“His music may have been both figuratively and physically heartfelt,” Joel Howell from the University of Michigan said in a news release. “When your heart beats irregularly from heart disease, it does so in some predictable patterns. We think we hear some of those same patterns in his music.”
Researchers have speculated that Ludwig van Beethoven had cardiac arrhythmia – which means electrical impulses coordinating heartbeats are off, either causing the heart to beat too fast, too slow or just irregularly. This is in addition to other conditions the composer is suspected to have had, like: inflammatory bowel disease, abnormal bone destruction, liver disease, alcohol abuse, kidney disease, and deafness.
The researchers, who put together a study on the subject, believe that this heart condition could have played a role in Beethoven’s unusual rhythmic style, including unexpected changes in pace and keys that match asymmetrical rhythms. And being deaf would have only made his perception of his own heartbeat more prominent.
“The symptoms and common association of an abnormal heartbeat with so many diseases makes it a reasonable assumption that Beethoven experienced arrhythmia—and the works we describe may be ‘musical electrocardiograms,’ the readout of modern heart rhythm testing equipment,” says University of Washington’s Zachary Goldberger.
IFLScience described a detailed example:
Beethoven has said that “Cavatina,” the final movement in his String Quartet in B-flat major, Opus 130, always made him weep. In the middle of the quartet, the key suddenly changes to C-flat major, involving an unbalanced rhythm evocative of disorienting dark emotions, often described as a shortness of breath. In his directions to musicians, Beethoven marked the section with “beklemmt,” or “heavy of heart” in German. While that could just mean sadness, it may also describe that feeling of pressure associated with cardiac disease. “The arrhythmic quality of this section is unquestionable,” the authors write
“While these musical arrhythmias may simply manifest Beethoven’s genius,” Goldberger adds, “there is a possibility that in certain pieces his beating heart could literally be at the heart of some of the greatest masterpieces of all time.”
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
[Photo from Flickr user New Visions]
