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PREFACE
I am in Vienna, on my last trip for a documentary film I am making about the global impact of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. I began the journey for Following The Ninth: In The Footsteps of Beethoven's Final Symphony over five years ago. Now, having traversed five continents, from China to Chile, from Japan to Great Britain, from Cape Town to Manhattan, I sit in the Café Hawelka near Der Graben ("the trench"), a still fashionable promenade where Beethoven enjoyed watching members of the haute monde present themselves to their fellow Viennese during the years when he retreated into deafness and isolation.
The day is cold and wet and, for a Californian, somewhat intimidating as I have not, sartorially speaking, anticipated this. Yet I have already made a morning pilgrimage to the Burggarten, a park near
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