saw his deafness as a challenge to be fought and overcome.
- With the end
of his career as a virtuoso pianist inevitable, he plunged into
composing. It offered a much more precarious living than that
of a performer, especially when his compositions had already
shown themselves to be in advance of popular taste.
- In 1802 his
doctor sent him to Heiligenstadt, a village outside Vienna, in
the hope that its rural peace would rest his hearing. The new
surroundings reawakened in Beethoven a love of nature and the
countryside, and hope and optimism returned. Chief amongst the
sunny works of this period was the charming, exuberant Symphony
no. 2. However, when it became obvious that there was no improvement
in his hearing, despair returned. By the autumn the young man
felt so low both physically and mentally that he feared he would
not surive the winter. He therefore wrote his will and left instructions
that it was to be opened only after his death.
- Towards the
end Beethoven would rest his head on his piano and compose using
- Just how serious
was Beethoven's plight? At first the malady was intermittent
or so faint that it worried him only occasionally. But by 1801
he reported that a whistle and a buzz was constant. Low speech
tones became an unintelligible hum, shouting became an intolerable
din. Apparently the illness completely swamped delicate sounds
and distorted strong ones. He may have had short periods of remission,
but for the last ten years of his life he was totally deaf.
- Imagine if
modern preventative hearing loss testing and hearing instrument
technology like the kind offered by Micro Hearing Aid had been
available to a great composer like Beethoven.
- You don't
have to be a great composer or virtuoso pianist to realise the
value of getting your hearing tested on a regular basis.