The Composer Who Flooded His Neighbors

Ludwig van Beethoven wrote the Missa Solemnis, the late quartets, and a symphony he could no longer hear. He also could not keep an apartment.

The trouble began at the washstand. When the music would not come, Beethoven stripped to a shirt, stood over the basin, and poured pitcher after pitcher of cold water over his own head, bellowing scales as he went. He believed it summoned the notes. His servants believed it was hilarious, and burst out laughing, which sent him into rages. The water, meanwhile, did what water does. It soaked through the floorboards and rained onto the tenants below.

This happened again. And again. He moved somewhere between thirty-six and sixty times in thirty-five Vienna years, a rate that suggests the pitchers were rarely idle. Baron de Trémont, calling in 1809, found a full chamber pot under the grand piano and last night's supper still on the plates. By 1826 a visitor found him half-dressed and stone deaf, sketching notes directly onto the plaster wall, occasionally reaching over to strike a few keys on a piano that no longer had strings.

Upstairs, the greatest composer in Europe was drenching himself to coax down the next bar of music.

Downstairs, someone's ceiling was leaking again.