Gian Carlo Menotti

The Italians are very unmusical. If I go to a Protestant church in London or Amsterdam or listen to a black choir, I hear four-part harmony. Italians could never do that. In Italy, we all have to sing the melody because we cannot harmonise.

Beethoven was a deeply political man in the broadest sense of the word. He was not interested in daily politics, but concerned with questions of moral behaviour and the larger questions of right and wrong affecting the entire society.