Beethoven

This lecture explores how the creative arts—literature, poetry, and especially music—can help sustain us in times of existential despair. Drawing on his experience as a physician specializing in mental health, the speaker will explain how artistic expression can offer meaning, resilience and even healing in the face of profound loss. He will then zero in on the example of Ludwig van Beethoven, who began to lose his hearing in his late twenties and was functionally deaf by his mid-forties. Instead of succumbing to hopelessness, Beethoven deepened his musical imagination, producing some of the most powerful works in Western music, which listeners are now using to offset their instances of despair.