![]() Witnesses describe him as composing while sitting normally at a piano with its legs intact. Wallace also dispelled the myth of the legless pianos: A letter cited these broken pianos as examples of his home being in disarray due to poor housekeeping. ![]() Wallace speculates that the related myth of Beethoven not knowing that the orchestra had stopped playing at the end of his ninth symphony is a twisted version of what likely happened-the audience stood to applaud after the scherzo, the second of four movements, and, since he was facing the musicians, Beethoven would have had no visual cues to alert him to this unexpected reaction, so someone had to notify him. In their paper “The Deaf Composer: Teaching Beethoven,” presented at the national meeting of the American Musicological Society in November 2016, Robin Wallace of Baylor University and Jeannette Jones of Boston University explain that Beethoven was not an oblivious conductor, since witnesses describe him following performances with his eyes. Beethoven’s deafness is often presented as cutting him off from musical society, encouraging us to treat his music as the pure product of an exceptional mind. Many of these stories reinforce our perception of composers as geniuses with rare gifts that distinguish them from the rest of humanity. I also examine why these myths circulate, how they affect our understanding of the past, and what they say about our present culture as we continue to accept them. On my own blog, Not Another Music History Cliché, I debunk music history myths like these stories surrounding Beethoven’s deafness. Int the other, he saws off the legs of his piano so he can feel the vibrations through the floor. ![]() In one, Beethoven waves his arms at the podium, oblivious to the fact that the orchestra cannot keep up. The above clip mentions two stories about Beethoven’s deafness that have circulated for centuries. In an 1802 letter to his brothers, referred to by historians as the Heiligenstadt Testament, the composer lamented, “Ah, how could I possibly admit such an infirmity in the one sense which should have been more perfect in me than in others, a sense which I once possessed in highest perfection, a perfection such as few surely in my profession enjoy or have enjoyed!” Beethoven’s disability forms a large part of our concept of him as the quintessential Romantic Hero, as it is a tragic flaw he must overcome to produce his great Art. The composer himself was aware of the irony. ![]() The confused student asks, “If he couldn’t hear, how would he even know what the notes were? Like, if he never heard a C, how’d he know that’s what he wanted played?” Holland takes a moment to redirect his thoughts from his son to the composer, and answers, “Well…Beethoven wasn’t born deaf.”īeethoven’s deafness has captivated audiences since knowledge about his condition became public. One student raises his hand, but Holland doesn’t notice until the student hesitantly calls his name to get his attention. As he talks about the composer’s deafness, he is visibly distracted, gazing over the heads of the students seated at their desks. Holland sits on his desk while the symphony emerges from the record player beside him. Holland discusses Beethoven’s deafness with his students.
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