Saving the Shipwreck

Helloo0O Ladies and Gentlemen!

Welcome back to the Inspire Halton update feed, where we send you awesome stories to improve your life and the lives of those you love. Today, we’re going to talk about struggle.

Many of you have heard of the great classical composer, Ludwig van Beethoven. Along with Haydn and Mozart, he shaped the classical age with his nine symphonies and many piano works (the first movement from his fifth symphony, the “Ode to Joy” chorus from his ninth, Sonata Pathétique and his “Für Elise” piano bagatelle are all popular). Furthermore, always the rebel, he revolutionized music into the Romantic age, when feelings took over from the previous form of older composers.

It’s surprising Beethoven could compose anything, let alone the great works he did. From the age of thirty, he slowly began losing his hearing. By the time of his death, he was nearly completely deaf.

But, in his entire career, Beethoven only wrote one opera, Fidelio.

For those out there who don’t know, an opera is essentially a play where everything’s sung in arias, basically songs that further the plot. But, for some reason, this didn’t go down well with Beethoven. He wrote four overtures (introductions) to his composition, for the love of a cow!

In one letter to the man who helped him revise it in 1814, Georg Freidrich Treitschke, Beethoven wrote: "I assure you, dear Treitschke, that this opera will win me a martyr's crown. You have by your co-operation saved what is best from the shipwreck. For all this I shall be eternally grateful to you".

Even the greatest geniuses, the masters who shape our age, have their failings. They mess up, like you and I and it’s painful for them, too. The difference between them and us largely falls down to how willing they are to keep working - even when they don’t like it. Vince Lombardi, the legendary American football coach, said “The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will”.

Get to work on that project that needs to be done, that workout that’s waiting to be run. Ignoring it’s the only thing preventing you moving forward to the next level in your life.

Alex H.