Beethoven's Deafness

[Bonn1827]

This morning I've been having a conversation with my family about deafness and its impact upon individuals. It is axiomatic that 'deafness' and "Beethoven" go together, but thinking about the issue a little more intensely has thrown up a couple of issues which I thought worth sharing.

Just a quick background: I have a friend who is deaf and I've gradually observed her psychological and cognitive decline as a consequence of this, comparatively recent, handicap. Though I have many times suggested to her that she might get a computer, undertake a course and learn about the internet to mitigate her social isolation she has shown a dogged unwillingness to do this. I have lately developed the view that such stubbornness, depression and inflexibility are all consequences of her disability. Another anecdote I relate, and which is relevant, is that during a Rhine/Danube cruise in 2009 I sat for dinner at a table with an Audiologist and his wife. It happened that we were near Bonn at the time and Beethoven came into the conversation (well, wouldn't he - always??). This man suggested that, since he himself had been deaf since childhood and had found ways of coping, Beethoven would have found coping strategies and wouldn't have felt the handicap nearly as much as generally believed. He further suggested that it had obviously caused Beethoven few compositional challenges. (The man seemed to be speaking from personal experience and the heart, but I cautioned him, "please take care; you are stepping now on dangerous ground as Beethoven is my idol".) After this latter exchange we both fell silent!!

These two anecdotes are relevant and I've tied them to Beethoven and our knowledge of him. Firstly, social isolation as a factor is immense. This would have made Beethoven inward in his thinking, angry, depressed and inflexible. Did all this impact on his compositional skills, therefore? Unquestionably. We know from the last works that he was inward, reflective and intense. The inability to communicate with human beings and, therefore, express his humanity had to be contained within those works to a great degree. In that sense, I feel that counterpoint - particularly in the late string quartets - must have become a "conversational" outlet and metaphor for him. Listening to the 'speaking' of various instruments lead him to the daring nature of those works at the time of their composition. I'm suggesting that his gregarious needs were possibly expressed in and through the very act of composing a 'dialogue' of increasingly complex nature in the form of music. Externally, he was socially isolated and inflexible but in his music he surely was not.

In short, I'm suggesting that deafness was much more significant for Beethoven's creative powers in terms of innovation, growth and development than might otherwise appear. Counterpoint as the conversational trope.

[jamesofedinburgh]

I agree entirely. You have to also take account that there was no sign language at that time which meant that he had terrible trouble not only with communication but also the pace of communication. It is very frustrating to wait for people to write out lengthy responses by hand! (I am referring of course to the conversation books.) Equally, he most probably had to repeat himself many times in order to be understood, due to the difficulty deaf people have in modulating and moderating their voice. Thus communication was very slow.

I would next suggest that conversation would have been somewhat frustrating at the best of times for him, hearing or not. He was always noted for being a very quick witted man. Several people, writing of him, have been at times rather patronising of his lack of formal learning as if this were some sort of handicap (i.e. - he wasn't Samuel Johnson). I think this is fallacious, he read a great deal though not formally, and it is clear that at time ideas came so rapidly he had hardly the time to express them in words. Thus, though he enjoyed social intercourse and could be tremendously entertaining (just read some of his letters), I think this was a distant second from music.

In contrast, at the piano, I think that, away from ordinary social conversation, his thoughts could - to a degree - be expressed as they occurred to him. I am thinking here of improvisation, and with the proviso that 'thoughts' does not mean ideas that require words and, furthermore, that there is a sort of kinaesthetic thinking where the hands follow the mind. (Anyone who has ever improvised at a piano, however modestly, and felt that the music was flowing will know this from experience.)

Of course, when deaf, improvisation became much more limited if indeed it occurred at all.

Thus, music was always a more direct mode of expression for him, including social occasions (public performance and improvisation).

As to suffering from his social isolation, he certainly did, though I would suggest that his sense of humour - his awareness of the absurd - carried him through quite frequently. (Reflected in the humour of his music i.e. Opus 120). There are many anecdotes of his later years which are like tales out of Tristram Shandy. I think he was often very detached from the world around him, which is not to say that he did not feel very lonely at times.

My personal sense is that at times he may have heard music in his mind - sublime music - while watching people go about their ordinary business, and been appalled by the disconnect between the very ordinariness of life around him and his privileged access to what he termed 'the Godhead' (which of course suggests he read Meister Eckhart!). I think he must have keenly felt, and expressed in his music, the absurdity of life. (I have always felt the second movement of the Eighth Symphony is a good example of this, like listening to an ironic soundtrack of people behaving like automatons - in this case, the 18th c conception of automata from Descartes.)

As to counterpoint in his music, yes, some pieces are intensely argumentative and I think this is found in his piano music in particular (Opus 106 fugue). Perhaps this is an outlet for conversational intercourse - if you could 'translate' the repartee in the fugue you would almost certainly 'out Johnson Johnson' to refer back to SJ! At the same time, the fugue is more than conversation, but that has always appeared to me to be an element in it.

At the risk of sounding very silly, I would also suggest that some of the auditory phenomena of deafness find their way into the music. When I was in my 20s I had a severe ear infection where I lost hearing for about a month. Hearing a spoon strike a tea cup was anguish! (A learning disabled man, the brother of a flat mate, had in all innocence kissed me and managed to hit my hear, stretching the ear drum and bringing on the infection.) During this time, my ear occasionally cleared (rather like that 'pop' you get when descending in a plane) and I am convinced that this feeling of almost heavenly relief is behind one or two moments in the first movement of Opus 110 and some of the sounds of the Adagio of Opus 106.

(When I could fully hear again - after an extraction of wax - I walked around outside the surgery, beneath trees on a beautiful sunny day, and spontaneously heard the conclusion of the Heiliger Dankgesang as if it were being played nearby. That was a wonderful experience!)

