Talking Hearing Loss

This article comes from ABC Classic

“I must live alone – like one who has been banished.”

Beethoven’s deafness was a source of profound fear, shame and despair for the famous composer.

He was around 27 years old when he first realised he was losing his hearing. He confessed in the Heilgenstadt Testament that it nearly drove him to suicide, but that the only thing keeping him going was writing music.

Doctors prescribed all sorts of treatments early on, but nothing worked. Eventually he had to use notebooks in place of spoken conversation. And he had a giant metal resonator attached to his piano so he could better hear and feel the vibrations.

Towards the end of his life, Beethoven’s hearing was so bad he couldn’t hear the applause at the end of the premiere of his Ninth Symphony.

Hearing science has come a long way since Beethoven’s time, and in a special interview, Alice Keath chats with Ian O’Brien – an audiologist and principal horn player with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra – to better understand Beethoven’s hearing loss and what it might have sounded like.

Ian talks to professional musicians and music students around the country about the risks to ear-health for an orchestral musician, and what can happen if hearing problems aren’t addressed.

He also uses music to illustrate what progressive stages of hearing loss sound like.

Go to ABC Classic FM for the interview and to get an idea for what the Ninth Symphony might have sounded like to Beethoven.