Beethoven: The Man Who Freed Music; 11; Beethoven's Deafness

When. Beethoven. Was. Commemorating the 210 of our survey of the birth of the big fun Beethoven in 1770. One of a series of programmes produced by the University of Michigan Broadcasting Service revealing the musical social and political climate of Europe during the lifetime of the man who freed music. The musical historian and researcher is indeed fortunate to have inherited such a rich legacy of material about the life and times of Ludwig van Beethoven. There are the

Beethoven letters the conversation books unfortunately containing only the questions posed to Beethoven in his deafness but not the composers replies. Letters of Beethoven's friends and contemporaries voluminous medical reports from the composer several doctors to mention all of the chief sources from these materials. Many biographies and studies of the composer have been written. The most notable of which is probably still that of Alexander Wheelock fair within the past decade or so however an entirely new use has been made of these interesting historical records psychological and psychoanalytical method has been applied to them and a new concept of Beethoven the man and the composer has taken shape. One of the most distinguished investigators in this field is Dr. Frederick Wyatt professor of psychology and director of the psychological clinic at the University of Michigan. Dr. Wyatt spends considerable time studying the relationship of psychology to history and literature. Unfortunately for us one of his subjects is Ludwig van Beethoven coming to

the staff of the University of 952 Dr. Wyatt was formally a practicing psychologist with the United States Veterans Administration and a member of the staff of Harvard Medical School. His most recent publications include an article on the relationship of psychology and history printed in the International Journal of Psychology and he edited a translation from the French and wrote the foreword to the book female sexuality a just released by the University of Michigan press on the University of Michigan staff Dr. Wyatt teaches the theory of an organizes and supervises clinical practice in the field of psychological disruptions. Doctor why is our guest on today's program in the series Beethoven the man who freed music. But before we hear what Dr. Wyatt has to say about Beethoven Let's listen to one of the composers lesser known and seldom heard compositions pianists Yorke Damus and Norman shuttler will perform Beethoven's eight variations for piano duet on a theme of Count von Vost time where composed probably during the last years of Beethoven's

residence in Bonn. Dr. Wyatt the psychological analysis of creative individuals

in the past history has been attempted on numerous occasions. Generally speaking call valid Can any conclusions based on admittedly incomplete evidence be. I think you have two problems here. One is that of historical reconstruction to talk about somebody who cannot talk back anymore and in discussing whose work and life we are dependent on what's been left over which is obvious to some extent Johnson. Accidental matter then there's a second element which perhaps aggravates the situation but makes it also more interesting and that is the mystery of the creative individual who is in some respects like all other individuals. One might see only more so. In addition it has a peculiar quality that kind of thing that leads to great works which we must assume has also something some effect in the psychological household so we have two problems. The historical one and that of creativity.

Now about the historical one. There's a school of thought which says since you cannot inquire with the person directly and you cannot observe him directly since you don't have any data of immediate observation on him you can only talk in terms of guesses. I think that cannot be denied but it seems to me a less restrictive statement than it may appear at first. I have not been troubled interesting. To reconstruct the meaning of past works of literature you will in conjunction one Xmas book as a Wilcox in history in construing historical personality one of the British generals during the American Revolutionary War. We can in such a venture. And then of course applies to the hero of our discussion. Beethoven just as much we cannot speak of certainties. We have no way of validating what we can see. But I think we can arrange what we know much more plausibly and

meaningfully than we had it before. Is it true to say that this analysis is a psycho analysis in the same way that you would treat a living person as long as they cannot speak for themselves and contribute to it. Again I I would like to answer in two parts. It is necessary to use psychoanalysis in the sense of Freud in psychoanalysis. For a while the understanding of historical events or historical personalities it's in principle possible to use other systems of psychology of personality theory. It so happens that I know most about the significant one and have worked with it all my life. So I applied. It is also true that I believe that it is by far the one that is most suited most subtle for the purpose. The second one the practical psychoanalysis one would have to say no. Of course it is not because we do not have dialogue. We do not have the continuous use

