So Beethoven wasn’t deaf? What next, a 9th-century Mary Berry saying Alfred cooked her cakes to perfection!

THE most moving story in the history of music, I reckon, is the familiar account of the stone-deaf Beethoven’s public appearance — his first on stage for 12 years — at the world premiere of his Choral Symphony at a theatre in Vienna on May 7, 1824.

In the version I heard as a schoolboy, and fully believed until this week, the great man had been told he was to conduct the performance himself. But this was merely for the sake of politeness, in homage to his brilliance. In fact, his total deafness meant he was unable to do the job properly, and the orchestra had been told to ignore him and follow the guidance of another conductor who shared the stage with him.

Over to the eyewitness account of the violinist Joseph Bohm, who recalled: ‘Beethoven himself conducted, that is, he stood in front of a conductor’s stand and threw himself back and forth like a madman. At one moment he stretched to his full height, at the next he crouched down to the floor. He flailed about with his hands and feet as though he wanted to play all the instruments and sing all the choral parts. The actual direction was [Louis] Duport’s hands; we musicians followed his baton only.’

Majestic

If the story had ended there, it would be poignant enough for what it has to tell us about the contrast between the composer’s consummate genius and the pathos of his disability. But it’s the punchline that has always touched me most deeply.

When the performance ended, according to accounts widely accepted for almost 200 years, the audience erupted in a tumultuous standing ovation, the first of five that threatened to bring the theatre’s roof down. But poor old Beethoven was several bars behind, and still conducting, unaware that the orchestra had finished playing and of the thunderous cheering.

It was only when the contralto Caroline Unger walked over and turned him around to face the crowd — who were throwing hats and handkerchiefs into the air to signal their appreciation — that he realised how rapturously his majestic masterpiece had been received.

Or so I was led to believe, some 50 years ago when I first heard the story. But now along comes an eminent academic to cast a shadow of doubt on this version of events. Theodore Albrecht, professor of musicology at Kent State University, Ohio, is reported this week to have uncovered crucial contemporary evidence that the composer was not as deaf as everyone hitherto thought.

‘Not only was Beethoven not completely deaf at the premiere of his Ninth Symphony in May 1824,’ he says, ‘but he could hear — although increasingly faintly — for at least two years afterwards.’

As for the professor’s evidence — gleaned from Beethoven’s ‘conversation books’, in which people he met jotted down comments to which he would reply aloud — I must say it seems pretty convincing.

One entry, dated 1823, tells of an encounter in the composer’s favourite coffee house, where a stranger asked for advice on his own failing hearing. The maestro apparently said to take baths and country air and avoid using ear trumpets, adding: ‘By abstaining from using them I have fairly preserved my left ear in this way.’

The following year, when the Ninth Symphony came out, a visiting musician urged him to avoid conducting a work in its entirety, so as not to overstrain his hearing — which strongly suggests Beethoven could still hear a little, though perhaps only with his left ear.

If this is true, doesn’t it seem highly unlikely that he was completely unaware of the yells of approval behind him at the premiere? Now I come to think about it, isn’t it also improbable that he didn’t realise the orchestra had finished playing? He still had his eyesight, after all, and you don’t need the sound switched on to tell whether or not musicians are blowing their bassoons, beating their drums or bowing their violins.

Fake

As I see it, there are two uncomfortable possibilities: either Beethoven was hamming it up at the premiere by pretending to be stone deaf — or else the moving story of how he became aware of the ecstatic reception of his Ninth is a 200-year-old example of fake news.

All of which has set me wondering what other documents historians may unearth to raise doubts about our favourite episodes from the past.

Take King Alfred and the Burning of the Cakes. We were all brought up with the story that when the King fled from the Danes in 878 AD, he was given shelter by a peasant woman, unaware of his identity, who left him to watch over some wheaten cakes she was cooking on the fire.

As every schoolchild knows (or used to know, before schools stopped teaching any history apart from the cruelties of the slave trade and the Nazis), Alfred was so preoccupied with the troubles of his kingdom that he let the cakes burn — only to be roundly rebuked by the woman when she returned. Or so, at least, says the tradition handed down to us from the 12th century. Will an eyewitness account now emerge, telling us that, in fact, Alfred cooked the cakes to perfection — and was warmly applauded for his culinary skill by a ninthcentury equivalent of Mary Berry?

What about Sir Francis Drake and that famous game of bowls, which he is said to have carried on calmly when he heard news of the Spanish Armada’s approach, drily remarking that there was plenty of time both to finish the game and defeat the Spaniards?

Does some dusty archive, yet to be discovered, contain a contemporary report saying the minute he learned Philip’s fleet had been sighted, Drake abandoned the game and ran off to his ship in a panic?

I found it disappointing enough, years after I first heard that story, to be told that the Armada’s destruction owed more to a battering by storms than to the courage and skill of England’s seamen. God forbid that anyone should now disprove the tale of Drake’s quintessentially British sangfroid on Plymouth Hoe.

Legend

No, we all love a good story, whether it is strictly true or not. Indeed, I’m reminded of that most famous quote from a newspaperman in John Ford’s 1962 classic, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: ‘When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.’

Mind you, I’m not saying that historians should abandon their quest for the truth, for fear of spoiling a treasured myth. After all, they sometimes come up with evidence that confirms traditional stories, long after they’ve been dismissed as mere legends.

Take the recent discovery of long-lost medical notes that showed that Adolf Hitler suffered from cryptorchidism. In other words, he had an undescended testicle — or as the popular wartime song so crudely put it, Hitler really did have only one ball.

Or consider the tradition that Richard III was physically deformed. This was long thought to have been invented by Tudor historians and adopted by Shakespeare merely as a dramatic device. But as the 2012 discovery of the king’s skeleton in a Leicester car park confirmed, he really did suffer from severe curvature of the spine.

So, yes, do keep digging for the truth. But you must forgive me if I prefer, come what may, to go on believing that Alfred burnt the cakes, Drake finished his game of bowls — and that Beethoven could hear nothing at all at the premiere of his Ninth.

Whatever anyone may discover, I can vouch that nothing will diminish my love of that miraculous masterpiece. Indeed, my devotion to it remained unaltered even after the monstrous Brussels bureaucracy chose its sublime choral setting of Schiller’s Ode To Joy as the EU’s anthem. And if it could survive that, it will survive anything.