11 ms·

I Think Beethoven Encoded His Deafness in His Music

92 points by grzm 6y ago

throwaway2245 6y ago
Plenty of renowned visual art appears to be influenced by the artists' unique experiences of vision. Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night, for one. It would be surprising if music was not influenced by the way the composer hears and experiences sound.
pmoriarty 6y ago
I read somewhere that Beethoven could hear by biting down on a piece of metal (on his piano?) that acted like a bone-conduction[1] hearing aid. If this is true, then the popular conception of Beethoven being completely unable to hear while composing his masterpieces is mistaken. I'd love to learn more (or be corrected) from anyone who knows more about this. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_conduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_conduction
- black6 6y ago
  I recall a story about him having the legs sawn off a grand piano so that he could lay with his head on the floor while playing to "hear" the notes.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    Typically they are attached with screws, so no need to use a saw. Also, it would be far more efficient to somehow make a connection to the bridge because that's where the signal is the strongest, the case doesn't carry all that much sound though it does reflect it if the lid is up.
  - aae42 6y ago
    sounds like something from Mr. Holland's Opus
- idoubtit 6y ago
  His most famous sonata were published in 1798, 1801 (Moonlight), and 1803. By then, he suffered from tinnitus and knew he was to loose his audition, but he could still hear. He gradually lost his audition during the 1810s and was deaf by the end of the decade. TL;DR Beethoven wrote his masterpieces sonata at a time were he could certainly hear them.
  - andrepd 6y ago
    Many of Beethoven's greatest works were composed when he was fully deaf (most famously his 9th Symphony, but also the Late Quartets, Grosse Fugue, etc.)
  - darkerside 6y ago
    This is useful context. His sonatas are truly masterpieces, not to say that his other incredible works are not.
    - ec123 6y ago
      His greatest sonata “Hammerklavier” was written when he was almost completely deaf in 1818. I think this commenter’s insinuation that Beethoven’s best work happened while he could hear is largely false. Op 132, op 132, grosse fuge, 9th etc
      - darkerside 6y ago
        I think it was more of an argument against there being any correlation at all, which I think is a reasonable one
- dehrmann 6y ago
  > completely unable to hear while composing his masterpieces I'm not sure how true those stories are, but as someone with only some musical experience, I don't find an experienced composer who continued to compose after going deaf that crazy. I can "hear" songs in my head easy enough, and composers are pretty good at transcribing what they hear onto paper.
  - corin_ 6y ago
    I feel that way about the idea of coming up with a simple tune after going deaf, but hearing a full symphony you're composing while deaf is a whole new level. Then again, despite being a professional singer when I was young and then attempting to study composing I discovered I have no skill for it - so composing even a simple orchestral piece without being deaf seems complex to me.
    - alisonkisk 6y ago
      It's not that hard if you have a theory of music like a pro like Beethoven does. It's like writing a program. You aren't picking a note at a time, you are laying down "tracks" with parameters.
- williamdclt 6y ago
  I used to put my teeth against the neck of my bass guitar when tuning it sometimes, to hear the notes better (when unplugged, of course). It really works, especially when tuning with harmonics as you can physically feel the "phase" from two almost-the-same-frequency-but-not-quite notes. You look like an idiot though, get yourself an electric tuner it's like £10.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    I assume there are plenty of examples of people using their senses in unexpected ways to diagnose issues, and it’s always interesting to me. Eg mechanics smelling engine oil, or (closer to home) MRI staff who can listen to MRI sequences and hear problems.
    - pmoriarty 6y ago
