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Having become deaf as a stone, the composer gives up the conductor’s baton to a friend during the premiere at the Kärtnetor theater in Vienna.
Frederic Lewino and Gwendoline Dos Santos
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On May 7, 1824, during the first performance of the Ninth Symphony at the Kärtnetor theater in Vienna, Ludwig van Beethoven was the only person who did not realize that the last note of his ninth symphony had just been played. Turning his back to the audience, his eyes closed, he continues to beat time for a few seconds. Deaf as a pot, he does not hear the orchestra playing, he relies only on the music generated by his brain. However, it took a few seconds behind that of the orchestra, hence its late arrival.
The violinist Joseph Böhm later confided: “He gesticulated furiously. At times he straightened up, at others he collapsed to the ground; he moved as if he wanted to play each instrument in person and ch…
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