Heard with Beethoven's ear

Manuscript: Martella Gutiérrez-Denhoff  
Filtering: Wolfgang Hess  
Sound engineers: Hans-Martin Renz, Ernst Hartmann  
CD (out of stock):  
Direction: Peter Behrendsen  
Producer: Wolf Werth  
Production: Germany  
Recording: 9 October 2002 and 30 September 2003  
A Deutschlandfunk broadcast from 25 October 2002
© 2003/2004 Beethoven-Haus Bonn

[1] Pastoral Symphony op. 68, end of 2nd movement: Berliner Philharmoniker, conductor Herbert von Karajan (1:32; 1,9 MB) '… imagine my humiliation when someone standing beside me heard a flute in the distance and I heard - nothing! or someone heard a shepherd singing and again I heard - nothing! Such incidents brought me to the verge of despair …' 

These words come from the most moving document handed down to us by Ludwig van Beethoven, the 'Heiligenstadt Testament'. Beethoven wrote this 'Testament' on 6 October 1802 to his brothers Carl and Johann from the Viennese suburb of Heiligenstadt, where he spent many a summer and autumn.

Let's listen to the beginning of this document:

[2] Heiligenstadt Testament (2:56; 4.2 MB): 'Oh ye who regard or proclaim me to be malevolent, obdurate, or misan-thropic, you do me a grave injustice, for you know nothing of the secret cause that makes me appear to you in this way. From earliest childhood my heart and soul were filled with tender feelings of goodwill; never for a moment was I disinclined to perform even great deeds. Yet consider that for the last six years I have been afflicted with an incurable ailment, worsened by uncomprehending physicians and deceived from year to year with vain hopes of improvement. Ultimately I have been forced to face the prospect of a lasring malady whose eure, if possible at all, will perhaps take years to bring about. Though born with a fiery and boisteraus temperament, even susceptible to the diversions of society, I was soon compelled to keep myself apart and to conduct my life in solitude. If ever I tried to surmount these woes, oh how cruelly I was flung back by the doubly unhappy realization that I am hard of hearing. It was not yet wirhin my powers to say to people, "Speak more loudly, shout, for I am deaf." Ah, how could I possibly admit to an impairment in that very faculty that ought by rights tobe more highly developed in me than in other men, a faculty that I once possessed to the highest degree of perfection, a perfection such as few in my profession enjoy or ever have enjoyed. Oh, it is still beyond my powers! Therefore forgive me when you see me withdraw, however gladly I would prefer to tarry in your midst.'

Beethoven's despair becomes completely clear in the addition he made four days later on the address page of this document: 
'Thus, with sadness of heart, I bid thee farewell. As the leaves of autumn fall and wither, so too am I am fully abandoned by the fond hope I brought with me: the hope of finding at least a partial eure. Now this hope, too, is withered and blighted. I leave this place almost as I came; even the high spirits that so often inspired me in the beautiful days of summer have vanished. Oh Providence, grant me but one day of unalloyed joy. lt has been so lang since I have feit the inti-mate reverberations of true joy. When, oh when, Divine One, shall I feel them again in the temple of Nature and Mankind. Never? No, that would be too cruel!'

So when Beethoven wrote this, he was almost 32 years old and had already been suffering from typical signs of his hearing disease for some time: he could no longer hear the shepherd's flute as he was now suffering from 'loss of high frequencies', among other things. For him, the passage from his 6th Symphony that we heard at the beginning might have sounded like this:

[3] Pastoral Symphony op. 68, end of 2nd movement (filtered): Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Herbert von Karajan (0:56; 1,0 MB)

[4] A brief excursion into the human ear illustrates how this phenomenon of high-frequency loss occurs: Every tone, every sound that we hear, is transmitted from the eardrum via the three middle ear bones - the malleus, anvil and stapes - to the inner ear. In the inner ear, which is coiled like a snail, there are auditory sensory cells, small hairs that transmit the sound to the brain via the auditory nerve. High-pitched sounds are received at the front of the cochlea, while lower-pitched sounds are received further back. If these hair cells are damaged, they can no longer receive and transmit the frequency ranges assigned to them in full quality. Hearing damage therefore initially manifests itself in what is known as ‘high-frequency loss’, as the hair cells of the inner ear responsible for this frequency spectrum are closest to the eardrum. However, the loss of high frequencies not only means that you can no longer hear high tones as well, an experience that we all have as we get older, it also means that the frequency spectrum becomes flatter and speech becomes more incomprehensible as a result.

