The Roar That Lies on the Other Side of Silence

Edmund Morris, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, is also a classically trained pianist and the author of Beethoven: The Universal Composer. In this talk, which includes audio clips and keyboard examples, Morris explores how a deaf genius made art out of his disability, examining the ways in which many of Beethoven's most exquisite (or sometimes frightening) sound effects may have arisen from his deafness.

Edmund Morris's The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, the first volume of a biographical trilogy, won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. His collection The Living Hand, which includes essays on Beethoven and other subjects, will be published in November 2012.