Variations on 'Alternate Beethoven' themes

[ghappy1000]

Here is a list of plausible scenarios related to Beethoven besides this:
https://www.google.com/search?domai...j1.9.0....0...1c.1.64.serp..9.0.0.yHZMUGAw6hw

[1] Now, could there be more 'Beethovens' in the aspect of persistence in composing music despite disability or [heavy] illness? Perhaps a surviving [and more famous] Schubert, Chopin, Schumann or Smetana might do the trick, doesn't it?
[2] What if there was a 'no curse of the ninth [or later] symphony'? [Of course any scenario with a longer-lived, not deaf or symphony focused Beethoven would do the trick.]
[3] Has anybody considered the possibility of this composer living longer without deafness and is this significant in any aspect?
[4] Any scenario where said composer is influenced more by other contemporaries?
[5] How many works could he logically complete and how many varieties of music could he compose? Without deafness, how much longer could he live and how would his music be related to and affected by this scenario?

 

[CarribeanViking]

Going by David Suchet's biography, gradually becoming deaf did relatively little to stop Beethoven the musician, but destroyed Beethoven the social being.

Always an eccentric and an outsider, but capable of functioning in society as an officer of court, becoming deaf turned him into a caricature of himself, drove him in on himself to the point where he only fitted with people who already knew him well;

for everyone else, including most of his sponsors, he was aggressively defensive, playing the social pose of a great artist. Which arguably did not help, leaving him in intermittent poverty in the last half of his life and hastened his death. He fell out with his landlords so regularly that he moved house 41 times from 1800 until 1827, for instance.

A hearing Beethoven would have been a happier and more sociable man, and led a less jagged and because of that longer life, although it would have only made his ego and barbed sense of humour more acceptable, not tamed them.

What it would have done to his music, we can only opine, but his contemporaries certainly noted that he looked nothing like that author of that which they heard, the shambling, untidy, prickly thing in front of them seemed singularly ill fitted to be the great composer. His life already seemed to be largely disconnected from his work.

Whether, if he had the chance to write more, he would have written differently, that is the question- in view of the above, I doubt it though. A happier Beethoven would not have written lighter music. There might have been a second opera, and a tenth symphony, but how would he top Fidelio and the Choral? Answers on a genius to...

 

[ghappy1000]

Hypothethical List of Beethoven Compositions [without deafness]

Do you think this alternate hypothetical summary of major Beethoven compositions sounds plausible without his deafness judging by type based on the title?

12 symphonies [9 completed as of 1820 due to increased speed, one written over the course of the actual 9th, 11th replacing the 10th and completed due to butterflies and one unfinished.]
8 piano concertos [6 actual, '6th' completed and one dubious or unfinished]
1 cello concerto [or any concerto with cello, Triple Concerto counts]
1 concerto not for keyboard or string instruments
2 violin concertos
40 piano sonatas [32 actual, several earlier or obscure, a few more from butterflies.]
20 sonatas for instrument and piano [18 for string instrument due to butterflies.]
10 actually completed piano trios [due to butterflies]
20 string quartets [Due to a few more years of healthy life.]
5 string quintets [Including 1 or 2 unfinished in reality.]
5 string trios
A few more operas and tens of vocal works, piano pieces and bagatelles. [extra to reality].
[Excluding types that are obscure, without opus numbers, insignificant or wouldn't be butterflied by the scenario unless 'dubious or unfinished'.]

 

[ghappy1000]

Bumping. Without deafness [and some side effects and actions], how long do you think Beethoven could live [besides the 56 years and 3.3 months of actual life]?

 

[JonasResende]

I've seen it posited somewhere that Beethoven had a sort of autism, if he did, would this be covered under "healthier"? Or is it solely his famous deafness?

As to age, he might make 1830 at best. Sixty seems to have been a relatively average life-span for the middle-class/bourgeoisie if they survived childhood and war.

 

[CarribeanViking]

Counting up what he could have done is at best empty exercise and at worst painful, without some idea of what they might have sounded like...

There would have been as many minor works as he was paid to do, so probably rather more, but the great works that flowed out of his own inspiration, which is harder to predict, well- there would have been some, but about what?

Look at the world history and the artistic scene of the 1810s up to '30's, and try to estimate what would have caught his attention; I could see the breakup of the Spanish Empire and their civil war sparking something, but surely he would have been drawn to the Greek Wars of Independence?

I doubt that he would have lasted long enough to see 1848, which is a shame- and I can't help wondering how differently the twentieth century could have played out if he had beaten Wagner to a ring cycle, not that it is likely that he would.

Apparently he and Mozart did meet once; but it was at a very low point in both their lives, Beethoven's father and Mozart's mother were both terminally ill, and nothing came of it- both worried to distraction.

If he had a sort of autism, it was quite an odd sort- like the man himself. He did have some social antennae, which actually made it worse because he was aware that he was making a mess of it, but enough pride that bullying through often seemed the right thing to do. Having a sarcastic streak didn't help, and I'm not sure I'd call it autism as much as a kind of tourette's of the ego. Going deaf cut off the feedback loops that warned him when he was going too far.

 

[JonasResende]

I could be wrong here, but wasn't the deafness also a cause of how he lost interest in works or moved on to new works (intending to return to finish them, but never doing so), but also why some comissions weren't completed? And then due to the commissions not being finished, he lost out on future patronage. If he doesn't go deaf (which I've seen said as the result of his father's boxing his ears as a boy), then does he carry on the same routine? Or does he actually finish some works? I remember in Immortal Beloved Metternich is promised a grand oratorio commemorating the Congress of Vienna in exchange for intervening on Beethoven's part in the custody battle of Karl von Beethoven. I have no idea if said incident ever actually took place, but the movie also makes out that between getting custody of Karl and a future date, he wrote nothing, published nothing (which I find rather hard to believe).