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SirJo Cocchi's avatar

"I still find it hard to grasp how his music advanced more radically after the onset of deafness. There must be a lesson in that." maybe since you can't listen to the outer world, the only way is inward?

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Malcolm J McKinney's avatar

He could hear it in his mind and knew how each written note, progression and chord would sound It is how a composer works.

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Maura Bosch's avatar

Yes it is how a composer works, but what changed in BeethovenтАЩs music with the onset of his deafness: the introduction of a totally radical sense of time spans, middle-ground rhythm, how long you stay with a chord (the opening to the Waldstein, and it only becomes more radical from there).

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Jonny Bates's avatar

Agreed. Radical, novel, narrative, epic. I look at the factors--the suffering, unrequited love, turmoil--to apply some meaning/causation but then realize everyone suffered back then in horrifying ways and how subjective any suffering is. Beethoven's music has kept me from being truly secular/materialist.

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Malcolm J McKinney's avatar

He might have been really motivated to compensate for his blindness.

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