The fact that Beethoven had to ‘isolate himself from society’ was not least due to the fact that he could no longer follow conversations well. A conversation between two outsiders must have sounded as dull to Beethoven as the following fictitious dialogue between Prince Lichnowsky and the violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh:

[5] Schuppanzigh: My dear Prince Lichnowsky, have you also noticed that Beethoven's hearing is getting worse and worse?
Lichnowsky: Yes, my dear Schuppanzigh, I've noticed that too. Recently he was a guest at an evening party in the Palais. At first he took an active part in the conversation, but when the discussions became more heated and wildly confused, I noticed how he just looked into the fire. He was obviously no longer able to follow what was being said.
Schuppanzigh: When he is present at one of our quartet rehearsals, he always sits near the two violins, so I have to be careful not to hurt him with my violin bow.
Lichnowsky: Beethoven had music in his head and in his inner ear from an early age. Fortunately, he will never lose it. But it is sad for his everyday life. He, who needs people, feels excluded from larger societies. And he, who loves nature so much, can no longer hear the birds. And of course he can only hear his own music to a very limited extent.

[6] String Quartet in F minor op. 95, beginning of 2nd movement (filtered): Amadeus Quartet (1:03; 1,2 MB)

[7] Beethoven was also afflicted by two other symptoms: firstly, agonising noises in his ears, which doctors call ‘tinnitus’. There are many variations of this head or ear noise. But no matter which noise constantly afflicted our ears, we all find it unpleasant.

Tinnitus sounds

Another phenomenon of Beethoven's progressive hearing loss was a hypersensitivity to sound, which causes loud sounds to be perceived as particularly and unpleasantly loud. The medical profession calls this 'hyperacusis'. Beethoven's pupil and friend Ferdinand Ries was able to observe such hypersensitivity: During the brief bombardment of Vienna by the French in 1809, Beethoven was very anxious; he spent most of his time in a cellar with his brother Kaspar, where he still covered his head with pillows so as not to hear the cannons.

[8] Wellington's Victory op. 91, beginning 'Battle' (filtered): Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Herbert von Karajan (0:43; 1 MB)

[9] Beethoven had consulted many different doctors about his ailments since the age of 30. Dr Johann Peter Frank was one of them. Beethoven reported to his childhood friend Franz Gerhard Wegeler from Vienna in June 1801:

'My hearing has been getting weaker and weaker for 3 years, and this is said to have been caused by my abdomen. Frank wanted to restore the sound to my body with strengthening medicine and my hearing with almond oil, but nothing came of it, my hearing got worse and worse. (...) My ears continue to buzz and roar day and night. (...) To give you an idea of this wonderful deafness, I will tell you that in the theatre I have to lean very close to the orchestra in order to understand the actor. I do not hear the high notes of instruments, singing voices, when I am a little distant; in speaking it is to be wondered at that there are people who have never noticed it; as I have mostly been distracted, it is thought to be so. Sometimes, too, I can hardly hear the person who is speaking softly; yes, I can hear the sounds, but not the words; and yet as soon as someone shouts, I find it unbearable.'

Even at this early stage of his illness, Beethoven must have listened to his music with some restrictions: He had tinnitus, a constant ‘buzzing and roaring’ in his ears. He suffered from ‘hyperacusis’, i.e. he heard loud sounds particularly loudly, and the loss of high frequencies made the overall sound dull and speech more difficult to understand. Today, all of this is taken as a sign of sensorineural hearing loss, which is either due to an infectious disease, otosclerosis - a pathological bone change in the middle ear - or apoptosis - a programmed, in this case premature cell death of the hair cells in the inner ear. Beethoven may therefore have heard his 5th Symphony at the premiere in December 1808 as follows:

[10] Symphony No. 5 op. 67, beginning of 1st movement (with filter and tinnitus): New York Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor L. Bernstein (2:50; 3,7 MB)

To our healthy ears, the passage sounds like this:

[11] Symphony  No. 5 op.  67, beginning 1st movement

Almond oil was one of the many attempts Beethoven made to treat his hearing problem during the course of his life. Every doctor prescribed a different therapy, but neither almond oil, nor horseradish cotton, nor warm Danube baths helped.

