Word: beethoven
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Ludwig van Beethoven probably thought he was taking his secrets to the grave when he died in 1827. He thought wrong. While the composer was decorously interred in his beloved Vienna, most of his hair wasn't; souvenir-hunting fans snipped off so much of his silver mane before burial that he went to his tomb almost bald...
...Beethoven's turn, thanks to two Arizona music lovers. They bought a lock of hair at an auction in 1994, and have offered it for scientific analysis. So far, researchers have learned that the composer didn't have lice and didn't take morphine for his kidney stones or his cirrhosis of the liver. They're still looking for traces of mercury and lead, either of which could have caused his famous deafness; the former would be an especially juicy find, since mercury in those days was used to treat syphilis, which some scholars think Beethoven may have had. They...
...give 'em what they want to see!'...At Warners, Brother Jack [rushed] production on a [3-D] remake of that ancient horror about murder in a wax museum [with] the only director on the lot who cannot properly perceive depth: one-eyed Andre de Toth. [Said De Toth]: 'Beethoven couldn't hear music either, could he?'" --June...
...such renowned conductors as Christoph Eschenbach, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Marek Janowski, Tilson Thomas was the favorite from the outset. He first guest-conducted the orchestra back in 1974, and over the years had led it more than 100 times. His easy and knowing way with music as disparate as Beethoven and Mahler symphonies, Ravel and Stravinsky ballets, and American music from Charles Ives to Steve Reich also pleased the search committee, as did the fact that Tilson Thomas is an American...
Whoever programmed the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra's concert last Friday night clearly wasn't looking for crowd-pleasers; there wasn't a Beethoven symphony or Mozart concerto to be found in Sanders Theater. Instead, the orchestra gamely offered up a trancelike Wagner overture, a defiantly modernist Stravinsky ballet and--strangest of all--a bassoon concerto. While Wagner and Stravinsky are hardly obscure, it's not every day that you get to hear the bassoon--an instrument that ranks with the tuba and bass in ungainliness--dominate the stage...