He didn’t actually write one, of course — but he did write sketches, and Beethoven scholar used them to flesh out a conception of what the first movement would have sounded like:

I have always enjoyed this, just as I enjoy the attempts to realize the fourth movement of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony.

This is not Beethoven, exactly — but if you have never heard it, you might be surprised. It’s neat.

[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]

Yeah, I don’t have anything. After a week of vacation my “blog about whatever is going on even if it seems stupid” muscles are atrophied.

Looks like we killed some allies in Syria. Trump just learned that North Korea is not a simple issue from a ten-minute talk with the leader of China. I hope you weren’t too wedded to his positions on China as a currency manipulator, or replacing Janet Yellin, or the Ex-Im bank, or the importance of NATO, because he just flip-flopped on all that in one day (yesterday).

None of this really inspires me. There’s an erratic clown in the Oval Office, but you either already knew that or already refused to accept it, and in either case there’s nothing I can do about it.

What else? I had a nice trip last week. My parents’ second date was seeing “La Traviata” at the Metropolitan Opera. (I used to think it was their first date but then learned that after they had agreed to go as their first date, they went to dinner once beforehand.) Last week my family saw the same opera with my mom in New York, so that was neat. We looked at schools for our daughter, who says she wants to move away from California for school.

We visited Cornell, and while touring the music building we ran into the man who, when I sang in the Sage Chapel Choir, had been the associate conductor. He told me that the choir disbanded 12 years ago. Nobody was coming to services any more. I denounced the godless campus to my family.

Colleges renovate everything — with all the money they are swimming in, from robbing hardworking parents of their savings (don’t talk to me about paying for college; it makes me angry) — meaning nothing looks like it did when you attended.

Also it was cold.

Anyway, talk about whatever. If anyone was on spring break last week with kids or whatever, tell us what you did. Tell us a lawyer joke, or any joke. You can talk about politics of course, but today it bores me.

[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]