At 7 p.m. on May 7, 1824, Ludwig van Beethoven, then 53 years old, arrived at Vienna's magnificent Kärntnertortheater to help conduct the world premiere of his last completed Ninth Symphony. I stepped onto the stage.
That performance, which celebrates its 200th anniversary on Tuesday, was unforgettable in many ways. However, the piece was characterized by an incident at the beginning of the second movement that revealed to the approximately 1,800 audience just how deaf the esteemed composer had become.
Ted Albrecht, professor emeritus of music at Kent State University in Ohio and author of a recent book on the Ninth Symphony, described the scene.
The exercise began with loud kettle drums and the crowd cheered wildly.
However, Beethoven was not aware of the applause or his music. He was standing with his back to the audience and marking the time. At that moment, one of the soloists grabbed him by the sleeve, turned him around, and heard loud praise that he could not hear.
This was yet another humiliation for the composer, who had felt humiliated by his hearing loss ever since he started losing his hearing in his 20s.
But why did he become deaf? And why was he suffering from non-stop abdominal pain, bloating and diarrhea?
A cottage industry of fans and experts debates various theories. Was it Paget's disease of the bones, which can affect hearing in the skull? Was irritable bowel syndrome causing his gastrointestinal problems? Or was it syphilis, pancreatitis, diabetes, or kidney disease? Could you have had the disease renal papillary necrosis?
After 200 years, a toxic substance has been discovered in a composer's hair, and the mystery may finally be solved.
This particular story began several years ago, when researchers realized that DNA analysis had advanced enough to justify testing the hair that was said to have been cut from Beethoven's head by an anguished fan near his death. It started when we noticed it.
William Meredith, founding director of San Jose State University's Ira F. Brilliant Beethoven Research Center, began searching for the lock at auctions and museums. Eventually, he and his colleagues obtained his five locks, which DNA analysis confirmed were made from the composer's head.
Kevin Brown, an Australian businessman with a passion for Beethoven, owns three locks that, upon Beethoven's death in 1802, may help doctors try to uncover the cause of his illness. I wanted to respect your request. Brown sent the two locks to a specialized laboratory at the Mayo Clinic, which has the equipment and expertise to test for heavy metals.
Lab director Paul Janet said the results were surprising. One of Beethoven's hairs contained 258 micrograms of lead per gram of hair, and the other had 380 micrograms of lead.
The normal level of lead in hair is less than 4 micrograms per gram.
“This clearly shows that Beethoven was exposed to high levels of lead,” Dr Janet said.
“This is the highest value of hair I've ever seen,” he added. “We get samples from all over the world, and the values are orders of magnitude higher.”
Arsenic levels 13 times the normal level and mercury levels four times the normal level were also found in Beethoven's hair. But lead, especially in large amounts, may have caused many of his illnesses, Dr. Janet said.
The researchers, including Dr. Jannetto, Dr. Brown, and Dr. Meredith, describe their findings in a letter published Monday in the journal Clinical Chemistry.
The analysis updates a report from last year in which the same research team said Beethoven did not have lead poisoning. Now, after thorough testing, they have determined that there are enough clues in his body to at least explain his hearing loss and illness.
David Eaton, a toxicologist and professor emeritus at the University of Washington who was not involved in the study, said Beethoven's gastrointestinal problems were “completely consistent with lead poisoning.” Regarding Beethoven's hearing loss, he added that high doses of lead may have affected his nervous system and destroyed his hearing.
“It's hard to say whether the chronic doses were enough to kill him,” Dr. Eaton added.
No one has suggested that the composer was intentionally poisoned. But Jerome Niag, an expert on historical lead poisoning and a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, said lead was used in 19th-century Europe in wine and food, as well as medicines and ointments.
One source of Beethoven's high levels of lead may have been cheap wine. Lead in the form of lead acetate is also called “lead sugar” and has a sweet taste. In Beethoven's time, it was often added to poor quality wine to improve its taste.
The wine was also fermenting in a kettle with lead soldered to it, and Dr Niag said the lead would leach out as the wine aged. Additionally, wine bottle corks were pre-soaked in lead salts to improve their seal, he added.
Beethoven drank large amounts of wine, about one bottle a day, and even more in his later years, believing that wine was good for health. Also, according to Dr. Meredith, Beethoven was addicted to wine. In the days before his death in 1827 at the age of 56, his friends gave him spoonfuls of wine.
His secretary and biographer Anton Schindler describes the scene of his death: He continued to drink spoonfuls of your Rüdesheimer wine until his death. ”
When he was on his deathbed, his publisher gave him 12 bottles of wine. By that time, Beethoven knew that he could never drink them. He whispered the last recorded words. “Too bad, too bad, it's too late!”
For the composer, deafness was perhaps the greatest hardship.
Twenty-six years before his death, at the age of thirty, Beethoven wrote: In other professions I might be able to tolerate my weakness, but in my profession it is a terrible handicap. And if my enemies, of whom I have quite a few, hear about this, what will they say? ”
At the age of 32, Beethoven lamented that he could no longer hear the flute or the shepherd's song, and wrote that he was “near despair.'' If I had waited a little longer, I would have committed suicide. Art was the only thing that kept me going. Oh, it seemed like I couldn't think of leaving this world until I let out everything I felt inside me. ”
Over the years, Beethoven saw many doctors and tried one treatment after another for his illness and hearing loss, but no improvement was seen. At one point, he was using ointments and taking 75 different medications, many of which likely contained lead.
In 1823, he wrote to an acquaintance who was also deaf about his deafness, calling it a “wretched misfortune” and saying: People eventually get tired of them. ”
His Ninth Symphony was probably his way of reconciling his sadness and art.
As a teenager, Beethoven was fascinated by Friedrich Schiller's poem “Ode to Joy.”
He set this poem to music in the Ninth, and it was sung by soloists and choir. This is considered the first example of singing in a symphony. It was a symphonic masterpiece about the search for joy.
Beethoven wrote that the first movement is a depiction of despair. The second movement, complete with the sound of a kettle drum, is an attempt to overcome despair. The third, Beethoven wrote, reveals a “tender” world in which despair is set aside. But he concluded that it was not enough to put aside despair. Instead, “we have to look for something that will bring us back to life.”
The fourth movement of the finale was that call. It was a song of joy.
In the years since, Beethoven's Ninth has deeply moved millions of people, even Helen Keller, who “heard” it with her hand pressed against the radio.
As I listen to the darkness and melodies and shadows and sounds fill the room, I can't help but remember that the great composer who poured such a sweet flood into the world was deaf, just like me. I couldn't stay there. I marveled at the power of his indelible spirit to bring so much joy to others out of suffering. And I sat there, feeling in my hands a magnificent symphony crashing like an ocean on the quiet shores of his soul and mine.