ah, who’s that popular composer again? Rossini?”

But here, she gave a confused look.

“I take that as a no (lucky for you ponies). Still, at least it’s relieving that you know of Bach, Mozart, and Haydn.” Then he paused, “But there’s never been a Beethoven in this world, has there in the score of two hundred years?”

She shook her head, but her horn glowed as she wrote her note to him.

Perhaps we ought to compare musical history together since there are some clear similarities between ours and yours.

“Agreed, but for now, you ponies are moving my things, yes? Well, talk about it later on.”

Several minutes of walking later, they came across the room in the middle of the forest. Ludwig took out the key out from his pocket to unlock the door. When it opened, he couldn’t hear the horrified gasps behind him as he stepped in.

“Holy Celestia!”

“Uh… Shouldn’t we go in with hazard suits on?”

“What happened to the piano?”

“I think I’m gonna be sick.”

“Whoa, and here I thought my room was messy!”

“Look at all of this garbage.”

Ludwig turned around, “Well, are you going to just stand there! Get everything out!”

The volunteers looked over to Princess Twilight. “Okay, I’ll go in first,” she said as she stepped inside with the other ponies following close by.

“Sweet Luna, look at the state of this place.”

“It reeks!”

“Where do we start?”

“Look over there; I think something’s growing on that plate.”

“Ew, I think I’ve stepped in something nasty!”

Twilight turned around, “Okay everypony, I think what we need to do is to take everything inside this room out and organize whatever we find into groups. We’ll start with the paper and work our way from there.”

Hesitantly, the citizens of Ponyville began taking whatever they could get their hooves on the outside. Stacking piles of scribbled paper and books outside while doing their best to avoid touching the sickening mold, fungus and bug-ridden items in the room. While the others outside tried their best to separate those that looked like writing, music script or garbage into piles.

Beethoven stepped outside, inspecting the piles that had ink or pencil markings on it. He looked, in particular, in the piles where the garbage was being placed, “Ach! What’s this!” He pulled out some paper that he remembered has worked on the night before, turning to the stallion with the three horseshoes on his flank. “You! Why did you put this quartet in the garbage?”

The yellow stallion backed away, “Hey, I’m sorry, they all look the-”

“Face me first,” Ludwig commanded, “Then talk.”

He gulped, “Sorry, I couldn’t read it, so I thought it was garbage.”

Beethoven stepped forward, “The next time you see these lines,” he pointed to the staffs on the paper. “Do not throw them away!” he tossed it in the stallion's face, “Got it!”

He nodded timidly before the giant returned to the pile.

Meanwhile inside the cramped room, Twilight was searching to see if there were any books in the room. And there under the bed, buried underneath a pile of scores was the first bounded up tome she found. She opened it up to the first page: “Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92 by Ludwig van Beethoven.” To her delight as she flipped through the score to find that it was already printed.

“I think I’ve found something,” she looked over to where a charcoal black pegasus with a white mane pulled out a book with his mouth. Twilight levitated it over and opened it to the title page, “Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-Flat Major, Op. 73.” Again, the score was printed.

“Everypony,” she announced, “If you find any scores like these, please be sure to be careful when moving them. Put these in a separate box.”

“Princess Twilight,” the mare with the red mane and cream coat said as she too picked up a similar book. “I thought you said that the… giant out there was deaf.”

“He is… Rose Luck, was it?”

“It is,” she opened up the book that she read aloud, “‘Symphony No. 5 in C minor.’ How is he able to write all of this if he can’t hear it?”

Twilight too grabbed the manuscript, “I’m not sure, but for one thing, I don’t think he was born deaf.”

“How do you know?” the charcoal pegasus next to Rose asked.

“Because on the way here, he said that he remembers his father talking to him – meaning that he might not have always been unable to hear; but at any rate, let’s just focus on moving his things out.”

Beneath the filthy clothing, the mountains of scrap paper, dirty dishes, and underneath the furniture, the ponies found such books. Before they got to the heavy, and most disgusting stuff, they found bounded up books of nine symphonies; violin and piano concertos; dozens of sonatas; an opera; something called the “Missa Solemnis,” and a “Cantata,” written in a language nopony could understand; string quartets; and thousands of sketches both barely readable and unreadable. They’ve also found scores that didn’t have Beethoven’s name, but these were few as they were by other composers with names like Bach and Mozart. Even rarer still, they found newspapers, fliers, and a few books written in a language that nopony could decipher.

Eventually, when the buckets of water and the chamber pot was removed and dumped a ways away from the moving site, all that was left to move was the bed and the legless piano. Twilight helped, of course, to help lift the incredibly heavy wooden out of tune piano off the ground to be flipped on its side so that the stallions could push it out the door. She repeated this with the wooden bedframe as well as it was the last thing to be taken out.

Outside, ponies loaded the heavier stuff into the carts like the piano and the bed frame before they piled on the books, paper, candles, inkwells, dishes and silverware that were weeping of being scraped, clothing and sheets that needed to be washed, a violin, viola, candelabra, matches, wine bottles, dripping glasses, were carefully set in or balanced on the backs of ponies. Twilight found Beethoven taking hold of the boxes into the cart. When she approached him, he asked her an odd question.

“What are these boxes made out of? They’re so light and strong.”

She wrote down her answer.

It’s called cardboard.

“Cardboard? Isn’t it a type of hard paper,” he asked. “I’ve read of someone inventing it a few years back, but it looks nothing like it. Is it new?”

I don’t think so; it’s been around for awhile now.

Ludwig placed the box into the cart, “First ponies that speak and write English, and now cardboard. Next, you’ll be telling me that you’ve figured out how to make the steam engine that is safe enough for travel with.”

Twilight was about to write a reply but quickly decided that if she continued to carry on a conversation like this, it will take up all day. She instead wrote something else.

I think we’ve got everything out of your apartment, and by the looks of things, we’re ready to head off to my friend’s farm.

“Good, the sooner we get this done, the sooner I can work.”

Once everyone was set to leave, Ludwig took the key out of his pocket to lock the empty room behind him.

Comments

[Time Reaper]

Some grammar mistakes, but nice transition chapter, it felt nice to read.

[Seirs]

Nice to see everyone chipping in. I can see Twilight is probably going to have a field day with those manuscripts, esp comparing the ones writing by composers with equestrian counterparts.

Edit: every chapter in this story makes me want to pull out more of my Beethoven collection.

[CrackedInkWell]

7428476 No need, I'll bring mine to the table.

[Seirs]

7428493 yeah I need to find/pull up some of his cello sonatas, see if there are any parts in them I can take a crack at playing some.

[CrackedInkWell]

7428591 Oh don't worry, I haven't forgotten about Octavia.

[Seirs]

7428603 oh I never thought you did. Though I have noticed now that every time I think of Beethoven, Vynil, and Tavi in a room together the following song pops into my head:
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