Harvard professor Lewis Lockwood is the author of the newest biography of Beethoven. From the NYT’s review of the book:

At his funeral, Ludwig van Beethoven was remembered by the dramatist Franz Grillparzer as a paradox, in his personal life discontented and alienated from much of society but full of love for humanity in his music. Baron de Tremont, who visited his apartment in Vienna in 1809, reported seeing ‘the dirtiest, most disorderly place imaginable,’ the piano buried under dust and papers, an unemptied chamber pot under the piano. This was the same year Beethoven wrote his Fifth Piano Concerto, the noble ‘Emperor,’ and ‘Das Lebewohl,’ one of his most elegant piano sonatas.