This episode was written & produced by Daniel Semo and Casey Emmerling.

What happens when one of history’s greatest composers begins to lose the very sense he relies on most? In this episode, we explore how Ludwig van Beethoven continued to create groundbreaking music even as his world fell into silence. Along the way, we uncover the myths, inventions, and raw determination that fueled Beethoven’s defiant creativity, and hear how his lifelong struggles are reflected in his music. Featuring musicologist Laura Tunbridge, author of Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces.

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View Transcript ▶︎

Before we get started. This episode is clean as always, but it discusses Beethoven’s experience with isolation, depression, and thoughts of giving up on life. If you have younger listeners who may not be ready for that kind of discussion, you may want to preview it first.

[20K sonic brand]

[music in: Symphony No. 5 Op 67 III Alegro - MusOpen cc license]

I grew up playing trumpet in the school band. And for fifteen years, music was my purpose, my biggest passion, and my escape from a difficult home life. It also sparked my lifelong love of classical music.

Then in college, I decided to pursue conducting. During that time, I did a work study in the music library. Now keep in mind, this was long before Spotify, Youtube, or even Napster. So having thousands of classical recordings at my fingertips felt magical. I’d spend hours getting lost in pieces by Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Bach, and of course Beethoven.

In Beethoven’s music, I could hear pain and joy, struggle and triumph… and those themes became even more powerful when I learned that Beethoven lost his hearing. And yet, he kept composing, all the way until his death.

[music out]

As someone who’s devoted my life to sound, I’ve always wondered, how did that loss affect Beethoven? How did he compose music he could never hear? I’d heard different stories over the years… but with any legendary figure, it's hard to separate the truth from the legend.

To begin to understand someone, the best place to start is with their own words. [Music in: Symphony No. 3 in E Flat Major Eroica, Op. 55 - II. Marcia funebre Adagio assai - MusOpen cc license]

Beethoven: Heiligenstadt, October 6, 1802. For my brothers Karl and Johann Beethoven to be read and executed after my death.

It's the autumn of 1802, in a small Austrian town called Heiligenstadt. Ludwig van Beethoven is at the height of his composing career at only thirty one years old. Now, his home is in the bustling city of Vienna. But for the last five months, at the recommendation of his doctor, he's been staying here in Heiligenstadt.

On October 6th, Beethoven sits down and writes a letter to his brothers.

Beethoven: Oh you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn, or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you.

Beethoven: For six years now, I have been hopelessly afflicted, made worse by senseless physicians, from year to year deceived with hopes of improvement, finally compelled to face the prospect of a lasting malady (whose cure will take years, or perhaps be impossible).

Beethoven's despair is clear in his words. And the thing that's agonizing him is that he's losing his hearing. He's worried that he won't be able to compose anymore.

Beethoven: What a humiliation for me when someone standing next to me heard a flute in the distance, and I heard nothing, or someone heard a shepherd singing, and again I heard nothing. Such incidents drove me almost to despair, a little more of that, and I would have ended my life.

Beethoven never sent that letter. It was only discovered years later, after his death. But what drove him to that point? And how could he ever get past it?

[music out]

Laura Tunbridge: Beethoven had quite a tumultuous upbringing.

That's Laura Tunbridge.

Laura Tunbridge: I'm a professor of music at the University of Oxford, and author of Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces.

[Music in: Piano Sonata No 1 in Fm I Allegro- MusOpen cc license]

Beethoven was born in 1790, in the Austrian city of Bonn. His mother had seven children, four of whom died as infants.

Laura Tunbridge: His father was a musician and was also an alcoholic who was quite aggressive when drunk. And a young Beethoven found that he had to really find his own way in the world, and then also to look after his family.

At age five, his father started teaching him to play piano.

Laura Tunbridge: Beethoven's father wanted his son to be successful, and I think wanted him to be more of a prodigy than he actually was.

For instance, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who was fifteen years older than Beethoven, was considered a prodigy by age six.

Laura Tunbridge: One of the early stories we have of Beethoven's childhood is of his father making his son seem younger than he was in order to sell him as a prodigy in the style of Mozart. So whilst Beethoven was a talented young musician, he wasn't quite of Mozart's class.

[transition to IV - Prestissimo]

Beethoven started his musical career as more of a performer than a composer. He was a talented pianist who would play in church, and in private performances for aristocrats.

Laura Tunbridge: In his early years, I think Beethoven primarily was writing for his own instrument, the piano. This was music for him to play. It wasn't necessarily music to be published that would be shared more widely, but was very much a showcase for him.

[music out with polite applause]

In his early twenties, Beethoven moves to Vienna to study with composer Joseph Haydn.

Laura Tunbridge: He finds a way into the aristocratic circles of Vienna, and gradually finds himself working in genres such as piano sonatas, chamber music, symphonies, opera, choral music...

