The sad truth about Beethoven.

[zheer]

  You know had he been alive today we would have been able to fix his ear with a simple operation. 

[ihatepop]

The past is the past, zheer......
Yeah, It is kind'a sad......

ihatepop

[counterpoint]

zheer, do you think, Beethoven would have composed better, if he had better ears? 

[invictious]

I thought beethoven composed better when he was deaf, sigh.. deaf musician = oxymoron

Exception for beethoven thouhg

symphony number 9 is da best!

[pianistimo]

you mean there's a cure for sarcoidosis?  beethoven had a lot of stuff wrong with him.  not just his hearing.  he became bloated.  had skin color change.  his hair became a different texture.  he had organs that were trying to fail.  i think when he suddenly raised his arm during a lightening storm on his death bed - and sat up stiffly before collapsing back - it was the result of some ailment that was inclusive of the whole package.  all the symptoms together. 

some say the red wine back then had some high levels of lead.  or was it the cup he drank from?  in any case.  between wine, women, song - he did himself in.  of course, if you look at his birthplace - you'd wonder how he got past the unsanitary conditions - not to mention his strange father, when drunk, who would wake him up in the wee hours of the morning to play for his drinking buddies.  beethoven, instead of being angry about this - actually began to love piano and playing and then took lessons from gottlieb neefe.  but, many things could have killed beethoven much earlier if he didn't have some resolve about just allowing things to run their course.  i think he was very kindly towards his mother and she was a sort of go-between.  her death really affected him, it seems.

i almost see it in my mind.  the inclement weather.  the doctors at the bedside.  the sitting up and commanding 'arrggh' - the falling backwards.  people scurrying to get a death mask.

[pianistimo]

i actually did a report on 'the possible causes of beethoven's death.'  if anyone wants to hear more - i'd try to dredge it up.

personally, i don't think the 'women' did him in.  he was somewhat of a recluse and people always tried to get him to go out - with the usual - 'i don't want to.'  if he did have an std it was probably a one time occasion in his youth - and he sufferred for it ever since.  but, even then - i kind of highly doubt it.  he was content to view women from afar and enjoy friendships.  say as with the von breuning girls.  the reason i say this - is because he had enough of drinking and partying watching his father.  i think it repulsed him.  he loved his mother very much.  i really ahve no idea if what i am saying is the truth - but my impressions from reading are that beethoven almost died a couple of times from the stresses and strains of life - his poor health - his failing hearing - the impossible situations of his brother and his brother's sons.  he took a certain responsiblity for everything and it put a huge load on him.  he was not as strong physically as he looked. 

[zheer]

zheer, do you think, Beethoven would have composed better, if he had better ears? 

  No, more possibly but not better. Those who were close to him describe his last remaining years as very withdrawn, in a different world, you know he was stone deaf for 10 years.
  His late string quartet is so spiritual.

[pianistimo]

ok.  noone said 'yea or nay' - so i will attempt to make this as brief as possible - although there are many important facts - which, if left out - make the story incomplete.

'One cannot write anything about beethoven without recognizing his great biographer Alexander Thayer.  His biography of the 'Life of Beethoven' was a lifelong work (the first volume took seventeen years, and another thirty-two to finish volumes two and three).  He never really finished it, and others completed the task of finishing and translating it into English.  Mr. Thayer was born in Massachusettes in 1817and received a liberal education at Harvard (where he graduated in 1843).

After graduation, he went on to take an interest in the life of Beethoven and went to Europe in 1849.  He spent two years researching in Bonn, Berlin, Prague, and Vienna.  He came back to America, worked for the NY Tribune a couple of years, and returned to Europe in 1854.  He studied precious documents in the Royal Library at Berlin, unearthed much in Bonn, and returned to America again.  Then, he sought employment in New Jersey from Lowell Mason.  Mr. Mason became interested in Thayer's great project and became a patron (along with Mrs. Mehetabel Adams of Cambridge, MA).  Together they helped him return to Europe a third time.  He remained there until he died.

"In his travels, Thayer visited every person of importance then living who had been in any way associated with Beethoven or had personal recollection of him, among them Schindler, the composer's factotum and biographer; Anselm Huttenbrenner, in whose arms he died; Caroline van Beethoven, widow of nephew Karl; Charles Neate and Cipriani Potter, the English musicians who had been his pupils; Sir George Smart, who had visited him to learn the proper interpretation of the Ninth Symphony; Moscheles, who had been his professional associate in Vienna; Otto Jahn, who had undertaken a like task with Thayer's, but abandoned it and turned over his gathered material to him; Mahler, an artist, who had painted the composer's portrait; Gerhard von Breuning, son of Beethoven's most intimate friend, who as a lad of fourteen, had been a cheery companion of the great man when he lay upon his fatal bed of sickness."  Because he fought for no theories and cherished no prejudices, I decided to start with reading what he wrote about Beethoven's deafness.

