[3][4] The soundtrack is an arrangement of fragments of Beethoven's works, modified as if heard by the deaf composer himself; it is distinct from Kagel's 1970 composition Ludwig van.
[1][4] Prominent contemporary artists including Dieter Roth, Stefan Wewerka (de), Robert Filliou, and Joseph Beuys were involved in the design.
[5] In the first part of the film, Beethoven visits Bonn of the late 1960s, stopping off at a record shop before embarking upon a tour of the Beethoven-Haus in which he was born; there is a deluge of busts, in the music room every surface is covered in sheet music, and in the final scene his works are hung out to dry in the laundry.
There ensues a bridge passage in which he strolls along the Rhine and boards the Cecilie, where he tries to find the source of music but ends up chasing shadows.
The second part of the film, a more explicit parody of art films and commentary on the composer's reception, begins with a talk-show in which Karajan is criticised for creating beautiful sound at the expense of revolutionary edge and for conducting the orchestra rather than the music; there follows an encounter with a madman who claims to be Beethoven's true descendant; a sequence set to In questa tomba oscura ("In this dark tomb let me rest"); a scene with a pianist in a lab; and a recital of the Waldstein sonata by a thinly-disguised and super-annuated Elly Ney, where she ends up smoking and the percussive sound morphs into the beating of the heart; the film ends with a scene in a zoo with an owl, tortoise, boar, defecating elephant, and "many ruminants, predominantly ears and paws", accompanied by fragments of the "Prisoners' chorus" from Fidelio and of the Ode to Joy from the Ninth Symphony.