The Great Man

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 473, 16 July 1948, Page 8

The Great Man

FOUND Beethoven the Man, an hour-long illustrated talk, produced by the NZBS and read by William Austin, outstanding in both content and presentation. ~The biography seemed to me just the right kind of biography. There were enough but not too many details of nepotal ingratitude and squalid surroundings not merely to call

forth our cdémpassion but to heighten our sense of awe and wonder at the greatness of his accomplishment. The real tragedy of Beethoven’s life, his deafness, was dealt with at. greater Tength, and the

scriptwriter, realising that poetry is better fitted than prose to: convey the depths of human suffering, let Milton, in his blindness, speak for the deaf Beethoven ("O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse, Without one hope of day!") But, the programme went on to point out, how much worse for the composer to be deaf than for the poet to be blind. Milton could at any rate hear his own verbal music! And the tragedy was pointed by the introduction here of the biographical detail, the piano wrecked by Beethoven’s efforts to hear his own playing, the story of the composer, still conducting from his score, having to be turned round to see the audience’s thunderous applause and know that the performance was over.