His deafness continued to progress. By around 1814/15, Beethoven was as good as deaf in his right ear. At this time he tried to get help with mechanical devices. In 1812, he met the mechanic Johann Nepomuk Maelzel, who became known in Vienna for his musical machines and to posterity in connection with the metronome. Maelzel constructed various ear trumpets for Beethoven.
Four ear trumpet models are on display at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn. The smaller tubes were primarily used to amplify the high resonances, the larger ones to amplify the low resonances. It is difficult to say how great the effect actually was.

At any rate, these devices seem to have helped Beethoven temporarily, as he noted in his diary in 1815:

'The Maelzel machine is the most powerful …  you should have several in the room for music, speaking and according to the size of the hall.'

From later years, visitors to Beethoven, for example the Berlin librarian Dr Spicker, report a kind of large bell on the grand piano:

'Unfortunately, his hard hearing (which was also the cause of a peculiar device attached to his grand pianoforte, a kind of sound box under which he sat when he played and which was intended to catch and concentrate the sound around him) made conversation with him very tedious.'

If Beethoven, for example, had played his piano piece in A minor, which later became world-famous under the title 'For Elise', to the lady for whom it was intended, he might have heard its first part with his deaf ears without additional aids as follows:

[12] For Elise (beginning) (filtered): Anatol Ugorski (3:58; 4,5 MB)

Under the bell or with an ear trumpet about 20 cm long, the following probably still remained:

Music: For Elise (beginning) (filtered and with ear trumpet)

Fortunately, healthy ears can hear this passage as it is:

Music: For Elise (beginning)

[13] However, despite all of Beethoven's attempts to amplify his remaining hearing with the help of various devices, the environment became increasingly silent for the deaf composer. According to a report by his pupil Carl Czerny, Beethoven had not been able to hear any music since 1817. From around this time, he was also no longer able to hold coherent conversations. He resorted to another aid, the so-called 'conversation notebooks'. The young Ferdinand Hiller had experienced such a semi-written conversation with Beethoven during a visit and later wrote it down several times.

'It is known that the oral conversation with Beethoven was partly conducted in writing, he spoke, but those with whom he spoke had to write down their questions and answers. To this end, thick notebooks of ordinary writing paper in quarto format and pencils were always lying near him. How embarrassing it must have been for the lively, even slightly impatient man to have to wait for every answer. … He also followed the writer's hand with a greedy eye and overlooked the writing with a glance rather than reading it.'

The surriving 138 notebooks, which are kept in the Berlin State Library, give us an interesting insight into Beethoven's everyday life.

Beethoven's parts of the conversation are generally not preserved in the conversation notebooks, as the other person could hear him. The conversation must be deduced from the entries made by Beethoven's dialogue partners. The following excerpt from such a conversation book shows that this is not so easy. Here we can hear the interlocutors whose words we can read in the notebooks today. We have to guess Beethoven's parts of the conversation, which, as already mentioned, are missing in the notebooks, as he could reply to his counterpart in speech.

Let's go to the inn 'To the Wild Man' in Vienna, where Beethoven's String Quartet in A minor op. 132 was performed in September 1825. Alongside Beethoven, we meet the English musician George Smart and the publisher of the quartet, Maurice Schlesinger.
Instead of the parts of Beethoven's dialogue that we do not know, an acoustic signal (***) appears.

[14] Smart: 'Did you think of Dragonetti in the recitatives of the D minor Symphony?'
***  
'Dragonetti did not take part in the symphony because he demanded too much for his contribution; he claimed that Beethoven had written the whole symphony for him.'
***  
'To your health'
***  
'and eternal fertility.'
***  
'Many more quartets like today's, my dearest, if you want to write more of the same.'
***  
'Quartets, though without # [cross] and B flat; Mylord will play as well as he plays whist.'
***  
Schlesinger: 'I have said that everything you are to write depends on your nephew, and Falstaff has said no, what Beethoven writes is written by him.'
***  
Smart: 'When is Mephistophilos Rochlitz due to arrive from Leipzig?'
***  
Schlesinger: 'But I say that Cherubini has such a great reverence for a certain Beethoven that when one speaks of him his figure once again becomes so long with attention – '
***  
'it is a great man'
***  
'Haydn has written an opera entitled little Tobias'
***  
'I told Tobias today that Beethoven will immortalise you and the Paternoster alley.'