      This reminds me of a fascinating article I once read about the lost art of diagnosing diseases by smell, and told of a senior doctor in a bygone era advising his students to open all their senses when meeting a patient for the first time. Apparently some diseases have characteristic smells, but these days medical students are rarely trained to recognize them.
      - astrange 6y ago
        Dogs can supposedly tell when humans are sick because of this, even before they know themselves.
      - autoro 6y ago
        There is a case of a woman in England that can smell Parkinson [1]. I think that when I read about it was the first time I really understood that smell is a generic sense that can detect certain molecules and that there is much more information encoded in the air around us. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-47627179 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-47627179
    - williamdclt 6y ago
      There was an HN post recently (or a comment? can't remember) about playing a beep when memory is allocated/released in a program. The claim was that you can hear weird allocation patterns. Similarly most of us could probably diagnose some faulty hard drive issues by ear
npunt 6y ago
Very cool to think about the spatial properties of composition like hand position changing as Beethoven went deaf. It suggests there's broader discoveries to be made in finding the patterns underneath things we thought we already understood. Also love the author's insight that one can work on the technique of composition before turning on her hearing aids and being able to hear it, using her deafness as a sort of focus superpower.
idoubtit 6y ago
I fail to see any interest in this article. It looks to me that someone projected her beliefs on Beethoven, with an oversimplification and little regards to the various influences on Beethoven's composition. He composed music at a time where musical trends emerged (notably romanticism), he suffered big professional failures, he was influenced by other composers... Did Beethoven's music become more complex in his last years because he could not hear? Maybe so, but Bach had no hearing problem yet his later music evolved in a similar way (Musical offering, The Art of the Fugue). One could build a theory that Bach's piano works were influenced by his reading of the Odysseus, or by his growing taste for coffee. There certainly are arguments that could justify these theories. There are arguments against it, and anyway nothing can be established. Well, as long as some people enjoy writing or reading theories, why not.
- dvtrn 6y ago
  It was interesting watching your thoughts manifest as the comment progresses towards its conclusion; as the final sentence almost seems to resolve the inquiry contained in the first. Thank you
  - Sawamara 6y ago
    Upvote if you are a music composer :D
    - dvtrn 6y ago
      Heh not a composer but I do play the tuba haha :) glad you caught the musical metaphors there
- gryson 6y ago
  You don't have to look far to see the interest in the article: a pianist with near-profound hearing loss stating that Beethoven's compositions become more interesting to her the later they were composed, coinciding with Beethoven's loss in hearing. "More pitch distance and difference, and more vibration and resonance, create a recipe for happiness for a hearing-impaired person." That, in turn, leads to the consideration of whether Beethoven's later music was defined in some way by his deafness.
tomcam 6y ago
Nonsense. A lot of people don't understand that for a composer of Beethoven's training and skill, physically hearing the music is essentially irrelevant. The image we have in our heads of a composer sitting at the piano and noodling almost certainly doesn't apply to a Beethoven or a Bach or a Schumann. It would slow them down intolerably. They could read music and hear it as surely as you and I can see word pictures when we read a novel. They would compose and hear the music in their head and simply transcribe.
- jeofken 6y ago
