A hymn of rage, a hymn of redemption, and a timeless love letter to the possible. “Day by day I am approaching the goal which I apprehend but cannot describe,” Ludwig van Beethoven (December 16, 1770–March 26, 1827) wrote to his boyhood friend, rallying his own resilience as he began losing his hearing. A year later, shortly after completing his Second Symphony , he sent his brothers a stunning letter about the joy of suffering overcome , in which he resolved: Ah! how could I possibly quit the world before bringing forth all that I felt it was my vocation to produce? That year, he began — though he did not yet know it, as we never do — the long gestation of what would become not only his greatest creative and spiritual triumph, not only a turning point in the history of music that revolutionized the symphony and planted the seed of the pop song, but an eternal masterwork of the supreme human art: making meaning out of chaos, beauty out of sorrow.…