No one knows why Beethoven went deaf. We know a great deal about how he suffered for it. How his forte piano had sawn-off legs so he could detect the vibrations of the different notes when that was all he had left. How he struggled with the anguish of encroaching deafness. At one point considering suicide but then declaring, in his ‘Heiligenstadt testament’ (in German), ‘I shall take fate by the throat; it shall not wholly overcome me…. I feel that I am not made for a quiet life’. And how, at the world premiere of his last and 9th Symphony (the Choral), which he conducted, the soprano had to take his hand and turn him around to see the ecstatic audience giving him a standing ovation. He couldn’t hear them.
I’ve followed Beethoven all of my adult life – or rather, kept his symphonies amongst my most precious memories. How I was moved to tears as an awkward teen on hearing his works for the first time. How I used to wander around the local streets, my Grundig Elite Boy (then the pinnacle of portable hi-fi) blaring out Beethoven and Brahms from Radio 3, as others my age blared out the Bay City Rollers and the Osmonds on Radio 1 (ah, the compliance of teen rebellion…!). And how I could, even in a crescendo, pick out which woodwind instruments were playing. That is no easy feat, if you are not a musician. Which I am not. Because in a symphony crescendo up to 60 instruments could be playing at once, and the woodwinds play alone: clarinet, oboe, flute, bassoon. Distinct loners surrounded by teams of strings and brass. It’s hard to pick them out. But I could do it, through familiarity and sheer determination.
Less so lately. With age, and hearing loss, those wonderful delicate melodies playing in the great storms of sound were often lost to me. I know they were still there, but they were hidden now, in the growing fog of silence. I accepted that.
Until today. Today, I dared to believe I might glimpse them again. My new hearing aids have been surprising me in so many ways – I wondered. Would they be there? I went for the 7th. My favourite in some ways. The first I heard live. Granted, I now have the benefits of pin-sharp digital sound and a system which would dwarf the hi-fi back in my teen years. Technology has moved on. It gives me an edge. And yet, I wondered. Would they be there?
They were. Probably not as recognisable as the teen me would have known. But they came out of the fog and I felt the joy in the sound. This time, it was not about the music. But because I could hear it so much better. Like the crystalline grandeur of Symphony Hall’s perfection the first time I heard that. The fog might descend again. I know that. We don’t get to deny the undeniable for ever. But it doesn’t matter. For a moment, for a time, I can hear the small voices in the crowd again. The genius of Beethoven brought back closer.
Alan Taman
