03 Aug Reflections on Beethoven’s E-flat major String Quartet – AFCM 2025
Friday afternoon’s lecture at the Australian Festival of Chamber Music has stayed with me more than most. Professors David McAlpine and Chi Lo from Macquarie University – both leading researchers into hearing loss and auditory neuroscience – spoke about music and the listening brain. It was illuminating, not just for its science but for its humanity. They reminded us hearing is not simply a matter of functioning ears. Music lives in the brain, and the brain, even as it ages and adapts to hearing loss, continues to listen, to interpret and to feel.
Later in the evening there was a performance of Beethoven’s String Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 127 – a late work written when Beethoven was profoundly deaf. The connection between the two events was almost uncanny but probably not accidental. I couldn’t help but reflect on what McAlpine and Chi Lo had said: musical perception is not just about receiving sound, but about remembering it, anticipating it, and constructing meaning from it internally.
Beethoven, by that stage in his life, was cut off from sound – and yet this quartet is full of clarity, nuance and serenity. How is that possible? The answer, perhaps, lies in exactly what the researchers had described: the brain’s remarkable ability to hold music in the absence of hearing, to let it live on inside us.
The Australian String Quartet, Francesca Hiew (violin), Dale Barltrop (violin), Christopher Cartlidge (viola), and Michael Dahlenburg (cello) brought a rare depth and cohesion to this elusive work. From the noble opening of the Maestoso, through the luminous variations of the Adagio, and into the rhythmic playfulness of the scherzo, they struck just the right balance between grandeur and intimacy. The final movement hovered between resignation and transcendence. One had the sense that the players were not just performing Beethoven, but communing with him.
I couldn’t help being reminded of the 2006 film Copying Beethoven, which portrays the challenges he faced while composing the Ninth Symphony. There’s a powerful moment where he conducts the premiere, entirely unable to hear the music or the thunderous applause that follows. It is a portrait of isolation – but also of defiance. He could no longer hear the world, but had not stopped listening to the music within.
Op. 127 feels like a kind of continuation of that journey – the vast, public vision of the Ninth Symphony turned inward, distilled into chamber music. It is quieter, yes, but no less profound. If anything, more personal. And perhaps thats the lesson: even as our hearing changes with age – even as silence encroaches – music remains. We carry it in our minds, in memory, in feeling. Just as Beethoven did.
Wendy Galloway
Posted at 07:10h, 05 AugustProfound reflections David.
I will seek out the Beethoven film you mention.
Happy days on Maggie Island.
A remarkable place. Beauty unspoilt by too much development. Ferry now and heading for Sydney.
Keep reflecting and sharing your thoughts.
Daphne Dobbyn
Posted at 13:30h, 07 AugustThanks David,
I revised my opinion of the ASQ after this performance . It was an exceptional performance of this.beautiful music.
I also will seek out the film you mention..
So much to enjoy within a diminishing time frame.
Keep well and enjoy life as always.
Perry Buckland
Posted at 13:06h, 09 Augustthanks David, very thoughtful. One of the universe’s greatest secrets lies half hidden in understanding the link between hearing sound waves and the brain’s perception of it as music. Your description of Beethoven being able to perceive that magic without physically hearing it was nicely wrtitten.
Perry, your festival friend.
PS, I just downloaded your new book preview. Looking forward to a good read by the (emissions intense heated) pool in Port Douglas…