"IT IS JUST AS WELL that things were going well for Beethoven the musician, because for Beethoven the man they were not so good. An acquaintance from his Bonn years came to Vienna. She happened to be the ‘beautiful, talented and accomplished’ singer Magdalena Willman... Clearly Beethoven had admired her from afar on that sojourn, but there is no evidence he pursued matters then. He most certainly did now. He must have seen her on a number of occasions, because he fell head over heels in love with her, and wasted no time in proposing marriage.
She turned him down flat. We know no further details, except one. Her niece, interviewed by Thayer sixty-five years later, told him her father had often spoken of how the famous musician had once proposed marriage to his sister. Thayer asked her why Magdalena had turned him down. She hesitated a moment, then said, ‘Because he was so ugly, and half crazy!"
