Ludwig van Beethoven

Born in Bonn and settled in Vienna at twenty-two, Beethoven began losing his hearing in his late twenties. He wrote of despair in a letter to his brothers that he never sent, then went on to compose most of the work he is remembered for while deaf.

At the first performance of the Ninth Symphony he could not hear the applause and had to be turned round to see it. Some ten thousand people came to his funeral. He was reburied at Vienna's central cemetery in 1888, near Schubert.