The 200-Year-Long Mystery of Beethoven’s Death Is Slowly Unraveling: Here’s What We Now Know

What killed the great composer Ludwig van Beethoven? Given that he died in 1827, the mystery of the cause of his death has stumped musicologists and researchers for nearly two centuries. To this day, no one knows for certain what caused the liver and kidney disease that led to his demise, but the good news is that we are slowly learning what did not cause his demise.

Indeed, while little is known about the cause of his death, some facts about his health are well-known.

We do know, for example, that he began to lose his hearing by 1810 and that  he was almost completely deaf and gave up public appearances by 1815.

His decline was documented in two letters known as his Heiligenstadt Testament, in which he discussed his health and his unfulfilled personal life, which he sent to his brothers (Beethoven was the second child born to his parents, but only he and two younger brothers survived infancy) as well as in his unsent love letter to his Unsterbliche Geliebte, his Immortal Beloved, an unknown individual who some scholars now believe was Josephine Gräfin von Brunsvik, also known as Countess Jozefina Brunszvik de Koromp.

Die unsterbliche Geliebte? Giulietta Guicciardi – Therese Brunsvik, the latter for whom the Bagatelle in A minor, known as “Für Elise” (a misspelling during transcription of Therese), was written.

Josephine appears to have been the most important woman in Beethoven’s life bar none, a belief based on the at least 15 love letters in which he called her his “only beloved.”

But I digress.

Beethoven is one of the most revered figures in the history of Western music and his works rank among the most performed in the classical music repertoire. They span the transition from the Classical period to the Romantic era in classical music and, despite his advancing deafness, he created a body of work in his later years that include his later symphonies, mature chamber works, and his final piano sonatas, the latter category including Piano Sonata Nr. 29 in B♭, Opus 106, known as the Große Sonate für das Hammerklavier, or simply, as Hammerklavier, a piece that ranks among the greatest piano sonatas of all time.

Last week, Harvard Medical School researchers said that the long-standing theory that the German composer died of lead poisoning is simply not true.

„Allegorie,“ or „Allegory“ in English, by the Austrian artist Professor S. Hruby (1869-1943)

Indeed, new research published in the journal Clinical Chemistry suggests otherwise. A DNA analysis based on authenticated locks of Beethoven’s hair analyzed two of the locks for toxic substances and found extremely high levels of lead, as well as arsenic and mercury, although those substances are also unlikely to have caused the great composer’s death.

“It definitely shows Beethoven was exposed to high concentrations of lead,” Paul Janetto, co-author and director of the Mayo Clinic’s Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, told the New York Times in an interview. “These are the highest values in hair I’ve ever seen.” “We get samples from around the world, and these values are an order of magnitude higher.”

Given these findings, however, the authors said that they had concluded that Beethoven’s exposure to lead was still not sufficient to actually have killed the composer, although he very likely did suffer adverse health effects because of it.

Beethoven sketches motifs for „Fidelio“ in the oak grove at Schônbrunn by the Austrian artist Vinyenz Gorgon (1891-1963)

The researchers performed a toxin analysis on two of the composer’s authenticated locks, the Bermann and the Halm-Thayer Locks, using a highly accurate technique known as mass spectrometry. The procedure identifies chemical substances by cataloging gaseous ions in electric and magnetic fields according to their mass-to-charge ratios.

The results of the mass spectrometry analysis showed that the Bermann Lock had a lead concentration 64 times the normal amount, and that the Halm-Thayer Lock had a lead concentration 95 times greater than what is considered normal. These results indicate that the composer’s blood lead concentration would have been 69 to 71 µg/dl.  While this is several times higher than the norm for adults, it is not high enough to be considered the sole cause of his death.

These findings, while not supporting lead exposure as the composer’s cause of death, do show that his high blood lead levels were likely contributors to the many ailments that plagued him throughout the later years in his life.

Beethoven sketches motifs for „Fidelio“ in the oak grove at Schônbrunn by the Austrian artist Vinyenz Gorgon (1891-1963)

As an adult, Beethoven suffered chronic gastric ailments, including persistent abdominal pains and prolonged stretches of diarrhea. By 1821, the composer suffered the first of two severe attacks of jaundice.

At this point, the reader may wonder why the composer’s blood lead levels were as high as they were. The answer is in vino veritas.

Beethoven consumed prodigious amounts of wine; indeed, it was reported he continued sipping it by the spoonful while on his deathbed. It was common to add lead acetate to inexpensive wine to reduce acidity and remove cloudiness. In addition, wine was aged in lead-soldered kettles and corks were soaked in lead salt before being inserted into wine bottles. Beethoven’s wine goblet was likely made from lead glass or crystal as well.

By the end of the first Industrial Revolution, lead was a well-known killer but that knowledge was not common in the early 19th century when lead was a common additive to  various ointments and medications that the composer likely used to treat his ailments. He reportedly took as many as 75 medications at one time and at least some of them contained the pernicious metal.

In 1821, or so the story told by Professor Blasius Höfel, a teacher of fine arts at Weiner Neustadt, goes, Beethoven was arrested after being mistaken for a tramp, released only when Anton Herzog, a school teacher known for having written the censored account of the commissioning of the Requiem from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart by Count Franz von Walsegg.

In addition, even today, Heavy metals, such as mercury, lead, arsenic and cadmium, are naturally present in the environment and this, in turn, results in the presence of heavy metals in food, particularly in seafood.  Beethoven consumed copious amounts of fish and much of it would have come from the heavily polluted and not-very-blue Donau, the Danube River.

After his death in 1827, the autopsy he had requested in his decline pointed to evidence of cirrhosis as the likely cause of death as well as significant dilation of the auditory nerve.

We still don’t know what caused the great composer’s death but the latest findings should complete an important and heretofore missing piece of the puzzle and should enable scientists and musicologists to better understand the medical history of the man about whom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart said, after hearing Beethoven improvise on the piano, “Pay attention to this one, he will be the talk of the world.”

(Photo: Accura Media Group)