17 December—Today is Saint Hildegard’s day. She’s better known these days as Hildegard von Bingen and, a composer of sacred monophony (a single melody line), is probably the only saint to have an extensive discography. A Benedictine abbess who lived from 1098 to 1179, Hildegard was also a writer, philosopher, mystic, and visionary, as well as a medical writer and practitioner, not to mention a feminist. What a woman! She was canonized in 2012 and made a Doctor of the Church that same year.

Hildegard von Bingen naturally segues to Ludwig van Beethoven. He would have celebrated the 252nd anniversary of his baptism yesterday, had he not died in 1827. Two of his more memorable statements are, “I would rather write 10,000 notes than a single letter of the alphabet” and “Music is like a dream, one that I cannot hear.” (He wrote them in German, of course, because his English wasn’t too good.)

Beethoven spent the last decade of his life profoundly, totally deaf, in addition to being generally unhealthy physically and mentally. The proximate cause of his death was liver failure, likely caused by his heavy alcohol consumption. You can’t really blame the poor guy.

Among the relatively few works Beethoven composed in his last years in spite of his inability to actually, physically hear his music was the Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, the Choral Symphony. He worked on it between 1822 and 1824.

At its premiere in Vienna on 7 May 1824, the deaf composer stood next to the orchestra’s “official” conductor essentially beating time (which is what conductors do), but the orchestra and chorus had been instructed to ignore him; and he kept it up after the work had ended. Beethoven realized the audience loved the symphony and him only after the contralto turned him around to face it. As opposed to facing the music.

Beethoven knew how great he was and never tried to restrain his ego: “What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.” Amen.

It would be fitting to give you the whole Ninth Symphony. But two covers of the “Ode to Joy” will have to do for now. The first is Franz Liszt’s piano reduction, the second is performed by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, both recorded at the Albert Hall in London.

And lest we forget Hildegard, here’s also a short track of her popular “O dulcis divinitas” (Oh sweet divinity).