Hazzard's A Thousand Naked Strangers

Beethoven’s hearing was getting so bad, he could not hear orchestras in theaters unless he was sitting really close, he struggled with hearing the voices of singers, and he had difficulty hearing the high notes (50). Away from music, Beethoven struggled with hearing people that spoke in low tones and people that spoke very softly (50). Beethoven did not want the word to get out that he was losing his hearing, he believed his music career would be tainted if people knew about his hearing condition. Beethoven was able to hear some music and speech up to about 1812, but at the age of 44 Beethoven had little to no hearing, he could not hear speech or music (51).

Beethoven had reached complete deafness in the 1810’s. At this time he piano playing and conducting were deteriorating. At the age of 44 he was no longer able to play in public, but insisted on conducting still. Often times the performances were chaotic and he was hard to comprehend by musicians. He had a custody battle for his nephew Karl, in which he won. This caused disaster as Beethoven craved attention and companionship. After 1818, Beethoven conducted some of his greatest works even though he was completely deaf. Beethoven’s music was influenced by Haydn and Mozart although he had his own unique style. He was one of the greatest composers ever and had to overcome his complete deafness and suffering to put out these great works.

Ever since his father began teaching him as a child to play the violin and clavier, any keyboard instrument such as the harpsichord, Ludwig van Beethoven has been amongst the most renowned and influential composers of music. Despite the harsh punishments and mistreatment Beethoven suffered through while practicing with his father, he still managed to become a “prodigy” at a rather young age, having his first public recital at around seven years old. After his first recital role music played in his continued to grow, and soon after dropping out of school to pursue music “full time” he published his first composition.

Only a few composers in the history of time have ever successfully left their mark throughout our musical world we live in today. It’s been over two hundred years since the birth of Beethoven and his music still speaks to us today as he originally expressed and composed it. Ludwig Van Beethoven was born in the city of Bonn Germany on December 16th 1770 and has since been one of the most influential composers known to man. A common theme of early age learning and mastering seems to emerge in Beethoven’s life because while living in a musical family as a child, his father taught him how to play the piano, violin and in addition how to compose musical pieces since he was four years of age. A few short years later, he gave his first public piano performance at the age of seven. While Beethoven certainly gained a lot of knowledge from his peers, he also supported his family by giving music lessons and also by playing in the court orchestra. In the year 1792, Beethoven worked under an Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn and by the year 1800, his compositions established him as a strong Mozart successor.

In Bonn, on December of 1770, a child was born to a lower middle class Finnish couple; Johann and Maria. Given the name Ludwig after his grandfather, a choirmaster, this child would grow to continue the name of the musically inclined Beethoven family, and eventually supersede its reputation with his own genius. As a deaf composer and musician, Ludwig von Beethoven is one of the greatest paradoxes in the realm of music. From his upbringing, his triumph over his disability, and his world renowned success in music, it is still proclaimed that he is one of the most influential and well known classical musicians in the world.

Regrettably, though in the late 1790s Beethoven began to lose his hearing. Then at the start of the 1800s Beethoven changed the way he created music and his personality because of the increasing deafness. Prior to the increasing loss of hearing Beethoven had been full of pride and independent, though a little odd. When his hearing started to go he changed, he became more apprehensive and ill tempered. Despite becoming absolutely deaf by the end of his life Beethoven’s works were still brilliant. It was on March 26, 1827 when Beethoven died, the cause was a simple cold that turned into pneumonia and then later dropsy.

One myth about Beethoven involves the rumors around his deafness. It is true that by the time he finished his last symphony he was deaf, but he had a lifetime of writing music to develop the skills necessary to write, even when he could no longer hear. Beethoven began losing his hearing in 1801. Musical Style Beethoven was one of the greatest composers of the Classical period. His music overlaps two time periods, as he helped to define and expand the Classical period into the Romantic period.

Ludwig van Beethoven was a deaf German pianist/composer of Classical music and was a very important musical figure between Classical and Romantic eras. He is widely recognized as one of the greatest composers of all time and became a musical innovator of his era by widening the scope of not only symphony, but also concert, sonata, and quartet. He defined his struggle against deafness and even composed some of his most important works during the last 10 years of his life, in which he was completely deaf. Beethoven's actual date of birth was not recorded and is unknown, but it is assumed that he was probably born on December 16, 1770, since it was law and custom at the time that children were baptized within the first 24 hours of life, and Beethoven

INTRODUCTION Attention getter: Whether in spite of, or because of his father’s excessive harsh and abusive methods of teaching, Beethoven was an extraordinary musician from an early age. He showed creative musicianship and imagination that reach further than any other composer ever has or possibly ever will.

What caused his deafness is unknown, therefore many people theorized many ideas. Then when Beethoven goes to a doctor for his hearing, he finds out he is losing his hearing permanently. The effects of Beethoven becoming deaf are when he stopped going out with his friends, many people thought he was rude, grumpy, and moody because he wouldn't usually respond back since he has no idea what they are saying, Beethoven started dressing sloppy and from there on he would start to care less about his appearance in front of others, and Beethoven stopped himself from committing suicide. Instead of allowing deafness to overwhelm him, he started to continue playing and writing his own music

Beethoven already started to lose his hearing way before his dedication to Napoleon. Becoming deaf made his life miserable, but he tried to come to terms with his condition. The most likely reason for his loss of hearing is probably because of lead poisoning. There were high amounts of lead found in his hair. Beethoven was often irascible and may have suffered from bipolar disorder and irritability brought on by chronic abdominal pain that has been attributed to possible lead poisoning Over time his hearing loss

The early piano sonatas of Beethoven deserve special mention. Although his first published examples of concertos and trios and the first two symphonies are beneath the masterpieces of Mozart and Haydn, the piano sonatas bear an unmistakably Beethovian stamp: grandiose in scope and length, and innovative in their range of expression. The sonatas were able to move expression from terrible rage to peals of laughter to deep depression so suddenly. Capturing this unpredictable style in his music, a new freedom of expression which broke the bounds of Classical ideals, was to position Beethoven as a disturbed man in the minds of some of his contemporaries. Furthermore, he was to be seen as the father of Romanticism and the single most important innovator of music in the minds of those after him. (Bookspan 27).

In order to more effectively investigate whether or how deafness may have influenced Beethoven 's music, it will be helpful for us to first briefly examine the nature of his deafness and its progression. Beethoven 's deafness did not occur abruptly; instead it progressed gradually. Beethoven first mentioned hearing loss in a letter written to his physician in June of 1801: "For the last three years," he writes, "my hearing loss has grown steadily weaker." He continued by addressing his symptoms, which included difficulty hearing the high notes of the orchestra, experiencing bilateral

Later in his life, Beethoven discovered that he was having trouble hearing. He struggled to come to terms that he was going deaf, even though he knew it was the reality. Beethoven persevered through this illness and composed some of his greatest pieces today, despite being deaf. Whether related to being deaf or not, Beethoven also had an extremely short temper. He often felt lonely as well, possibly because he was never married, as stated above.

The depression however, did not last and Beethoven continued carrying on as a young musician. In 1790, Beethoven, just 19 years old, received a remarkable honor of composing a musical memorial for the death of the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II. With no reasons known, this piece was never played. “However, more than a century later, Johannes Brahms discovered that Beethoven had in fact composed a ‘beautiful and noble’ piece of music entitled ‘Cantata on the Death of Emperor Joseph II.’ It is now considered his earliest masterpiece” (“Biography”). Just under two decades old, this man was pronouncing himself in the world. As Mozart said before, he was giving the world amazing music to talk about.