Exactly two centuries ago, Ludwig van Beethoven's 9th Symphony was premiered. It was on May 7, 1824 at the Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna, at seven in the afternoon, at a concert where an orchestra made up of the best performers of the moment was conducted in four hands by the German composer himself and the conductor Michael Umlauf. .
The one known as the Choral Symphony was an overwhelming success. The audience applauded wildly and showed their white handkerchiefs in recognition of the music they had just heard, the finishing touch to the extraordinary career of a Beethoven who, almost completely deaf, did not even notice the cheers of the 2,000. attendees at the event.
Three years later, in 1927, the German genius, one of the great masters in the history of classical music, died. The usual theory was that the German composer had died from lead poisoning, but the latest genetic analyzes have revealed that it was another cause that ended his life.
As the researchers explain in an article published in the journal Clinical Chemistry, Beethoven probably succumbed to liver disease caused by a hepatitis B infection, seeded by genetic risk factors and worsened by his drinking habits.
A team led by pathologist Nader Rifai, from Harvard Medical School, has studied two centuries-old locks of hair from the German musician (authenticated in 2023 and known as Bermann and Halm-Thayer samples) and has confirmed that he really suffered from the effects of poisoning by lead, although this exposure was not enough to kill him.
Hence, specialists still did not understand what caused his gastrointestinal problems and progressive hearing loss throughout his life. Health difficulties did not prevent Beethoven from continuing to compose great masterpieces, but they did force him to withdraw from the public scene and stop acting.
Using mass spectrometry methods, Rifai measured the amount of lead, as well as arsenic and mercury, in the two strands of hair that had first been washed and dried to minimize contamination during handling and storage.
The Bermann sample had a lead concentration 64 times the upper limit of what is considered typical for a healthy person, while the Halm-Thayer (which Beethoven gave to the pianist Anton Halm in 1826) had a lead concentration 95 times greater than that reference range. Arsenic and mercury levels were also high (13 and 4 times higher, respectively).
From the lead levels in these 19th-century hair samples, researchers estimated that the lead concentration in Beethoven's blood could have been between 69 and 71 micrograms per deciliter (μg/dL).
“These ranges are commonly associated with gastrointestinal and kidney diseases and with decreased hearing, but are not considered high enough to be the only cause of death,” the American researchers write in their article.
Ludwig van Beethoven's exposure to heavy metal is easily explained by the culture of drinking from lead glasses and the medical treatments used in his time. The new measurements provide more data on how this exposure affected his health.
“While the determined concentrations do not support the idea that lead exposure caused Beethoven's death, it may have contributed to the documented ailments that plagued him for most of his life,” the specialists conclude.
Measuring lead levels in hair, however, might not be a good indicator for counting blood concentrations, and there are other possibilities that could explain Beethoven's hearing loss. A 2023 DNA analysis revealed that the composer had some genetic markers related to lupus, a rare disease that can sometimes cause hearing loss.
Medical historians have also wondered whether Beethoven's middle ear bones had fused, which occurs with a condition called otosclerosis. But the causes of this disease are not yet known.
