I’m sitting on the 2nd floor of the Beethoven Haus Museum, which is situated in the historic house Beethoven grew up in (although, renovations have changed it significantly from Beethoven’s time). It’s a little room, with a set of couches arranged in a cross in the middle of it, a few windows, and a sign on the wall. Jutting up from the couch is a series of boards from which expensive AKG headphones hang. The sign encourages us to sit down and listen to Beethoven’s music that he would have written while living in the house. I try one set of headphones, there is no sound coming out of it. Taking the headphones off, I can hear sound coming from another set of headphones. I try the pair I think it is, which also has no sound coming out. Defeated, I turn to a different board and am greeted with the sound of an string quartet tuning. Success! I let myself listen to these recordings, some of which even have some café sounds over the top like we are listening to it in a chamber setting – thrilling. Occasionally, other museum attendees enter into the room. They have a look around, note me sitting with headphones on, and then turn around and head off. One pair of girls, enters, puts the headphones on for one piece, then leave again. I am the only one that sits through the entire program. It strikes me that I am there to learn about the man behind the myth; for everyone else, it’s a chance to be within the same walls Beethoven once was.

The Beethoven museum is tiny. It’s a small German town house, as mentioned, so there’s not a lot of space to work with, but even what is there makes it seem almost depressingly small. The famous portrait of Beethoven is in the first room on the ground floor, and that’s the best thing in the collection. I tried to get a ticket to the afternoon concert but it was sold out by the time I got there; a blessing in disguise for it was not included in the museum entrance as I thought but an additional charge. I’m sure the music would have been lovely; I’m not sure it would have made the experience any more fulfilling.

Fundamentally, the Beethoven museum just feels like a collection of stuff inside his childhood house, which just makes the whole thing feel like a tourist trap (which, let’s be honest, it is). I didn’t come away from the experience feeling like I knew Beethoven any better than I did before, except that he suffered from stomach pain most of his life. One exhibit talks about how the last piano Beethoven owned, when he was deaf, had a special and unusual casing to make the sound larger; around the corner is supposedly the last instrument Beethoven owned, a piano, that has no such special casing. What’s the point of it being there then? A quarter of the museum feels like portraits and notes on the people Beethoven worked with or for; which would be interesting were it not for the fact that these are just presented as “look, Beethoven was supported by the archduke!” with no further context. The objects in the museum are interesting, the way they are presented is not.

Look, in fairness, Beethoven and I don’t have an amazing relationship. I don’t hate the guy, but I don’t strongly care about his music. I say that not to diminish his achievements or his creative skills, but I think culturally we put Beethoven on too many pedestals. This makes modern composition a tough industry, because Beethoven sells concerts, but modern composers do not; yet these modern composers are often doing things that are at least as interesting, if not more, than Beethoven. Music has progressed enormously in the past 200 years, yet still general audiences persist in their devotion to one German man. Furthermore, one of the reasons Beethoven is still so popular is because of a systemic power structure that supports white men above all. Beethoven, because he was a white man, had access to numerous more opportunities than women and people of colour. Beethoven lived for 37 years before the British Empire’s slave trade was outlawed, and died almost 40 years before the USA totally outlawed slavery — by being a white man, he had the means to employ housekeepers and had copious amounts of time to devote to his art. His works, before and after his death, were going to be more favourably viewed than others. While Beethoven may have been a better composer than his contemporaries, and even possibly relatively better than other composers in the “Western canon” of great works, it is not right to describe him as a titan or a genius, when we don’t know how many other composers, if given the same opportunities and frame as Beethoven, would have done as well or better. For example, Joseph Bologne was a black man who was Mozart’s contemporary and whose works influenced the younger Mozart, but Mozart is the far more famous name (source). Clara Schumann was an amazing composer in her own right, but overshadowed by her husband, Robert. Francis Johnson was a black composer who is largely forgotten in the history books; partly because he is black and partly because he never got opportunities to write for the symphony orchestra, which is how music “geniuses” are determined. For more on this topic, I highly recommend Philip Ewell’s work, which you can start with here.

Of course, the Beethoven museum will never admit to anything like this — their business model relies on tourists coming because of their fascination with Beethoven, the man the myth the legend. To suggest that Beethoven is not as good as he is made out to be, or that he benefitted from the racist and colonial governments of the time, would be straying into debates they don’t want to have. So instead, they put out the non-offensive exhibits. A totally safe experience for a tourist, where their beliefs don’t have to be challenged, and instead they can walk around and look at things and not even listen to the music he wrote in the first place. Because it’s not about his music — it’s about the fact that he is Beethoven. He surpasses his music. You go to the museum to say you’ve been inside the same walls a so-called genius grew up, not to actually engage with his art or learn about the debates around the musical canon. Because of this, the Beethoven Museum will always falter in its purpose. It is very much an old-school style museum: filled with artifacts, but with nothing to help you gain further insight into the man behind the myth. That’s what made it so depressing to me, sitting on my own, listening to his music on headphones: out of everyone who was at that museum on that day, chances were I was the most musically educated; and yet, I was the one who despised the place the most.