Beethoven & Smetana / Deaf Composers / Disability Pride Month / Cute Composer

🎀 Cute Composer Series: Disability Pride Month — Deaf Composers 🦻✨🎶 Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) began losing his hearing in his late 20s — a slow, agonizing deterioration that by 1819 had left him completely deaf 🎵 In 1802 he wrote the Heiligenstadt Testament, a private letter of devastating grief, convinced his career and life were over. He never sent it. Instead, he adapted 💪 He sawed the legs off his piano to feel the vibrations through the floor. He bit down on a wooden rod pressed against the soundboard to feel the resonance through his jaw. It's likely Beethoven never heard a single note of his Symphony No. 9 in D Minor played. His 9th Symphony, his late string quartets, his Missa Solemnis — the greatest music he ever wrote — came after silence 🙏🎼 Bedřich Smetana (1824–1884) was the father of Czech national music — and unlike Beethoven, Smetana had 50 years of normal hearing, but once becoming deaf, he shared the ability to compose in his head. He became completely deaf in October 1874 and described his tinnitus as "a pounding and intense hissing in the head, day and night, without ceasing, as if I were standing underneath a huge waterfall." He encoded that very tinnitus into his String Quartet No. 1 From My Life — a piercing high E screaming through the violin 🎻 He became totally deaf in late 1874, but between that year and 1879 he wrote the cycle of six symphonic poems bearing the collective title Má vlast (My Country), which includes Vltava. His most beloved work. Written in silence. 👉 Which one's music do you want to explore more? VOTE BELOW👇& follow @daixcompose for more Cute Composer spotlights 💙 Recordings: Beethoven - Große Fuge (Op. 133) - Alban Berg Quartett - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5XJ_HY5xGg Smetana - Vltava (Má vlast) - Leonard Bernstein, New York Philharmonic - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuHpfGwgids . . . . . #DisabilityPrideMonth #DeafComposers #ClassicalMusic #Beethoven #Smetana #MáVlast #Vltava #HeiligenstadtTestament #DeafHistory #DisabilityAwareness #ComposerFacts #MusicHistory #ClassicalMusicTikTok #ClassicalMusicIG #MusicEducation #DaixCompose #CuteComposerSeries #DisabilityPride #MusicTok #ClassicalTok