of transcendence self correction that is implied in the therapeutic dialogue in which the therapist may come up with a hypothesis but then will have to modify it if what the patient has to say to it goes in a different direction and vice versa so that the two of them influence each other continuously in a corrective way in historical material we have to proceed differently. We have to test hypotheses against all of the data coming from the work of the man himself coming from the biography coming from observations of contemporaries let us have graphical notes and so on diaries and then we have to see how much the consistency holds up. And be sure that we are not carried away by Pit ideas as we so easily do. In the evidence particularly of contemporaries there is bound to be a contradiction. Contradictory statements. Is there any way for instance in the case of Beethoven of assessing what

the man was really like to his contemporaries if they don't really agree. You have to then turn and analyze the contemporaries and what they were like to before you can tell why they responded to Beethoven in a certain way at least to some extent. I think there we have to learn from the skill of historians who would inquire into the validity and trustworthiness of a given source which does not always mean that the man was either truthful or a liar. But it may simply mean that he acted under specific circumstances and from a particular viewpoint to give you a simple example. People who have visited Beethoven and talked to him at different times when he was in a different state of mind and they came away with different impressions. Another thing that happens to a man is great as the subject of our discussion is that in his lifetime a myth develops. And most people begin to react to the mythological conception of the genius rather than to the man. That has to be considered too. A person may be very much in keeping with his time

or sharply deviate from it. He bit off his case he was not quite in keeping with his time. Neither would his music know with his madness. On the other hand a new movement romanticism made use of just that fact and idealized and exaggerated certain acts of Beethoven which have become anecdote in the mean time attributing character traits to him that when not necessarily his. So in that sense we have to do the usual careful historical sifting enriched we hope an amplified by psychological meaningfulness some of the descriptions of Beethoven imply that he was not easily approachable. That as a young man he was. Boorish on occasion and as time went on he was more and more anti-social and a phrase we use today at any rate. Do you think that generally speaking this was part of the image. Was he partly responsible

for this creating this image. Keep in mind that I'm speaking not as a musicologist that I do not have the requisite specialized knowledge about Beethoven but rather as a lifelong admirer and a few Sunanda of his music who simply out of love for the product has done some reading about the man and has also been interested in the psychology of the personality. Now Beethoven came from what we would now call a very under privileged home from poor people. When he came to Vienna he talked a dialect which was not only alien to the dialect spoken in Vienna but had in addition a peasant a lower caste quality to it. He also had a kind of awkwardness and lack of experience with social amenities that go with a limited and under privileged circumstances. On the other hand he had very

early the consciousness of his genius and knew what he was like. He was very quickly adopted by the highest favorites by the highest sponsors of musical creativity then in the ME and the society that is high up feudal people. Dukes and counts well-to-do friends of music and he took that for granted he was a rather instant success an almost instant success. I think I would now as psychologist say that he also fairly early hit some of the problems of his temper a great deal of impatience and great sensitivity. Feeling easily hurt sometimes when it wasn't intended and when it was rather construed by him. Now that these three. Motifs he made this personality. He was a rather sociable person until his deafness took over.

But I think at the end of his life when cannot speak of him as a loner he always had company always came to his favorite coffee house. Students and admirers of his friends who made the purpose to be the friends in the tendons of the great man. So him to the end of his life regularly and when he lived alone as a bachelor these knew if you joined him he made his nephew join him. One cannot speak of him as an and as a person who was alone. It's a different story to speak of him as a person who felt lonely very often. That is probably correct. Do you think as a creative person or as so often happens with a creative person that he devised a persona for himself or did he see himself as a certain kind of individual and try to live up to that image. I think he had a strong conviction of his immense musical competence. Incidentally before they had also of his

immense skill as a pianist. Beethoven succeeded first really as a performer before he succeeded his way. Composer. And the sense of power and superiority one might almost say I don't give a hoot for anything. Quality in him is on the one hand a fairly genuine expression of what there was. It's nightly that he also sometimes he had behind it. Like many easily vulnerable sensitive profoundly insecure people he was gruff to the point of rudeness and given too much change of temper. Some of that I think expresses simply the liabilities of his temperament. In other respects he probably soon used it as a shield. His people have this kind of make up do when Brits used it as a protection.

