Historians love influence, yet genius eschews it. The whole point of genius is its singularity. Or as Beethoven once put it to his patron: “What you are, you are by circumstance and birth. What I am, I am through myself. Of princes there have been and will be thousands. Of Beethovens there is only one.” Historians, then, face an uphill battle when trying to chart the influence on a true genius, not least because most readers frown upon too much context, and instead prefer something closer to defiance of it, at least when it comes to a figure like Beethoven.
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