What made Beethoven sick? DNA from his hair offers clues

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• A new U.S. tool maps where heat will be dangerous for your health
• ‘PDQ Bach’ musical satirist has died – this Beethoven 5 parody captures Peter Schickele’s rare genius
• What is a symphony? We explain…
• SMART NEWS
• Unlocking the code to Beethoven's life through his hair
• How did Ludwig van Beethoven change music?

To date, population genetics has seldom taken its analyses down to the level of a single individual. The surprise was that Ludwig van Beethoven’s locks had a different Y chromosome. Having considered other explanations, we inferred that at some point in the seven generations between Aert and Ludwig, someone’s father for social and legal purposes was not their biological father. As part of our work, we sought to link Beethoven’s genome with those of living members of the Beethoven lineage. To do this we focused on the Y chromosome, which is inherited in the male line only (following a similar pattern to surnames in most European traditions). We already knew through documentation that Beethoven had attacks of jaundice.

A new U.S. tool maps where heat will be dangerous for your health

For Johannes Krause, however, the project is over for the time being — even though there's no shortage of alleged Beethoven hair. Since the publication of the results, Krause has already been offered three more hair samples that are supposed to be from Beethoven for research purposes. One of the findings concluded that Beethoven had the liver disease hepatitis B. Other articles noted that Beethoven might not be genetically a Beethoven at all.

‘PDQ Bach’ musical satirist has died – this Beethoven 5 parody captures Peter Schickele’s rare genius

And stars from Bieber and Bowie, to Marilyn Monroe have had various hairs auctioned for thousands a piece over the years. Recent studies have found that hair is a possible HBV DNA pool in individuals with chronic and acute HBV infections. In this study, screening through shotgun sequencing and the hybridization capture experiments suggested the occurrence of HBV DNA in multiple gene libraries constructed from the Stumpff Lock. The combination of excellently documented provenances with perfect genetic agreement between five independently sourced samples made it very difficult to doubt these hair samples came from Beethoven. Our project used samples from eight independently sourced locks attributed to Beethoven.

What is a symphony? We explain…

Beethoven wrote an unusual document in 1802 requesting that his favorite physician, Dr. Johann Adam Schmidt, describe his disease following his death and make it public. Unfortunately, since he died in 1809, 18 years before the musician's death, he could not fulfill his last wish. However, much later, several medical biographers attempted to determine the likely causes of Beethoven's health complaints by relying principally on documentary sources, e.g., his hand-written letters. A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institutes for Empirical Aesthetics in Germany and the Psycholinguistics in Netherlands analyzed Beethoven’s DNA sequences extracted from strands of hair available from a 2023 study.

The concrete heavy, modernist landscaping of the 1992 redesign causes the sounds of the park -- machines, munching managers, and mariachi bands -- to amplify. I found myself sweating from the heat, which was fragrant, filled with aromas from the many stalls selling quick Thai, Chinese and Greek food to the businessmen and young urban dwellers who throng the area at lunchtime. In the present study, researchers first authenticated hair from eight locks attributed to Ludwig van Beethoven, which they acquired from public and private collections.

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Scientists use Beethoven's hair to study his DNA and uncover his health issues - CBS News

Scientists use Beethoven's hair to study his DNA and uncover his health issues.

Posted: Wed, 22 Mar 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

"We approached the Central Cemetery in Vienna, but they decided against supporting the project." It began in his mid- to late 20s and ended his performing career about two decades later. Given the culture of drinking from lead vessels and medical treatments of the time that involved the use of lead, it's hardly a surprising conclusion. When Fremming died, his daughter sent the lock of hair to Sotheby’s of London for auction.