  For anyone interested in getting a hang out of this, here’s is one way. In computing we have massive amount of logic gates and wires into and out of the computer - from this we can create all kinds of things. In music, you have intervals between frequencies and you have time intervals between these, ie rhythm. Traditionally we divide the space between a sound frequency and the double of it into 12 notes, because it’s a great number to divide by. That means a middle A is 440Hz. 440Hzx2=880Hz. That interval is called “octave”. Middle C on a piano is thus at 261.6256Hz [0]. Of these 12 “raw” simple fractional divisions, you can select a number of notes that played make a certain mood. If you start at C on a piano and hit the white keys to the next C, you will have hit the 8 notes we group as the “C major” scale. In this group there are 8 frequencies selected. The 1st is middle C, 2nd is D, 3rd is E, and so forth. For this example I chose C major just because all the notes have easy names - so flats or sharps, but that’s just a side effect of the language we use to talk about tone frequencies. The interval “5th” sounds great. Hit a C and then G and thank God for creating you in a world of beauty. The frequency of G is 1.5x the frequency of C. The major 5th of A is thus 440Hzx1.5=660Hz. The major 3rd interval is also a beauty; hit C and then E. It’s all about fractions and multiples, and mathematical beauty. Each interval in each scale (1st, 2nd, etc) have a certain feel to it. The 7th makes you feel tension - almost home! The 5th inspires heavenly joy. You can try to find a song you know that contains the intervals. IIRC Norway’s pride Take On Me by A-Ha has a chorus beginning with a 7th and then one step - that would be C4-B5-C5. In Norwegian you’d write C4-H5-C5 though, since B is called H in “the Germanic tribes”, maybe so that you can play “B-A-C-H” on your instrument. Just like if you nerd out on assembly or binary code for a few years, you can read what a processor would do by just seeing a list of numbers, if you do music for a while you can learn to read music without having to have an instrument embody it for you. Enjoy music! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_key_frequencies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_key_frequencies Ps I agree with the parent comment - as always when reading something from NYT about a topic I’m not unfamiliar with, I realise it’s a publication somewhat detached from reality.
alisausaaa 6y ago
Wanna have hot-lovin' conversations? You’re on the right way! - https://adultlove.life https://adultlove.life
glandium 6y ago
Relatedly, Rick Beato recently did an interesting video about Beethoven's condition. https://youtu.be/3bA2V0jZMo4 https://youtu.be/3bA2V0jZMo4
odyssey7 6y ago
> I wonder: Is it an exaggeration to say that composers after Beethoven, the vast majority of them hearing, were forever changed by a deaf aesthetic? I’ve heard it expressed that when a user interface is designed with accessibility needs in mind, it tends to serve all users better. A contemporary analogue might be: are design choices that were originally made for accessibility reasons becoming broadly popular with users who don’t have those needs? Personally, I think the answer is yes. Is it because I’ve become familiar with those patterns? Or is it because those patterns appeal to my senses more easily (hence, more accessible) and therefore it’s easy to come to like them? Were these more accessible compositions more popular because Beethoven was already an esteemed composer, or because they resonated better with audience members, or perhaps some of both?
- vnorilo 6y ago
  I struggle a bit with the analogy of Beethoven and accessibility. By his day European music had swung from Bach's contrapuntal intricacies towards lighter playful elegance of Mozart's time. To me, Beethoven represents the start of the long climb towards epic, architectural monumentalism in music - which I could accept someone wants to call "deaf aesthetic", although I think Beethoven's particular condition had little to do with.
  - odyssey7 6y ago
    His work was epic and monumental at times, though the author mentions some stylistic developments that are more subtle as well. > If you look at his piano sonatas, in that first one in F Minor, the hands are very close together and the physical choreographies of the left and right hands are not that dissimilar. As he gets older, the activity of the hands become more dissimilar in his piano work, and farther apart. To me the higher contrast between the hands’ parts is analogous to having higher contrast in a visual design. The details of the work are easier to follow, potentially reaching more listeners.
egypturnash 6y ago
