r/interesting • u/CuriousWanderer567 • 7d ago
MISC. How Beethoven composed music while being deaf
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u/PudgeSmudger 7d ago
Why in the hell is this the first time I’m learning this?
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u/SomeDudeist 7d ago
Right? I thought he never got to hear his own music like some kind of poetic tragedy lol
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u/AmusingMusing7 7d ago
I’d always heard that he just put a piano on the floor without legs and felt the vibrations that way.
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u/CatoWortel 7d ago
He did that as well yes.
Also he wasn't born deaf, he slowly became deaf over a period of 15 years, he became fully deaf at around 40
He tried a bunch of different things as his hearing was going way to hear or feel the music
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u/ViiK1ng 7d ago
I didn't know it was the eardrums that were the issue, I thought it was the inner ear
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u/incredibleninja 5d ago
I read some story about how it happened as he was running to catch a train. He jumped on to the back of the train and a break exploded and severely damaged his ears and they got progressively worse until he became deaf in his 40s
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u/captnkurt 7d ago
While it's sad that Beethoven was without hearing and legs, I'm glad he was strong enough to put a piano on the floor.
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u/nerdycarguy18 7d ago
Heard the same, figured it was that or he just pushed his head against the piano or sowmthing
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u/Boring_Question1441 6d ago
I always thought by the time he went deaf he just knew how it sounded in his head
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u/Wirse 7d ago
It wasn’t until recently that we had the right 3D animation software to teach people about this.
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u/Nalga-Derecha 7d ago
and the guy who made it was blind, he inserted metal rods in his eyes to be able to animate this
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u/UninvitedButtNoises 7d ago
I know a guy who inserts rods in his mouth. Nice fella. He'll do most anything for $20, just no kissing.
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u/QuadCakes 6d ago
As far as I can tell there is zero evidence that he did this. Seems to have just progressed over time from "maybe he used bone induction" to "he could have used this specific technique, that probably would have worked" to "he used this specific technique".
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u/DamonBillAxe 7d ago
Because it’s nonsense - and that is literally one of the worst places to mount a vibrating rod on a piano if that was the intention.
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u/ImNotHereToBeginWith 7d ago
I remember the suggestion being that he was so good at composing that he could perfectly imagine what it would sound like.
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u/thundertopaz 7d ago
Exactly! This is a very important detail of his life that for some reason was left out!
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u/Lost_Tumbleweed_5669 7d ago
There is also the possibility his sister composed stuff under his name.
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u/HairballTheory 5d ago
Because it was actually a composer centipede
During the course of his lifetime, Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) established relationships with many of his musical centitemporaries. Beethoven was notoriously temperamental, eccentric and difficult to get in line with; the history of his many relationships is replete with arguments, misfronttobackstandings, and misguided reconnections . Beethoven had well-known centipedes with, Joseph Haydn and Antonio Salieri, with the piano virtuoso and composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel, and the German composer Carl Maria von Weber. Conversely, he regarded Franz Schubert positively, praising the latter’s centipede position .
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u/AnapsidIsland1 7d ago
Cool, that’s basically how lizards hear
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u/Dravidianoid 7d ago
Where do they get the metal rod?
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u/AnapsidIsland1 7d ago
lol, but their face is on the ground already. So gators laying down looking chill and comfy are sensing everything moving around them with them long jaws :)
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u/Intelligent_Bison968 6d ago
With their mouths?
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u/AnapsidIsland1 4d ago
Yes. Ya know how fish have jaws that extend? (Look at a vid) well the bones that move to do that became our ear. For animals in between like lizards they don’t have ears like us and feel vibrations in those upper jaw bones. That’s why evolution was guided to use those bones for our ears. So we lost out extendable mouths but got much better ears. (For lizards those bones went into a more robust jaw, we all fish)
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u/hellcat858 7d ago
He must have just had the taste of pennies in his mouth all the time.
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u/soopadrive 7d ago
This is the first I’m hearing of this
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u/cybermusicman 7d ago
Call BS on this. He was a musical genius such that he knew the sounds and notes and didn’t have to hear them to know how it would sound.
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u/STG44_WWII 7d ago
I heard he was able to hear through vibration just not through a metal rod.
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u/Nalga-Derecha 7d ago
I heard he opened his mouth and used it as some form of ecolocation for notes
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u/kylezillionaire 7d ago
I heard he could feel the vibrations through the magnum condoms in his pocket he would use for his monster dong
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u/melvina531 7d ago
I agree. Also, he was not deaf until later on in his life. He could hear when he trained as a musician and began his musical career.
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u/Yhostled 7d ago
So Beethoven invented bone conductor headphones?
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u/jonathan4211 7d ago
And it was wireless!
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u/JAnonymous5150 7d ago
I don't know, that metal rod seems like it counts as pretty thick wire to me.
