![]() The English Broadwood piano he owned during the last decade of his life was both louder and muddier sounding than the ones with which he grew up-again, the exact opposite of what someone with hearing loss would seem to require.īut Beethoven fell in love with the Broadwood for another reason entirely. As he grew older, he became more, not less, attached to his pianos, but what he needed from them was different. The early Viennese pianos he played as a young man had a clear, bell-like sound that was evidently easy for him to hear even as his hearing faded. When he wrote this music, Beethoven needed to augment his perception of aural cues, much as a person with progressive hearing loss might augment their understanding of speech by beginning to read lips even if they’re not conscious they’re doing so.Īnother sign can be found in his pianos, which changed over Beethoven’s lifetime. This is why the four-note motive at the beginning of the Fifth Symphony is repeated throughout the work. Beethoven established motives as the building blocks of his longer pieces, a process imitated by many later composers. ![]() Beethoven’s music abounds in repetition, especially repetition of short, highly recognizable units. Repetition is particularly important to someone who is unable to absorb everything on first hearing. Instead, look for his use of repeating phrases. Listening to a quiet piano sonata in an environment without distractions would likely be more pleasant than hearing a dramatic symphony. Indeed, loud music can be painful to failing ears. Beethoven wrote a lot of loud music, but for someone with hearing loss, loud music is not necessarily better. Where can those marks be found? The most obvious answers to that question are probably wrong, or at least misleading. 109, shows him creating music on paper, getting carried away with rhythmic, repetitive writing patterns that mirror the emphatic rhythms of much of his music. Indeed, he accepted it and adapted to it, and this left recognizable marks on his music.īeethoven’s manuscript of the piano sonata in E Major, Op. He never claimed to be overcoming his hearing loss. When he wrote the Fifth Symphony, his most recognizable work, he could hear well enough to correct mistakes in the performance.Īnd Beethoven wasn’t a “ supercrip,” the term for a person who responds to a disability in ways that inspire others but also set unreasonable expectations. For most of his adulthood he experienced progressive hearing loss, as many of us do as we age. ![]() He did not completely lose his hearing until the last decade of his life, if even then. ![]() To begin with, accounts of Beethoven’s triumph are often overdone. His story, for all its wonder, is no myth it offers unfussy but lasting lessons about music, hearing, and disability. But Beethoven the man was not the Beethoven of our imaginations. ![]() This achievement is often seen as an example of super-heroic determination, a triumph of the human spirit that tests the boundaries of our species’ ingenuity. Ludwig van Beethoven occupies a larger-than-life place in our imaginations, all the more so because late in his life he accomplished the seemingly impossible: He continued to compose beautiful and enduring music even as he went deaf. ![]()
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