Comments by "Michael Wright" (@michaelwright2986) on "How Did Beethoven Hear Music?" video.

  1. I also have developed fairly persistent and loud tinnitus (I'm 76, so I'm entitled to have tinnitus) and I, too, could not hear the simulation.
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  2. As I understand it, a lot of composers of Western Art Music compose on the page, without the need to hear the music. Recently I was looking at a biography of Benjamin Britten: as a student, he wrote a lot, most of which he couldn't get performed. I was astonished to find that, when he did get something played, he said, as though it were a realisation, that the sounding of the music was the real thing. I also went to a series of lectures by a musicologist: someone asked her about a piece, and she said "I haven't read that," and then, slightly embarrassed, changed it to "I haven't heard that." It doesn't lessen LvanB's achievement, but perhaps he was working in a way that wasn't, in principle, all that unusual, the ability to experience, in a satisfying way, a piece of music from the score. Quite beyond me, but so are lots of things. What Beethoven's deafness really destroyed was his capacity, first to play, and then to conduct his own music.
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