Twyla Tharp

very different, different challenges.

There is argument to be made, depending on your particular set, of the coherency of the classicism of the earlier quartets as opposed to the late quartets and the total disillusion that he was able to accomplish at the end of his career, totally taking the sound world apart that he could only actually do because he was deaf.

He had developed, during the course, unfortunately, of a very long time, decades, the awareness that he was losing his hearing.

And by the end, he genuinely, basically was completely deaf, which forced him into his own world.

And there he looked at himself across the ages.

So in a piece, I think, of the Diabelli,

which is the last thing he wrote for keyboard after the sonatas.

And he actually had started the Diabelli 15, maybe even I'm forgetting my details here, but 15 years earlier than when he came back to complete it.

And he got bored with it initially because to a younger composer, it wasn't challenging enough, right?

When he came back to it later, he had a humility about him that said, that theme, which I used to poo-poo because it's like, you're kidding.

He's going, what?

And later he comes back and he says...

Right.

Not stupid, simple.

I could never have written anything that simple or that useful.

And he finished it, and it's arguably the greatest set of keyboard variations in the entire repertoire.

Which do you want?

The earlier Beethoven?

The Beethoven who has passed way through many different works, a mass, an opera, many quartets, and returns to it with this new information to look at it again.

Totally.