<\/strong>Hearing is clearly the most important sense for a musician, particularly a composer, so the trauma of experiencing difficulties with this sense is hard to imagine. Beethoven famously suffered deteriorating hearing for much of his adult life; an affliction which brought him to despair at times. The cause of his deafness is still unknown, although much speculated upon, but the composer\u2019s feelings about his situation are well-documented: Beethoven kept \u2018Conversation Books\u2019 full of discussions of his music and other issues which give a unique insight into his thoughts, and in a letter to his brothers (the\u00a0Heiligenstadt Testament<\/em>) he wrote a heart-wrenching description of his sense of despair and isolation caused by his inability to hear.<\/p>\n Despite his catastrophic loss of hearing\u00a0Beethoven <\/a>continued to compose \u2014 producing some of the greatest works in Western musical history. So how was this possible? How can a musician, particularly a composer, continue without full, or even hyper-sensitive, hearing?<\/p>\n We can get a modern day insight from Michael Berkeley \u2014 one of OUP\u2019s composers who, over recent years, has been struggling with hearing troubles himself. Berkeley\u2019s hearing damage was the result of a blocked ear, brought on by a fairly minor cold, which has caused irreparable nerve damage. These days there\u2019s better help available to sufferers of hearing loss. However, sound distortion remains a problem, and hearing aids can only help so far, as Berkeley explains:<\/p>\n \u201cMusic was appallingly distorted, and in fact I couldn\u2019t go to concerts as it was just so painful. I got a condition called\u00a0hyperacusis<\/a>, where loud sounds are unbearably painful. I got some very good digital hearing aids which made a great difference to speech, but it can only amplify what I\u2019m already hearing so it didn\u2019t help for music.\u201d<\/p>\n Michael Berkeley explains how he continued to write music:<\/p>\n \u201cIf you are trained as a composer you can write in your head: you hear the sounds internally, and you\u2019ve been trained how to get those sounds onto the page without a piano or any intermediary. It\u2019s something you learn to do gradually through lots of hard work and by instinct. The problem is, when the music is played back I can\u2019t comment very usefully: what I hear may not be what the conductor or the rest of the audience hear\u2026it could be my hearing disability is distorting the real sound.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/everhear.wpengine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/comp_01.jpeg\" "\\"comp_01\\"")
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