[HN Gopher] Researchers find high levels of lead, mercury and ar...
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Researchers find high levels of lead, mercury and arsenic in
Beethoven's hair
Author : marban
Score : 50 points
Date : 2024-05-14 10:15 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| jmclnx wrote:
| >"This man created some of the most beautiful music humanity was
| able to produce," Rifai adds. "It was so incredibly tragic that
| he couldn't hear this majestic music that he created."
|
| I wonder if his deafness helped him create that music.
| lioeters wrote:
| I'm sure that he heard his majestic music in his head as he was
| composing it.
| Iulioh wrote:
| He still _felt_ it
| recursive wrote:
| Me too, but that's a fundamentally different experience. I
| think the question stands, and I'm interested in the answer.
| HEmanZ wrote:
| People debate endlessly about what effect it had on his
| music, and we'll never know the counter factual. A few
| things about this that the majority of people don't know
| tho:
|
| 1. He was wildly successful before he started going deaf.
| Like performing for and requested by the kings and emperors
| all around Europe successful. Like graduating from being
| apprenticed by Hayden successful.
|
| 2. He had played and composed a truly insane amount before
| losing his hearing. As a modern analogy, his father "Tiger
| Woods"ed him. He had all-day and all-night kind of regime
| from the time he 4 years old. He had famous teachers and
| was forced to perform in front of the nobility starting at
| the age of 6. He was pulled out of school as soon as
| possible to spend all of his time playing. His life was
| music, in a way very few humans ever experience anything.
|
| 3. Classical music is structured in a way that, it is not
| uncommon for composers to put the whole piece together on
| paper before hearing it. In composition exercises, pieces
| are critiqued without them being played. Exercises even at
| the highest level don't need to be played to be judged.
| Pieces are often submitted and judged without anyone
| hearing them. It can be hard for someone not used to
| classical music to understand this.
| chasd00 wrote:
| there are people without an inner monologue, that little
| voice inside your head. If you don't have that voice then i
| wonder if you can imagine or hear music inside your head like
| you would "that little voice".
|
| edit: here's a old article about people who lack an inner
| monologue https://www.iflscience.com/people-with-no-internal-
| monologue...
| genman wrote:
| Yes, there are people who can hear music in their head but
| it is necessary not related to having the inner monologue.
| lukan wrote:
| "I wonder if his deafness helped him create that music. "
|
| Since he already composed great music before he became deaf, I
| think no.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Possibly. You can often tell when a piece was composed based on
| how much he uses the low octaves. Some of his lower pitched
| works are because he could still hear those notes well.
|
| You can notice this in his 7th symphony for example.
| https://youtu.be/Qu_kAWCKSo8?si=swCapaFJM9CwYwWV
|
| This movement is incredible because it's so simple. It's
| basically beginner piano. And yet it's overflowing with
| emotion.
| throwup238 wrote:
| All great artists are a little bit crazy. Heavy metal poisoning
| is a clever shortcut.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> One had 380 micrograms of lead per gram of hair, while the
| other had 258 micrograms. For reference, a normal level of lead
| in a gram of hair is around 4 micrograms or less. His hair also
| had 13 times the normal level of arsenic, and four times the
| normal level of mercury.
|
| What is "normal"? Normal for now, or normal for the 17th century?
| Looking at the hair and makeup regimes of the wealthy, they were
| all probably soaked in poisons. Arsenic seems more common than
| garlic, lead used more liberally than salt. If we apply modern
| standards for poisons, nobody should have survived those times.
| rovr138 wrote:
| I mean, did anyone survive those times?
| rqtwteye wrote:
| Most people certainly didn't live as long. I can also imagine
| that a lot of people had lower IQ due to lead exposure.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Just curious how do modern humans compare. I think most people
| have this notion that sewage treatment removes everything.
|
| I know the local creek that the local water treatment plant
| empties out into, and the creek smells like sewage. The water
| intake is maybe km away down river. Aside from obvious chemicals
| like paint that people might flush. All kinds of medical/drug
| chemicals they're on are also peed out as well. And those can be
| active in tiny amounts.
