BEETHOVEN PLAYING FOR HIS FRIENDS
But a strange Fate touched him and took away his sense of hearing. From the time he was about thirty years old his hearing grew gradually worse. Indeed it was necessary for him to have a piano especially constructed with additional wires so that he could hear.
BEETHOVEN'S PIANO
Can you think of anything more cruel, more terrible, more depressing, more awful?
BEETHOVEN IN THE COUNTRY
And yet he went on day, after day, composing beautiful music as he walked the fields, or as he sat at his table. For we must remember that he could hear his own music in his thoughts. That is, the mind that made the music could hear it, though the ear itself was forever closed to the sound of it.
Year after year he continued to write symphonies and concertos, sonatas, songs, choral and chamber music.