Was this insecurity something peculiar to Beethoven or is it the typical insecurity of the artist. I think we have reason to think that it went much further in Beethoven's case Beethoven's childhood was really very high. Difficult one if we had the man without his genius we would expect the worst from the conditions under which he was being brought up. Family was not only poor the father was a drunkard and was not good for anything although he was a musician. The singer himself there was a long suffering mother. There were a number of other children. There wasn't any money around it was an insecure or difficult situation suffering of course from the excesses of the Father and from the problems of the Father. So Biddulph would according to the books have a good deal of reason to be afterwards a difficult eccentric or neurotic personality. This was financial insecurity as much as emotional insecurity.

I would see both. The the conditions of his upbringing what we know about it and I think that is the part of his biography which is most one thing least is known about that. But whatever Beethoven recalled late on unstated and what other people observed gives one the feeling that this was an on the Happy to Bill and the House who would suffering very much from the problems of his father which seem to have been compensated by the mother although when sometimes that the feeling that this was one of those long suffering wives of alcoholics who themselves in subtle ways cost good feelings over their entire environment in that way do as much damage. But in the rambunctious father who comes home drunk. But years been made perhaps too much about Beethoven's relations or lack of relations with women. Would this perhaps be connected with the family life which he knew as a child.

The psychologist would conclude this way and the one outstanding psycho analytic study about the Beethoven the one by Richard in the disturber to Detroit psycho analysts of Viennese origin comes to the same conclusion. So it is a like a thing that we again is one of the things we will not know for certain but that we would on the basis of what we now know of people nowadays of similar lives and similar backgrounds we would conclude with some degree of assurance. The funny thing is that the matter is apparently unsettled the stabber us come to the conclusion that in all likelihood be to have made very little if anything to do with women. Now a bit of man was notorious for having crushes on women quite often women who for the very class conscious society of his age were enough above his

station that even with his genius and with his fame he could probably not have married. What is not a dollar tier is how much these relationships were requited in reciprocal. When I grew up the belief was and that culminates in the book of the starbursts that probably not a great deal happened and disturb us show a lot of good psychological reasoning why it is unlikely that bit of myth much relationship to women. Strangely enough recent more recent biographical studies have come up with opposite results and infer at least or hint that Beethoven made a number of relationships and two relatively to two ladies who were in the Cascades relatively above him which is somewhat similar to go to. He resembles in some way he did not keep him from entertaining such relationships. I can't decide where the truth lies. I would say however one thing we can say with

reasonable assurance the fact that he did not settle down and marry and that we do not know of any steady regular developed what we would call normal mature grown up relationship. That I think has its roots in his character and in the problems of his childhood. He never actually came out and declared I choose not to marry because it would interfere with my career. In a sad state if I recall correctly he made from time to time some disdainful remarks about women on the other hand he was also clearly devoted to some of them that there was a tendency for kind of rambunctious. So for more Rick humor in him that he entertained with his friends something that had very much the qualities not only of nothing but male society with all its shortcomings. But also when the brother of adolescence a somewhat

unrefined way of jostling with each other and sometimes talking in not entirely proper terms about life sex and ladies. With this was more or less of the homosexuals. I don't think that there is in the in the sense in which this term should be used. And I should make it clear here I think it makes sense to speak of homosexuality in what in a non theoretical context. Only if we talk about people for whom it is impossible to form. Relationships with the other six which have a lasting reasonably lasting and meaningful quality Have a great deal of mutuality. It's a different story with the use of the term homosexuality in psychoanalysis. There it may not necessarily mean what I just said and we must really keep this in mind. Now the stabbers make a point that Beethoven in the

attitude to the widow of one of his brothers and later on to that deceased brother's son the famous nephew evinced all kinds of traits that we would in a purely technical theoretical psychoanalytic sense relate to the origins of the quality of homosexuality but we want to distinguish this sharply. From homosexuality let's say in the sense that we know who the Tchaikovsky was troubled by. Because for that I think there is no evidence in bit of life. How influential was this relationship with the nephew on his creative work. I don't know whether it was an influential in his creative work what we have seen directly so it certainly had an immense impact on his life by insisting and he really insisted on it and thought the long complicated legal battle to come to that end by insisting on taking on the guardianship over

