Heiligenstadt Testament

On the advice of his doctor, he moved to the small Austrian town of Heiligenstadt, just outside Vienna, from April to October 1802 in an attempt to come to terms with his condition. There he wrote the document now known as the “Heiligenstadt Testament”, a letter to his brothers which records his thoughts of suicide due to his growing deafness and records his resolution to continue living for and through his art. The letter was never actually sent and was discovered in the composer’s papers after his death. The letters to Wegeler and Amenda were not so despairing; in them, Beethoven commented also on his ongoing professional and financial success at this period, and his determination, as he expressed it to Wegeler, to “seize Fate by the throat; it shall certainly not crush me completely.” In 1806, Beethoven noted on his musical sketches "Let your deafness no longer be a secret – even in art."