Page 50 - Coverage Book_Aurora Orchestra Autumn 2020
P. 50
4 September 2020
MUSIC
Richard Ayres: ‘It’s like Beethoven
is humming in my head’
The composer was inspired by Beethoven to write a work for the Proms
about his deafness
Beethoven, portrayed while composing the Missa Solemnis, 1820
GETTY IMAGES
Neil Fisher
Friday September 04 2020, 5.00pm, The Times
Ludwig van Beethoven spent the spring and summer of 1802 in the small town of
Heiligenstadt, just outside Vienna. It was an attempt at relaxation, but out of it came an
extraordinary declaration of spiritual and artistic defiance: the so-called Heiligenstadt
Testament.
In this letter addressed to his brothers (but never sent) he wrote: “For six years I have been a
hopeless case, aggravated by senseless physicians, cheated year after year in the hope of
improvement, finally compelled to face the prospect of a lasting malady.”
The malady was encroaching deafness and it was incurable. Beethoven felt he was suffering
twice over, because at the same time as losing his hearing he was too ashamed to seek company.
“I was compelled early to isolate myself, to live in loneliness, when I at times tried to forget all
