At the premiere of Beethoven's 9th Symphony he could not hear the roaring applause from the audience at the conclusion of the performance. He was directed by someone to turn around so he could see the people applauding.
We tend to think of it as tragic yet ironically his deafness, after initial despair, simply spurred him on with greater determination. And in some ways his deafness allowed him to focus more completely on his composing. It gave him a unique perspective. He could imagine in his "minds ear" what his compositions would sound like.
Beethoven is actually one musical artist whom I don't want to hear the entire output of anytime soon. Not because I don't like it- the opposite. Because I know that if I hear it all, there will be nothing of his left to look forward to hearing! I like to have a sense of anticipation. Maybe someday if I reach 99 I might decide to finally listen to those Beethoven pieces I never got round to listening to, but personally I don't want to eat all the musical cookies in the jar at once.
Ludwig Von Beethoven would have fitted in quite comfortable in the 1970s DEEP PURPLE plus Ritchie use to play a full-on rock band version of Beethoven's 9th Symphony when he was in RAINBOW during the 1981-84 era and also during the re-formed 1980s DEEP PURPLE.
A Jon Lord quote from 1973-
"Deep Purple are as valid as anything Beethoven ever did".
Maybe old Ludwig could have been Jon Lord's Hammond organ tech??.
LG, on the subject of LvB...we attended a funeral last week of the husband of a good friend of my wife, and he was a great life long lover of Beethoven, and his family requested that my wife, along with 3 of her colleagues from the orchestra she plays with, should play the very short adagio movement from the Beethoven Opus 131 C sharp minor string quartet as the coffin was being carried out of the church at the end of the service, and I have to say it was quite overwhelming. For me the Beethoven quartets are amongst the most miraculous sequences in western chamber music, and this short movement is almost unbearably poignant, and as you would imagine it made for an extremely moving farewell as the funeral party left the church. It was composed by a totally deaf Beethoven in the last year of his life, to me it's incomprehensible how he achieved such perfection in his deafness with all of those late works, in musical terms it's the equivalent of Michelangelo being blind - but somehow still managing to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel....
Not only did he compose his masterpieces when he was virtually deaf but he conducted his new Symphonies to the orchestra. Now that is nearly like driving a car blindfolded.
John Suchet is doing a wonderful Beethoven series on Classic FM every Saturday evening this year. Very enlightening listening it is too. Really gets inside the character of the man and plays pieces not often heard.
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