the music is calling me home

22 || choir director || classical music, music history, and whatever else i feel like || sideblog to @/smythecriminal

[nemfrog]

Passionate pianist. Bizarre. 1922.

Internet Archive

[bogleech]

Hey if a guy's leitmotif starts building up again but this time it's got like a church choir chanting in Latin it's because he's decided to cool it and be friends right

[politishaun-deactivated20230409]

Beethoven’s DNA decoded from locks of hair saved by his fans

Scientists searching for genetic clues to the German composer's medical ailments found a few surprises in DNA collected from treasured keepsakes

In 1802, German composer Ludwig van Beethoven wrote a heart-wrenching letter to his brothers, describing the deafness that forced him to “live like an exile” and yearn for death. Beethoven kept going for another 25 years, propelled by his music, but he begged them to have his hearing loss studied and publicized, so that “so far as possible, the world may be reconciled to me after my death.”

Two centuries later, a team of international researchers has answered that plea by sequencing Beethoven’s DNA, preserved in locks of his hair that collaborators and fans collected as treasured keepsakes.

The central ailment of Beethoven’s life was his hearing loss, which began in his mid-20s. He also suffered from debilitating gastrointestinal symptoms and attacks of jaundice. An autopsy revealed that he had cirrhosis of the liver, pancreatitis and a swollen spleen. Medical biographers have debated what killed him at the age of 56 and whether his liver disease was the result of excessive drinking or some other cause.

The scientists studying his DNA did not discover a clear explanation for Beethoven’s deafness. But they identified genetic risk factors for liver disease, and they found signs he had a hepatitis B infection that could have contributed to his cirrhosis. They also found evidence that one of Beethoven’s relatively recent ancestors had a child with someone other than their spouse.

The study, published Wednesday in the journal Current Biology, illustrates the power of DNA to explore fundamental questions about life in the distant past. But most diseases are not purely genetic, so the data is limited in what it can reveal.

“I love this paper. Zeroing in on one extraordinarily famous individual — it feels a little bit like time travel,” said Robert C. Green, a medical geneticist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston who was not involved in the research. “It isn’t so much the specific questions they answered as the fact that they ruled a few things out, searched for others, and made some truly original findings.”

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Bach is an astronomer, discovering the most marvellous stars. Beethoven challenges the universe. I only try to express the soul and the heart of man.

- Frédéric Chopin

[anonymousdandelion]

Musicians: Which ensemble(s) have you been in?

Choir

Orchestra

Wind band (marching or concert band)

Choir and orchestra!

Choir and band!

Orchestra and band!

All of the above!!!

None of the above, but another music ensemble (string quartet, jazz, rock, etc.)

None of the above — I'm a solo musician

I'm in the audience; show me the results!

Voting ended onMar 7, 2023

Note: Once a musician, always a musician. If you haven't touched your viola since seventh grade, I don't care, you're still an orchestra kid. And if you joined a choir for the first time after retirement? Guess what, you're a singer!

Audience members, we love you too. <3

[i-was-today-years-old-when]

i learned that Wolfgang Mozart had a sister, Maria Anna, who was also an extremely talented child prodigy in music. Sadly, she was prevented from performing as an adult. Many of her compositions have been lost, including one Wolfgang wrote that he was in ‘awe’ of, contributing to her obscurity (x)

[stegal]

[faszaakisshobbi-deactivated2025]

sometimes Baby Girl is a 30-some year old male guest conductor of a symphony whom you only talked to for about 5 minutes and will never see again and i think that’s okay

[detroitlib]

Portrait of pianist Josephine Love. Stamped on back: "When publishing this photograph please give credit to James L. Allen." Handwritten on back: "Josephine Harreld Love."

E. Azalia Hackley Collection of African Americans in the Performing Arts, Detroit Public Library

[hobnob-in-my-pocket]

Tchaikovsky's The Nutpacker suite

[life-spire]

@ Kevin Wang

See more like this.

[thepersonalwords]

“Music is like a dream. One that I cannot hear.”

— Ludwig Van Beethoven

[malachia-il-bibliotecario]

airbrushed.

[lanativite]

Million Dollar Hands

Sergei Rachmaninoff hated getting photographed without his consent, it annoyed him greatly, including for this shot. However, when he saw the title of this one in the newspaper, he was amused.

[veiledd]

Everything feels so right when I’m sitting in front of the piano. The layout of the keys. The music. The way my hands move, already knowing where they’ll move next. It’s just right.

[yimra-deactivated20250209]

Okay this kinda fucks

[copperbadge]

This entirely fucks and also Banjo there has some impressive breath control, given he had to basically speed up and string together a lot of what in the original was spaced out to give the lead singer time to, you know, inhale. 

[that-catholic-shinobi]

This fucks

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

look verdi had his music featured on two episodes of classic 2000s children’s tv show little einsteins and wagner had his music featured on exactly zero episodes of the same show

…just sayin’.