[pianistimo]

But, not before reading another interesting article by KM Knittel entitled 'Pilgrimages to Beethoven: Reminiscences by His Contemporaries.  He explained that not all that was said or written was fact.  Take for instance (his example) of a story written by Liszt's pupil Ilka Horowitz-Barnay about Liszt's first meeting with Beethoven.  "I was about eleven years of age when my venerated teacher Czerny took me to Beethoven...

Beethoven was working at a long, narrow table by the window.  He looked gloomily at us for a time, said a few brief words to Czerny and remained silent when my kind teacher beckoned me to the piano.  I first played a short piece by Ries.  When I finished, Beethoven asked me whether I could play a bach fugue.  I chose the C-minor fugue from the Well-Tempered Clavier.  'and could you also transpose the fugue at once into another key?' Beethoven asked me.  Fortunately, I was able to do so...'a devil of a fellow,' he whispered, 'a regular young Turk!'"

While there is a doubt that Liszt ever met Beethoven (and obtained his blessing), even if he did, there are some things that are unlikely.  On is, that it is unlikely that his hearing at the time was sufficient to know in what key Liszt was playing.  Additionally, we know that Liszt, over the course of his life, validated - either actively or passively - other versions of this story.  (quote) The author of this article goes on to say that "the fact or fiction of Liszt's meeting with Beethoven ultimately does not negate his anecdote's value as a historical document, but simply necessitates our treating it in a slightly different manner."   (ps personally i would probably believe Liszt's story if Beethoven truly was near enough the piano to see what key he was playing in or if Czerny wrote down which fugue he was playing).

So, to piece together what I want to say about Beethoven's deafness, I will quote from Thayer's first volume what Beethoven said himself about his deafness...

[pianistimo]

"My dear, good Amenda, my cordial friend, I received and read your last letter with mixed pain and pleasure...you are not a Viennese friend, no, you are one of those who spring from the ground of my native land...(very close friendship) know that my noblest faculty, my hearing, has greatly deteriorated.  When you were still with me I felt the symptoms but kept silent;  now it is continually growing worse, and whether or not a cure is possible has become a question; but it is said to be due to my bowels and as far as they are concerned I am nearly restored to health.  I hope, indeed that my hearing will also improve, but I am dubious because such diseases are the most incurable.  How sad is my lot!...My affliction causes me the least trouble in playing and composing.  I beg of you to keep the matter of my deafness as a profound secret to be confided to nobody no matter who it is...My ears whistle and buzz continually day and night."

[kempff1234]

you mean there's a cure for sarcoidosis?  beethoven had a lot of stuff wrong with him.  not just his hearing.  he became bloated.  had skin color change.  his hair became a different texture.  he had organs that were trying to fail.  i think when he suddenly raised his arm during a lightening storm on his death bed - and sat up stiffly before collapsing back - it was the result of some ailment that was inclusive of the whole package.  all the symptoms together. 

some say the red wine back then had some high levels of lead.  or was it the cup he drank from?  in any case.  between wine, women, song - he did himself in.  of course, if you look at his birthplace - you'd wonder how he got past the unsanitary conditions - not to mention his strange father, when drunk, who would wake him up in the wee hours of the morning to play for his drinking buddies.  beethoven, instead of being angry about this - actually began to love piano and playing and then took lessons from gottlieb neefe.  but, many things could have killed beethoven much earlier if he didn't have some resolve about just allowing things to run their course.  i think he was very kindly towards his mother and she was a sort of go-between.  her death really affected him, it seems.

i almost see it in my mind.  the inclement weather.  the doctors at the bedside.  the sitting up and commanding 'arrggh' - the falling backwards.  people scurrying to get a death mask.

he would probably make a good subject for House M.D

anyways, yest it is extremely sad, altough I believe we wouldn't have masterpieces such as hammerklavier or Op.111 if he wasn't deaf

[pianistimo]

He goes on to write another letter to another friend, Wegeler, explaining that when he is a little distance from the orchestra "I do not hear the high tones of the instruments, singers, and if I be a little farther away I do not hear at all...frequently I can hear the tones of a low conversation, but not the words, and as soon as anybody shouts, it is intolerable.  It seems singular in conversation there are people who do not notice my condition at all, attributing it to my absent-mindedness."  This was written by Beethoven on June 29, 1801.  Beethoven was approximately thirty years old.

