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Did Beethoven struggle with deafness?
By California Symphony Music Director Donato Cabrera. Imagine directing an orchestra you can’t hear. Or playing a soundless piano for a staring audience. Most know classical composer Ludwig van Beethoven struggled with deafness — but many don’t realize how much of a struggle it was.
Dec 17, 2019 · Beethoven first noticed difficulties with his hearing decades earlier, sometime in 1798, when he was about 28. By the time he was 44 or 45, he was totally deaf and unable to converse unless he...
- Dr. Howard Markel
- Overview
- Approaching deafness
- Beethoven and the theatre
- The established composer
A change in direction occurred with Beethoven’s gradual realization that he was becoming deaf. The first symptoms had appeared even before 1800, yet for a few years his life continued unchanged: he still played in the houses of the nobility, in rivalry with other pianists, and performed in public with such visiting virtuosos as violinist George Bridgetower (to whom the Kreutzer Sonata was originally dedicated). But by 1802 he could no longer be in doubt that his malady was both permanent and progressive. During a summer spent at the (then) country village of Heiligenstadt he wrote the “Heiligenstadt Testament.” Ostensibly intended for his two brothers, the document begins:
O ye men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the cause of my seeming so. From childhood my heart and mind was disposed to the gentle feeling of good will. I was ever eager to accomplish great deeds, but reflect now that for six years I have been in a hopeless case, made worse by ignorant doctors, yearly betrayed in the hope of getting better, finally forced to face the prospect of a permanent malady whose cure will take years or even prove impossible.
He was tempted to take his own life,
But only Art held back; for, ah, it seemed unthinkable for me to leave the world forever before I had produced all that I felt called upon to produce.…
There is a Werther-like postscript:
Britannica Quiz
A change in direction occurred with Beethoven’s gradual realization that he was becoming deaf. The first symptoms had appeared even before 1800, yet for a few years his life continued unchanged: he still played in the houses of the nobility, in rivalry with other pianists, and performed in public with such visiting virtuosos as violinist George Bridgetower (to whom the Kreutzer Sonata was originally dedicated). But by 1802 he could no longer be in doubt that his malady was both permanent and progressive. During a summer spent at the (then) country village of Heiligenstadt he wrote the “Heiligenstadt Testament.” Ostensibly intended for his two brothers, the document begins:
O ye men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the cause of my seeming so. From childhood my heart and mind was disposed to the gentle feeling of good will. I was ever eager to accomplish great deeds, but reflect now that for six years I have been in a hopeless case, made worse by ignorant doctors, yearly betrayed in the hope of getting better, finally forced to face the prospect of a permanent malady whose cure will take years or even prove impossible.
He was tempted to take his own life,
But only Art held back; for, ah, it seemed unthinkable for me to leave the world forever before I had produced all that I felt called upon to produce.…
There is a Werther-like postscript:
Britannica Quiz
The next few years were those of Beethoven’s short-lived connection with the theatre. In 1801 he had provided the score for the ballet Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus (The Creatures of Prometheus). Two years later he was offered a contract for an opera on a classical subject with a libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder, who had achieved fame and wealth as the librettist of Mozart’s The Magic Flute and who was then impresario of the Theater an der Wien. Two or three completed numbers show that Beethoven had already begun work on it before Schikaneder himself was ousted from the management and the contract annulled—somewhat to Beethoven’s relief, as he had found Schikaneder’s verses “such as could only have proceeded from the mouths of our Viennese applewomen.” When the new management reengaged Beethoven the following year, it was largely on the strength of his now almost-forgotten oratorio, Christus am Ölberg (Christ on the Mount of Olives), which had been given in an all-Beethoven benefit concert, together with the first two symphonies and the Third Piano Concerto.
The year 1804 was to see the completion of the Third Symphony, regarded by most biographers as a landmark in Beethoven’s development. It is the answer to the “Heiligenstadt Testament”: a symphony on an unprecedented scale and at the same time a prodigious assertion of the human will. The work was to have been dedicated to Napoleon, intermittently one of Beethoven’s heroes, but Beethoven struck out the dedication on hearing that Napoleon had taken the title of emperor. Outraged in his republican principles, he changed the title to Eroica and added the words “for the memory of a great man.” From then on the masterworks followed hard on one another’s heels: the Waldstein Piano Sonata, Opus 53; Piano Sonata in F Minor, Opus 57, known as the Appassionata; the Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Opus 58; the three Razumovsky Quartets, Opus 59; the Fourth Symphony, Opus 60; the Violin Concerto, Opus 61.
During all this time, Beethoven, like Mozart, had maintained himself without the benefit of an official position—but with far greater success insofar as he had no family to support. His reputation as a composer was steadily soaring both in Austria and abroad. The critics of the Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, the most authoritative music j...
Apr 3, 2014 · Learn about the life and works of Ludwig van Beethoven, a German composer who was going deaf while writing some of his greatest symphonies. Find out how he overcame his struggles with deafness, his family, and his musical influences.
Mar 7, 2023 · Ludwig van Beethoven suffered hearing loss from around the age of 26, leading to his complete deafness by the age of 30. He was still able to compose masterpieces of music, using his imagination and touch to feel the sound of the piano. Learn more about his life, his causes of hearing loss, his treatment, and his works.
- 7 min
Mar 23, 2024 · Was Ludwig van Beethoven deaf? Beethoven was not born deaf , but he gradually became deaf. Although his deafness did not become total until 1819, the first symptoms of the impairment manifested before 1800.
Feb 2, 2020 · Sat 1 Feb 2020 07.05 EST. The one thing everyone knows – or thinks they know – about Ludwig van Beethoven is that he composed some of music’s greatest masterpieces while completely deaf....
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