his nephew and have him live with him in a bachelor home staffed by servants who usually with fed up pretty soon by their master who was a very difficult master to have indeed judging from the many changes of servants of which Beethoven continually complained and which were probably to some extent his fault bringing a pre-adolescent into this situation was in and by its ever very strange idea there was not no new woman due to be the lady of the household. So Betto have made a lot of worries and concerns and tried himself as educator not always effectively and not always aptly but really with genuine deep concern and suffered a number of setbacks and disappointments culminating in Syria's suicidal attempt of that nephew threw himself into the river wanted to drown but was fished out in time. So it is quite possible that the preoccupation with the real living nephew and his

problems was a kind of a drop out type. But one has the feeling of a badly understood one. The problem was as much on the part of his country than on his own. So the engagement in all of this must have taken a bit of a lot of time to stave us conclude and I would go along with that. It must also interfere it with the flow of creative energy in his life. Because roughly these events coincide with a period in which Beethoven's creativity went inside or went underground it's perhaps wrong to say that it disappeared although he did for quite a long time not publish any major works. It is assumed that in his mind he was working on the products of the last great period the period of his life. But it is also quite possible that the psychological preoccupation and absorption. The things that we have stood up officially and perhaps just as much so

latently and invisibly in his mind kept him from producing. Did Beethoven have any occupations which he pursued which we would think of as a relief from his compositional activities other than random social occasions. He was an inveterate walk on this side to be sure was a pastime of many other Viennese Freud's among others. But Beethoven was perhaps MAUNSELL. He went on long walks sometimes solitary sometimes in company. I don't remember anything else. Did he enjoy it. He may have braided Skittles at times but I think the wrist was really more or less convivial being together with his friends and followers. Following a brief musical interlude Dr. Frederick Wyatt will return again to discuss Beethoven's deafness and its effect on the composer's personal and artistic life that Dymes Beethoven would take leave of his efforts to compose

symphonies piano sonatas spring quartets or other more or less conventional works to devote time and effort to a composition in a somewhat different genre. We were not here one of these compositional interlude so to speak the adagio an E-flat for mandolin and harpsichord are free to construct is the mandolin ist and Gloria Handel Lightner is the harpsichordist. Little.

Thank you. Scott.

Little. By little. Eh.

Eh eh. Eh eh. Eh eh. I am who. I am. I am. Saying A. The event obviously to which most attention has been given in

the physical life of Beethoven was his increasing and final total deafness and reasons for this are still being put forward and I guess no one really knows the answer as to what the nature of this illness was. You know one of the most recently published biographical studies concerned with. The last period of his life his life as well as his output at that time. There is also a medical instrument by a friend of the author if I remember correctly he Mr. Thompson and the doctor whose name I don't remember. Wind over the existing records and discard it I had Potter since that had been hailed from time to time namely that Beethoven's deafness as well as other symptoms of it of illness that he had from time to time where due to a progressive syphilitic condition this was discarded and

it would be up to the medical specialist to judge the validity. The doctor who passed his opinion certainly took a great deal of pains to dig up what ever possibly could be used so I have the feeling he knows what he's talking about. It also seems to me entirely possible to make different assumptions such as precautions to scare osis or something of that kind for Beethoven's condition that the deafness in and by itself has an immensely faked on the person. Who was peculiarly groomed to Southam or from just from from from this deficiency in any other what who would suffer anyway that's a different story. So the psychological part the psychological effect of deafness. I would rate very very highly and significantly. One of the phrases that's been used to describe that as is no right just acoustic or does that ring at all a bell with you doctor or that I think that is a medical term that would not anymore

be used. This simply means an inflammation of a nerve and probably of the accused. And I don't know how well this would stand up. But again yeah I bet everything you are the medical specialist in this line. There is no possibility from a psychoanalytic point of view that the deafness was a psychosomatic illness is there. No I don't think so. This does happen but quite commonly It happened in the past a little more often apparently than it seems to be happening in the present but it is in any case a rather rare symptomatology and the conditions of the slow progression of Beatle deafness. The things that he described. While he was losing his hearing seemed to be all to point definitely in the direction of an organic change either caused by deterioration of the organ itself or by some other agent such as an