| rovr138 wrote:
| > Researchers tested two authenticated locks of Beethoven's
| hair. One had 380 micrograms of lead per gram of hair, while
| the other had 258 micrograms. For reference, a normal level of
| lead in a gram of hair is around 4 micrograms or less. His hair
| also had 13 times the normal level of arsenic, and four times
| the normal level of mercury.
| elevaet wrote:
| I think we tend to have a lot less heavy metal poisoning in
| general than we did at different times in the past.
|
| It's only fairly recently that we realized how dangerous these
| metals are and started removing them from things like plumbing
| (that word comes from french/latin for lead), fuels, paints,
| even eating-wares.
|
| I think north america was using leaded gasoline up until the
| end of the 70s or so.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| At least until the mid-late 80's. My roommate had a 71 Dodge
| Challenger and it was only around '89 or so that it became
| harder for him to find the leaded gas it needed in the NYC
| area.
| windowsrookie wrote:
| And small engined airplanes still use leaded fuel.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| " the slew of other health problems he suffered, including
| diarrhea and abdominal cramps."
|
| So no different than the average consumer-society sedentary
| person. Just let poor old Beethoven rest in peace.
| brailsafe wrote:
| People have a way of forgetting that everybody poops. Famous
| people have the same human deficiencies as any other, but if
| anything talent probably intensifies those issues through
| relentless focus on greatness or money to the point of complete
| neglect of yourself.
|
| Bill Gates is super sus, rich, and powerful, but he must feel
| like hell every time he wakes up or bends down.
| amatecha wrote:
| "It was so incredibly tragic that he couldn't hear this majestic
| music that he created."
|
| He couldn't physically hear the performance of it, but it's
| possible he could "hear" what it would sound like - and he very
| possibly heard it in his head before writing a single note down
| on paper (or however he recorded his music).
|
| I'm not sure everyone has this ability, but whenever I've
| written/recorded music, I almost literally hear it before I even
| try to create it or play it. My memory of sound is REALLY strong.
| I've never had someone go "oh yeah, me too!" when I discuss this
| though, so I have no idea if it's a common thing or what. It's
| like borderline hallucination, the clarity with which I can
| recall music and sound. I would wager that a lot of composers
| over the years have had this ability, especially since you
| couldn't exaclty spin up an orchestra in your livingroom while
| composing an operatic piece in 1800 :)
| gramie wrote:
| My son is a composer, and he told me that he doesn't even need
| a keyboard any more, when he composes (he composes on paper,
| then transfers it to music notation software when it's ready to
| distribute).
|
| He also, sometimes, has a photographic memory for music. In
| university he had a listening test on a piece of classical
| music. He was able to visualize the score that he had studied
| when in high school, and identify the types and numbers of
| instruments.
| patternMachine wrote:
| I am not a composer but I do have a similar memory for sound. I
| can "listen" to music in my head very vividly. It can go on for
| quite awhile almost subconsciously and when it ends it often
| feels like someone _else_ turned the music off, leading me
| wondering what happened.
| kiba wrote:
| I got earworms but nothing super vivid.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Being able to simply hear the music in your head by reading or
| writing it sounds like the highest possible audio fidelity.
| lambdaba wrote:
| I can't find a quote I remember reading, attributed to
| Beethoven, something along the lines of "if people could hear
| what I hear in my mind, they wouldn't care about my music".
| Does that ring a bell (!) with anybody? I could not get any
| language model to help.
| aristus wrote:
| Try "the music of the spheres".
