BEETHOVEN’s deafness may have helped inspire some of his best-loved compositions, according to new research.
Experts believe that by 1820, when the German composer was almost completely deaf, he wrote some of his greatest works.
Medical experts said his deafness meant that Beethoven favoured lower notes in his later string quartets, as these could be heard more easily.
Music experts said the composer’s deafness actually improved his later works, with one claiming that it “shielded the composer from the disturbance of the outer world and forced him to live in his inner world.”
Ludwig van Beethoven, who died in 1827 aged 57, first reported a hearing impairment in 1796 when he was just 26.
As the years progressed, his deafness worsened, leaving him unable to hear woodwind instruments and reducing him to communicating through note books.
By 1826 the composer was completely deaf, with scientists from the University of Amsterdam claiming his disability had a profound effect on his later string quartets.
The findings, published in the British Medical Journal, showed that as his hearing failed Beethoven used more middle and low frequency notes, as these proved easier for him to hear.
And when his hearing disappeared completely, he was able to disappear into an ‘inner world,’ composing music using the same vivid imagination that had marked the early stages of his career.
SOURCE
Actually, it was his hearing that gave him that start as a pianist/musician that allowed him to hear all of the notes, chords and understand the chromatic scale. He was already a devout and heavily devoted musician in the classical world of music. He knew what each note sounded like in his head only because he could hear it. Not only the piano but for a variety of instruments of the time and how an orchestrated music sounded like. Without that deep knowledge of the musical notes and sound he would not have carried that into his next phase of his musical career as a person slowly losing his hearing until he became deaf. Had he been born deaf he would NEVER have become the Beethoven we know of today. Never! It was his love and drive for classical music that ensured him that he wouldn't stop hearing or in this case feel his music when he became deaf later in his life. He could've easily given up when his hearing became absolutely useless but he didn't. He found ways to continue with his mad love for music. And I guess in someways his deafness made for a deeper, richer music that you could literally feel in your body as it emanates from the instrument. We owe Beethoven his musical genius to the fact that he was born hearing and grew up hearing in his young, musical life. Ever thing else later on in his life simply added an extra dimension to his musical genius.
ReplyDeleteYet curiously an 'Deaf' icon for some reason....
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