Beethoven

Recently, I was asked the questions:  "How could Beethoven compose such beautiful pieces, like the Moonlight Sonata, and be deaf?  How would he know what the composition sounded like?"

Let's first establish, that Beethoven was a genius.  In my opinion, all composers are/were.  I couldn't compose anything worth listening to.

Next, let's look at a timeline:

Born December 1770
1778 - gave his first recital
1779 - started studying composition
1783 - published his first compositions
1796 - started to lose his hearing
1801 - Moonlight Sonata completed
1804-1808 - Beethoven's 5th Symphony written
1806 - Violin Concerto in D Major completed
1812 - Beethoven could still hear speech and music normally
1814 - Beethoven almost completely deaf
1824 - 9th Symphony completed
1827 - death

That is just a very abbreviated bit of a timeline, but it illustrates that Beethoven had been playing and composing long before he even started to go deaf.  Furthermore, whatever caused his deafness was not sudden; it took him almost 20 years to completely lose his hearing.

Any composer gets his or her musical ideas from somewhere.  I imagine, not being a composer myself, they come to them in their heads, much like I am writing this sentence now.  If Beethoven was hearing melodies in his head, and had already been playing piano, violin, and viola for several years, and even been composing for several years, it's not stretching the imagination too far to say he could probably translate what he heard in his head onto paper, so someone else could recreate it.

The only step Beethoven was missing (in his later years, after he'd gone completely deaf), was listening to that recreation, and verifying it matched what he heard in his head.  Had he been a new composer, this most likely would have been a great obstacle.  But he had been composing for several years, so he could probably reliably reproduce what he wanted to.

A further point is that most of Beethoven's compositions were from earlier in his life, when he could still hear.  Later in his life, he had several family and health issues, several dry periods in which he did not compose, and really did not have the same output he had in his earlier years.

So really, Beethoven's reputation of being "the deaf composer" might be almost a misnomer.  Yes, he did go deaf later in life, but most of his compositions were written while he could still hear.

Happy Playing!