Episode 1

‘…this strange deafness…’

Unfolding chronologically, Being Beethoven grapples with the living, breathing human being often lost behind the myth of the Romantic genius. Beethoven emerges as a man of contrasts and extremes, driven by love, anguish, fury and joy - qualities woven through both his life and his music.

By returning the composer to the context of his own time and place, telling his life story in the present tense, the series reveals how the composer’s life frequently appeared to follow an entirely different trajectory to his art. What emerges is a complex and often contradictory individual living a life marked by isolation, ill-health and deafness. A man who, despite the frequent wretchedness of his personal circumstances, managed to create musical masterpieces that have enthralled and uplifted the world for 250 years.

The first episode explores Beethoven's childhood, the crucible in which the man and his music were formed, and his subsequent rise to fame as a piano virtuoso, then composer, in late 18th-century Vienna. While he was groomed as a prodigy by a demanding and often violent father, Beethoven’s psyche was also marked by the death of his mother when he was 16 years old. Beethoven emerged as a great but troubled talent, an unstoppable force of nature until the onset of deafness tore his world apart.

The realisation that Beethoven was losing his hearing - the sense upon which not only his career was built, but his very sense of self - led to a devastating psychological collapse and a letter, written to his brothers Carl and Johann, known as the Heiligenstadt Testament. In it, Beethoven not only contemplated suicide but also looked at his future and accepted that he would have to create his art under extraordinary circumstances.

As well as interviews with Beethoven biographers and scholars such as Jan Swafford and Barry Cooper, the series features contributions and performances from musicians, including Iván Fischer, Marin Alsop, the Takács Quartet, Evelyn Glennie, Paul Lewis, Mark Padmore and Chi-chi Nwanoku.