Was Beethoven deaf? How he lost his hearing and kept composing

Yes. Ludwig van Beethoven began to lose his hearing in his late twenties, and by his last years he could hear almost nothing. He was not born deaf. He heard well as a child and as a young pianist. He wrote some of his greatest music, including the Ninth Symphony, after his hearing had failed.

The short answer

• Beethoven’s hearing began to fade around 1798, when he was 27.
• It got worse over about 20 years.
• By about 1818, people had to write down what they wanted to say to him.
• He kept composing until he died in 1827.

How it happened, year by year

Year	His age	What happened
About 1798	27	He notices buzzing and ringing in his ears.
1801	30	He tells two close friends in letters. He asks them to keep it secret.
1802	31	He writes a long, sad letter to his brothers and never sends it.
About 1814	43	He stops playing the piano in public.
About 1818	47	Visitors begin to write their side of each talk in notebooks.
1824	53	The Ninth Symphony is first played. He cannot hear the applause.
1827	56	He dies in Vienna.

The letter he never sent

In 1802, a doctor sent Beethoven to rest in Heiligenstadt, a quiet village outside Vienna. His hearing did not improve. He wrote a letter to his two brothers. In it, he said how lonely he was, and how hard it was to ask people to speak louder or shout. He wrote that his art was what kept him going.

He put the letter away. It was found among his papers after he died.

How he talked with people

For some years, Beethoven used ear trumpets. An ear trumpet is a metal horn. The wide end catches sound, and the narrow end goes in the ear. Several of his are in a museum in Bonn, the city where he was born.

Later, he carried notebooks. A visitor wrote a question, and Beethoven answered out loud. More than 130 of these notebooks survive. They show what people asked him about: music, money, his nephew, and what to have for dinner.

How he kept composing

A trained musician can hear music in the mind, the way you can hear a song you know well without singing it. Beethoven had built that skill over thirty years of playing and writing. He could read a page of notes and hear it. He could think of a sound and write it down.

He also used what hearing and touch he had left. He asked piano makers for louder pianos. One story from the time says he held a wooden stick between his teeth and touched it to the piano, so that he could feel the sound through the bones of his head.

What he wrote after his hearing failed

• Symphony No. 9, which ends with the “Ode to Joy”
• The Missa solemnis, a huge piece for choir and orchestra
• His last five piano sonatas
• His last string quartets

At the first performance of the Ninth Symphony, in 1824, he stood on stage facing the players. When the music ended, he did not know the audience was cheering. One of the singers turned him around so that he could see.

What caused it?

No one knows. Doctors have suggested many causes over the years, and none has been proved.

In 2024, a team of scientists tested two locks of Beethoven’s hair that are known to be his. They found lead at 64 to 95 times the level in hair today. Lead is a poison, and people of his time took it in from cheap wine, cups, and medicines. The scientists said the lead may have added to his health problems. They could not say that it caused his deafness.

Could he hear anything at all?

Not much. Some scholars think he kept a little hearing in one ear until near the end. He could not follow speech or hear an orchestra in the normal way.

Things to do together

Hear it in your head. Think of “Happy Birthday” without making a sound. Stop on the word “you.” Now sing that note out loud. That is the skill Beethoven used.

Feel the sound. Hold a balloon between your hands in front of a speaker. Play music with a strong bass. Feel the balloon shake.

Notebook dinner. For one meal, nobody may speak to one person at the table. Write to them in a notebook, and let them answer out loud.

Listen to late Beethoven. Play the “Ode to Joy” and tell your child that the man who wrote it never heard it played.

Print and play

Print the Beethoven fact sheet. Read Beethoven for kids for his life and five pieces to play first. For another composer who lost his hearing, read Smetana for kids. For more, see deaf and blind composers and how they wrote music.

Sources

Checked in November 2026.

• Daniel, A. (2024). Beethoven was a classical and romantic composer, but his body was full of heavy metal. NPR.
• Mental Floss. (2024). Beethoven’s hair reveals he suffered from lead poisoning.