ABSTRACT
To understand the historical role that disability has occupied in music performance, this chapter traces the contextual understanding of disability throughout different performers' contemporary cultural environments. It provides a brief overview of the historical model of disability, which is used as the basis for most of the literature available in the field of music and disability studies, and its application to some of the historical intersections between disability and music. In order to trace the effects of social spreading in the lives of disabled musicians, the chapter focuses on one example: the social construction of hearing impairments into deafness that led to the peculiar representation of Ludwig van Beethoven as a disabled pianist and composer. It also provides an overview of the role that disability occupies in music performance.
