Nothing is sweeter to my ears than the voice of someone I love, soothing words from a stranger,  voices of doves in summer trees, the emergence of joy in the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth. Nothing is more frustrating than failing to follow a fast or subdued talker, than hearing conversation as a loud blur in a room of faces but this is minor. What does a composer suffer if sound diminishes to nothing and he can only unfold in his head the music he’s created? Imagine Beethoven at that first performance of his final symphony,  a gesticulating figure standing…