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Comment by idoubtit | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

I didn't read the article (yet) but this seems like a great summary of it, thanks.

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

Upvote if you are a music composer :D

Heh not a composer but I do play the tuba haha :) glad you caught the musical metaphors there

> someone projected her beliefs

You may be right about some projection going on, but your comment ignores the critical fact that she is one of presumably relatively few humans with experience as a composer with significant hearing loss. So her “projection” isn’t based on some random beliefs, but grounded in a relatively rare shared experience with the subject of her study.

In addition, historians and anthropologists routinely project to varying degrees in trying to interpret the “why” of history in addition to the “what”. And the fact that there’s a lot of speculation going on, is my default expectation as reader. No need to write it into every article on historical interpretation.

So I find her observations an interesting avenue of interpreting some aspects of Beethoven’s musical evolution.

Also Beethoven was composing at a time when the piano was undergoing quite a bit of physical iteration.

A typical piano in Mozart's day, just proceeding Beethoven, had a wooden frame, strings made of iron, and a range of perhaps 5 octaves.

The modern concert grand, the design of which was mostly settled on by about 1880, has a cast iron frame, strings of spring steel ("piano wire"), and a rage of just over 7 octaves.

Also, pianos were an evolving instrument and Beethoven could employ wider and wider ranges later because pianos were getting them. A young Beethoven couldn't use these notes even if he wanted to, as long as he wanted his pieces actually played.

Beethoven worked as an organist before he began to go deaf, and pipe organs had wider range than modern pianos (as well as playing louder). Despite this he composed very little music for the pipe organ. This makes me think the increased range in his later compositions was just the natural tendency for composers to increase the complexity of their works as they gain experience.

While an organ has a similar interface (keyboard), it's such a different instrument really, in terms of the noise it makes, and various other elements like the length of noise from a key press. He would have had to actually want the organ as the instrument in the piece for how it is, not just for offering a greater range than an early pianoforte.

So it could well be that he would have preferred to use the organ's range earlier but just not wanted that instrument in his music. And that's not necessarily an insult to pipe organs - I think they sound lovely, watching somebody play well can be as enjoyable as almost any other instrument, and I'm a big fan of them in their place. But their place is pretty niche really - there's lots of lovely (but religious) choral works that use one, due to churches historically, and there are nice things written for organ. But it's pretty rare for organ to be the keyboard instrument of choice in orchestral music, chamber music, etc

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