Ludwig van Beethoven's Framework

Beethoven rose at dawn and wasted little time getting to work. Breakfast was coffee he prepared himself with great care, sixty beans to the cup, often counted out one by one. He composed at his desk until two or three in the afternoon, breaking now and then to walk outdoors, then ate his midday dinner and set off on a long, vigorous walk with a pencil and a few sheets of music paper in his pocket for whatever came. He would stop at a tavern to read the newspaper. Evenings were company or the theatre, or in winter reading at home; supper was soup and leftovers with a glass of wine or beer and a pipe. He never worked in the evening and was in bed by ten. As a week it is an eight-and-a-half-hour night, one unbroken eight-hour morning of creative work, a walk after the main meal and an evening that is entirely off. The washstand method, pouring pitchers of water over his hands while bellowing scales and flooding the tenants below, is optional.