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Daily Routine
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Beethoven rose at daybreak, no matter what season, and went at once to his work-table.
There he worked until two or three o' clock, when he took his midday meal. In the interim he
usually ran out into the open two or three times, where he also "worked while walking." Such
excursions seldom exceeded a full hour's time, and resembled the swarming out of the bee to
gather honey. They never varied with the seasons and neither cold nor heat were noticed.
The afternoons were dedicated to regular promenades; and at a later hour Beethoven was
wont to hunt up some favorite beer-house, in order to read the news of the day, if he had not
already satisfied this need at some cafe. At the time when the English parliament was sitting,
however, the Allgemeine Zeitung was regularly read at home for the sake of the debates. It will
be easily understood that our politico was arrayed on the side of the Opposition. Nor was his
great predilection for Lord Brougham, Hume, and other Opposition orators necessary to this end.
Beethoven always spent his winter evenings at home, and devoted them to serious reading.
It was but seldom that one saw him busy with music-paper in the evening, since writing music was
too taxing for his eyes. In former years this may not have been the case; yet it is quite certain that
at no time did he employ the evening hours for composition (creation). At ten o' clock at the
latest he went to bed.
-- Anton Schindler --
Life of Beethoven - 1840
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