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When a plaster cast of the statue was shown to the city park board, Beethoven's baggy pants caused consternation among some of the commissioners and one Ms. Adele Lewis of Riverside Drive, who wrote the board the following letter. The DNA extracted showed that Beethoven had two copies of a particular variant of the gene PNPLA3 that has been linked to liver cirrhosis. He also had single copies of two variants of the HFE gene that cause hereditary haemochromatosis, a condition that damages the liver. “Those are really significant,” says Begg, given that historical reports suggest Beethoven was a heavy drinker, especially in the year before his death, which would have further increased his risk of liver damage. By 1787 he had made such progress that Maximilian Francis, archbishop-elector since 1784, was persuaded to send him to Vienna to study with Mozart.

Unlocking the code to Beethoven's life through his hair

Still, the team could not name a cause of death with certainty, and they were unable to determine when or how he was infected with the hepatitis B virus. They note in the paper that the quality of the old samples and the fact that genetic causes of diseases are not fully understood limited their analysis. Of the others, two locks could not have come from the composer; one belonged to a woman with an ancestry consistent with Ashkenazi Jews, the researchers found.

Hepatitis B infection may have been common in Europe at the time, but details on this are scant. He was, however, beset for many years by other health problems – particularly gastrointestinal problems (pain and diarrhoea) and liver disease. We didn’t expect to find a genetic basis for Beethoven’s most widely known health problem – his hearing loss – and this was borne out.

Whether Beethoven ultimately died from his hepatitis, however, cannot be proven. It is not possible to say with absolute certainty that the hair used to sequence the DNA is authentic, Siegert says. After all, she says, there was a buoyant trade after Beethoven's death, including in alleged Beethoven hair.

The source of the lead that poisoned Beethoven is something historians will probably have a field day fighting about; lead was smelted in Europe in large quantities in the 19th century. Ludwig van Beethoven was known for being both a brilliant composer and a difficult human being. For most of the almost two centuries since his death, his tendency toward irritability and depression has been put down to the fact he was a genius, since there’s a common perception that genius and eccentricities go hand in hand.

Using genetics to prove what killed Ludwig van Beethoven may not have allowed a team of researchers from across multiple institutions to come to a revolutionary new conclusion, but it did help them find some interesting connections. Beethoven’s marks for musicality generated an “unremarkable polygenic score for general musicality compared to population samples” that were taken from Sweden and Vanderbilt University. Of course, the team points out that the genetic indicator for beat synchronization ability may not directly tap into Beethoven’s musical creativity that lead to his composing abilities. They also looked at three other historical locks, but weren’t able to confirm those were actually Beethoven’s. Previous tests on one of those locks suggested Beethoven had lead poisoning, but researchers concluded that sample was actually from a woman.

By analyzing seven samples of hair said to have come from Ludwig van Beethoven, researchers debunked myths about the revered composer while raising new questions about his life and death. After cleaning Beethoven’s hair one strand at a time, scientists dissolved the pieces into a solution and fished out chunks of DNA, said study author Tristan James Alexander Begg, a biological anthropologist at the University of Cambridge. After the complete redesign of the park in 1992, Beethoven was moved to his present cramped location. One more redesign and perhaps he would be placed in storage forever -- an irrelevant statue in a city with little interest in a past that doesn't involve celluloid.

Beethoven is widely regarded as the greatest composer who ever lived, in no small part because of his ability—unlike any before him—to translate feeling into music. His most famous compositions included Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67 (1808), Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op 92 (1813), and Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op. 125 (1824). Beethoven’s wild hair is an iconic part of his appearance so it’s little wonder it sparked wide interest and garnered so high a sum yesterday at Sotheby’s.

This initial dataset of five hair samples, spanning the last seven years of the musician's life, in the future, would allow several future lines of scientific inquiry, e.g., infections he acquired during the course of his life. The genetic research didn’t offer any definitive explanations for the deafness or gastrointestinal problems, but it did highlight significant genetic risk factors for liver disease. The team also found evidence of a Hepatitis B infection present in the body in the months before the composer’s death. The genetic research didn't offer any definitive explanations for the deafness or gastrointestinal problems, but it did highlight significant genetic risk factors for liver disease. The team also found evidence of a Hepatitis B infection present in the body in the months before the composer's death.