The DU Lounge

And yet, Beethoven had plenty of self-esteem.

A well-known tale that pops in almost every biography goes like this: While playing a private piano recital for one of his royal patrons, Beethoven happened to glance at the audience and noticed a certain Count Palffy chatting with a woman, paying no attention to the music. Beethoven stopped playing, slammed his fists on the keyboard, shouted at the audience "I won't play for swine!" and stormed out.

And in The Letters of Ludwig Van Beethoven, there is one to his patron Prince Lichnowsky, in which he wrote: "Prince, what you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am of myself. There are and there will be thousands of princes. There is only one Beethoven."

https://www.wrti.org/arts-desk/2020-12-15/these-are-the-quirks-about-beethoven-you-may-not-know