Research reveals Beethoven didn’t have musical talent in his DNA

By Jim Leffman via SWNS

Famous composer Ludwig van Beethoven didn't have any inherited musical talent, a new study of his DNA reveals.

Researchers say his genes reveal a low predisposition for beat synchronization or musicality.

And they say the finding proves that we can't rely purely on genes to determine what talent we have in life.

The team from Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee produced the study in the journal Current Biology along with colleagues from the Max Planck Institutes for Empirical Aesthetics in Germany and Holland.

They analyzed Beethoven's DNA from a hair sample that was extracted for a different study last year.

They set out to investigate his genetic musical predisposition, an ability closely related to musicality, comparing his DNA to nearly 14,500 other people in databanks.

Doctoral candidate Tara Henechowicz, a visiting graduate student at Vanderbilt, said: "For Beethoven, we used his recently sequenced DNA to calculate a polygenic score as an indicator for his genetic predisposition for beat synchronization.

"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.

"Beethoven, one of the most celebrated musicians in history, scored unremarkably, ranking between the 9th and 11th percentile based on modern samples."

The study authors said it would be wrong to conclude that he had no musical talent but it highlights the problems making predictions based purely on old DNA.

Henechowicz added: “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.

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

Prior studies have found an average heritability, which is the proportion of individual differences explained by all genetic factors, of 42 percent for musicality.

Co-author Dr. Reyna Gordon said: "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."