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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

#81

Post by smeej »

Stratoscope wrote: post #32
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…

Many years ago a friend was looking at a new recipe to cook, and she asked me, "Can you taste a recipe?" My first thought was "Huh? What?" My second thought was "Yes, I can taste a recipe." So I read it, imagined cooking it, and tasted it in my mind. It tasted good, and of course I had a couple of minor suggestions. Maybe one was more garlic, but I always want more garlic. She agreed with my ideas and had a couple of…

I wonder if there's an equivalent for "aphantasia" for the other senses. If there is, I'm pretty sure I have it for taste.

I can imagine whole detailed worlds and hold them in my imagination, but nothing tastes like anything, and I definitely can't taste recipes.

To be fair, it's possible it's underdeveloped because I don't taste things terribly well in reality either, but now I'm wondering about how all the senses translate to imagination!

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

#82

Post by cdelsolar »

lqet wrote: post #71
jorgesborges wrote: post #30

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.…

Beethoven surely was an interesting character. He often had trouble finding apartments because he was such a difficult neighbor (and it didn't help that he played his piano as loud as possible, so that he could hear it). One time, he was arrested because he was creeping around Wiener Neustadt at night, dressed like a beggar, and peeping into living rooms. Nobody believed he was the famous composer, and a local organi…

I would have thought you needed a decent grasp of math to compose. Don’t you have to count - ie all your measures must have equal sums of note durations (if you are using 32nds, all your notes - halves, quarters, 32nds, rests, and so on, must add up to 32 32nds).

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

#83

Post by mensetmanusman »

cranberryturkey wrote: post #54
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…

I spent the last 20 hours using 4o writing a tauri/rust desktop app. I don't know rust, so it was a LOT of pasting errors back in copying back to my code. But I'd say after about 14 hours it got very lazy. Does AI get tired like humans?

Tell it you will give it tips for kWhrs.

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

#84

Post by efields »

cranberryturkey wrote: post #54
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…

I spent the last 20 hours using 4o writing a tauri/rust desktop app. I don't know rust, so it was a LOT of pasting errors back in copying back to my code. But I'd say after about 14 hours it got very lazy. Does AI get tired like humans?

Sounds productive. Don't forget to take breaks, drink water, and sleep.

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

#85

Post by leobg »

rompic wrote: post #66

There's a very interesting German (Austrian) podcast episode about this here: https://www.falter.at/podcasts/gerichtsmedizin/20221202/klen...

That was great.

No chronic lead poisoning after all. Lead poisoning started only within ~100 days before his death, mostly caused by medical interventions (lead based antiseptic, lead based medicine) when he was treated for symptoms of an undiagnosed hepatitis and cirrhosis of the liver.

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

#86

Post by tbossanova »

hilbert42 wrote: post #64
littlestymaar wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the young Mozart of 14 listened You mean “Mozart in the middle of his career” at 14 ;) (he was already an international star for seven full years before he was 14)

"You mean “Mozart in the middle of his career” at 14" Sorry. Yeah you're right. I recall when I got to the age of 35 he died at I asked myself what the hell have I done in my 35 years. The comparison was embarrassing (even now years later I still use that comparison).

Love

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

#87

Post by StefanBatory »

Novosell wrote: post #65
hilbert42 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You mean “Mozart in the middle of his career” at 14" Sorry. Yeah you're right. I recall when I got to the age of 35 he died at I asked myself what the hell have I done in my 35 years. The comparison was embarrassing (even now years later I still use that comparison).

Seems like a potentially unhealthy comparison.

But a true one :/

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

#89

Post by hilbert42 »

Novosell wrote: post #65
hilbert42 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You mean “Mozart in the middle of his career” at 14" Sorry. Yeah you're right. I recall when I got to the age of 35 he died at I asked myself what the hell have I done in my 35 years. The comparison was embarrassing (even now years later I still use that comparison).

Seems like a potentially unhealthy comparison.

I don't reckon so, we know a great deal about Mozart and that he was incredibly productive throughout his working career which spanned 30 of his 35 years.

Thanks to Köchel and others essentially Mozart's entire life's work is very well documented and that over those 30 years he produced about 626 musical works most of which are of the highest standard, and of those some rank as works of sheer genius, not only have they stood the test of time but they still remain popular and well loved by millions some 233 after his death.

Mozart's talent and his life's work can thus be held up as a standard—a level of excellence—to which many of us would like to aspire.

What makes Mozart special, perhaps more so than many other famous composers, is how much he achieved in such a short life. He's up at the pinnacle with others who have achieved great things. Even for those of us who are not composers Mozart's yardstick can remind us of our own often-limited talents and work and how we wished they were better or how we might go about improving them. At times I experience such notions when listening to his music.

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

#90

Post by lostemptations5 »

There are a number of people commenting about how Beethoven could hear music in his head, being deaf, and thus compose entire symphonies.

But at that time the musical instruments of the day were incredibly "standardized".

Basically it was all orchestral instruments such as violins, percuasion, and all the usual fair -- and by the time Beethoven went deaf he was intimately familiar with these such that he could IMAGINE it all in his head.

Even if you went deaf tomorrow, in 20 years time you would still be able to imagine a violin -- it is a very distinctive instrument.

So I think this feat -- while wonderful-- is pretty explainable.

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