![]() ![]() ![]() He was amazing.”Īlbrecht is now editing the “conversation book” accounts and translating them from German into English for the first time, a mammoth publishing project that will eventually comprise 12 volumes.īritish company Boydell & Brewer will publish volume 3 of Beethoven’s Conversation Books in May (£45), following the publication of some of the new research in an article entitled “The Hearing Beethoven”, in The Beethoven Journal this month and (in German) by the Vienna Oboe Journal in March.Ĭovering the period from 1818 until the composer’s death, the books’ subjects range from music and politics to shopping lists and errands. ![]() Otherwise, what do you do with the piccolo in the Ninth Symphony – up there on top – and the contrabasses down below? All the registers are there. But, looking at the range of pitches used in the final complete symphony, Albrecht dismisses that theory: “I don’t think it holds. Some musicologists suggest that, as his hearing worsened, Beethoven favoured lower and middle-range notes in his compositions and began to use high notes again only once he was totally deaf, drawing on memory and imagination. Among the surviving examples – two in the composer’s birthplace, the Beethoven-Haus museum in Bonn, and 137 in Berlin State Library – he has so far found 23 direct references to the subject of hearing, and estimates that several dozen more will show “he could still hear something”. “The conversation books are going to be a game-changer,” Albrecht said. He added: “When possible, through writing is better the hearing will be spared.” In another account, from 1824, a musician visits Beethoven and tells him: “You can already conduct the overture entirely alone … Conducting the whole concert would strain your hearing too much therefore, I would advise you not to do so.” Just do not use mechanical devices too early by abstaining from using them, I have fairly preserved my left ear in this way.” Beethoven scribbled down this advice: “Baths country air could improve many things. One account, dated 1823, tells of the composer visiting his favourite coffee house, where he was approached by a stranger seeking guidance on his own failing hearing. From 1818, he carried blank “conversation books”, in which friends and acquaintances jotted down comments, to which he would reply aloud. “If I belonged to any other profession, it would be easier,” he told a friend, “but in my profession it is a frightful state.” Between 18, he tried ear trumpets, with little success. Photograph: Ian Waldie/Getty Imagesīeethoven began to lose his hearing in 1798. The manuscript of Beethoven’s ninth symphony, premiered in 1824, with notes ‘in all registers’. ![]()
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