Five Interesting Facts About A Man We Can’t Stop Talking About

The venerable sound-obsessed podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz recently released an episode which I co-produced, called The Deaf Composer. It’s (duh) about Ludwig van Beethoven, and how he dealt with hearing loss while managing to write some of the most profound and revolutionary music ever created.

Something about Beethoven continues to appeal to people more than two centuries after his death. In the process of researching and writing the episode, I came across a number of interesting facts about him; some of which made it onto the final version, some which landed on the cutting room floor. Here a few of my favourites:

Beethoven… Mouseketeer at the Crossroads?

Beethoven’s life has been well documented—through official records, letters, secondary accounts—but the one thing that no one’s sure is one of the simplest: when he was born. That was, in part, because of his dad and the minor grift he was trying to run.

Beethoven’s dad Johann, a court musician, had mercilessly trained his son from an early age and clearly wanted him to be viewed as a childhood prodigy, like Mozart. There was only one problem with that plan—Ludwig wasn’t that good. 

Rather than a true wunderkind, producing mature, high-quality works during childhood, like young Mozart or even Felix Mendelssohn, Beethoven was more like your run-of-the-mill kid virtuoso—clearly gifted at his instrument and able to wow audiences onstage, but unable to create transcendent work of his own until much later. More like, say, Michael Jackson, or Björk, or member of the Mickey Mouse Club.

Or maybe a more accurate comparison would be one of those teen blues guitarists that all seemed to sprout at the same time in the 1990s – your Kenny Wayne Shepherds, Jonny Langs, and Derek Truckses. Clearly impressive and technically accomplished, but not particularly original. A screen depiction of that bluesy prototype was immortalised in Ralph Macchio’s 1986 film Crossroads, famous for its climatic guitar duel between his character, Eugene Mortone, and the devil’s hired axe slinger, played by Steve Vai. 

There are even stories of young Ludwig participating in similar piano duels, facing other young virtuosi in improvisational battles sponsored by wealthy aristocrats. He may not have been battling for his, but you wouldn’t put it past the mercurial Viennese to play as if he was. 

Deafness as a Deep Pool of Sorrow… Just Not the One We’d Assume

A large part of Beethoven’s popular appeal through the years has come from his heroic personal story. It’s a tragedy that’s easy to grasp and sympathise with—an exceptional artist whose source of genius is slowly stripped away from him, leaving him in anguish, but, at the same time, giving him a battle to overcome.

And there is truth to it—his hearing loss did drive him to the edge of despair. But not because it stopped him from making music. In fact, it didn’t seem to have a huge impact on his musical output. Beethoven was prolific, even later in life, producing some of his most sophisticated and lasting work while completely deaf (see: 9th Symphony).

No, the misery he experienced due to hearing loss was mostly about the non-musical aspects of his struggle—the effect it had on his social life, on his interaction with friends and family, and on his self-image. It was about the shame of being seen as “the deaf composer”, rather than the difficulty of being “the deaf composer”.

As he writes in the Heiligenstadt Testament, a letter from 1805 addressed to his brothers: 

“How could I possibly admit an infirmity in the one sense which ought to be more perfect in me than in others, a sense which I once possessed in the highest perfection, a perfection such as few in my profession enjoy or ever have enjoyed.— Oh I cannot do it, therefore forgive me when you see me draw back when I would have gladly mingled with you. (...) I am bound to be misunderstood; for me there can be no relaxation with my fellow-men, no refined conversations, no mutual exchange of ideas. I must live almost alone like one who has been banished…”

The Sublime and the Mundane in One-Way Conversation

Probably the most fascinating aspect of Beethoven’s everyday life as he learned to live with his hearing loss, was his use of a set of notebooks, often referred to as “conversation books”. He would use these not only to communicate with others as his hearing worsened, but also as musical sketch pads, to jot down random personal notes, copy advertisements from the newspaper, etc.

The “conversations” included in these books are interesting because they were almost always one-sided affairs. Beethoven would say something aloud, and then the other person would write their response in the notebook. We get their side of the conversation, but never Beethoven’s. This gives us a general idea of what the interaction was about, but not a full picture.

They also hint at the general randomness of his life, and the way his creative work interacted with his everyday activities. There is something so disarming about Beethoven jumping from making simple notes about the shutters he was ordering for his room, to casually jotting down the opening theme for one of the most famous piano works in history, Piano Sonata no 30, op 109:

Freelancer Life Hasn’t Changed Much in 200 years

As much of a genius as he became, and as celebrated as he was even in his own lifetime, if you look through his notebooks, you’ll also see how much time and effort is taken up with the everyday struggles of a working musician. Negotiating payments, sorting out publishing royalties, complaining about getting fleeced by concert promoters.

Whenever I read of Beethoven struggling to get musicians together for a premiere of a symphony, I think of a modern singer-songwriter pulling favours to wrangle session players because she blew all her budget on the studio time. 

Or the time when Beethoven has his annuities cut by his patrons because Napoleon’s army has invaded Austria. It’s like when a change in government leads to funding cuts and an ensemble loses the grant money they were expecting. 

At the Technological Vanguard in a Techless World

If Beethoven were a modern day musician, I imagine he would have liked to experiment with the modern song forms and styles, just like he experimented with sonata form and the orchestration options available in the late-18th/early-19th century. 

I bet he would have also been a gearhead. Just like Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock would get first dibs on the early analogue synthesizers in the 1970s, Beethoven was sent the latest piano models from France and England in the 1800s. Some of them had features like larger hammers and thicker soundboards, making them louder and easier for him to perceive. 

And he would also play around with other kinds of technology to help with his hearing. He owned a number of ear trumpets, which were… well, exactly what they sound like. Long metal tubes with a small hole at one end for your ear, and a large spherical cone at the other end, which act like a reverse megaphone.

The piano maker Andre Stein also designed a contraption often referred to as a “hearing machine”. It was a large dome, probably made out of brass, that fit over the piano and helped to focus and amplify the sound into the player’s ears. 

Some visitors reported that the hearing machine made a difference to Beethoven, but, in a way, it also didn’t matter. The man was destined to compose, and he would do so whether he could hear it through his ears, feel it under his fingers, and see it upon the page.