DNA analysis — just as Beethoven requested

Following the composer's death a document addressed to his brothers was discovered among his possessions. In it, Beethoven asks that the cause of his death be determined and the results made public

The original locks of Ludwig van Beethoven were used by an international team of researchers led by Cambridge University to sequence the genome of the world famous composer — to look for clues about his many health problems

Of old the world on dreaming fed, Grey truth is now his painted toy — W B Yeats

Ludwig van Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ symphony, quotes the songs of the nightingale quail and cuckoo. Its 2nd movement celebrates the soothing ambience of a murmuring brook, Nature at her most restful, while the 4th depicts the other extreme, a violent thunderstorm. ‘No one can love the countryside more than I do’, the composer declared, ‘for the woods the trees and the rocks give a man the inspiration he needs’. The divine music of this extraordinary genius, who led the transition from Classicism to Romanticism, is an evocation of Nature so profound that Beethoven is one of the great naturalists.