| Although Beethoven could sit down and
make up music easily, his really great compositions did not come easily at all.
They cost him a great deal of hard work. We know how often he rewrote and
corrected his work because his notebooks are still kept in museums and
libraries. He always found it hard to satisfy himself. When he was 28, the worst difficulty of all came to him. He began to notice a strange humming(嗡嗡声) in his ears. At first he paid little attention; but it grew worse, and at last he consulted doctors. (46) {{U}}They gave him the worst news any musician could bear: he was gradually going deaf.{{/U}} Beethoven was in despair; he was sure that he was going to die. He went away to the country, to a place called Heiligenstadt, and from there he wrote a long farewell letter to his brothers. He longed to die, and said to death, "Come when you will, I shall meet you bravely." In fact, Beethoven did something braver than dying. He gathered his courage and went on writing music, though he could not hear what he wrote. He wrote his best music, the music we remember him for, after he became deaf. The music he wrote was very different from any that had been composed before. |