I mean Beethoven probably encoded a lot of stuff in his music, the man was in the Freemasons. And yesterday I was reading some Mystical Initiation Rituals and realized that they ended with three of the participants humming "VVVV V V VVVVVV" in unison, and thought about a certain symphony he wrote, and for a moment, perhaps, I was Enlightened
- makz 6y ago
  In this context what's V?
  - thelightthat 6y ago
    Ode to Joy if I'm not mistaken, if you were to hum it
8bitsrule 6y ago
A lot of musicians can 'play' with tones and chords in their imaginations ... even whole compositions. With training those can be written down without the need of an instrument. Beethoven had 40 years of hearing experience, and had lots of ideas (to remember) while he went on walks. So, I suspect his 'aesthetic' was a hearing one ... different from someone born deaf.
- ehnto 6y ago
  Known as audiation, it's very likely Beethoven could audiate all of his ideas very clearly in his head. Even I as a casual listener and occasional player can audiate improvised compositions with no trouble at all.
  - copperx 6y ago
    Is audiation universal, like the natural human ability to imagine and manipulate and rotate complex 3D scenes in the mind? I'm thinking it is, because many people say "I can imagine that sentence being read in so-and-so's voice".
    - computerphage 6y ago
      Fun fact: not all humans can visualize things in their heads. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
    - Tycho 6y ago
      “song stuck in my head” seems universal
    - ehnto 6y ago
      I imagine it's "universal" in the sense that it's part of most people's capabilities, but there are disorders that could affect it. One is called Amusia, which is a disorder affecting the ability to perceive music and difficulty remembering music. There are people who can't imagine pictures in their head, such as your example manipulating 3D scenes in your mind. They couldn't do that. That's known as aphantasia. There are also people without an inner-monologue, so they don't think inside their head. I couldn't find the name of that. It's an alien world to think of any of those possibilities, I guess you would work around it. I knew a graphic designer with aphantasia, and she was just as capable as the others!
nafts 6y ago
Paywall
grizmaldi 6y ago
Rick Beato has a pretty compelling take[0] on what Mozart's experience may have been like. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bA2V0jZMo4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bA2V0jZMo4
- danbmil99 6y ago
  I think he's wrong regarding perfect pitch. Relative pitch would be enough to be able to "auditorize" (like "visualize" but for sound) works in his mind. Having studied music from an early age when as he says his hearing was superlative, he would have internalized the timbre of each instrument through its playable range, and could use that knowledge to choose what (absolute) pitch to choose for various passages. He would not have to "hear" the absolute pitch in his head; melody and harmony are invariant to transposition. That said, he may have had perfect pitch, but that in itself would not enable him to hear a complex orchestral piece in his head. BTW none of the Beatles had perfect pitch.
  - copperx 6y ago
    I can imagine complex orchestral works and I'm no musician. It must be incredibly common and orthogonal to absolute pitch, because imagining music is a prerequisite for playing an instrument, and most people can play at least air drums.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - bjowen 6y ago
    I wonder whether absolute pitch in the sense we consider it today is even applicable to Mozart’s time. Pitch standards are a creature of the 19th century, and before their adoption, pitch varied considerably between cities, orchestras and even buildings. In that context the timbre of pretty much every non-keyboard instrument would be the only real reference point for how a melody might sound - a bassoon from a maker in Vienna may have been a quarter-tone sharper than one made in Dresden, but they would have had a recognisably similar tone colour when playing eg an E flat. That’s not to say a freakishly good ear might not have been able to distinguish a Dresden pitch from a Viennese - but as you say, that’s not material to composition. Knowing whether that that E flat will sound confident or mournful would be way more relevant to how it’s used in a phrase and ultimately what key to set the piece in.

