Beethoven premiered his Ninth Symphony after he had gone completely deaf.

Ludwig van Beethoven began losing his hearing in his twenties, and by the time his Ninth Symphony premiered in Vienna in 1824, he was almost entirely deaf. He still stood on stage to help conduct the performance, but the orchestra’s actual tempo was kept by another conductor beside him, since Beethoven could no longer hear the music he had written.

According to accounts from the premiere, Beethoven kept conducting after the piece had ended and had to be turned around by one of the singers to see the audience’s applause, which he could not hear. The Ninth, with its famous “Ode to Joy” choral finale, is now considered one of the most influential works in the history of Western music, composed almost entirely inside a mind that could no longer hear sound.