Beethoven may have literally “composed from the heart”

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Classical music is often described as metaphorically coming from the heart. But with Beethoven, that literally may have been the case.

According to a researchers from the University of Michigan and University of Washington–including a cardiologist, medical historian, and musicologist–the legendary composer may have been inspired by his own heartbeat when creating some of his greatest masterpieces.

Published in a recent edition of the journal Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, their research analyzed several of Beethoven’s compositions for clues for a heart condition that many have speculated he might have had, and found that some of the rhythms for certain parts of his compositions may indeed reflect the irregular rhythms of a cardiac arrhythmia.

“His music may have been both figuratively and physically heartfelt,” co-author Joel Howell, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School, said in a statement.

“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,” he added. “The synergy between our minds and our bodies shapes how we experience the world. This is especially apparent in the world of arts and music, which reflects so much of people’s innermost experiences.”

Howell, along with University of Washington School of Medicine Zachary D. Goldberger and University of Michigan musicologist Steven Whiting, analyzed the rhythmic patterns of several compositions believed to reflect the fact that Beethoven had an arrhythmia (a condition which causes a person’s heart to beat too quickly, too slowly or with an irregular rhythm).

They found “sudden, unexpected changes in pace and keys” in his music that appear to match these types of asymmetrical patterns. In the final movement “Cavatina” of Beethoven’s String Quartet in B-flat Major, Opus 130, for example, there is a sudden key change to C-flat minor.

That key change, the researchers explain, involves “an unbalanced rhythm” which “evokes dark emotion, disorientation and what has even been described as a ‘shortness of breath.’” The section is marked “beklemmt” in the composer’s directions to music playing the piece.

Beklemmt is a German word that translates to “heavy of heart.” While the term is often used to convey sadness, it could also be used in a different context, to describe the sensation of pressure that is often associated with cardiac disease. Howell, Goldberger and Whiting write explained in their study that the “arrhythmic quality of this section is unquestionable.”

They also identified arrhythmic patterns in other pieces as well, including the opening of the “Les Adieux” Sonata (sonata opus 81a, in E-flat major) and the Piano Sonata in A-flat major, Opus 110. It has long been known that Beethoven struggled with several health-related issues, including deafness, inflammatory bowel disease, Paget’s disease, liver disease, alcohol abuse, and kidney disease, this new study suggested that he also had an irregular heartbeat.

“We can’t prove or disprove that Beethoven had many of the diseases he’s been supposedly afflicted with because almost all of today’s diagnostic medical tests didn’t exist in the 18th century, and we are interpreting centuries-old medical descriptions into the context of what we know now,” said Goldberger.

“However, 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,’” he added. “While these musical arrhythmias may simply manifest Beethoven’s genius, 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.”

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