Rick Beato describes Beethoven's Heiligenstadt Testament, a letter revealing his despair over hearing loss, underscoring the tragedy behind his ability to compose masterworks like the Ninth Symphony while completely deaf. ✦ AI generated
Rick Beato · Lex Fridman · 2026-03-01 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 98:07
“What would motivate you to write music, this beautiful music that you can never actually hear except for in your head?”
There's a thing called the Heiligenstadt Testament that he wrote. It was a letter to his brothers in, from 1802... he felt a sense of shame and humiliation because of his hearing loss. And he said that he was afflicted with this thing where him of all people, that someone standing next to him could hear a flute that he could not hear.
verbatim transcript · starts at 98:07
98:07- I mean, it— Beethoven was sick all the time too. I mean, a lot of people were sick all the time. It was very common. What would motivate you to write music, this beautiful music that you can never actually hear except for in your head? Right? Like, why... The amount of time it takes to write, to write a 35-minute, 40-minute piece, all the parts, you got to hear all the orchestration in your head. You're editing,
98:38you're doing all these things. Where do you get the motivation when you can't hear the actual finished work? One, and people would say, "Well, he's hears in his head." But what kind of enjoyment is it? You wanna hear the orchestra... I mean, it's really profound that he was inspired to do this. There's a thing called the Heiligenstadt Testament that he wrote. It was a letter to his brothers in,
99:07from 1802. I think they found it in his desk after Beethoven died, and he felt a sense of shame and humiliation because of his hearing loss. And he said that he was afflicted with this thing where him of all people, that someone standing next to him could hear a flute that he could not hear, or a shepherd singing in the field that... And he could not hear
99:32this. And, and of all the people, why him? Where hearing played such an important part. Another person that would have had to have had perfect pitch, 'cause you could never do this- ... if you didn't have perfect pitch, which I think all of these great composers, for the most part. Brahms didn't, from what I know, but all the rest of them, for sure, had perfect pitch. So they could hear these things in their head, and that's how
99:56they composed. - I mean, you love sound and music. What do you think it was like gradually losing your hearing for Beethoven? - It must have been terrible. I mean, I, just... Terrible. I mean, I've heard things where he would have a stick in his mouth, and put it on the soundboard of the piano, and you could feel the vibrations in his skull, and things like that.