How Did Beethoven Lose His Deafness

Ludwig van Beethoven is considered by many performers, historians, and music critics to be one of the most famous musical artisans in the history of music composition and performance in the western world. He is very well known for his world famous symphonies, sonatas, string quartets, and concertos. However famous Ludwig van Beethoven’s music might be, he is also very well known for his very ironic, considering his lifetime profession and amazing musical talents, disability. Ludwig van Beethoven began to lose his hearing, in the form of extremely deafening tinnitus that had developed as possibly the result of lead poisoning, around 1796 and then it developed into total deafness around 1816 when he was 41 years of age. Although the famous composer and performer lost his ability to hear, he still composed for years after the he had become deaf. How could someone whose profession relies so heavily upon the sense of sound be able to cope with such an extraordinary loss and how did

Many theorists and historians believe that because of this inability to hear higher pitches, Beethoven had begun to compose his string quartets with more focus on the lower voices, like the cello, as opposed to the more traditional higher ones, like the violin. There is in a fact a historical account that whenever Beethoven would receive visitors that would visit him for social or performance affairs, he would often play obnoxious, thundering bass notes on the piano and would ironically declare about how wonderful and beautiful the music sounded because it was all he could hear. Beethoven eventually decided to cease performance after a devastatingly pathetic piano performance. He could not very well hear what he was playing due to his deafness and became