Slowly but surely, his reputation as a composer grows. He starts publishing his compositions, and getting more funding from wealthy backers. People see him as the successor to Mozart, who had died when Beethoven was twenty. But not everything in his life is going so well.

[music in: Moonlight Sonata - MusOpen - cc license]

In 1801, Beethoven falls in love with one of his piano students, a young woman named Julie Guicciardi. His Moonlight Sonata, which you’re right hearing now, was dedicated to her. But Julie ended up marrying another man. It was a pattern that would happen several times throughout Beethoven's life.

Laura Tunbridge: Beethoven fell in and out of love quite rapidly as a young man, and quite often he was besotted with women who married other people.

But along with his romantic struggles, he also continually struggled with his health.

Laura Tunbridge: Beethoven suffered from a variety of ailments throughout his life. His digestion was always an issue. And also, as a young man, he suffered from asthma.

He had smallpox as a child, which left him with facial scarring. In 2024, samples of Beethoven's hair were tested, and they showed high levels of toxic lead. In his twenties, it's believed he had typhoid fever, which would help explain the issue he's most known for: hearing loss.

Laura Tunbridge: From what we know, Beethoven began to experience hearing loss in his mid twenties, from around the age of 26. And it seems that he began to experience problems with his left ear... [left channel fades]

Laura Tunbridge: And to struggle with hearing higher pitches and words.

[music and Laura's voice become muffled] [designed music out]

Laura Tunbridge: He also suffered from tinnitus, and also from what's called loudness recruitment.

Tinnitus is when a person hears a sound that doesn't come from anything in the real world. It's often experienced as a continuous, high-pitched ringing... [sfx]

But it can also be perceived as a low buzz... [sfx] or a hiss.... [sfx] And it can come and go, seemingly at random. [hiss fades out]

The other condition, called loudness recruitment, is where sounds are perceived as [boost / subtly clip voice] louder than they really are.

Laura Tunbridge: By his early 30s, he's beginning to talk about this to friends and also seeking medical advice. And we have letters to friends admitting that he was struggling with his hearing.

[Music in: Piano Sonata No 12 III - MusOpen cc license]

Beethoven: That jealous demon, my wretched health, has put a nasty spoke in my wheel; and it amounts to this, that for the last three years my hearing has become weaker and weaker.

This is from a letter that Beethoven wrote to a close friend.

Beethoven: My ears are buzzing and ringing perpetually, day and night. I must confess that I lead a miserable life. For almost two years, I have ceased to attend any social functions, just because I find it impossible to say to people: I am deaf! In any other profession this might be more tolerable, but in mine such a condition is truly frightful.

One of the doctors Beethoven was seeing recommended that he go away for a while. Take some time out of the city, and rest in the country air. That’s what brings him to Heiligenstadt, the small town where he writes that anguished letter to his brothers. It became known as the Heiligenstadt Testament.

Laura Tunbridge: It's a long letter that in some ways serves as a will. It's explaining to them that the reason he's been so difficult and unsociable is because of his hearing loss, and he discusses the trauma that's causing him.

Beethoven: No longer can I enjoy recreation in social intercourse, refined conversation, or mutual outpourings of thought. Completely isolated, I only enter society when compelled to do so. I must live like an exile. In company I am assailed by the most painful apprehensions, from the dread of being exposed, to the risk of my condition being observed.

Laura Tunbridge: But then begins to explain how, despite all of this, he's still determined to carry on living and to carry on composing and devoting his life to music.

Beethoven: It was only my art that held me back. Ahh, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt called upon me to produce, and so I endured this wretched existence.

[music out]

The art that held Beethoven back from going over the edge would be some of the deepest, most groundbreaking music in history. Like his Third Symphony, also known as the Eroica Symphony, meaning Heroic. Beethoven started composing it right around the time he wrote that letter.

[music in: Symphony No. 3 Eroica I - MusOpen cc license]

Laura Tunbridge: It's often discussed as being a piece that marks the beginning of what's called his heroic style, or his middle period. And there is a sense in the symphony that he's breaking new ground in terms of taking a conventional form, and making it more dynamic, more dramatic.

Dramatic dynamics are a signature feature of Beethoven’s music. The loud sections are very loud, and the quiet parts are very quiet. And they're often right next to each other.

Laura Tunbridge: One thing that really helps us get to the experience of music for Beethoven, as somebody who's struggling with his hearing is actually the sounds that he asks instruments to make.

Laura Tunbridge: And so really extreme contrasts and dynamics can be ways in which you think, "Well actually, if this is at the edge of your hearing, what do you think that music is trying to do? Or if you have really loud passages, how does that respond to a visceral experience that one might have of sound?"

The third symphony was radical for a lot of reasons. At fifty minutes, it was longer than any symphony before it. It did things with rhythm and harmony that no one else had even tried before. Beethoven originally dedicated it to Napoleon, but then retracted that dedication when he learned that Napoleon had declared himself an emperor.

