President’s Message
TEA TREATS OR SOMETHING’S BREWING
As we have spent so many months at home now, one turns to hobbies to pass time. After all there is just so much television one can watch.
Music is a great companion in these distressing days where gloom and doom are permanent bedfellows.
Listening to classical music brings me to the topic of one of my favorite composers Ludwig Van Beethoven. A musical genius who composed a large portion of his work with a hearing impediment.
What was the cause of Beethoven’s hearing impairment and could modern medicine have helped him? What is the relationship between his increasing deafness and his musical creative process? What effect did the composer have on his time and beyond?
These and other questions will be explored by international scientists, doctors, and specialists from all over Europe in Bonn on 16 and 17 October 2020. The musical-medical symposium “Beethoven – the Heard and the Deaf” is organised by Beethoven Jubiläums GmbH in cooperation with the University Hospital Bonn and the Freiburg Institute for Musicians’ Medicine.
Also, another important question that springs to mind. Did Beethoven’s deafness change his music?
In his early works, when Beethoven could hear the full range of frequencies, he made use of higher notes in his compositions. As his hearing failed, he began to use the lower notes that he could hear more clearly. Works including the Moonlight Sonata, his only opera Fidelio and six symphonies were written during this period. The high notes returned to his compositions towards the end of his life which suggests he was hearing the works take shape in his imagination.
It will be interesting to see what this extraordinary project with its music medicine perspectives will uncover and we can get to know Beethoven in a way we have never before.
Framroze Mehta
President