Beethoven deafness tagged posts

Joys, Sufferings, Creation: Beethoven’s “Heiligenstadt Testament”

You’re arguably the greatest musical force in history, and something inside you knows this, feels the weight and the call of it. You seem to have been born hearing the music of the spheres, with the strong determination to transcribe and share it with your fellow humans.

Like most all artists, you suffer various torments related to the struggle of creating something from nothing, to become as a god in wrestling ultimate beauty, harmony, wisdom from the unformed dust of creation.

This noble purpose clashes with the all-too-human vagaries of your personality, some endowed at birth, others formed by a miserable childhood under a highly abusive alcoholic father. He as much as beats music into you, but rather than recoil, you forge music into your own answer, a kind of transcendent revenge in which you explore and expand upon the very depths of disconsolation and tragedy, beauty and triumph.

Widely acclaimed bu...

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