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musica_universalis
| louthy wrote:
| > I'm not sure everyone has this ability, but whenever I've
| written/recorded music, I almost literally hear it before I
| even try to create it or play it. My memory of sound is REALLY
| strong
|
| I'm the same. Details in sound is the same as details in vision
| for me, I can remember the fine details of complete songs
| seemingly forever (yet my memory for everything else is
| terrible). And I have the same thing where I have the sound and
| musical progression of what I'm about to make in my head,
| 'playing', before I even start trying to make it happen on a
| synthesiser or on my modular system. And I don't just mean
| _known_ sounds like violin, piano, etc. I'm doing sound design
| as well as composition in my mind (I can hear it) before I
| start doing it for real.
|
| I can easily believe that Beethoven was capable of
| "hallucinating" the music that he was composing in the same
| way.
|
| Interestingly, I don't really get this when reading sheet
| music, only when I'm creating. Presumably, it's a different
| pathway in the brain.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| Many years ago a friend was looking at a new recipe to cook,
| and she asked me, "Can you taste a recipe?"
|
| My first thought was "Huh? What?" My second thought was "Yes, I
| _can_ taste a recipe. " So I read it, imagined cooking it, and
| tasted it in my mind.
|
| It tasted good, and of course I had a couple of minor
| suggestions. Maybe one was more garlic, but I always want more
| garlic.
|
| She agreed with my ideas and had a couple of improvements of
| her own. When she made the dish, it was very very good, and
| tasted even better in real life than the original recipe tasted
| in our minds.
| telesilla wrote:
| A trained or otherwise skilled composer can hear music in their
| mind by reading the score (and while he wrote it). For sure,
| Beethoven knew how powerful his music was. He also intimately
| knew theory and how music 'worked' and aside from inventing a
| great number of things in music, he applied theory expertly.
| Modern day composers in the conservatory track are expected to
| have the same set of skills. A trained conductor can do the
| same.
| retrac wrote:
| For some skilled musicians (of which I am not) reading sheet
| music seems to be just that; they look at it, and it pops into
| their head effortlessly. It's not exactly effortlessly for me,
| but I have experienced it enough to believe a genius could
| probably manifest a whole orchestra.
|
| I am probably going deaf, and this sort of weighs on me. I
| already have lost much of the high frequencies, and music has a
| sort of brilliance in my head, that it doesn't in the ear
| anymore. But I'll probably hear music in my head, long after I
| can't hear anything. Well, maybe not anything. The frequencies
| below about 200 Hz are felt in the bones and tendons. I am
| pretty sure people who can interpret those frequencies as
| musical notes, continue to do so even if they lose all cortical
| hearing. (Beethoven was particularly fond of bass notes after
| being deafened, maybe for this reason.) It was quite
| interesting the first time I 'heard' a musical scale through my
| hands. Pale imitation, barely an octave of range down there,
| but sound and its perception are surprisingly malleable.
| w-m wrote:
| I'm quite confused. I learned 20+ years ago that lead poisining
| from the wine was the cause, or at least the suspected cause of
| Beethovens deafness. It's great that they found lead in his hair
| (again?), but thoroughly weird that they don't mention that it
| was the go-to theory already.
|
| On a large tangent, I tried asking GPT-4o to check the article
| whether it mentions that previously that theory already existed
| (could have overlooked it). GPT-4o confidently made up a complete
| quote from the article, then doubled down after I said I couldn't
| find the quote, and finally reversed its opinion 180 degrees.
| It's of course much too early to tell, but my feeling from a
| handful queries has been that GPT-4o hallucinates quite a bit
| more than GPT-4.
| deepakg wrote:
| Indeed! There was even a book on the topic I read years ago.
| Lead poisoning seemed quite conclusive even back then.
| https://www.amazon.com/Beethovens-Hair-Extraordinary-Histori...
| jorgesborges wrote:
| Beethoven wrote a letter to his brothers that he never sent but
| it's often referred to as a suicide note. It's interesting --
| apparently he hid his bad hearing for a long time and considered
| it a humiliation. From the letter it also sounds like he was a
| real dick to people around him as a result, but they weren't
| aware. So it serves as a sort of confession, apology and goodbye.
|
| You can read it here it's pretty short.
|
| https://nac-cna.ca/en/stories/story/beethovens-complete-heil...
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