Listening with all senses, mind and soul
In his book, Michael Heinemann looks at Beethoven's music with a concept of hearing that goes far beyond the purely acoustic.
In this publication, the term "ear" stands for the perception of music beyond purely acoustic phenomena, i.e. not just with the "ear". Hearing does not just mean perceiving and understanding, but rather feeling and sensing, being touched and moved. Beethoven and his works open up this dimension of music to us as an art that can literally be experienced by the senses.
As an experienced composer, Beethoven undoubtedly "heard" every piece of music inwardly. He was able to perceive music sensually by means of his remaining hearing on the one hand, and haptically via his fingers on the piano keys on the other. However, according to the author of this study, there is also the connection between body and sound: the vibrations and resonances of extreme chord positions and changes of register (such as in the first movement of the Forest Stone Sonata) are absorbed somatically. Added to this is Beethoven's imagination of new worlds of sound, which incorporates overtones into the sound design in certain chords and pedal indications. Forcing inner listening also opens up the transcendent beyond the tones. E.T.A. Hoffmann praises Beethoven for having opened up the "spiritual realm of the infinite" for us. These sensually conveyed spheres elevate Beethoven's music to the rank of philosophy.
The Dresden musicologist Michael Heinemann shows the various parameters of this sound world using many examples of music. His work, written in academic language, ultimately remains speculative, but provides us with new insights into Beethoven's music based on the examples given and their analyses, which also take meta areas into account. The 130 pages of text are divided into eleven chapters with headings such as "Body Consciousness", "Understanding" or "Grasping", followed by their encyclopaedic definition. A further 25 pages contain original documents on Beethoven's deafness: excerpts from his conversation books, writings and letters, together with reports from his contemporaries.
Michael Heinemann: Beethoven's ear. The emancipation of sound from hearing, 156 p., € 19.80, Edition Text + Kritik, Munich 2020, ISBN 978-3-96707-452-9
