Deafness, despair, and Beethoven

In late February, I was struck with a vicious ear infection that lasted for the duration of two weeks. It started out boringly as a sinus cold but then that nasty Eustachian tube decided to get all infected and nasty.  During this period, I could barely hear my friends talking closely to me.  I had to turn up the volume on my iPod to maximum to hear any music. Even then, most sounds were muffled to me.  I trudged through the pain like a trooper. (Shout out to Tylenol for being amazing.) 


After about 4 days of this silliness, I did what all responsible people do - and I kept self-medicating.  On day 5, after a volume of text messages from my parents, I finally went to the Walk-In Clinic.  My doctor prescribed me some antibiotics and off I went. I was hopeful and had a renewed spirit.  I would get soon right?


WRONG! For five days, I took the antibiotics with no result.  A week after taking the antibiotics, I finally started to regain my hearing. It was the in between time that I wish to share.


I continued to teach - didn't even take one day off (this was a stupid decision by the way, just in case anyone's wondering.) I was irritable all day at school, could not properly hear the children, and physically my ears were always ringing or hurting.  I was appalled at how the condition impacted my mood.  And of course, which composer did I think of? Beethoven. (duh)


Beethoven had started to lose his hearing by 1796, at the age of 26. He had tinnitis which is a ringing in your ears.  What I recently learned is that he had kept this a secret.  In 1801, he finally started to reveal this secret.  Throughout my ear infection, I started to identify with the shame that Beethoven had felt. It's just simply embarrassing to have to reveal to people that you can't hear what they're saying.  At some points, I simply nodded to keep the conversation going. 


How must have Beethoven felt knowing that the way he made his entire living and that very thing which made his soul fly could be taken from him if he lost his hearing?  I recently posed this question to my grade 3 French Immersion class while we were reading this book. One boy answered quickly: "He would have wanted to just kill himself and die."  The other children gasped but I replied to the boy that he indeed felt that way.  Those sentiments were recorded in his Heilegenstadt Testament. 


Musically, Beethoven's sentiments on his deafness are best expressed in the second movement of the Third Symphony (completed in 1804.) Keep in mind that at this time, Beethoven was, for all intents and purposes, deaf.  The second movement of this symphony journeys deep into the depths of human despair. It's a funeral march and its solemnity reflects how Beethoven felt about his deafness.

Throughout this pretty serious ear infection, I kept thinking to myself how much I take sound, music, and hearing for granted. What if I never heard the voices of my friends or family again?  What if I never heard another note of music again?  What sounds do you hear each day that you take for granted? 

The scariest part was that the doctor told me I need to be increasingly careful about how many infections I get. Here's a resource about hearing and ear health.  Thank you to all of my friends for bearing with me. :) 

Here's a Beethoven treasure - and oui, it's filmed in Paris!! This work was composed in 1803.