Hacker News Reader

Comment by pmoriarty | Hacker News Reader

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

View on HN

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.

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.

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.

Dogs can supposedly tell when humans are sick because of this, even before they know themselves.

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

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

My wife told me her external SSD was failing. I asked what the symptoms were and she said it was making a noise.

With all the paternal condescension I could muster I told her, SSDs don't make noise.

She said it's making a noise right now!

I listened - no it isn't!

A fracas ensued.

Later after the armistice was signed, we Googled and discovered the power supply can emit sounds in the 16Khz range when voltage is inconsistent.

And sure enough I've lost that hearing range and my wife hasn't.

I told her that's proof I didn't hear her about taking out the trash - she must've been using her 16KhZ voice!

Power supplies... Phone chargers, ebike battery charger, laptop chargers... So many switching power supplies tend to whistle it's a major pain. Even worse when you're the only one hearing it... Even even worse is that unshakeable feeling that the thing is shit and is going to blow up soon (I played the 'blowing up electronic components' game when a teenager instead of sports or dating or studying).

I can also hear some GPUs around me, and I'm not sure whether it's the draw of the power supply that makes the PC sing or something within the GPU itself.

Likely the GPU itself, which has it's own powerful switching converters (to get from the voltage it gets from the PSU to core voltage for the GPU chips)

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

sounds like something from Mr. Holland's Opus

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.

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.)

This is useful context. His sonatas are truly masterpieces, not to say that his other incredible works are not.

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

I think it was more of an argument against there being any correlation at all, which I think is a reasonable one

Reply on news.ycombinator.com