92 points by grzm 6y ago

Plenty of renowned visual art appears to be influenced by the artists' unique experiences of vision. Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night, for one. It would be surprising if music was not influenced by the way the composer hears and experiences sound.

pmoriarty 6y ago

I read somewhere that Beethoven could hear by biting down on a piece of metal (on his piano?) that acted like a bone-conduction[1] hearing aid. If this is true, then the popular conception of Beethoven being completely unable to hear while composing his masterpieces is mistaken. I'd love to learn more (or be corrected) from anyone who knows more about this. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_conduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_conduction

black6 6y ago
I recall a story about him having the legs sawn off a grand piano so that he could lay with his head on the floor while playing to "hear" the notes.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Typically they are attached with screws, so no need to use a saw. Also, it would be far more efficient to somehow make a connection to the bridge because that's where the signal is the strongest, the case doesn't carry all that much sound though it does reflect it if the lid is up.
- aae42 6y ago
  sounds like something from Mr. Holland's Opus
idoubtit 6y ago
His most famous sonata were published in 1798, 1801 (Moonlight), and 1803. By then, he suffered from tinnitus and knew he was to loose his audition, but he could still hear. He gradually lost his audition during the 1810s and was deaf by the end of the decade. TL;DR Beethoven wrote his masterpieces sonata at a time were he could certainly hear them.
- andrepd 6y ago
  Many of Beethoven's greatest works were composed when he was fully deaf (most famously his 9th Symphony, but also the Late Quartets, Grosse Fugue, etc.)
- darkerside 6y ago
  This is useful context. His sonatas are truly masterpieces, not to say that his other incredible works are not.
  - ec123 6y ago
    His greatest sonata “Hammerklavier” was written when he was almost completely deaf in 1818. I think this commenter’s insinuation that Beethoven’s best work happened while he could hear is largely false. Op 132, op 132, grosse fuge, 9th etc
    - darkerside 6y ago
      I think it was more of an argument against there being any correlation at all, which I think is a reasonable one
dehrmann 6y ago
> completely unable to hear while composing his masterpieces I'm not sure how true those stories are, but as someone with only some musical experience, I don't find an experienced composer who continued to compose after going deaf that crazy. I can "hear" songs in my head easy enough, and composers are pretty good at transcribing what they hear onto paper.
- corin_ 6y ago
  I feel that way about the idea of coming up with a simple tune after going deaf, but hearing a full symphony you're composing while deaf is a whole new level. Then again, despite being a professional singer when I was young and then attempting to study composing I discovered I have no skill for it - so composing even a simple orchestral piece without being deaf seems complex to me.
  - alisonkisk 6y ago
    It's not that hard if you have a theory of music like a pro like Beethoven does. It's like writing a program. You aren't picking a note at a time, you are laying down "tracks" with parameters.
williamdclt 6y ago
I used to put my teeth against the neck of my bass guitar when tuning it sometimes, to hear the notes better (when unplugged, of course). It really works, especially when tuning with harmonics as you can physically feel the "phase" from two almost-the-same-frequency-but-not-quite notes. You look like an idiot though, get yourself an electric tuner it's like £10.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  I assume there are plenty of examples of people using their senses in unexpected ways to diagnose issues, and it’s always interesting to me. Eg mechanics smelling engine oil, or (closer to home) MRI staff who can listen to MRI sequences and hear problems.
  - pmoriarty 6y ago
    This reminds me of a fascinating article I once read about the lost art of diagnosing diseases by smell, and told of a senior doctor in a bygone era advising his students to open all their senses when meeting a patient for the first time. Apparently some diseases have characteristic smells, but these days medical students are rarely trained to recognize them.
    - astrange 6y ago
      Dogs can supposedly tell when humans are sick because of this, even before they know themselves.
    - autoro 6y ago
      There is a case of a woman in England that can smell Parkinson [1]. I think that when I read about it was the first time I really understood that smell is a generic sense that can detect certain molecules and that there is much more information encoded in the air around us. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-47627179 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-47627179
  - williamdclt 6y ago
    There was an HN post recently (or a comment? can't remember) about playing a beep when memory is allocated/released in a program. The claim was that you can hear weird allocation patterns. Similarly most of us could probably diagnose some faulty hard drive issues by ear

npunt 6y ago

Very cool to think about the spatial properties of composition like hand position changing as Beethoven went deaf. It suggests there's broader discoveries to be made in finding the patterns underneath things we thought we already understood. Also love the author's insight that one can work on the technique of composition before turning on her hearing aids and being able to hear it, using her deafness as a sort of focus superpower.

idoubtit 6y ago

I fail to see any interest in this article. It looks to me that someone projected her beliefs on Beethoven, with an oversimplification and little regards to the various influences on Beethoven's composition. He composed music at a time where musical trends emerged (notably romanticism), he suffered big professional failures, he was influenced by other composers... Did Beethoven's music become more complex in his last years because he could not hear? Maybe so, but Bach had no hearing problem yet his later music evolved in a similar way (Musical offering, The Art of the Fugue). One could build a theory that Bach's piano works were influenced by his reading of the Odysseus, or by his growing taste for coffee. There certainly are arguments that could justify these theories. There are arguments against it, and anyway nothing can be established. Well, as long as some people enjoy writing or reading theories, why not.

dvtrn 6y ago
It was interesting watching your thoughts manifest as the comment progresses towards its conclusion; as the final sentence almost seems to resolve the inquiry contained in the first. Thank you
- Sawamara 6y ago
  Upvote if you are a music composer :D
  - dvtrn 6y ago
    Heh not a composer but I do play the tuba haha :) glad you caught the musical metaphors there
gryson 6y ago
You don't have to look far to see the interest in the article: a pianist with near-profound hearing loss stating that Beethoven's compositions become more interesting to her the later they were composed, coinciding with Beethoven's loss in hearing. "More pitch distance and difference, and more vibration and resonance, create a recipe for happiness for a hearing-impaired person." That, in turn, leads to the consideration of whether Beethoven's later music was defined in some way by his deafness.