Again on November 16, 1801, he writes to Wegeler, "For several months Vering has had vesicatories placed on both arms, which consist, ask you know, of a certain bark (Daphne Mezereum)...It is true, I cannot deny, that the ringing and sounding in my ears has become less than usual, especially in the left ear, where my deafness began; but my hearing has not improved and I dare not say that it has not grown worse than better."

Beethoven was so distraught over his hearing loss that he actually contemplated suicide.  He wrote a final testament, The Heilingenstadt Testament, on October 6, 1802 to be presented to Caspar Anton Carl, and Nokolaus Johann Van Beethoven (his brothers)...

[pianistimo]

Yes!   perhaps he wanted to show us how it feels to be deaf with the hammerklavier?  so much open space.  so much description of deafness and yet a closer proximity to the spiritual?

[pianistimo]

"Alas! How could I possibly refer to the imparing of a sense which in me should be more perfectly developed than in other people, a sense which at one time I possessed in the greatest perfection, even to a degree of perfection such as assuredly few in my profession poassess or have ever possessed...I must live quite alone and may creep into society only as often as sheer necessity demands it; I must live like an outcast...My sensible doctor, by suggesting that I should spare my hearing as much as possible has more or less encouraged my present natural inclination, though, indeed when carried away now and then by my instinctive desire for human society, I have let myself be tempted to seek it."  Other signs of despair, before the Heilingenstadt Testament would be the tragic sadness heard in his Largo of the Piano Sonata in D, Op. 10 (written in 1798) and also the Pathetique Sonata, Op. 13 (written in 1799).

[pianistimo]

Total deafness came over Beethoven in 1818. Maynard Solomon writes of this in his book Late Beethoven (University Press 2003).  He quotes a then philosophical comment that Beethoven was becoming attached to:  "For God, time absolutely does not exist."  Could this explain some of his Late Works being so expansive and reflective.  I personally think so.  And, it explains how alone he felt.  Maynard goes on to explain that Beethoven kept a personal intimate diary (Tagebuch) to which he confided his inmost feelings and desires.

His first entry was, 'You must not be a human being, not for yourself, but only for others; for you there is no longer any happiness except within yourself, in your art.'  So between 1812 and 1818 Beethoven had come to terms with his deafness and basically proclaimed himself a stranger to anything but his music.  Maynard writes, "In his last sonatas he chose to work out possible reconfigurations of musical form and to sound unplumbed depths of expressivity."  The Diabelli Variations would be an example as well, of great working out, and a more dark outlook.

(more to come on Beethoven's doctors...)

[pianistimo]

Beethoven was treated by many, many doctors who prescribed many different things.  One was cold baths, then warm baths by another doctor, mercury used medicinally, the mentioned tree bark (wrapped to his arms), various doctors told him not to drink alcohol (for his liver problems), and he had some ear trumpets that are preserved today at the museum in Bonn.

From 1812 on, Czerny mentioned that Beethoven's friends needed to shout for him to hear anything (which really irritated him, so he avoided social parties and gatherings).  It might be inserted here, before further discussion of his doctors, that Konrad Graf was able to make Beethoven a more powerful toned piano.  He used a stick, I believe, to conduct the sound from the soundboard to his ear.  At least some noise and vibration was allowed to reach him.  In 'Le Cas Beethoven,' author Jean Louis Michaux writes about all the doctors and how they related to Beethoven.  I will simply list their names and go on to the possible reasons for Beethoven's deafness.

[pianistimo]

since there are many books written on this subject - i'm going to save time and skip the list of doctors. 

A post mortem was performed on Beethoven after his death in 1827.  They found "the eusachiantube and facial nerves were very much thickened.  The acoustic nerves on the other hand were wrinkled and were without medulla...the petrovs bones and ossicles were removed and last seen at the Pathology Museum in Vienna, but are since lost."  A lock of hair was removed from Beethoven at the time of death, as well.  This hair was tested and found to show that Beethoven had a high degree of lead (and mercury) in his system.  The mercury was used for medicinal purposes, but the cure was worse than the symptoms being treated.  With all the modern knowledge we have today, several doctors have undergone a thorough analysis of what Beethoven and his doctors wrote about his symptoms, suggested ailments, and treatments.

It was thought for many years that his deafness was a result of a contraction of syphillis (but in some recent studies, Beethoven may have been more of a celibate and simply dreaming of his loves instead of fulfilling any desires).  In PJ Davies book Beethoven In Person, he states that some modern day considerations of his condition would include:
meningo-neuro labryinthitis, typhus, meningitis, brucellosis, sarcoidosis, whipples disease, intenstinal autointoxication, autoimmune disease, sensorial/eural deafness, head injury, paget's disease, and more.

