Science, symphonies mix with Alsop's 'CSI'

By Tim Smith | Sun music critic

February 27, 2008

Marin Alsop and BSO conduct CSI on Beethoven

BSO Music Director Marin Alsop (center) will explore Beethoven with commentary from Dr. Philip A. Mackowiak (left) and Dr. Charles J. Limb. (Sun photo by Lloyd Fox / February 25, 2008)

Subject: Long-haired male.

Age: 57

Place of death: Subject's messy apartment; Vienna, Austria.

Time of death: Late afternoon, March 26, during snow/thunderstorm; subject observed raising clenched fist of right hand before expiring.

Cause of death: Multiple factors contributed; suggest further investigation.

That investigation will be carried out in CSI: Beethoven, a Baltimore Symphony Orchestra presentation tonight and tomorrow that promises an unusual mix of forensics and music.

It's the brainchild of BSO music director Marin Alsop, who describes the venture as "pop culture meets a slice of history." A longtime fan of CSI programs on TV, the conductor wanted to come up with a fresh way to focus on the composer who is at the heart of her inaugural BSO season -- all nine Beethoven symphonies will have been performed by the time the season ends in June.

"For me, the main motivation is to get beyond the image of Beethoven as this disembodied bust," Alsop says, "to give people insight into this man who lives upstairs or next door, who writes this incredible music, but is such a tortured soul."

CSI: Beethoven, which will include chronological excerpts from the symphonies and one of the composer's late string quartets, takes the kind of musical-demystification approach that is something of an Alsop trademark.

"I like mysteries and puzzles and forensic shows," she says, including Fox's House. "That's one of those tacky, very predictable series, but I like the character of Dr. Gregory House, who's able to diagnose rare conditions. The Beethoven program is really a combination of CSI and House. And there will be a cliffhanger on Wednesday so people will want to come back Thursday."

The project will explore diagnoses of the composer's hearing loss and a long list of physical ailments that made his last years especially difficult, from respiratory trouble to skin disorders.

Joining Alsop at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall for the examination will be two medical experts -- Dr. Philip A. Mackowiak, professor and vice chairman of the department of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and Dr. Charles J. Limb, assistant professor of otolaryngology at the Johns Hopkins University.

"Beethoven is probably the most famous deaf person the world has ever known," Limb says. "Beethoven's hearing loss is the closest thing that classical music has to an urban legend. There is a tendency to romanticize it, but he hated it."

Expect the participants in the BSO program, including William Meredith, director of the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University in California, to avoid the romanticism and concentrate on the realities.

The experts won't be turning this into a dry panel discussion, though. Instead, their observations and analyses will be woven around the orchestral performances, complemented by projected slides of historic images and contributions from a local actor, Tony Tsendeas, portraying Beethoven. In addition to handling the conducting duties, Alsop will have the role of lead investigator, asking the necessary probing questions.

The show was scripted and produced by Seattle-based writer Denise "Didi" Balle, who has attempted to provide a detailed look into the composer's physical state. "It's amazing how many illnesses he had," Balle says. "I don't think most people realize that."

In his final years, Beethoven experienced, among several other things, severe abdominal swelling.

"He had fluid sitting inside the abdominal cavity," Limb says, "and his doctors drew the fluid out four times. They drained several quarts. He also had cirrhosis of the liver. It is hard to know if he had a viral hepatitis, or if the cirrhosis came from moderate alcohol use. His liver was not metabolizing toxins as it should have."

All of this leads to the issue of lead poisoning.

As Russell Martin's 2000 book Beethoven's Hair points out, an analysis in the late 1990s of a hair sample taken from the composer the day he died in 1827 "strongly suggested" that Beethoven "had been massively toxic with lead at the time of his death and may have been for dozens of years before." (A lock of the composer's hair, along with manuscripts, letters and other artifacts, will be on display in the Meyerhoff lobby for the CSI: Beethoven programs.)