infection. Now how do you assess the effect of this deafness upon his actual creative work. Would it have been different if he had not gone deaf at a certain period in his life. Just in what way did it change his creative abilities. The musical side of it has been debated by people much more competent to discuss it than I am and what it seems to come out is perhaps to some extent yes but perhaps also not in any very significant one in the details of composition. Let us say somebody recently said I think it was Thompson. In the bass parts of the last piano sonata s Beethoven if he were able clearly to hear the effect that a given instrument would produce while his music was being played might have changed something indeed the structure and the ideas seemed to me to be quite

independent. Also it goes without saying that the musician of his capacity. In fact most competent musicians do of course hear without hearing. That is the Year Inside they have absolute pitch and have very clear ideas of what he wants to do in music without hearing a single sound. So it is in perhaps more ephemeral matters if he faked that some changes would have taken place. I would rather put the weight on the beak Yulia psychological isolation and its consequences that deafness brings about. It did turn him more into himself he became more introspective. Perhaps it certainly turned him more into himself. Let's try the creative pot first and then say something about the personality side. Although the two again continuously belong together and I only hear taken apart for the argument it seems to me that

the growing interest in structure and counterpoint the experimental quality of the last five quartets at least some of them that has something to do with a person whose concentration is on the one hand undisturbed by anything coming from outside but also is forced upon him by his loneliness. So the whole thing is something like an enforced very deep meditative state in which the pain the anguish of that it isn't chosen but imposed must not be overlooked. Now the personal side I said before this was an insecure overly sensitive irascible person who probably had profound doubts in spite of his justified ideas of his own competence and greatness. Whether he was likable and could be like them could be accepted and then try to compensate for these profound feelings of insecurity and inadequacy in usual way that people do somethings by doing just the

opposite. Now if such a person who is any way inclined to be distrustful and uneasy about other people and their relationship to him doesn't get the primary signals that we all expect as a matter of course from his environment. So he never knows quite what they are saying and thereby doesn't know what they're thinking about him and feeling about him. He would infinitely aggravate such a person. Notebooks are preserved in which people wrote what they wanted to say to be told questions or statements. He of course spoke the answer and there are many comments did. Progressively his voice when he could not hear it anymore to control it became a little strange and rough. But if one just thinks the immensity Bishan the awkwardness the burden that any human relationship important ones in simple everyday ones would Safa if everything is to be written down.

You can imagine how much this would burden and isolate the person. It strikes me that the illness perhaps by accident contributed to the romanticism of which he was a great exponent. We think of the romantic hero the Byronic character as being someone with a deficiency. Whether it be a clubfoot or deafness or something like this which he has to somehow overcome and so that all of this really did contribute to the to the image that you mentioned earlier of the romantic person and perhaps in turn contributed to the romanticism of his music. I me simply not know enough. So I say this with this proviso but I have to feeling. Deafness is Beethoven had it a creative musician being deaf and the

person who just because his relationship to the world wasn't all that good and all that an ambiguous need it the comforts of finding out what people said and thought about him. I think that is enough of a serious condition that you don't make a Byronic who's out of it. It is true that Byron made himself into Byron including tab food and his inclination to gain weight which also bothered him a great deal. I would say in Beethoven's case the romantic pose was invented by the romantics. I did just that Jagat Nyssa quality of discontinuity not in Beethoven's music but in Beethoven's behavior. That I think became progressively greater. He's leaning on and embracing on. Cryptic prophetic statements sometimes not a great deal above what we know with think of.

Like Ron who of course did not exist at that time and Beethoven used to copy out such prophetic statements and have them around himself. So a tendency for a somewhat new mystic perhaps romantic intellectual search. I was a product of his loneliness of the psychological loneliness but I think the ironic pose the Beatle pose came from somewhere else. This prophetic aspect does not necessarily mean that the older he grew and the more difficulty he had he became more religious in the accepted sense. He did take confession just before he died. He went through finally rites by his own will although he had been in and hit the captives as a freethinker. There is also a statement

that as he was composing the Missa which was both something that had been asked of him was it in the way of God. I could move in the commission Yes exactly. A commission though it was a commission by somebody of whom he was very fond a member of the Imperial House one of the Archduke's whom he taught and to me dedicated several of his works. Nevertheless it appears perhaps that this commission at first was approached as a fascinating musical informal problem but then stated that he. As he went over the text to stand the text of a Missa it attained new meaning for him. And so as set in train to a move to religiosity more in terms of established faith and creed is perhaps can be stated before that one might think of him as a romantic pantheistic type.

