18. The Deaf Composer

Although Beethoven could sit down and make up music easily, his really great compositions did not come easily at all. They cost him a great deal of hard work. We know how often he rewrote and corrected his work because his notebooks are still kept in museums and libraries. He always found it hard to satisfy himself.

When he was 28, the worst difficulty of all came to him. He began to notice a strange humming in his ears. At first he paid little attention; but it grew worse, and at last he consulted doctors. They gave him the worst news any musician can hear: he was gradually going deaf. Beethoven was in despair; he was sure that he was going to die.

He went away to the country, to a place called Heiligenstadt, and from there he wrote a long farewell letter to his brothers. In this he told them how depressed and lonely his deafness had made him. "It was impossible for me to ask men to speak louder or shout, for I am deaf," he wrote. "How could I possibly admit an infirmity in the one sense (hearing) which should have been more perfect in me than in others ... I must live like an exile." He longed to die, and said to death, "Come when you will, I shall meet you bravely."

In fact, Beethoven did something braver than dying. He gathered his courage and went on writing music, though he could hear what he wrote only more and more faintly. He wrote his best music, the music we remember him for, after he became deaf. The music he wrote was very different from any that had been composed before. Instead of the elegant and stately music that earlier musicians had written for their wealthy listeners, Beethoven wrote stormy, exciting, revolutionary music, which reminds us of his troubled and courageous life. He grew to admire courage more than anything, and he called one of his symphonies the "Eroica" or heroic symphony, "to celebrate the memory of a great man". Describing the dramatic opening notes of his famous Fifth Symphony, he said, "thus fate knocks on the door."

In time Beethoven went completely deaf, so deaf that he could not hear even the stormiest parts of his exciting music. But in those years he wrote more gloriously than ever. He could "hear" his music with his mind, if not with his ears. His friends had to write down what they wanted to say to him. He was lonely and often unhappy, but in spite of this, he often wrote joyful music. In his last symphony, the Ninth, a choir sings a wonderful Hymn of Joy. Because of his courage and determination to overcome his terrible disaster, his music has given joy and inspiration to millions of people.