[Bonn1827]

"JoE", this is exactly my thinking too - though you may have put it more eloquently! Thank you for these thoughts!! The "humanity" in the music is pervasive and I loved your comments about improvisation. Yes, this is truly gregarious and conversational music. I think a couple of the last "Diabelli Variations" - written much later than the earlier ones - had that improvisational quality too.

The fugue? We know Bach was a 'rhetorician' and belonged to a formal society of like-minded people. I have always thought fugue itself, apart from its sheer architectural and contrapuntal complexity, was inherently conversational - and I guess this is where our views become divergent. (I guess the semantics of the case are instructed by whether or not you view "rhetoric" as "conversation". An interesting discussion to have all on its own!)

[jamesofedinburgh]

"JoE", this is exactly my thinking too - though you may have put it more eloquently! Thank you for these thoughts!! The "humanity" in the music is pervasive and I loved your comments about improvisation. Yes, this is truly gregarious and conversational music. I think a couple of the last "Diabelli Variations" - written much later than the earlier ones - had that improvisational quality too.

The fugue? We know Bach was a 'rhetorician' and belonged to a formal society of like-minded people. I have always thought fugue itself, apart from its sheer architectural and contrapuntal complexity, was inherently conversational - and I guess this is where our views become divergent. (I guess the semantics of the case are instructed by whether or not you view "rhetoric" as "conversation". An interesting discussion to have all on its own!)

Oh no I agree, there is a social element to fugue and it arises from the conversational/rhetorical aspect. However, I think with Beethoven the conversation/rhetoric is internalised, it is a dialogue (in 2, 3 or 4 parts) with oneself and - to me at least - dialogue at a very introverted level that is inaccessible to words (although god knows Rilke and Proust tried to get there). At other times, when it is more dramatic (the Grosse Fugue) it also seems to be introspective as well, as if through introspection some contact has been made with (if you like) 'the life force' and the best way to transmit this astounding energy, to Beethoven, is through counterpoint. - Of course, Bach is also introspective, so with Beethoven we almost have to say, at times, that we are experiencing almost total introversion - all the more moving that he finds a garden within, alongside the darker forces.

Bach is also very definitely conversing and/or holding forth rhetorically. The F# minor fugue from the 48 (book 1 or 2, I cannot recall which) has a theme with repeated notes. Every time it comes round (after each episode) it seems to be making a point, as if in a sermon where a phrase of scripture is illustrated with endless examples which in this case would be the episodes. So think of 'Vanity of vanity, all is vanity' as the theme and each episode as a little illustration of vanity in practice. I think perhaps Bach had this sort of thing in mind - music as a sort of illuminated book, if you like, using episodes rather than images to illustrate a discourse. At least that is the sense I get when playing this music - the B minor prelude and fugue from Book 1 is another example of this. The prelude moves with such dignity, the regular rhythm easing the pain of the dissonant lines, and the ending (chromatic stretto) is deeply profound, while the fugue theme is a crucifix theme with tender interludes that make one think of the little angels in Giotto's paintings that cry inconsolably at the crucifixion.

I do not sense this in Beethoven, I think his fugues are a matter of life and death for him whereas Bach's are a matter of life and death for other people - in the greatest, most moving, Gandhian or Christ-ian sense of the word, Bach is an evangelist whereas Beethoven is forever in the moment of his anguish and of his transcendence which makes it, at least to me, more moving than Bach because we are there with him when we so choose. As Wittgenstien remarked 'Mozart believed in heaven and hell, whereas Beethoven believed in nothingness and heaven'. Substitute 'Bach' for 'Mozart' and it's the same idea. (To me, Wittgenstien's comment offers the greatest insight into Beethoven - one wishes one had thought of it.) Which is not to disparage Bach (or Mozart) in any way, they all go together so well.

Words again! The music is always more precise.

[Bonn1827]

The words are imprecise, but the music is not. Yes.

I did mean exactly what you said about the "internal conversation" which LvB is having in his late quartets, through counterpoint. You move to the next level, however, to suggest that amid the darkness Beethoven finds "a garden". How apposite, and the response of an obviously intelligent, informed listener! But I also mean "conversation" in the sense that, as creator (if you will) he is a spectator in the 'conversation between the parts': a vicarious experience of communication.

In an earlier thread some months ago there was a discussion about LvB's asceticism, experimentation, introspection and the concept of "less is more".

The Bachian world is another animal altogether, of course. To me his music has a transcendence and an almost preternatural symmetry, control and logic. It is "absolute music" in the strictest sense of that academic cliche!!

[jamesofedinburgh]

Full agreement with the proviso that Beethoven, too, is absolute music!

[Bonn1827]

Without question, which is why both composers are No. 1 and No. 2 (LvB and Bach, in that order!) I've been reading your comments about Sullivan and his critiques of LvB's works. For me, the great critic is the one who understands and can make the reader/listener understand, without getting bogged down in esoteric, arcane or arid argument. (The critic writing ohne musical examples? Please!! This is merely a philosophy lecture, not a musical one!!)

I had a discussion with another person from these boards some time ago (privately) on the 'Cambridge Companion to the Missa Solemnis' by William Drabkin (by name and nature!). We came to the conclusion that his discussions on that masterwork merely described the work in question, as though it were an event, without really revealing anything about it at all. "Here we have a dominant seventh, etc. etc." But your description of the Sullivan writings leads me to believe that there is some revelation, at least, at work in his analysis. You certainly reveal this particular insight yourself!! This is what all criticism should be striving for: show me, don't just tell me. Redundant criticism for its own sake should be avoided, and I grow tired of those who say this "works" or "doesn't work".