Was he susceptible perhaps to the influence of mystical trends of his day. I think so at least judging from the things that he copied out of books and used for himself. He usually talked about but not overwhelmingly so. Days also an immense difference between the high degree of competence the Buddhas of experiment the continuity in his musical work the high pitch of craftsmanship and the disjunctive and difficult life. This is not does not happen for the first time in the history of creativity but is a particularly good example where these two spheres of life are very different from each other to bring in another literary figure. I think of Yeats for instance as turning to mystical research in this spiritualism this kind of thing. If Beethoven had been in the right place at the right time I wonder if he might not also have been persuaded in

that direction that it is a feasible assumption. Although I think it would not. It would not have a great deal if we faked the greatest and most important of his works. They do not show a mystical inference in that sense it's also interesting is you speaking of Yeats that this belongs to an earlier phase of Yates's life. The late hundreds perhaps is also the great Yeats again turned away from these mystical things to much simpler and much more direct mundane humane human things. This baby a purely medical question. Again Dr. Wyatt but there is a story that when Beethoven's body was exiled for re burial that Ricard Wagner among others noticed that his skull was especially thick and heavy and certain conclusions were perhaps drawn from that. So normally

speaking a brilliant person is supposed to have a thinner skull than sick. Is there any evidence one way or the other. This all again myth. I don't know. Progressive diseases in which bones and it could also be a Scalia think again but I don't think there is any evidence to beat who suffered from them. Modern I think is not a particularly good evidence dance to offer the many things that La Nina said which are not quite as he said them very much not as he said them and he used Beethoven so much as an article in his own very few cation in his own program. That I think he doesn't deserve our trust. You may remember that he wrote a little piece about an imaginary visit with the Beatles. Which is amusing to read but is purely and simply a propaganda piece for by a

right and for Wagner's own endeavor. He has beat who've midi and say something to the effect that in his ninth symphony he was already aiming for that which Lucky Lee and grandly Wagner a little later accomplished and all that seems highly improbable. This may be a difficult question but as a music lover. Would you be just as happy if you didn't know anything about Beethoven the man. Decidedly not. I can see it energetically enough but I cannot think of anything that has enriched in music that has enriched my life as much and is given me as much and it has accompanied me from a relatively early childhood. I had the good fortune of getting musical training and living in the musical household from the beginning on the soap has been with me from the beginning on tastes change and it took some time.

I was well into manhood before I began to appreciate. For instance what the great last five quartets really mean. Perhaps take some time take some learnings of listening some patients conditions of life to appreciate them. But it all always comes to the same thing this is one of the greatest musical experiences that I had the good fortune of having and it still is with me. I would still just as easily take a direct hit with one of the sonatas of the piano sonatas when I need some comfort and some sense of whether creativity for myself is I would choose anything else. So I am sure that I'm not alone in saying this. This is the central figure. The happiness and enrichment that music provides for one's life.

But wouldn't you get that same sense if you knew nothing about Beethoven's life. I think so. I am perhaps not a good person to ask I mentioned in the beginning that I've been involved in applying psychology to historical research is in literature as well as in history and so I'm especially disposed to ask questions about the person whose product whether it's hundred years or 200 or 300 years old whose product I like whose work I like so myself. Or it may have added a little to my enjoyment but I would readily concede what matters is to music. Everything else is secondary. If more research should reveal other facts about Beethoven's life do you believe that they would in any measurable way train our attitudes or feelings toward the music.

I can't imagine I can't conceive how this should be the case even if it should turn out that Shakespeare's works were really written by the Earl of Essex which is extremely unlikely. I don't know that it would change anything in what we now consider Shakespeare's work because it's before us the same is true of Beethoven. So I cannot imagine that any change in his biography other people might have influenced him. He certainly was not anybody who learned for a long time. He became an independent rather early a little too early for his due to the great Haydn. So I don't really I can't conceive of anything that would change the picture. It's a different question. How much great works sustain in the change of styles and tastes and needs that one cannot predict. But otherwise I think biographical revelations I think are not likely to change the appreciation of his music.

Thank you so much for joining us today. This program was originally produced in 1970 by the University of Michigan Broadcasting Service and is currently being distributed by NPR National Public Radio.