According to a leading Beethoven expert, the composer still had hearing in his left ear until shortly before his death in 1827. “This is going to send everybody scurrying to revise biographical concepts about Beethoven,” Theodore Albrecht, professor of musicology at Kent State University, Ohio, told the Observer. From 1818, he carried blank “conversation books”, in which friends and acquaintances jotted down comments, to which he would reply aloud. But, looking at the range of pitches used in the final complete symphony, Albrecht dismisses that theory: “I don’t think it holds. He added that these “compelling conversations” will finally allow English-speaking music lovers to hear what Beethoven and his friends were discussing.

Source: The Guardian February 01, 2020 12:00 UTC