Beethoven Bonn to Wien (3)

There's a saying that you can tell a promising tree from its first sprouts.

Beethoven's life was the same, and Kim Yul had diagrammed the early part of it very simply and stuffed it neatly into the opening serialization arc.

His grandfather had been a court music director, and his father a tenor.

In cliché terms, that meant he was born of extraordinary stock.

But the grandfather who seemed like a reliable patron died quickly, and instead he began being worked to the bone by an alcoholic father who wanted to exploit his son for fame.

But if you were only going to make readers choke down hardship with an unhappy background,

you also had to deliver a cathartic payoff by giving them a fateful encounter.

Then, as if to overturn the somewhat gloomy opening mood, what appeared was.

the teacher who would become Beethoven's lifelong mentor in his heart.

Christian Gottlob Neefe...