How did Beethoven know what he was playing if he was deaf?
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He became deaf. He was not deaf from birth. So he had heard all the instruments play all different kind of music before he became deaf. He was very intimately familiar with how each instrument sounded as he had worked with music all his life. As he started to lose his hearing towards the end of his life he could rely on this information and could imagine how the music sounded just by reading the sheets.
Largely because music can be written perfectly fine if you’re an expert in composition, which he was. Think of it like this: if you went deaf today, could you still write English? Well he could still write music. He knew how it sounded without having to hear it.
He sat on the floor and could feel the vibration intensity of each note played on his piano. Since he wasn’t born deaf, he associated the vibrations with the notes and imagine the sounds in his head.
It’s said that after he went deaf he played with his head against the piano to feel the vibrations.
He didn’t start deaf, he became deaf over time and still retained some hearing well into his 30s. He would have been able to hear partially up to his 5th symphony, and understand how an orchestra fit together so he could still compose 4 more.
At that point if you have a genius level musical theory background, use cues like feeling vibrations etc. and just kinda knowing what works from composing several he could likely practically hear it just by looking at the paper he was writing on.
It affected his work too though, his later symphonies definitely evolved.
You don’t actually need to hear music to make music. In its simplest form, any song you’ve ever heard can be broken down into consisting of any of the following of notes: A, A#/Bb, B, C, C#/Db, D, D#/Eb, E, F, F#/Gb, G, G#/Ab, and then it goes back to A. From A to A we call it an octave. The # stands for sharp, while the b stands for flat. A# is Bb we have to know both names, but they mean the same note. Song writing takes these notes and groups them into chords, then progresses through cords in ways that make “sense” using scales. Again, I’m oversimplifying here, but basically if you know what chords sound good within a scale (I, IV, V is very common in western music), you can build off of that, use the circle of fifths, and theoretically create music.
Beethoven completely became deaf in his 40s though he was starting to become deaf in his 20s. Regardless, by that time he had mastered music theory which allowed him to compose most of his famous works.
Do you know how “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley goes? Can you hear it in your head? Ok, now imagine you went deaf. Do you still remember how it goes? Can you still hear it in your head?
Does it count as a RickRoll if the victim only hears it in their head? Anyways, that’s the idea. Except Beethoven knew how to write music, and music theory, and knew a LOT of songs and parts of songs and could use that knowledge to invent new songs, but it’s the same process whether you’re deaf or not. You imagine how the song goes, and write it down.
In fact, no symphonic composer before modern computers could hear their composition before it was performed. It’s not like they had a symphony sitting in their parlor. They imagined it in their head with their knowledge of music, music theory, and imagination.
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