  Beethoven's deafness was like Mozart's beginning as a child
prodigy — the biographical fact that has been merged with every
discussion of their work's significance. But you say that
Beethoven wasn't completely deaf in 1808 when he wrote his Fifth
Symphony. Why has that myth persisted? Beethoven was the most
famous composer during a time when the German Romantics decided
that music picks up where language leaves off. The Romantics
thought music was a way to leap beyond our conceptual
limitations towards a glimpse of the Divine. The idea that
Beethoven was profoundly deaf was fantastic for them, because
here was someone who was completely shut off from the world.
What he had was pure inspiration, because he wasn't being
distracted. It made him the musical equivalent of the blind seer
of classical Greek mythology.  You describe the staggering
varieties of contradictory interpretations of Beethoven's Fifth
— from the struggle of the individual against the state, to
Wellington's victory over Bonaparte, and the s