Davies opts for irritable bowel syndrome for Beethoven's recurrent gastro-intestinal problems and alcohol dependency as a disease for consequent cirrhosis of the liver, chronic pancreatitis, and terminal liver failure.  But, in another journal/magazine I found an article entitled 'An Incurable Affliction' that brought out a recent discovery by Dr. Palferman, a rheumatologist at the Yeovil District Hospital in Somerset, England.  He drew the conclusion that from everything he read and autopsy results -  that Beethoven was closer to an ascetic than an alcoholic and found his autopsied liver description quite unlike what one would expect from a cirrhotic liver from alcohol.

[pianistimo]

Dr. Palferman read from the Heilingenstadt Testament about the litany of fevers, infections and abcesses, bronchitis, rheumatism, anxiety, and bouts of prostrations from severe abdominal pain and colic.  Ten  years before he died, Beethoven was stone deaf.  Four years later, he was jaundiced.  A year after that, he was diagnosed with thoratic gout.  Severe pain in his eyes for the next couple of years caused him to 'shun light and bandage his eyes at night.'  "His last years were as hellish as his final music divine."

The conclusion that Dr. Palferman came up with, in light of increasing knowledge about rheumatology and immunology, was that there might be a single explaination for all the multisystem aspects (including deafness).  He suggests that Beethoven sufferred from 'sarcoidosis.'

"Sarcoidosis is a puzzling systematic disease that can affect the lungs, skin, eyes, and almost any other organ or tissue in the body in either its acute or chronic forms.  Although it's cause is unknown, researchers have speculated that it may be caused by a viral or bacterial infection, an immunological disorder, or even an allergic reaction.  He goes on to say, "Diagnosis can be tricky because so many different parts of the body can be affected....and because it can look like certain other maladies, including tuberculosis and certain fungus infections."  It is a pleiomorphic disease, meaning that it can look different ways in different people (just like syphillis or lupus).  What makes it appropriate as a diagnosis for Beethoven's condition is "it appears to explain all of his ills - and they were legion.  There is even a case for it's being responsible for the deafness."

(more later)

[pianistimo]

Dr. Arthur Bookman, a rhumatologist at Toronto General Hospital, is quoted as saying, "If you do very detailed acoustical studies on sarcoid patients, about 25% have some impairment of nerve function.  When sarcoidosis does affect the cochlear nerve (which transmits sound waves as neural impulses to the brain), it tends to do so very early on in the disease, and there's freqently a long latent period - it could be years - between the onset of deafness and other manifestationsof sarcoidosis developing."  Beethoven's eye problems (today identifiable as an inflammatory eye condition called uveitis) is well recognized as being associated with sarcoidosis.  He chest problems (thoratic gout) is a chest disease associated with joint disease.  And, his liver disease would fit.  Even Beethoven's long history of abdominal pain is explained (he had quite large kidney stones, which can cause the most terrible abdominal pains).

[pianistimo]

Beethoven, at the end of his life, did suffer a multisystem disorder:  increasing pain and joint size, evidence of jaundice, liver disease, and the complications one gets from cirrhosis.  He was totally deaf, badly affected with fluid retention, cirrhosis, heart and liver failure, bleeding spontaneously from various orifices, huge distended abdomen from his fluid - it was bad.  If he had lived today, Dr. Palferman says "a regimen of corticosteroids would have been highly effective."  Despite Beethoven's great discomfort and sufferring, he went on to compose the 9th Symphony which had it's first performance only three years before his death.  Also, his last five quartets are masterpieces, including the Grosse Fugue which Stravinsky acknowledged as being 'eternally contemporary.'

[thierry13]

Is music wouldn't have been the same if he would have been hearing. And I don't think that means automatically it would have been better.

[pianistimo]

agreed.  and, the grosse fugue is now at julliard:

www.therestisnoise.com/2006/02/the_great_fugue.html

i want to view it.  how?  go to julliard and ask?  would it be that simple?

of course, once i saw it, then i wouldn't want to leave.  he's sort of like a pop-star to me.  i'd look at his handwriting and memorize details.  trying to keep some sort of memorabilia in my head.  what if??  what if they let me have a facimile?  they could sell them for a good price and make money for julliard (but they probably already thought of that). 

has anyone published it yet?  i thought we were going to be able to see it online!  mr. kovner, where are you? 

www.newyorker.com/critics/music/articles/060206crmu.music  (or click on 'articles' at the above link).

[opus10no2]

He suffered for us, his suffering made him more secluded and forced him inward, he became more introverted, and produced music that reflected his suffering but also shone with hope.
Ever since, we have loved his music and looked upon his example and feel from his music the hope to get through even the most difficult struggles and come out stonger in the end.

Beethoven rox  .

[dnephi]

I don't really like Grosse Fugue