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Classical Fact

Beethoven's father gave him piano lessons before he was 4 years old and would strike young Ludwig across the knuckles whenever he made a mistake. Neighbors remembered him as a tiny boy who would cry in front of the piano. By the time he was 12, Ludwig was already publishing music and earning a salary as a court organist to support his family because his alcoholic father no longer could. Beethoven once said to Karl Czerny, the Austrian pianist and composer, "as a boy I was neglected; my musical education was very bad, but I did have talent for music."