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Researchers find high levels of lead, mercury and arsenic in Beethoven's hair

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Researchers find high levels of lead, mercury and arsenic in Beethoven's hair

#21

Post by HEmanZ »

recursive wrote: post #9
lioeters wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure that he heard his majestic music in his head as he was composing it.

Me too, but that's a fundamentally different experience. I think the question stands, and I'm interested in the answer.

People debate endlessly about what effect it had on his music, and we’ll never know the counter factual. A few things about this that the majority of people don’t know tho:

1. He was wildly successful before he started going deaf. Like performing for and requested by the kings and emperors all around Europe successful. Like graduating from being apprenticed by Hayden successful.

2. He had played and composed a truly insane amount before losing his hearing. As a modern analogy, his father “Tiger Woods”ed him. He had all-day and all-night kind of regime from the time he 4 years old. He had famous teachers and was forced to perform in front of the nobility starting at the age of 6. He was pulled out of school as soon as possible to spend all of his time playing. His life was music, in a way very few humans ever experience anything.

3. Classical music is structured in a way that, it is not uncommon for composers to put the whole piece together on paper before hearing it. In composition exercises, pieces are critiqued without them being played. Exercises even at the highest level don’t need to be played to be judged. Pieces are often submitted and judged without anyone hearing them. It can be hard for someone not used to classical music to understand this.

Re: Researchers find high levels of lead, mercury and arsenic in Beethoven's hair

#22

Post by patternMachine »

amatecha wrote: post #17

"It was so incredibly tragic that he couldn’t hear this majestic music that he created." He couldn't physically hear the performance of it, but it's possible he could "hear" what it would sound like - and he very possibly heard it in his head before writing a single note down on paper (or however he recorded his music). I'm not sure everyone has this ability, but whenever I've written/recorded music, I almost literal…

I am not a composer but I do have a similar memory for sound. I can "listen" to music in my head very vividly. It can go on for quite awhile almost subconsciously and when it ends it often feels like someone else turned the music off, leading me wondering what happened.

Re: Researchers find high levels of lead, mercury and arsenic in Beethoven's hair

#23

Post by deepakg »

w-m wrote: post #20

I'm quite confused. I learned 20+ years ago that lead poisining from the wine was the cause, or at least the suspected cause of Beethovens deafness. It's great that they found lead in his hair (again?), but thoroughly weird that they don't mention that it was the go-to theory already. On a large tangent, I tried asking GPT-4o to check the article whether it mentions that previously that theory already existed (could…

Indeed! There was even a book on the topic I read years ago. Lead poisoning seemed quite conclusive even back then. https://www.amazon.com/Beethovens-Hair-Extraordinary-Histori...

Re: Researchers find high levels of lead, mercury and arsenic in Beethoven's hair

#24

Post by kiba »

amatecha wrote: post #17

"It was so incredibly tragic that he couldn’t hear this majestic music that he created." He couldn't physically hear the performance of it, but it's possible he could "hear" what it would sound like - and he very possibly heard it in his head before writing a single note down on paper (or however he recorded his music). I'm not sure everyone has this ability, but whenever I've written/recorded music, I almost literal…

I got earworms but nothing super vivid.

Re: Researchers find high levels of lead, mercury and arsenic in Beethoven's hair

#25

Post by rqtwteye »

rovr138 wrote: post #11
sandworm101 wrote: post #4

>> One had 380 micrograms of lead per gram of hair, while the other had 258 micrograms. For reference, a normal level of lead in a gram of hair is around 4 micrograms or less. His hair also had 13 times the normal level of arsenic, and four times the normal level of mercury. What is "normal"? Normal for now, or normal for the 17th century? Looking at the hair and makeup regimes of the wealthy, they were all probably…

I mean, did anyone survive those times?

Most people certainly didn't live as long. I can also imagine that a lot of people had lower IQ due to lead exposure.

Re: Researchers find high levels of lead, mercury and arsenic in Beethoven's hair

#26

Post by deadbabe »

amatecha wrote: post #17

"It was so incredibly tragic that he couldn’t hear this majestic music that he created." He couldn't physically hear the performance of it, but it's possible he could "hear" what it would sound like - and he very possibly heard it in his head before writing a single note down on paper (or however he recorded his music). I'm not sure everyone has this ability, but whenever I've written/recorded music, I almost literal…

Being able to simply hear the music in your head by reading or writing it sounds like the highest possible audio fidelity.

Re: Researchers find high levels of lead, mercury and arsenic in Beethoven's hair

#27

Post by brailsafe »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #16

“ the slew of other health problems he suffered, including diarrhea and abdominal cramps.” So no different than the average consumer-society sedentary person. Just let poor old Beethoven rest in peace.

People have a way of forgetting that everybody poops. Famous people have the same human deficiencies as any other, but if anything talent probably intensifies those issues through relentless focus on greatness or money to the point of complete neglect of yourself.

Bill Gates is super sus, rich, and powerful, but he must feel like hell every time he wakes up or bends down.

Re: Researchers find high levels of lead, mercury and arsenic in Beethoven's hair

#28

Post by lambdaba »

amatecha wrote: post #17

"It was so incredibly tragic that he couldn’t hear this majestic music that he created." He couldn't physically hear the performance of it, but it's possible he could "hear" what it would sound like - and he very possibly heard it in his head before writing a single note down on paper (or however he recorded his music). I'm not sure everyone has this ability, but whenever I've written/recorded music, I almost literal…

I can't find a quote I remember reading, attributed to Beethoven, something along the lines of "if people could hear what I hear in my mind, they wouldn't care about my music". Does that ring a bell (!) with anybody? I could not get any language model to help.

Re: Researchers find high levels of lead, mercury and arsenic in Beethoven's hair

#29

Post by louthy »

amatecha wrote: post #17

"It was so incredibly tragic that he couldn’t hear this majestic music that he created." He couldn't physically hear the performance of it, but it's possible he could "hear" what it would sound like - and he very possibly heard it in his head before writing a single note down on paper (or however he recorded his music). I'm not sure everyone has this ability, but whenever I've written/recorded music, I almost literal…

> I'm not sure everyone has this ability, but whenever I've written/recorded music, I almost literally hear it before I even try to create it or play it. My memory of sound is REALLY strong

I’m the same. Details in sound is the same as details in vision for me, I can remember the fine details of complete songs seemingly forever (yet my memory for everything else is terrible). And I have the same thing where I have the sound and musical progression of what I’m about to make in my head, ‘playing’, before I even start trying to make it happen on a synthesiser or on my modular system. And I don’t just mean known sounds like violin, piano, etc. I’m doing sound design as well as composition in my mind (I can hear it) before I start doing it for real.

I can easily believe that Beethoven was capable of “hallucinating” the music that he was composing in the same way.

Interestingly, I don’t really get this when reading sheet music, only when I’m creating or reflecting. Presumably, it’s a different pathway in the brain.

Re: Researchers find high levels of lead, mercury and arsenic in Beethoven's hair

#30

Post by jorgesborges »

Beethoven wrote a letter to his brothers that he never sent but it’s often referred to as a suicide note. It’s interesting — apparently he hid his bad hearing for a long time and considered it a humiliation. From the letter it also sounds like he was a real dick to people around him as a result, but they weren’t aware. So it serves as a sort of confession, apology and goodbye.

You can read it here it’s pretty short.

https://nac-cna.ca/en/stories/story/beethovens-complete-heil...

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