Was Beethoven Completely Deaf When He Wrote the Ninth Symphony? What the Evidence Shows

Beethoven was severely deaf when he wrote the Ninth Symphony between 1822 and 1824, but probably not completely deaf. By 1818 his hearing had deteriorated so badly that visitors had to write their side of the conversation in notebooks. Yet according to the evidence collected by historians, he never became totally deaf: he could still detect low tones and sudden loud sounds. For practical purposes, though, he could no longer hear an orchestra the way his audience did, which makes the Ninth all the more astonishing. He composed it largely from the music he could hear in his head.

A difficult childhood in Bonn

Ludwig van Beethoven was baptised in Bonn on 17 December 1770; his birthday is traditionally given as 16 December, though that date is not documented. His first music teacher was his father, Johann, a musician at the court in Bonn. Johann's drinking eventually cost him his post: in 1789 he was forced to retire because of chronic alcoholism.

The young Beethoven found a better guide in Christian Gottlob Neefe, who became his most important teacher in Bonn from around 1780. In November 1792 he moved permanently to Vienna, the musical capital of Europe, and studied with Joseph Haydn. There he began to build his career as a pianist and composer.

When did Beethoven start going deaf?

The trouble began just as his career was taking off. Beethoven later told the English musician Charles Neate that his hearing loss had started in 1798, during a quarrel with a singer. By 1801 he was describing his symptoms in letters to friends. For a musician, and especially for a performing pianist, it was a nightmare.

His pupil Carl Czerny later said that Beethoven could still hear speech and music normally until around 1812. After that the decline was steep. At a performance in 1814 the composer Louis Spohr noticed that the piano was badly out of tune, and Beethoven did not seem to notice. In 1825 he even commissioned a piano with four strings per note, hoping it would be loud enough for him to hear; it did not work.

The Heiligenstadt Testament

In 1802, while staying in the village of Heiligenstadt outside Vienna, Beethoven wrote an extraordinary letter to his brothers. In it he admitted that his deafness had brought him to thoughts of suicide, and explained that only his art had held him back. He never sent it. The document, now known as the Heiligenstadt Testament, was found among his papers after his death.

The letter is often read as a turning point. Instead of giving up, Beethoven entered one of his most productive periods. Two years later he was working on the Third Symphony, originally titled "Bonaparte". When Napoleon declared himself emperor in 1804, Beethoven scratched out the name, and the work was published in 1806 "to celebrate the memory of a great man".

The conversation books

From around 1818, Beethoven and his visitors communicated in writing. Friends, publishers and family wrote questions and news in small notebooks. These "conversation books" covered music, money and private life, and 136 of them, covering 1819 to 1827, survive in the Berlin State Library, with two more in the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn.

They come with a warning, however. His secretary and early biographer Anton Schindler later inserted fake entries to make himself look more important. The old claim that Schindler destroyed most of the books has been shown to be exaggerated, but his forgeries mean historians must read the books carefully.

The night of the Ninth

The Ninth Symphony premiered on 7 May 1824 at the Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna. Beethoven shared the stage with the official conductor, Michael Umlauf. Umlauf had reportedly told the musicians to ignore Beethoven's gestures and follow him instead.

The most famous story about that evening is that, when the music ended, the contralto Caroline Unger turned Beethoven around so that he could see the applause he could not hear. It is a moving scene, but it rests on a single second-hand account, and historians treat it with caution. Less romantic but certain: the concert was expensive to stage, and Beethoven earned little from it.

Why the Ninth was revolutionary

The Ninth was the first major symphony to bring singers into the orchestra. Its finale sets words largely taken from Friedrich Schiller's poem "Ode to Joy", with some lines added by Beethoven. It runs about 65 to 70 minutes, much longer than a typical symphony of its time.

Its later life is remarkable. In 1972 the Council of Europe adopted the music of the finale, without words, as the Anthem of Europe, and the European Communities adopted it in 1985. In 2001 Beethoven's manuscript became the first musical score added to UNESCO's Memory of the World Register.

The last years

Beethoven's final years were troubled. After his brother Kaspar died in 1815, he fought a long legal battle for custody of his nephew Karl. In 1826 Karl attempted suicide; he survived and later joined the army. Musically, though, Beethoven was still exploring: he wrote a series of daring late string quartets, and he considered the String Quartet No. 14 his most perfect single work.

He fell ill in December 1826 and died in Vienna on 26 March 1827, aged 56. The autopsy found serious liver damage, and proposed causes include alcoholic cirrhosis, hepatitis and lead poisoning; the debate is still open. An estimated 10,000 people followed his funeral procession.

Learn with Beethoven: English phrases about hearing and perseverance

Phrase	Meaning	Example
hard of hearing	partly deaf	My grandfather is a little hard of hearing.
to fall on deaf ears	to be ignored	Her advice fell on deaf ears.
to play by ear	to play music without written notes; to improvise	We don't have a plan, so let's play it by ear.
to keep going	to continue despite problems	Beethoven kept going when others would have stopped.
against the odds	despite strong difficulties	He finished the symphony against the odds.

Try this: Beethoven's visitors wrote to him in notebooks. Keep a "conversation book" in English for one day: each time you would normally send a quick message, write the same thing in English in a notebook first.