The Broken Harpsichord

The old composer was in the twilight of life. He was only fifty-seven years of age, but he seemed so much older. Always misshapen in appearance, he now looked like a hunchbacked gnome. A tempestuous past had finally worn his soul down to a nub. He had overcome so much. His mother tried to abort him, his grandfather rejected him, and his father almost destroyed him. Though he was a musical prodigy, his dyslexia made it difficult for him to read or write. He was ugly in appearance, melancholy in temperament, and painfully shy. Rejected by every woman he ever loved, he would live out his life in loneliness.

Almost all of his fees went to support a family left destitute by his drunken father. Yet poverty didn’t impede productivity. He drove himself with perfectionistic frenzy to earn the approval he craved. Some two hundred years later, his soaring symphonies still leave us breathless. They also reveal the inner rage that drove him to write such gloriously tempestuous scores.

Just as he experienced success, he contracted an incurable disability. He drove himself to compose as many works as possible in the short time left. As his disability increased, so did his miraculous output. Yet his obsessive-compulsive personality, fueled by emotional turmoil, ruined almost all his friendships. Critics complained that his symphonies were strange, overtly extravagant, and even risqué. He would utter these cynical words on his deathbed: “Plaudite, amici, comoedia finite est.” (Applaud friends, the comedy is over.)

In his final days, he spent long evenings playing a broken-down harpsichord that had been sold cheaply at auction. Its finish was faded; keys were missing. And it was hopelessly out of tune. Yet tears of joy flowed down the composer’s face when he played that wreck of a harpsichord. Those watching said that the malformed body became serenely beautiful. Maybe he had finally begun to relax after fifty-seven years of frantic turbulence.

His servants would look at each other with sly grins. You would think that old Ludwig van Beethoven was hearing a symphony from heaven instead of the sour notes on a broken instrument. And maybe he was! As you may know, the disability that should have ruined his career was the loss of his hearing. It was a miracle that he could have written symphonies for the ages when he was going deaf. Now he existed in a world of total silence. But he was hearing the music that the harpsichord should make, not the sour notes it did make.

Do you ever feel like Beethoven’s wreck of a harpsichord—faded and peeling, with your best days behind you? Are you a few ivories short of a full keyboard? Remember this, dear friend: God has purchased you with the priceless sacrifice of his only begotten Son. He’s not deaf like Beethoven. He hears all your sour notes. But he chooses to enjoy your best ones and loves you all the more for those that aren’t so good. The story of Beethoven’s harpsichord gives this hope:

God plays his most beautiful symphonies on broken instruments.

Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.

Isaiah 41

https://tbibles.com/twpu