Engraving depicting Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827). MARY EVANS PICTURE LIBRARY/PHOTONONSTOP
In the collective imagination, he remains the archetype of the artist who has turned his suffering into musical gold. And the trials in the life of the author of The Hymn to Joy were not lacking. Raised by a brutal and alcoholic father, Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) lost his beloved mother at the age of 17 and his life was littered with a litany of health problems. In addition to his famous deafness, which began around the age of 28 and became total between the ages of 45 and 48, the composer regularly complained of abdominal pain and suffered from depressive disorders.
Almost two centuries after his untimely death at the age of 56, the causes of Beethoven’s deafness and those of his death are still a matter of debate. Many hypotheses have been put forward: cirrhosis of the liver, syphilis, acute hepatitis, Paget’s disease (a bone disease that causes deformations of the skull in particular) … Not to mention his excessive fondness for wine and possible chronic lead intoxication or lead intoxication , possibly related with this alcoholism. In fact, the cheap wine of the time was often cut with lead to give it a sweet taste – but Beethoven particularly appreciated the often adulterated wines from Hungary.
A new study published March 22 in the journal Current Biology has unlocked the DNA of the man who knew how to make the piano sing. An international team has decoded the human genome extracted from eight strands of hair believed to have come from the composer’s skull and from public and private collections. The study was coordinated by Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, a laboratory with experience in methods for reading ancient DNA.
“Blunt’s Wick”
“Hair is relevant material for studying the genetic causes of various diseases,” recalls Jean-François Deleuze, director of the CEA’s National Center for Human Genome Research. It must also be ensured that the analyzed wicks are actually genuine. »
And that’s the first surprise. Of the eight locks examined, the authors have only authenticated five, all of which were taken in the last seven years of the musician’s life. The closest connection was found between the DNA of the “wick von Stumpff” (belonging to a private collector) and the DNA of people of known German ancestry of Beethoven now living in North Rhine-Westphalia.
And the other three locks? One’s DNA was unusable. The genomes of the other two do not correspond to the same individual as the five authenticated locks. In particular, the “Hiller Castle,” which was said to have been taken from Beethoven’s deathbed by a young admirer and then passed from hand to hand, actually belonged to a woman. This invalidates the conclusions of a study that found lead levels there a hundred times higher than normal in 2000, which could have explained the artist’s deafness.
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