Beethoven's Flaw

Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Beethoven’s Flaw

The juxtaposition was the most stirring element: hearing the music and seeing the years when Ludwig van Beethoven composed it, compared to the state of his hearing.

Beethoven’s gradual loss of hearing set against the masterful skill of creating music is astonishing. The human spark behind it, even the deep sense of divinity, especially if you enjoy classical and romantic music. To see a person’s life work develop from age eleven, when he enjoyed full faculties, to age 55 when he could hardly hear a thing—to hear the music that he could only imagine. It is quite moving.

It had been several years since I’d watched any videos from this musician and YouTube creator, the Brazilian concert pianist who goes by the online name “Lord Vinheteiro”. By “several years”, it appears to have been about five, which is the most recent date where the videos show as “played” in my YouTube account. In the meantime, Vinheteiro has done quite well for himself, generating a subscriber count over seven million and over a billion total views.

Despite all our worst impulses with social media, this much should be said: This particular channel has nothing at all to do with politics. It is purely about music, mainly piano music. He has more subscribers than our most inflamed, most popular political channels—much less TV cable news channels, which are the source of so much emotional strife. He has had more total views than, well, than so many of the most exciting spectacles meant to cause controversy.

Not everything online, not everything on social media has to be divisive and distressing. That’s something worth recalling from time to time. The same holds for the human spark that transcends the conceivable parameters of skill, ability, and talent. It puts the quotidian sources of angst into perspective.