Episode 3: The Chambermaid's Choice

This is the story of how music was almost silenced. He turned out to be a strange little boy, often reclusive and unresponsive. But he did have his family’s love for music. When a local teacher took him on as a piano student, no one imagined that she was gaining a prodigy. Maria was forty years old when Wolfgang Mozart allegedly declared that her son was destined for greatness. Two months later, the teen- age prodigy rushed home to be at her deathbed. She told her son that giving birth to him was the best thing she ever did in her unhappy life. We should all be grateful that Maria van Beethoven did not abort little Ludwig, a child of rape who would grow up to write the world’s greatest symphonies.