tomcam 6y ago

Nonsense. A lot of people don't understand that for a composer of Beethoven's training and skill, physically hearing the music is essentially irrelevant. The image we have in our heads of a composer sitting at the piano and noodling almost certainly doesn't apply to a Beethoven or a Bach or a Schumann. It would slow them down intolerably. They could read music and hear it as surely as you and I can see word pictures when we read a novel. They would compose and hear the music in their head and simply transcribe.

jeofken 6y ago
For anyone interested in getting a hang out of this, here’s is one way. In computing we have massive amount of logic gates and wires into and out of the computer - from this we can create all kinds of things. In music, you have intervals between frequencies and you have time intervals between these, ie rhythm. Traditionally we divide the space between a sound frequency and the double of it into 12 notes, because it’s a great number to divide by. That means a middle A is 440Hz. 440Hzx2=880Hz. That interval is called “octave”. Middle C on a piano is thus at 261.6256Hz [0]. Of these 12 “raw” simple fractional divisions, you can select a number of notes that played make a certain mood. If you start at C on a piano and hit the white keys to the next C, you will have hit the 8 notes we group as the “C major” scale. In this group there are 8 frequencies selected. The 1st is middle C, 2nd is D, 3rd is E, and so forth. For this example I chose C major just because all the notes have easy names - so flats or sharps, but that’s just a side effect of the language we use to talk about tone frequencies. The interval “5th” sounds great. Hit a C and then G and thank God for creating you in a world of beauty. The frequency of G is 1.5x the frequency of C. The major 5th of A is thus 440Hzx1.5=660Hz. The major 3rd interval is also a beauty; hit C and then E. It’s all about fractions and multiples, and mathematical beauty. Each interval in each scale (1st, 2nd, etc) have a certain feel to it. The 7th makes you feel tension - almost home! The 5th inspires heavenly joy. You can try to find a song you know that contains the intervals. IIRC Norway’s pride Take On Me by A-Ha has a chorus beginning with a 7th and then one step - that would be C4-B5-C5. In Norwegian you’d write C4-H5-C5 though, since B is called H in “the Germanic tribes”, maybe so that you can play “B-A-C-H” on your instrument. Just like if you nerd out on assembly or binary code for a few years, you can read what a processor would do by just seeing a list of numbers, if you do music for a while you can learn to read music without having to have an instrument embody it for you. Enjoy music! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_key_frequencies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_key_frequencies Ps I agree with the parent comment - as always when reading something from NYT about a topic I’m not unfamiliar with, I realise it’s a publication somewhat detached from reality.

alisausaaa 6y ago

Wanna have hot-lovin' conversations? You’re on the right way! - https://adultlove.life https://adultlove.life

glandium 6y ago

Relatedly, Rick Beato recently did an interesting video about Beethoven's condition. https://youtu.be/3bA2V0jZMo4 https://youtu.be/3bA2V0jZMo4

odyssey7 6y ago

> I wonder: Is it an exaggeration to say that composers after Beethoven, the vast majority of them hearing, were forever changed by a deaf aesthetic? I’ve heard it expressed that when a user interface is designed with accessibility needs in mind, it tends to serve all users better. A contemporary analogue might be: are design choices that were originally made for accessibility reasons becoming broadly popular with users who don’t have those needs? Personally, I think the answer is yes. Is it because I’ve become familiar with those patterns? Or is it because those patterns appeal to my senses more easily (hence, more accessible) and therefore it’s easy to come to like them? Were these more accessible compositions more popular because Beethoven was already an esteemed composer, or because they resonated better with audience members, or perhaps some of both?

vnorilo 6y ago
I struggle a bit with the analogy of Beethoven and accessibility. By his day European music had swung from Bach's contrapuntal intricacies towards lighter playful elegance of Mozart's time. To me, Beethoven represents the start of the long climb towards epic, architectural monumentalism in music - which I could accept someone wants to call "deaf aesthetic", although I think Beethoven's particular condition had little to do with.
- odyssey7 6y ago
  His work was epic and monumental at times, though the author mentions some stylistic developments that are more subtle as well. > If you look at his piano sonatas, in that first one in F Minor, the hands are very close together and the physical choreographies of the left and right hands are not that dissimilar. As he gets older, the activity of the hands become more dissimilar in his piano work, and farther apart. To me the higher contrast between the hands’ parts is analogous to having higher contrast in a visual design. The details of the work are easier to follow, potentially reaching more listeners.

