Beethoven had great genes, but not for beat synchronization

No one will deny that Ludwig van Beethoven was one of the most celebrated musicians in human history despite slowly developing deafness from his 20s—apparently due to lead poisoning. He was a genius, but researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville and Germany’s Max Planck Institutes for Empirical Aesthetics have found from samples of his hair that he had a rather low genetic predisposition for beat synchronization.  

When the societal impact of a renowned figure relates to their exceptional talent or expertise in a certain domain, like music, a commonly asked question is: to what extent does genetics influence their exceptional performance? This old line of inquiry, dating back to the earliest days of human genetics, may now appear more addressable due to modern molecular methods. But how reliable are the resulting answers given our current state of knowledge?

The international team of researchers analyzed Beethoven's DNA to investigate his genetic musical predisposition – an ability closely related to musicality – by using sequences from a 2023 study in which the composer’s genetic material was extracted from strands of his hair.

They published their findings in the journal Current Biology titled “Notes from Beethoven’s Genome.” 

How findings were discovered

“For Beethoven, we used his recently sequenced DNA to calculate a polygenic score as an indicator for his genetic predisposition for beat synchronization,” said Tara Henechowicz, a doctoral student from the University of Toronto who is doing research at Vanderbilt’s human genetics and the paper's second author.

“Interestingly, Beethoven, one of the most celebrated musicians in history, had an unremarkable polygenic score for general musicality compared to population samples from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and Vanderbilt’s BioVU Repository,” she said. 

The authors noted that it would be wrong to conclude from Beethoven’s low polygenic score that his musical abilities were unexceptional. “Our aim was to use this as an example of the challenges of making genetic predictions for an individual who lived over 200 years ago,” Henechowicz explained.

 “The mismatch between the DNA-based prediction and Beethoven’s musical genius provides a valuable teaching moment because it shows that DNA tests can’t give us a definitive answer about whether a given child will end up being musically gifted.”

Henechowicz said the study does not discount that DNA contributes to people’s musical skills, noting that prior studies have found an average heritability, which is the proportion of individual differences explained by all genetic factors, of 42% for musicality.

“In the current era of ‘big data’ such as Vanderbilt’s BioVU repository, we have had the opportunity to look in fine detail at large groups of people to uncover the genetic underpinnings of traits such as rhythm ability or being musically active. The current study and other recent work also suggest that environment plays a key role in musical ability and engagement as well,” said co-author and otolaryngology Prof. Reyna Gordon, and graduate co-advisor to Henechowicz. 

 “Polygenic scores are intended to work well for comparisons of large groups of people to tell us how genetic risk for one trait relates to the genetics involved in other traits,” Henechowicz said.