Last night when I realized I was all alone in the house I headed downstairs to the piano.

Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor, op. 13. Well, that’s the forensic name. Most call it the “Sonata Pathétique.” I call it the Sonata I’m Stressed Out and/or Angry and Want to Bang the Bejeebus Out of the Piano. It’s in C minor, which means that Beethoven was feeling particularly Emo when he wrote it. Except they didn’t call it “Emo” back then. They called it Sturm und Drang which makes it brooding, tempestuous, and full of tight pants and bad hair, yet somehow not totally super lame. The piece is dedicated to Prince Karl von Lichnowsky, who was Beethoven’s bff until the two had a terrible spat. The Prince wanted Beethoven to play for some visiting French officers, and Beethoven, like a good Germanic dude irritated as heck that Napoleon wouldn’t stay on his own doggone side of Alsace-Lorraine, refused. He shouted that he wanted his bff necklace back and stormed out of the house, smashing a bust of Prince Karl when he got home and shouting “Scheiße!” when some of it landed on his toe.

Naturally, a piece with this background is ideal for me to play when I’m feeling a little bit of the Sturm und Drang myself. It’s angry. It’s loud. It’s chaotic. It’s erotic. It’s the kind of thing that makes your mother worry about the future of humanity. It’s Rock and Roll.

Beethoven was the original rock star. He was trashing hotel rooms way before Keith Moon was flushing Roman candles down toilets. He hated The Man, and he wrote angry music that shocked old people and was accused of being indecently sexual. Glorious. As Jack Black once said, you’ve got to be “good and pissed off” to write a kickass rock song. And you’ve got to be good and pissed off to play one properly.

My roommate came home when I was halfway through the second movement. I heard him quietly say, “damn,” and then walk on into the kitchen. About twelve minutes later, after I’d finished the Rondo, I had a wave of euphoria wash over me. I wasn’t pissed off anymore — I was ecstatic. The Pathétique is musical porn, and I’d drowned myself in it. It’s hard not to believe there is a god somewhere out there in the universe when the planets align and the entire room is reverberating with the perfect clash of sound waves vibrating from string to sounding board as anger and negativity is converted through some unseen alchemy into beauty and joy. It’s all too perfect.