Beethoven Dies: Music's Titan Falls Silent

The thunder outside his window may not have happened, but the story persists: Ludwig van Beethoven died on March 26, 1827, at age 56, after months of agonizing illness, his hearing gone, his body wrecked by liver disease, and 20,000 Viennese lining the streets for his funeral procession. The man who had revolutionized Western music left behind nine symphonies, 32 piano sonatas, one opera, and a body of work that fundamentally altered the relationship between composer and audience. Beethoven began losing his hearing in his late twenties, a catastrophe for any musician but an existential crisis for the most ambitious composer of his generation. By 1802, he was so despairing that he wrote the Heiligenstadt Testament, a letter to his brothers that reads like a suicide note. He chose to live, and over the next two decades composed the works that shattered classical form: the Eroica Symphony, which expanded the symphony from entertainment to statement; the Fifth Symphony, whose four-note opening became the most recognizable musical phrase on Earth; and the Ninth Symphony, which placed a choir inside a symphony for the first time. His final years were wretched. Completely deaf, he communicated through conversation books, scribbling replies to visitors. He conducted the premiere of the Ninth Symphony in 1824 and had to be turned around by a soloist to see the audience's ovation because he could not hear it. His finances were precarious despite his fame, and a series of legal battles over the custody of his nephew Karl consumed years of energy. Modern analysis of his hair revealed lethal levels of lead, likely from wine adulterated with lead sweetener, a common practice of the era. Beethoven's deafness may also have stemmed from lead poisoning. He died having composed some of the most powerful music in human history while unable to hear a single note of it performed.