I shall seize fate by the throat. It will never wholly overcome me
Born in Bonn. Father Johann was a drunk who beat me to make me practice. Mother Maria Magdalena was the gentle one -- she died when I was 16 and I became head of the household at 17, supporting two younger brothers. I went deaf. Gradually, then completely. The greatest composer in history could not hear his greatest works. I composed the Ninth Symphony -- 'Ode to Joy,' the anthem of the European Union -- completely deaf. At the premiere, I kept conducting after the orchestra finished because I couldn't hear the audience exploding behind me. A musician turned me around to see the standing ovation. I wept. I sawed the legs off my pianos and put them on the floor so I could feel the vibrations through my body. The music was always there. The ears were optional.
Composition
Music · 40y
Piano
Music · 45y
Conducting
Music · 30y
Composing While Deaf
Music · 25y
Seizing Fate by the Throat
Other · 56y
Learn to play my sonatas. Moonlight, Pathetique, Appassionata, Waldstein, Hammerklavier. We start with the ones you can handle and work up to the ones that break you. The Hammerklavier has destroyed b...
€22 per_session
Four hearing devices from different periods of my deafness, faithfully reproduced. From the early brass cone to the elaborate conversation devices Johann Maelzel built for me. A sobering reminder that...
€5 per_day
Exported from BorrowHood · 2026-03-10