German Composer Who Completed His Late Masterworks While Deaf
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) was a German composer whose nine symphonies are milestones of Western classical music’s transition from the Classical to the Romantic. His hearing declined from his twenties and he was nearly wholly deaf by middle age, yet he kept composing, and many late masterpieces, including the Ninth Symphony (the "Choral," whose finale sets Schiller’s Ode to Joy), were completed while he could hear nothing at all, by the music of his inner imagination. Fiery and unconventional in character, his relations with the aristocratic patronage system of the time were complex, and he is seen as an early symbol of the modern idea that "the artist is no longer merely dependent on the powerful."
In 1802, tormented by his deafness and once near despair, Beethoven wrote at Heiligenstadt outside Vienna a never-sent testament-like letter, laying bare the loneliness and thoughts of ending his life brought by his deafness, but in the end he chose to go on living for music — a letter found only after his death, giving later ages a deeper understanding of the almost tragic spiritual power of his late works.
At the 1824 premiere of his Ninth Symphony, thunderous applause is said to have broken out at the end, but the wholly deaf Beethoven, unaware, still stood with his back to the audience, until the soprano onstage gently turned him around and he saw the crowd on its feet cheering — one of the most moving anecdotes in the history of classical music.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.
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