We’re glad so many of you are enjoying our “7 Days to Beethoven” mini-course.

My own journey to Beethoven has been life-long, starting from age seven when I played my first Beethoven Écossaise. There were significant stages along the way, such as learning to rip through the last movement of the Moonlight Sonata (about as un-moonlight-y as you can get!).

But the real mountain-peak came during the second year of my doctoral coursework. I was fortunate to squeeze into a seminar on 18th-century musical form given by Dr. Bathia Churgin, a visiting professor of musicology from Bar-Ilan University in Israel. She could sing every note of music popular during Beethoven’s lifetime (including the individual orchestral parts)! Or so it seemed. She had us terrified.

Yet we adored her. She taught us to hear—really hear—the sound of music from Beethoven’s day. If we would work to internalize the musical style of Beethoven’s youth, she insisted, we could realize what he did to expand that style. I’ve never taken so many notes as I did during her lectures.

Dr. Churgin’s course was followed by a seminar on Beethoven’s Sketchbooks. The visiting professor, Douglas Johnson, established himself early as a super-star of Beethoven scholarship, but he still had to get that pesky dissertation done. (He actually had to fly it out to his California university to meet the deadline).

Before we could pour over Beethoven’s messy sketches, though, he had a surprise for us. In the first class on a Thursday, he matter-of-factly announced that, since so much of the serious literature would refer to Beethoven’s pieces by opus numbers (the number given to a composition at publication), we’d best learn them by heart. We had, after all, an entire weekend to “brush up” on them before Tuesday’s class, when there would be a quiz.

“Brush-up”? I knew maybe a dozen out of the c. 140 needed: the piano sonatas I had played, and one or two of the symphonies. That was it.

And my classmates weren’t much better off. We spent the weekend drilling each other mercilessly. I doubt any of us got them all right. But we were flung headlong into the language of advanced Beethoven research where, indeed, his pieces really are referred to by opus number.

I’m not recommending that you take this project on. But if you do, expect to consume a lot of ice cream. Did I mention a Baskin-Robbins around the corner from the music library? After all, this happened in the days before Starbucks. In the days before email (just think: Prof. Johnson could have saved a transcontinental flight by sending an e-copy of his dissertation).

More importantly, I hope you too are blessed with similar memories: precious times when you were on fire with the desire to learn. Times when master teachers astonished you, and pushed you past your comfort zones.

For aren’t these are the times when our youthful aspirations are transformed into adult skills? When we grow up as thinkers, and as people of action? Definitely, for me, this critical process is wrapped up with the sound of Beethoven.

It’s also important to tell our children the stories of our own learning adventures. Maybe even ask them what Beethoven would say, if he knew someone 250 years later cared about his opus numbers, or his messy pen strokes on lines and spaces. I’ve always thought he would be pleased, and would take special delight in Mint Chocolate Chip.