On May 7, 1824, Beethoven shared his 9th Symphony with the world even though he could never hear it. On May 7, 2015 celebrate the anniversary of Beethoven’s most glorious and jubilant masterpiece with Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. An exhilarating testament to the human spirit, Beethoven’s Ninth bursts with brooding power and kinetic energy and culminates in the exultant hymn, “Ode to Joy.”The video is now available free on demand for all to enjoy! - See more at: http://cso.org/beethoven9
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  Todor Stojanov6 months ago
  Ludwig van Beethoven A man who wrote countless pieces of music, each and every one a masterpiece in a class of its own A man who lost the will to live after the discovery he wouldn't be able to hear music, the only undisputed passion in his life, but gave up on suicide because "he couldn't bare to leave this world before he had left it with his work"
  
  
     
  • "Symphony No.9 'Choral': Scherzo: Molto vivace" by Bernard Haitink Listen ad-free with YouTube Red
• AnAmericanComposer1 year ago
  It seems like a lot of people want to know how he wrote his 9th Symphony while deaf. It turns out, just like one has a "mind's eye" and can memorize and visualize intense detail through the imagination, one also has a sort of "mind's ear", where not only can someone hear melodies (all I have to write down is "I came in like a wrecking ball" and everyone here probably has the melody in their head), but also the distances between pitches (the first two unique pitches in Beethoven 5 are a minor-third apart, for instance), and duration. Then, with a high level of training and exposure, people can figure out actual individual pitches (the first sung note of Ave Maria is a B-flat). I can do this myself, to an extent, and in fact mentally writing (as opposed to writing at a piano) is a fantastic way of training your mind to contextualize melody, form, and harmony. I'm certain that Beethoven did a lot of writing away from the piano, and this allowed him to really train his mind's ear to hear harmony. It is important to notice that the further along the symphonie came in his repertoire (the progressively more deaf he became), the crazier his music became, in terms of harmonic usage and melody. This is because the mind's ear is less scrutinizing of hard harmonies, and in fact they can sound very normal in your head. It is very possible that Beethoven had a VERY strong grasp on what he was writing, but in fact didn't know EXACTLY what his music sounded like. Perhaps now he would hear this now and say "Ay! I messed up the trumpet part in measure 220!"