egypturnash 6y ago

I mean Beethoven probably encoded a lot of stuff in his music, the man was in the Freemasons. And yesterday I was reading some Mystical Initiation Rituals and realized that they ended with three of the participants humming "VVVV V V VVVVVV" in unison, and thought about a certain symphony he wrote, and for a moment, perhaps, I was Enlightened

makz 6y ago
In this context what's V?
- thelightthat 6y ago
  Ode to Joy if I'm not mistaken, if you were to hum it

8bitsrule 6y ago

A lot of musicians can 'play' with tones and chords in their imaginations ... even whole compositions. With training those can be written down without the need of an instrument. Beethoven had 40 years of hearing experience, and had lots of ideas (to remember) while he went on walks. So, I suspect his 'aesthetic' was a hearing one ... different from someone born deaf.

ehnto 6y ago
Known as audiation, it's very likely Beethoven could audiate all of his ideas very clearly in his head. Even I as a casual listener and occasional player can audiate improvised compositions with no trouble at all.
- copperx 6y ago
  Is audiation universal, like the natural human ability to imagine and manipulate and rotate complex 3D scenes in the mind? I'm thinking it is, because many people say "I can imagine that sentence being read in so-and-so's voice".
  - computerphage 6y ago
    Fun fact: not all humans can visualize things in their heads. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
  - Tycho 6y ago
    “song stuck in my head” seems universal
  - ehnto 6y ago
    I imagine it's "universal" in the sense that it's part of most people's capabilities, but there are disorders that could affect it. One is called Amusia, which is a disorder affecting the ability to perceive music and difficulty remembering music. There are people who can't imagine pictures in their head, such as your example manipulating 3D scenes in your mind. They couldn't do that. That's known as aphantasia. There are also people without an inner-monologue, so they don't think inside their head. I couldn't find the name of that. It's an alien world to think of any of those possibilities, I guess you would work around it. I knew a graphic designer with aphantasia, and she was just as capable as the others!

nafts 6y ago

Paywall

grizmaldi 6y ago

Rick Beato has a pretty compelling take[0] on what Mozart's experience may have been like. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bA2V0jZMo4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bA2V0jZMo4

danbmil99 6y ago
I think he's wrong regarding perfect pitch. Relative pitch would be enough to be able to "auditorize" (like "visualize" but for sound) works in his mind. Having studied music from an early age when as he says his hearing was superlative, he would have internalized the timbre of each instrument through its playable range, and could use that knowledge to choose what (absolute) pitch to choose for various passages. He would not have to "hear" the absolute pitch in his head; melody and harmony are invariant to transposition. That said, he may have had perfect pitch, but that in itself would not enable him to hear a complex orchestral piece in his head. BTW none of the Beatles had perfect pitch.
- copperx 6y ago
  I can imagine complex orchestral works and I'm no musician. It must be incredibly common and orthogonal to absolute pitch, because imagining music is a prerequisite for playing an instrument, and most people can play at least air drums.
- deleted 6y ago
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- bjowen 6y ago
  I wonder whether absolute pitch in the sense we consider it today is even applicable to Mozart’s time. Pitch standards are a creature of the 19th century, and before their adoption, pitch varied considerably between cities, orchestras and even buildings. In that context the timbre of pretty much every non-keyboard instrument would be the only real reference point for how a melody might sound - a bassoon from a maker in Vienna may have been a quarter-tone sharper than one made in Dresden, but they would have had a recognisably similar tone colour when playing eg an E flat. That’s not to say a freakishly good ear might not have been able to distinguish a Dresden pitch from a Viennese - but as you say, that’s not material to composition. Knowing whether that that E flat will sound confident or mournful would be way more relevant to how it’s used in a phrase and ultimately what key to set the piece in.