0:00 Sometimes you find things you aren’t looking for.0:05 Last week, we talked about that very idea—of history hiding in plain sight, of finding lost diaries and secret letters tucked away in the forgotten corners of the world.0:24 I never, ever thought it would happen to me.0:29 I was in a dusty little bookshop in Vienna, the kind that smells like old paper and leather polish.0:40 I found a book of sheet music, bound in dark green cloth.0:46 It was a collection of sonatas.0:49 Not especially rare.0:52 But as I opened it… a single folded sheet of paper, brittle with age, slipped out and drifted to the floor.1:03 The ink is faded, a spidery, angry-looking script in German.1:10 At the top, a date.1:12 May seventh… eighteen twenty-four.1:16 Of course, this can’t be real.1:19 It’s a fantasy.1:21 A fabrication.1:23 But as I read the translation… I can’t help but wonder.1:29 I want to believe.1:31 Let me… let me just read it to you.1:35 “May 7th, 1824.1:36 The end of the day.1:38 Or the beginning of it.1:41 I cannot tell.1:42 My head is full of noise, but my ears are full of cotton.1:49 A cruel joke from God.1:51 Tonight, they called it a triumph.1:55 They stood, they shouted, they waved their hats.2:00 I am told they did, anyway.2:03 The day began with dread.2:06 A familiar companion.2:08 The Kärntnertortheater felt… immense.2:13 A cavern waiting to swallow me whole.2:17 I stood in the wings and watched the players take their seats.2:24 So many of them.2:25 Too many.2:26 I do not trust them.2:29 I do not trust Umlauf, who stands beside me to beat the actual time.2:36 They think I don’t know.2:39 That I am a doddering old fool, a deaf relic to be propped up for show.2:47 Let them.2:48 The music is not in Umlauf’s flailing arms.2:52 It is not in the scrape of a bow or the puff of a flute.2:59 It is here.3:00 In my head.3:01 A prison of perfect sound.3:04 I walked to the podium.3:07 The applause felt like a distant tremor, a vibration through the soles of my boots.3:16 I saw their hands moving, their faces smiling.3:21 But the sound was a dull, muddy roar.3:25 Like the sea heard from a cave, miles inland.3:30 I cannot connect with them.3:33 Not anymore.3:34 I am a composer who cannot hear his own creation.3:40 I am a general sending troops into a battle I can only watch through a clouded glass.3:49 The thought is so absurd I almost laughed.3:54 A madman, conducting his own descent.3:58 I raised the baton.4:00 And for a moment, there was only the silence.4:05 My silence.4:06 The one I have come to know better than any melody.4:12 Then, I gave the downbeat.4:15 I felt the floorboards shudder as the cellos and basses dug in.4:22 A low D.4:23 A vibration in my bones.4:25 It is all I have.4:27 I followed the score in my mind, the one that has been screaming at me for months, for years.4:38 Every note, every rest, every surge and sigh.4:43 I turned the pages, a pantomime for the audience.4:48 My eyes were on the score, but my soul was inside the music, flying with the strings, battling with the brass.5:00 I could feel the tempo quickening in my blood.5:05 The scherzo… I felt my heart pound with the timpani I could not hear.5:13 It was a phantom limb, a ghost of a sound.” “I remember looking up, seeing the sweat on the musicians’ faces.5:25 Their intense focus.5:27 Were they playing it right?5:30 Was the sound I imagined, the one I had bled for, the one pouring into the hall?5:39 Or was it a cacophony?5:42 A mess?5:42 There was no way for me to know.5:46 This is the ultimate terror.5:49 To give your child to the world and be blindfolded at its first steps.5:57 And then… the choir.5:59 Oh, the choir.6:01 ‘Freude!’ Joy!6:02 A word I have wrestled with my entire life.6:07 Is this it?6:08 Is this joy?6:10 This desperate, pleading, thunderous thing?6:14 I wrote of brotherhood, of a million souls embracing under a starry firmament.6:23 And I have never felt so utterly, completely alone.6:29 I am shouting to them, from across a chasm.6:33 ‘Be embraced!6:35 Love one another!’ while I stand in exile.6:40 The final chords.6:41 A tempest.6:43 A hurricane of sound I could only feel as a vibration that shook my entire frame.6:52 I held the last beat, my arms aching, my eyes shut tight, living in that final, glorious crash of sound that only I could truly hear in its perfect form.7:09 And then… nothing.7:11 The vibrations stopped.7:13 The score was finished.7:16 I kept my back to the hall.7:19 My part was done.7:21 I waited.7:22 For what, I do not know.7:24 A sign.7:25 A feeling.7:26 There was only the ringing.7:29 The eternal, shrieking drone of my deafness.7:34 It felt like an eternity.7:37 Had they hated it?7:39 Had they walked out?7:41 Was I a failure?7:43 The silence from the crowd was the same as the silence in my ears.7:50 It was absolute.7:52 Then, a touch.7:53 A gentle hand on my sleeve.7:56 I turned.7:57 It was the young contralto, Fräulein Unger.8:02 Her face was a mess of tears and… something else.8:08 Awe.8:08 She wasn’t looking at me.8:11 She was gesturing.8:13 Pointing.8:14 Behind me.8:15 So I turned.” “And I saw it.8:18 It was not silence.8:20 It was a storm.8:22 A human storm.8:23 Five times, they rose to their feet.8:27 Five.8:28 The rule is three for the Emperor himself.8:33 They were breaking the law for me.8:36 For my music.8:38 Men were throwing their hats into the air.8:42 Women were weeping, waving their handkerchiefs.8:48 Every face was turned to me, every mouth was open, shouting.8:54 But all I could see was this… this silent, violent explosion of feeling.9:02 They saw me.9:04 They saw me, and they understood.9:07 Or perhaps they didn’t.9:10 Perhaps they only understood the music.9:14 But for a moment, the music was me.9:18 And I was them.9:20 A police commissioner finally had to shout for them to be silent.9:27 I saw his mouth move.9:29 I did not hear a word.9:32 I am in my room now.9:34 The ringing in my ears is louder than ever.9:39 They are calling it Beethoven’s greatest work.9:44 A new star in the firmament.9:47 But the stars are cold, and they are very, very far away.9:53 They heard my Ode to Joy.9:56 And I… I saw it.9:58 I suppose, for a deaf man, that must be enough.” He saw it.10:04 He didn’t hear the applause.10:08 He had to be turned around just to see it.10:12 Of course, this diary entry is a work of fiction.10:18 A historical imagining.10:20 We will never know Ludwig van Beethoven’s precise thoughts on that night.10:28 But this… this feels true, doesn’t it?10:33 It gets us closer to the heart of the man.10:37 The staggering genius, and the profound, crushing isolation of the day he gave the world his symphony of joy… and heard nothing in return but the silence he carried inside him.10:57 He stood on that stage, watching a hurricane of love he could only see.11:05 And it changed everything.
