Happy Birthday Mr. Beethoven

The Life of Beethoven set to his own music




Music performed by The Philharmonia Orchestra, The New Philharmonia Orchestra, The Alban Berg Quartet, and many more!


A birthday is a happy occasion for most of us, but as he grew older, Beethoven forbad anyone to mention his or give him a card or present. He became more and more unhappy as he realized that he was losing his sense of hearing and going deaf. For a composer this was a disaster and for a while he was very depressed and unhappy.


Today there are many electronic hearing aids and devices or sign language to help hearing-impaired people but in Beethoven's day, the only way to communicate with him was to write your message down in one of his many little ""conversation notebooks"". Once good thing that resulted from this primitive way of communicating was that the notebooks remain to this day and we can get a very good idea of how Beethoven lived.


Of course we can all ""hear"" music in our heads"" Think of your favourite tune and close your eyes and listen to it in your head. Beethoven could do that very well and that was how he managed to compose so many masterpieces that we enjoy so much today.


Ludwig Van Beethoven 1770-1825 Germany


Running time: 54:42 min