I wish Beethoven could be my lover. I’m sure he smelled bad, had yellow teeth, and was probably a difficult man, but still … he gets me. Or at least his music does … and it’s certainly spent enough time playing in my bedroom.
While I’ve written in the past about being in bed with the Bard, I have to say, if I had to choose, I’d choose the other bad boy of the arts and make my lover Ludwig von Beethoven.
In fact, I did quite a long time ago, bond with this dead man in some ways more than I ever have with a living male. 
How could I not? Beethoven feels like my soul mate. Except maybe for the anger part. But I like to think I could have soothed that savagery. Or at least had a damn good time trying. I might have lost my hearing or my heart. But, oh, all the moments in between.
I remember once, a real lover of mine was leaving to go back to Europe for an extended stay. We’d just made love and Beethoven was still playing in the background. Sonata in C minor began.
The moonlit sonata transported me unusually so. Was it because I was dreamily relaxed or in love? I don’t know. But I do know that I closed my eyes and listened. Listened with my whole body. Not with my mind, not necessarily with my heart. Just with my senses and my collective state of being.
Beethoven’s music is nearly the only thing capable of moving me to tears and this time was no different. Warm, salty tears slid down my cheek.
My lover, younger than I, reached over to wipe a tear away and said, not out of naivete really, but out of that singularly self-centered world in which the young exist, “Don’t be sad. I’ll be back again in three months.”
Though it was hard for me to not be irritated that he’d interrupted my reverie, I just smiled at him and said, “I know.” I didn’t want to burst his bubble by telling him it was Beethoven moving me to tears, not him.
In late April of this year, for my birthday, I was taken to Sarasota Orchestra’s multi-media performance of Beethoven: The Angry Revolutionary. While some of the presentation was just plain goofy, Conductor Leif Bjaland’s commentary made it clear that he was as passionate about Beethoven as I — it would have been hard for anyone to resist his enthusiasm for the man and his music. And the performance of the orchestra left me newly enamored with the musicians. It was a stunning and moving (yes, I cried) performance of Symphony No. 5. If you missed it this year or last, you should try to be sure to see it if the Symphony does it again in 2011. It’s really a can’t miss event in Sarasota and I believe those are few and far between.
For a fabulous read about the man I’d most like to sleep with tonight, check out a fabulous article in last week’s Wall Street Journal about Beethoven. The writer did a wonderful job of presenting the man behind the music and I’ll bet compelled not just a few readers to listen again, more closely, or possibly even for the first time, to the music of the man who “first fills the soul with sweet melancholy, and then shatters it … .” I couldn’t have said it better myself. Except to say that when Beethoven shatters your melancholy, he leaves joy in its place.
You can read the article here: Beethoven’s piano sonatas grip us and refuse to let go