Beethoven's Deafness, the Defiance of a Genius

Proceedings of the Western Pharmacology Society, 2000

BMJ, 2012

Beethoven's deafness and his three styles Edoardo Saccenti and colleagues chart the relation between the composer's deafness and his compositions Edoardo Saccenti postdoctoral research fellow 1 2 , Age K Smilde full professor 1 2 , Wim H M Saris full professor 2 3

4open

Background: During his life, Beethoven faced a lot of personal problems and diseases that could lead to a prolonged period of serious mental disorder. The aim of this work is to study the link between the distribution of pitch frequencies observed in 101 movements of 32 sonatas and four periods of his compositional style. Methods: The 32 sonatas for piano were chosen because they were composed during the three periods usually considered to reflect Beethoven’s career. A hierarchical generalized additive model was performed to regress the frequency of pitches with Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) pitches, periods of composition, degrees, rests, and length of the sonata’s movements. Results: The median frequency of pitches was higher during Beethoven’s time of mental distress. This period appeared as transitory between the bright Promethean period and the fullness of the final Ethereal period. This change in the expression of Beethoven’s creativity could well have played the...

A translation of Andreas Wawruch's review of Beethoven's final illness which in 1842 was published in the Wiener Zeitschrift für Kunst, Literatur, Theater und Mode. This is accompanied by a detailed commentary on Wawruch's report, a short biographical sketch of Wawruch and a commentary on Beethoven's medical condition and alcohol consumption.

Ninetenth-Century Music Review, 2021

2020 was a banner year for Beethoven, with several concerts and events (mostly online, due to Covid-19) celebrating his 250th birthday. It was also a banner year for Jeremy Yudkin, who published not one but two volumes on Beethoven, presumably on the occasion of that semiquincentennial. One volume he edited-The New Beethoven (a de facto festschrift for Lewis Lockwood 1); the other he authored-Beethoven's Beginnings. The otherwise curious omission of an essay by Yudkin in the former is made good by the latter, an expansive account of the various and sundry ways in which Beethovenand also Haydn and Mozart, from whom he took inspirationcommenced his works. Yudkin is a generous and versatile scholar, as evidenced both by his catalogue of books, which runs the gamut from Medieval music to jazz, and by Beethoven's Beginnings itself, which surveys a wealth of works by the Viennese-Classical triumvirate and which purveys many sensitive insights couched in lively prose. It is a testament to the author's enviable conversancy with this entire corpus and with a motley of scholarly disciplines in addition to historical musicologyto wit, the first chapter covers rhetoric, literature, literary theory, and cognitive science. Indeed, Yudkin's intellectual interests are as catholic as those of the composer he celebrates. 2 Since Yudkin's is a lengthy, diffuse tome, a précis of its most salient points might be welcome. 1 The New Beethoven: Evolution, Analysis, Interpretation (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2020). 2 Yudkin usefully enumerates many of the items in Beethoven's library (p. 27), the breadth of which points to Beethoven's voracious intellectual appetite.

The Cambridge Companion to Beethoven, 2000

Routledge Companion to Beethoven, 2006

Journal of Laryngology and Otology, 1999

In his best poems, the Renaissance poet Sabo Bobaljević Glusac emphasizes his hearing impairment, placing his deafness at the centre of attention. These works are not only a poignant expression of an individual artist's suffering, but they may also add to our understanding of the situation of deaf persons. This self-reflection can be seen as a detail that will enhance our ability to communicate with deaf people in order not only to help them hear us, but also to make us hear them as well.

Panel: "Listening Beyond Hearing: Music and Deafness" (panel organizer) American Musicological Society Conference Louisville, KY Nov 12-15

Collegium antropologicum, 2011

Medical history and relationship to the medical conditions as well as to the music creativity and productivity of some of the classical European composers have been described. In this review article we analyzed their illnesses as well as association between physical or mental diseases and their creativity and adaptability to disease. Some classical composers suffered from organic diseases, while others complained of mental disturbances. However, in spite of their disorders, the intensity of their creativity mostly remained unchanged.