[15] Up to the age of 48, Beethoven had to accept a continuous decline in his hearing. If he had repeatedly played the same piece to himself during this time, for example every three years, such as a few bars from his Pathétique Sonata, and if there had been a kind of auditory record of this, it might have summarised his deafness in fast motion in something like this way:

[16] Piano Sonata op. 13 (Pathétique), from the 1st movement (filtered): Rudolf Serkin (0:41; 0,7 MB)

[17] Beethoven will have come to terms with his situation at some point. After all, he had 'stored' music in his head since childhood, which made it possible for him to continue composing. Beethoven's increasing deafness was much more of a hindrance when he performed his own music in public. As a pianist, he had already withdrawn from public concert life in 1814. The composer Louis Spohr had contact with Beethoven between 1812 and 1816, when he lived in Vienna, and had also experienced him as the pianist of his 'Archduke Trio' during this time. He later wrote about this in his self-biography:

'It was not a pleasure to listen to; first of all, the pianoforte was very poorly tuned, which did not bother Beethoven much, since he could not hear it anyway, and secondly, almost nothing remained of the artist's once-admired virtuosity as a result of his deafness. In forte, the poor deaf man struck the keys so hard that the strings clattered, and in piano he played so softly that entire groups of notes were omitted, so that one lost the thread unless one could look at the piano part at the same time.'

[18] Bagatelle op. 126 No. 2 (filtered): Anatol Ugorski (2:12; 2,5 MB)

We don't know whether Beethoven's piano playing was really that bad at this time. In later years, Beethoven continued to sit down at the piano in small groups, mostly to improvise. This is how George Smart experienced him during his visit to Vienna in September 1825. According to Smart's diary, Beethoven extemporised 'in a most extraordinary manner, sometimes very fortissimo, but full of genius'. And afterwards, Beethoven was 'plenty of jokes, in the highest of spirits'

[19] Beethoven also continued to perform as a conductor of his own works for a long time. However, his increasing deafness naturally had an effect here too. The premiere of the 9th Symphony on 7 May 1824 was also memorable in this respect, as the violinist Josef Böhm reported:

'They studied with the diligence and conscientiousness that such a huge and difficult piece of music demanded. It was produced. A splendid, extremely large auditorium listened with rapt attention and gave enthusiastic, rousing applause. Beethoven conducted himself, i.e. he stood in front of a conductor's podium and moved back and forth like a madman. Sometimes he stretched up high, sometimes he crouched down to the ground, flapping his hands and feet as if he wanted to play all the instruments and sing the whole choir. - The actual conducting was in Duport's hands, we musicians only looked at his baton. - Beethoven was so excited that he couldn't see what was going on around him, that he didn't even pay attention to the storm of applause, which of course he could hardly hear because of his hearing impairment. - He had to be told when it was time to thank the audience for their applause, which Beethoven did in an awkward manner.'

Indeed, Beethoven could not even perceive the thunderous applause, nor could he feel it from his excitement over the surely strongly vibrating wooden floor; Beethoven had to be turned round so that he could at least see the thunderous applause. And he will at best have heard shadows of sound like this from the large choir and the full orchestra during the ‘Ode to Joy’:

[20] 9th Symphony op. 125, Ode to Joy (filtered): Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Herbert von Karajan (1:46; 2.2 MB)

You almost shudder when you hear this passage now in full sound and at normal volume:

Music: 9th Symphony op. 125, Ode to Joy

[21] In the last years of his life, Beethoven primarily wrote his great string quartets, which in their dimensions, tonal language and formal radicalism go far beyond the string quartet works of his time. The String Quartet in B flat major op. 130, which Beethoven completed soon after moving into his last residence in the 'Schwarzspanierhaus' was premiered in its first version, i.e. with the 'great fugue' as the final movement, on 21 March 1826. The great fugue is a work that goes to extremes in every respect.

