George Church, a molecular technologist at the Harvard Medical School who wasn't involved in the study, says it's solid research.

'Whichever way you cut it,' he says, 'it really comes as no surprise he died of cirrhosis, ultimately, at the age of 56.' Tristan Begg pulls strands from a lock of hair in a laboratory at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany as part of an effort to sequence Beethoven's genome.Īnd all three factors - the gene, the drinking, and the hepatitis B - they would have all interacted. That sparked this obsession, both with the music and with the man.' I had to catch myself, stop myself from crying. It was the first 'dun dun dun,'' Begg says, referring to the melody that subtly but powerfully surfaces after half a minute. He dropped the needle on Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, and his world would never be the same. One of his presents that holiday was a record player. 'Loved old Ragtime Blues - Blind Blake, Mississippi John Hurt.'īut then came Christmas Day of 2007, when Begg was 17 years old. 'ACDC, Led Zeppelin, Mozart, Prokofiev,' he recalls. When he was a kid, Begg listened to all kinds of music. His work has ensnared countless listeners, including Tristan Begg, a biological anthropology PhD student at the University of Cambridge, and one of the researchers involved in the genetic sequencing project. In spite of these difficulties, Beethoven is still regarded as one of the greatest composers in Western music.

He also struggled with chronic gastrointestinal problems and liver disease, which only compounded his misery. The findings, published in the journal Current Biology, offer clues about the health challenges that shaped him as a person and the musician he came to be.īeethoven famously suffered from progressive hearing loss, which made social interactions a source of increasing anxiety and ended his career as a performing musician by his mid-40s. Now, scientists have done one better: They've sequenced Beethoven's genome. Beethoven is considered to be one of the greatest composers in the Western tradition.

Beethoven babysitter