Beethoven: The Genius Who Couldn’t Hear

Beethoven was a man of few words and many notes. And by many, we mean thunderous symphonies, whispering adagios, and that unmistakable “duh-duh-duh-DUH” which may or may not be the most iconic four-note opening in music history. Beethoven is a name that conjures drama, defiance, and wigs in urgent need of brushing. But what do we really know about the man behind the music? Let’s unravel 25 truths, tales, and cheerful oddities about Beethoven that prove he wasn’t just a genius with a quill and keyboard.

Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany, in 1770, and despite his later fame, he came into the world not with a bang but more of a sigh. His birthdate is unknown, but he was baptised on 17 December, so everyone just settled on the 16th. Nothing says rock ‘n’ roll beginnings like fuzzy church records and mild administrative guesswork.

His father, Johann, was a singer who once tried turning young Ludwig into a second Mozart. Spoiler: it didn’t work. Instead of charming emperors at age five, Beethoven spent his childhood being yanked out of bed to practise scales in the dead of night while his dad wobbled nearby, likely inebriated. Ah, family tradition.

Beethoven’s hands were unusually broad and strong. So much so, he could span a thirteenth on the piano (that’s six more notes than your average mortal). Modern pianists still sigh in envy.

He didn’t like teaching. It bored him. And yet, he taught piano to a few aristocrats to pay the rent. There’s something oddly poetic about a man who wrote world-altering sonatas because he had to fund his lunch.

He loved strong coffee. Specifically, he insisted on exactly 60 coffee beans per cup. He counted them. Every single time. This level of precision also turned up in his music, so maybe there’s a link between obsessive bean-counting and musical immortality.

His hearing began to decline in his late 20s, which, for a composer, is like a pilot slowly going blind. By 1814, he was almost completely deaf. That didn’t stop him from composing. In fact, it made him push boundaries even more. By the end, he was hearing music not through his ears but in his bones and brain.

He had a notoriously chaotic appearance. Hair like a weather map in a thunderstorm. Clothes in disarray. His landladies regularly complained. One described him as resembling someone who had escaped from an asylum. Beethoven, naturally, shrugged it off.

He wrote some of his best works after losing his hearing. The Ninth Symphony? Totally deaf. The Late String Quartets? Ditto. It’s the musical equivalent of painting the Sistine Chapel with your eyes shut.

He carried around sketchbooks to jot down musical ideas. These notebooks are now prized artefacts. They reveal a composer who never took brilliance for granted. He tinkered endlessly. Revised. Crossed out. Swore. Wrote it again. Then crossed that out too.

He never married, though he fell in love often and disastrously. Most of his romantic targets were aristocratic women. Unfortunately, Beethoven had no title, little money, and the social charm of a wet broom. So, his love life remained one long, frustrated cadenza.

The “Immortal Beloved” letter, found after his death, remains one of classical music’s great mysteries. To this day, no one knows for sure who it was addressed to. Scholars have tossed around names, but Beethoven took the secret with him.

He was a walker. Long, solitary strolls in nature fuelled his creativity. He’d pace for hours, muttering, waving his arms, occasionally stopping to scribble in his sketchbook. Locals were concerned. Some probably crossed the road.

He had a fiery temper. He once threw hot food at a waiter for bringing him the wrong dish. He regularly insulted patrons and princes. He told one nobleman, “There are many princes and will always be, but there is only one Beethoven.”

His lodgings were constantly changing. He moved more than 60 times in Vienna, driving landlords to despair. He banged on the piano at all hours, shouted at himself, and refused to open the door.

He dedicated music to Napoleon Bonaparte, then scratched his name off the score when Napoleon crowned himself Emperor. That piece, Symphony No. 3, became the Eroica Symphony – bold, revolutionary, and dripping with Beethoven’s sense of betrayal.

His desk was always a mess. Not the charming chaos of a creative genius, but full-on battlefield. Papers, dirty plates, open letters, broken pens. He probably lost more scores in the clutter than we’ll ever know.

He experimented constantly. His music is full of sudden silences, explosive contrasts, wild key changes. He was the punk rock of the classical era. No powdered court composer here. Beethoven smashed the rules and rebuilt them louder.

He believed in brotherhood and freedom. His Ninth Symphony ends with the “Ode to Joy,” a celebration of universal kinship. It became an anthem for the European Union, though Beethoven would probably scoff at the bureaucracy.

He was paranoid about being poisoned. He often changed cooks and was obsessed with his health. Sadly, his diet of wine, lead-laced medicines, and dubious hygiene didn’t help. When he died, an autopsy found massive liver damage. Lead poisoning is suspected.

His funeral drew thousands. Vienna came out in force. Schubert, another musical legend, was a pallbearer. It was less a farewell and more a national event. The city mourned like it had lost a monarch. And in a way, it had.

Beethoven’s hearing aids were hollow metal rods he clamped between his teeth to feel vibrations. He was essentially inventing bone conduction technology two centuries before it became trendy.

He wrote music that stretched the limits of instruments. Some orchestras groaned at his demands. He once asked violinists to play with such force their strings snapped mid-performance.

He reused musical ideas like leftovers. A theme rejected in one piece might show up later transformed. Waste not, want not, even when writing the Moonlight Sonata.

Beethoven once attempted to write an opera and hated every minute of it. Fidelio was the result. He rewrote it three times, grumbling throughout, and swore never to write another.

He remains one of the most performed composers ever. Whether at a concert hall, in a car commercial, or blaring from a smartphone ringtone, Beethoven’s music still thunders on. Deaf, dishevelled, and defiant, he roared into history and made sure we’d never forget him.