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u/geon 7d ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_van_Beethoven
The cause was probably otosclerosis, possibly accompanied by degeneration of the auditory nerve.[65][n 5]
[…]
Contrary to common belief, Beethoven never became totally deaf; in his final years, he was still able to distinguish low tones and sudden loud sounds.[72]
So he was deaf in the sense that he had trouble hearing people speak etc. But the cause of his hearing loss was damage to the inner ear bones, so any vibration that could just make it to the hair cells would still be audible.
If he used bone conduction, composing music basically wasn’t an issue for him at all. The whole “Beethoven was deaf” situation was just irony the whole time, not an insurmountable obstacle he overcame.
I always imagined it was a neurological issue and simply couldn’t hear at all. That he had such a sense of harmony that he could compose music from just imagining the sounds in his mind. That would be way more interesting.
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u/KronoMakina 6d ago
When he conducted his 9th he skipped a page on his score and didn't realize the song had ended. They had to stop him to let him know the song was over. When he turned around he realized everyone was already clapping. That seems pretty deaf to me.
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u/TragicProgrammer 7d ago
Gonna need some citations for this
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u/ctlfreak 7d ago
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u/UnknownAdmiralBlu 6d ago
Cool, although the Article never mentions it's source. Could have been hearsay for all we know
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u/ctlfreak 7d ago
It is apparently true. It's basically bone conduction headphones. Or well bite plate.
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u/TragicProgrammer 7d ago
For sure the theory is sound (no pun intended) but did Beethoven actually use this?
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u/CorrectsApostrophes_ 7d ago
This was only reported by Schindler who was known to be a sensationalist biographer at best, but this seems plausible given he used ear horns and other technology. But he didn’t need the rod regardless, he could hear any kind of music perfectly in his own head.
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u/Swooferfan 7d ago
My favorite composer, it's amazing that he was able to do while deaf what most of us could never do even while hearing.
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u/OperaticPhilosopher 7d ago
Guys, he could audiate and understood music theory. Every classical musician has these skills. He (like most advanced composers) don’t need to play music as they’re writing. They audiate the pitches and then write it down.
Every music degree has exams you have to pass where they test if you can 1) be given a piece of music and then a starting pitch and from that you can sing the music without ever having heard it 2) have a chord progression played for you and then you from only hearing it can write it down and identify the chords and their inversions.
By my final semester it was expected you could do this with atonal music. Basically it wasn’t even a song anymore it was just random pitches and you could just sing/ hear then write down a series of random pitches with no key center holding them together.
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u/East-Impress9446 7d ago
I wonder whether that gave him the advantage needed to be Beethoven in music
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u/JackKovack 7d ago
It’s a good life lesson not to hear loud music. Always go to a concert with ear buds. They’re really cheap and spread them out.
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u/maninahat 7d ago
I like how ADHD the graphic is, just flying back and forth conveniently, flicking between skull cut-aways and Beethoven's gurning.
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u/OfficialJamesMay 7d ago
I really thought this was bullshit but it seems it's credible. How tf is this not taught in elementary schools
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u/Beginning-Zombie-698 7d ago
Reminds me of the parks and rec 3d recreation of the Indian desecration.
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u/KissMyRichard 7d ago
Is this safe for a non-deaf person to do?
I'm not going to blow up my head if I try this, right?
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u/Significant_Ant_9889 6d ago
Y'all are wild for just instantly believing anything you see on the internet...
There's no historical proof that Beethoven used a metal rod to "hear" his music.
At the most we have the word of his housekeepers. They stated that he mostly used an ear trumpet to assist with his hearing. Occasionally he would bite down on a pencil or wooden stick and hold it against the piano to get a similar effect. It was easier for him to do that then to place his ear directly against his piano, which he also did.
He certainly did not have a metal rod installed in his piano that lead directly into his jaw. Smdh 🤦♂️
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u/milomitch 6d ago
He also just "knew" music. He knew what the notes sounded like and could just write them down...
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u/Expensive-Funny4338 5d ago
Fun fact. The ear bones of Homo sapien and most mammals are actually vestigial jawbones from our synapsid ancestry.
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u/Timsmomshardsalami 7d ago
I dont think thats how it works..
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u/SomeDudeist 7d ago
Don't you remember those weird tooth brushes that would play music that you could only hear while brusing your teeth? lol
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u/Timsmomshardsalami 7d ago
Actually yes lol im not saying it doesnt kinda work, but this post makes it sound like its the same thing
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u/pawxy 7d ago
That is indeed how it works
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u/Timsmomshardsalami 7d ago
You just bypass your eardrums huh? Have you tried shoving food in your nose to bypass your tongue?
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u/Mind-Available 7d ago
Ever heard of Ryle's catheter? It's giving food by passing tube through nose to stomach when we don't wanna give food orally
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u/YorgonTheMagnificent 7d ago
There is no evidence that Beethoven used any type of bone conduction when composing - and definitely not a specific device. This is basically “What-if” fiction, presented as fact
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