After learning to play the keyboard for only a couple of weeks at the age of 10, Georg Telemann knew his life's passion. Having taught himself to play other instruments, he started composing his own pieces and had composed an opera by 12.
Despite discouragement from his mother and even going to a University to study law, his life always brought him back to music. His first wife died and his second cheated on him and squandered most of his money away, yet he concentrated on his music.
He inspired such greats as J.S.Bach and was the godfather to Bach's son Carl Phillipp Emmanuel Bach, who became a great composer in his own right. After finding that some of his early works were being distributed without his credit, he bought back the publishing rights to those pieces, which was one of the first times a composer had bought the rights to his own music. Even later on in life, as his health began to fail, he kept composing.
Which goes to show, it's not what happens to us, but what we do with what happens.