But to me, the thing that’s most impressive about this piece is the sheer musical power that it brings out of an orchestra. You can imagine Beethoven standing in the center of these musicians, feeling the soundwaves vibrate through his body, and all the way up through the rafters.

[End of Symphony]

The Eroica Symphony helped solidify Beethoven's place as one of the greats, like Bach and Mozart. But for him, it was getting harder and harder to make this music.

[SFX in: Tuning orchestra slowly muffled into Tinnitus]

Laura Tunbridge: We know that he began to struggle to hear some of the higher pitched wind instruments in rehearsal. So it's also a way in which you can think about how Beethoven's medical situation begins to impact his professional life.

But Beethoven was determined to keep making music.

[music in: Sonata 1 Cello - MusOpen cc license]

So he started experimenting with unique inventions to work around his hearing loss. And this is where the fact and fiction around Beethoven really starts to blur.

That's coming up, after the break.

[music out] MIDROLL

[music in - Fur Elise - Pixbay royalty free]

By the start of the 19th century, Ludwig van Beethoven had become one of the most famous composers in Europe. He had taken the mantle from Mozart and Haydn and was revolutionizing what orchestras could do.

At the same time, he was dealing with a profound personal struggle. His hearing was getting worse and worse, making him anxious, withdrawn, and unable to connect with people. But his passion for music kept him going.

Laura Tunbridge: One of the interesting things about Beethoven's hearing loss, despite all of the distress it obviously caused him, was that he was still determined to compose. He never really considers giving up composing and making music. He knows that he has to find a way to work around his hearing loss to do so. [music out]
So Beethoven started trying different things to mitigate his hearing loss. For communication, he started carrying around what he called conversation books. These were notebooks where people would write down what they wanted to say to him, and he would respond using his voice. Laura Tunbridge: Beethoven from 1818 conducted a number of conversations through these notebooks, so we have one-sided conversations remaining where we can tell the subject of conversations that Beethoven was having with various visitors, and friends, and family.

[music in: Piano Sonata No 32 I - MusOpen cc license]

When it came to composing, Beethoven could draw from a deep knowledge of musical theory. This meant that he could write out ideas away from the piano, and still hear them in his head.

He also learned to rely on the physical sensation of music. When he would improvise for hours on the piano, he had a sense of when the music felt right under his fingers… And he could feel when the instrument was resonating the way he wanted it to.

Laura Tunbridge: One of the things I find really compelling about some of the work on Beethoven's later music is the dependence on vibration, on the tactile experience of instruments that might, in some ways, be sensed within, say, the late piano sonatas.

[music out into music in: String Quartet Finale Menu Mossos - Epidemic Sound]

There are also accounts of Beethoven sitting in the middle of a string quartet as they rehearsed a new piece he had written.

Laura Tunbridge: It's not necessarily that he can hear everything, but he can tell from gestures, and following the score, and his musical knowledge what's in time, where a fingering won't work, how something might come together in a more synchronous way. You can tell that he's still very much in the inner workings of his music.

[music out]

But Beethoven also looked for help in the latest technologies.

Laura Tunbridge: As he's losing his hearing, he is somebody who is always interested in inventions, and amongst them is an idea of using ear trumpets.

An ear trumpet is a handheld metal tube. It has a small hole at one end for your ear, and a large open cone at the other end for sound to come in.

Laura Tunbridge: These are basically like reverse megaphones, so they collect and direct sounds to the listener. We know that Beethoven had a collection of these of different scales in terms of size. Some he could wear via a headband, so that he could have his hands free whilst he played at the piano.

[music in: Piano Sonata No 29 - MusOpen cc license]

Beethoven was also at the forefront of keyboard technology. Piano makers in England and France would send their latest models directly to him. Some of these featured larger hammers, and thicker soundboards, which is what amplifies the sound of the vibrating strings. The result was louder, more resonant pianos.

Laura Tunbridge: And then later on in 1820, the piano maker Andre Stein worked with Beethoven on creating what's translated as a “hearing machine.”

The exact Hearing Machine that Stein built has been lost to history, but there are some clues about what it looked like. Some of these come from the writings that Stein left in Beethoven’s conversation books. For instance, there were some early ideas of a wooden box with a couple of horns pointed at the player's ears. In the end, they settled on a kind of arched tube over the body of the piano, with the open end pointing towards Beethoven.

Laura Tunbridge: Basically a half dome that's put over a keyboard, so that you can capture more of the sound and more of the vibrations of the instruments.

[music out]

In 2017, a group of researchers at the Orpheus Institute in Belgium built several replicas of Beethoven's hearing machine.

