Beethoven and his "Disability"

This post is related to the slide in class about Beethoven. Most people know that Beethoven started going deaf while he was still composing his music and are astonished that a deaf person could write as technical music as he did. I am here to tell you that those who think this is amazing are dead wrong. Yes it is true that he could not hear his music very well (he could still hear a little) but in order to write the music you do not need to be able to hear it.

Musical notation is turning sound into something visual. You do not need to be able to hear the music in order to understand the theory or to see that you have, for example, too many parallel octaves or fifths, or to see that you used a diminished second (known as the Devil's Tone because of its horrible sound) where it does not fit. It also helped that he could hear his music at one point so he knew what the different intervals sounded like and could use them accordingly. For arguments sake, lets say he could never hear his music but could still understand theory. Even if you used a random chord progression with random passing and neighbor tones, the music would still sound good as long as you follow the theory behind it. I know that this is true because that is how I practiced four part writing (four instruments; a soprano, alto, tenor, and a bass instrument) and when put into a computer program to hear it played back, it sounded like classical music, even though the chord progression was random. This is because the theory was strictly followed. Also, Beethoven knew much more technical theory which would allow for him to follow even more strict rules which would in turn "tighten up" his compositions. The point is this: Beethoven's disability did not disable his comprehension of music theory and therefore did not substantially affect the music he composed. If you are a fan of Beethoven's music, please let it be for the complexity of the theory and the feeling put into it, not because he wrote music when he was deaf. (Taylor Brown 367438140)