Music: Great Fugue for String Quartet op. 133, beginning

However, Beethoven's ear will perhaps have been left with the following at best:

[22] Great Fugue for String Quartet op. 133, beginning (filtered): Amadeus Quartet (1:39; 2,1 MB)

[23] But Beethoven certainly followed the quartet in detail with his inner ear during the performance, just as he had written it from this idea. We can see how concise Beethoven's tonal conception of the composition was from the fact that he was not satisfied with the arrangement of the fugue for piano four hands that the composer Anton Halm had made on behalf of a publisher. It did not correspond to the tonal translation of his musical ideas, so that Beethoven finally produced a 4-hand piano version of the string quartet fugue himself, which was then published as op. 134.

Fortunately, Beethoven's creative power was independent of his physical ailments - which did not only affect his hearing. And what he wrote seems to have been independent of the composer's physical condition at the time. In the period when Beethoven wrote the Heiligenstadt Testament, a document of great depression, he composed works as diverse in character as the Violin Sonatas op. 30, the Piano Sonatas op. 31, the Bagatelles op. 33 and the music jokes and dances.

'Only she, art, held me back' Beethoven wrote in his Heiligenstadt Testament.

'Oh, it seemed impossible to me to leave the world until I had produced everything that I felt I was meant to do.'

Beethoven felt inspired to write more and more new works until the end of his life. He wanted to follow the ninth symphony with a tenth. After completing his work on the large string quartets, he planned to compose a string quintet. He had already put 48 bars of it on paper before he died. These bars were published as ‘Beethoven's last musical thought’ in a version for piano after his death. And perhaps such a piano version reflects what Beethoven would have imagined in his head and perhaps reviewed with the help of the piano. He would not have been able to actually hear this either, but only in his inner ear. Perhaps like this?

[24] Last musical thought (WoO 62) 'in the head': Ronald Brautigam (3:01; 3.5 MB)

Overview
[1] Pastoral Symphony: Birds Berliner Philharmoniker, conductor Herbert von Karajan (1:32; 1,9 MB)
[2] Heiligenstadt Testament (2:56; 4,2 MB)
[3] Pastoral Symphony: Birds (filtered) Berliner Philharmoniker, conductor Herbert von Karajan (0:56; 1,0 MB)
[4] How this phenomenon of high-frequency loss occurs ... (1:26; 1,5 MB)
[5] Conversation between Ignaz Schuppanzigh and Prince Lichnowsky (1:03; 1 MB)
[6] String Quartet in F minor op. 95, beginning of 2nd movement (filtered) Amadeus Quartett (1:03; 1,2 MB)
[7] Two other symptoms also plagued Beethoven ... (1:07; 1,2 MB)
[8] Wellington's Victory op. 91, beginning (filtered) Berliner Philharmoniker, conductor Herbert von Karajan (0:43; 1 MB)
[9] Beethoven had many different doctors ... (2:04; 2,6 MB)
[10] Symphony No. 5 op. 67, beginning (filtered with tinnitus background + unfiltered) New York Philharmoniker, conductor L. Bernstein (2:50; 3,7 MB)
[11] Almond oil was one of the many therapy attempts ... (2:07; 2,4 MB)
[12] For Elise, beginning (filtered) Anatol Ugorski (3:58; 4,5 MB)
[13] But despite all attempts ... (2:37; 3 MB)
[14] Conversation in the pub (1:33; 2,3 MB)
[15] Until the age of 48 ... (0:27; 0,5 MB)
[16] Piano Sonata Pathétique op. 13, opening bars (filters 0-6) Rudolf Serkin (0:41; 0,7 MB)
[17] Beethoven will have come to terms with his situation at some point ... (1:14; 1,5 MB)
[18] Bagatelle op. 126 No. 2 (filtered) Anatol Ugorski (2:12; 2,5 MB)
[19] As a conductor of his own works ... (1:45; 2,3 MB)
[20] Symphony op.125, Ode to Joy (filtered and unfiltered) Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Herbert von Karajan (1:46; 2,2 MB)
[21] In the last years of his life ... (Beginning of the Great Fugue op. 133, unfiltered) (2:23; 3 MB)
[22] Beginning Great Fugue op. 133 (filtered) Amadeus Quartett (1:39; 2,1 MB)
[23] But with his inner ear ... (2:22; 2,5 MB)
[24] Last musical thought WoO 62 'in the head' Ronald Brautigam (3:01; 3,5 MB)