According to the researchers, the Hearing Machine produced an overall volume boost of about 3 to 4 decibels. That’s about twenty three to thirty two percent higher in perceived volume. It also boosted frequencies down around a hundred and twenty five Hertz... [B2 note on piano] And up around four thousand Hertz. [B7 on piano]

Over the years, there have been lots of stories about the things Beethoven did to cope with his hearing loss. One of these showed up in the 1995 film Mr Holland's Opus, starring Richard Dreyfus. In the movie, Dreyfus plays a high school music teacher whose son is born deaf. In one scene, he addresses his class as Beethoven's 7th Symphony plays in the background.

Mr. Holland’s Opus: There is a story that, in order to write his music, Beethoven literally sawed the legs off his piano so that he could lay the body flat on the ground. And then, he would lay down on the ground next to the piano with his ear pressed to the floor. And he would pound the keys with his fingers in order to hear his music through the vibrations of the floor.

It's a great story. But there's not much evidence that happened exactly like that. However, several people who knew Beethoven wrote about him pressing his ear against the piano while he played, especially to hear the high notes. But again, there isn’t much evidence for it.

[Music in: 9th Symphony a Final Movement - YT SpatMusic No Copyright]

** Another well known story is set on the premier night of Beethoven's ninth and final Symphony. The premier took place on May 7th, 1824 at a prestigious theater in Vienna. It had been over a decade since Beethoven had published a symphony, or even performed piano in public.**

By that point, it was well known that he was completely deaf, which only added to the anticipation. While Beethoven was officially billed as the conductor that night, there was another conductor onstage next to him, who the musicians were told to follow.

According to the story, when the music ended… [final note + rumble] Beethoven kept conducting, not knowing they were finished. Then, one of the singers tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around and saw the audience giving a huge standing ovation.

[morph into clear applause]

According to Laura, this one probably isn’t too far off.

Laura Tunbridge: Now, it seems from other accounts of the premiere that actually it was after the scherzo movement that Beethoven was tapped on the shoulder.

That's a little less than halfway through. [Symphony 9 scherzo movement out + applause]

Laura Tunbridge: At that point perhaps nobody would have expected applause in the middle of the symphony. So you can tell that in this challenging premiere environment, you have Beethoven standing next to the conductor, something of a distraction, and himself lost in the music, then being turned around to realise how appreciative the audience have been. The 9th Symphony would be one of Beethoven's last compositions. He was fifty three years old, and his health was rapidly declining.

[Music in: Three Equals on 4 trombones - MIDI version]

Laura Tunbridge: Beethoven suffered from a variety of illnesses throughout his life, and these increased through the 1820s. It seems that he suffered in the end, primarily from liver disease. And after a summer of relative happiness and productivity in 1826, he became ill, returned to Vienna, took to his bed and spent the last few months there until he died in March, 1827.

Beethoven's funeral was a huge procession through the streets of Vienna. Around ten thousand people attended. During the procession, they performed pieces by Mozart, Schubert, and this trombone piece by Beethoven himself. [music out]

**Almost immediately after his death, the myth around Beethoven started to grow. And this only increased with the discovery of unsent letters like the Heiligenstadt Testament… as well as a love letter to someone he called the "Immortal Beloved".

[Music in: 9th Symphony “Ode to Joy” - YT Spat Music No Copyright]

Laura Tunbridge: Beethoven came of age in some ways during a time when myths about great men were particularly popular. It's the period when Romantic authors are really blurring the divide between life and art. And Beethoven in some ways becomes the composer who most obviously embodies that, because he has a personal struggle to overcome in order to create great works. And then we have the alluring combination of a lot of documentation about Beethoven's life, and a lot of gaps.

We can only imagine what Beethoven's fate would have been if he were around today. He might be using state-of-the-art hearing aids powered by AI. Or he might get surgery to get a cochlear implant, which can stimulate the auditory nerve directly.

But of course, he didn’t have access to any of that. And yet, even after the world around him faded to silence, Beethoven kept creating. The passion that fueled him just wouldn't let him stop. And those creations stand as some of the most beautiful, timeless pieces of music ever composed.

Laura Tunbridge: So, the possibility of imagining yourself into the mind of a composer who can't hear, of somebody who's often in love but never marries, of somebody who overcomes all kinds of difficulties in order to create. All of these things are immensely attractive to writers, to listeners. They allow a way into the music, but also encourage us to think imaginatively about what it must be to create.

[music up, then out into music in: Moonlight Sonata III Presto - MusOpen cc license]

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the sound design studios of Defacto Sound. Hear more at defacto sound dot com.

Other Voices: This episode was written and produced by Daniel Semo, and Casey Emmerling, with help from Grace East. It was sound designed and mixed by Graham Gold and Colin DeVarney.

Thanks to our guest, Laura Tunbridge. Laura's book is called Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces. You can get it wherever books are sold, and it's also available as an audiobook.

I'm Dallas Taylor. Thanks for listening.

[music out]