Rating is available when the video has been rented. 
 
 This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. ||||| Watch Queue Queue 
 
 Watch Queue Queue Remove all 
 
 Disconnect ||||| Crawl of outlinks from wikipedia.org started March, 2016. These files are currently not publicly accessible. Properties of this collection. It has been several years since the last time we did this. For this collection, several things were done: 1. Turned off duplicate detection. This collection will be complete, as there is a good chance we will share the data, and sharing data with pointers to random other collections, is a complex problem. 2. For the first time, did all the different wikis. The original runs were just against the enwiki. This one, the seed list was built from all 865 collections. ||||| Watch Queue Queue 
 
 Watch Queue Queue Remove all 
 
 Disconnect ||||| Whether or not music stirs inside, each of us bears a living metronome at our core. It may tick at 40 or 100 beats per minute, in three-quarter time or in six-eight, erratically or like a Swiss clock. The human heart quietly marks the rhythm of our lives. 
 
 A new study focusing on the music of Ludwig van Beethoven treats shifting musical rhythms as a sort of musical electrocardiogram. In Beethoven's dotted rhythms, tempo shifts, sudden pauses and composition notes, a trio of researchers suggest that they have gleaned the distant echo of the German composer's heart. 
 
 
 
 ------------ 
 
 FOR THE RECORD 
 
 An earlier version of this post said the study focused in part on Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 12 in A flat major. The study focused on, among other pieces, Piano Sonata No. 31 in A flat major (Opus 110). 
 
 ------------ 
 
 Where most hear greatness, they hear cardiac arrhythmia. 
 
 Although definitive diagnoses died with him, historians have speculated that Beethoven, who died, deaf, at 56, suffered from medical conditions including alcohol-induced cirrhosis, lead poisoning and syphilis. 
 
 
 
 Beethoven's heart was found structurally sound upon autopsy in 1827. But in an article published recently in the journal Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, the authors — a cardiologist, an internal medicine specialist and a musicologist — cite the rhythmic turnabouts in three of the master's compositions to diagnose an irregular heartbeat. 
 
 What is clear from his personal letters and notes is that Beethoven began to lose his hearing around 1800, at the age of 30. He composed the bulk of his music even as the sounds of the world around him dimmed — and that, say the authors of the new study, may have made him exquisitely attuned to his own heartbeat. Some of his most haunting and ambitious works — the late string quartets, the Mass in D minor (Missa solemnis), the Ninth Symphony in D minor — were composed after he became completely deaf in 1819. 
 
 
 
 “This is entirely speculative,” said Dr. Zachary D. Goldberger of the University of Washington, the cardiologist on the team. “At least it gives us a new dimension by which to listen to his music.” 
 
 Goldberger said he and his coauthors focused on the rhythmic shifts and punctuations of three Beethoven compositions: the Piano Sonata in E flat major (Opus 81a, called “Les Adieux”), the String Quartet No. 13 in B flat major (Opus 130) and the Piano Sonata No. 31 in A flat major (Opus 110). These works have been characterized by musicologists as particularly abrupt, dramatic or unusual in music of Beethoven's time. 
 
 
 
 The authors note the “distinctive ‘galloping' rhythm” of the Sonata in E flat major's adagio section and hear slow, irregular heartbeats, followed by “racing irregular heartbeats,” in the allegro section that follows. 
 
 In the String Quartet No. 13, the authors hear, in a seven-measure section in the middle of the fifth movement (the “Cavatina”), “a short paroxysm of an atrial tachyarrhythmia.” They cite Beethoven's notation: that the passage should be played “beklemmt,” or “heavy of heart.” And they note the 2011 observation by pianist Jonathan Biss that the section always evoked a sensation of shortness of breath. 
 
 
 
 In the third movement of the Piano Sonata No. 31 in A flat major, the authors point to an “arioso dolente“ (or lamenting song) preceding one of two fugues. The left hand plays a repetitive run of notes that “bears some resemblance to rapid tachyarrhythmia,” they write. The right hand, simultaneously, plays an irregularly punctuated melody that “bears some resemblance to dyspnea,” or shortness of breath, “which would not be an unusual sensation for someone experiencing a tachyarrhythmia.” 
 
 “When your heart beats irregularly from heart disease, it does so in some predictable patterns,” said Dr. Joel D. Howell of the University of Michigan, the team's internist (who also has a PhD in the history and sociology of science). “We think we hear some of those same patterns in his music.” 
 
 Beethoven's litany of physical woes clearly predisposed him to atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter or even multifocal atrial tachycardia, Goldberger, Howell and University of Michigan musicologist Steven M. Whiting wrote in the paper. But they acknowledged that their observations are far from proof of those conditions: “Similar rhythmic intricacies” are found in other works by many composers, and cardiac arrhythmia can hardly be ascribed to all who use irregular syncopation. 
 
 “However, in highly charged passages of certain pieces, the possibility of cardiac arrhythmia can lend a quite physical aspect to one's interpretation of the music in question,” they wrote. “These passages can seem, in an unexpectedly literal sense, to be heartfelt.” 
 
 Follow me on Twitter @LATMelissaHealy and "like" Los Angeles Times Science & Health on Facebook. ||||| Researchers investigating patterns in Beethoven's music believe the great composer may have suffered from irregular heartbeat, or arrhythmia, because they can hear what they describe as musical arrhythmias in some of his compositions. 
 
 
 
 Researchers say they can hear patterns of irregular heartbeat in Beethoven's music. Researchers say they can hear patterns of irregular heartbeat in Beethoven's music. 
 
 This surprising suggestion comes from a team that includes a medical historian, a cardiologist and a musicologist from the University of Michigan (U-M) at Ann Arbor and the University of Washington (UW) School of Medicine in Seattle. 
 
 They describe how they arrived at the idea in a paper published in the journal Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. 
 
 Beethoven lived and composed his great masterpieces 200 years ago, and there is little reliable evidence of his health and afflictions. His most often described ailment was his deafness, which the authors suggest could have heightened his awareness of his heartbeat, causing the great man to make music by literally following his heart. 
 
 There are also theories that Beethoven suffered from many other health problems, including liver disease, alcohol abuse, kidney disease, inflammatory bowel disease and abnormal bone destruction, or Paget's disease. 
 
 First author Zachary D. Goldberger, assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology at UW School of Medicine, says: 
 
 "We can't prove or disprove that Beethoven had many of the diseases he's been supposedly afflicted with because almost all of today's diagnostic medical tests didn't exist in the 18th century, and we are interpreting centuries-old medical descriptions into the context of what we know now." 
 
 'Musical electrocardiograms' reveal arrhythmia patterns in Beethoven's pieces 
 
 Arrhythmia is a condition where there is a change from the normal sequence of electrical impulses in the heart. As a result, the heart may beat irregularly (fibrillation), too fast (tachycardia), too slowly (bradycardia) or too early (premature contraction). 
 
 For the study, the team examined the rhythm of several of Beethoven's compositions and found patterns that Prof. Goldberger says match what they describe as "musical electrocardiograms," like the readout of modern heart rhythm testing equipment. 
 
 Sudden, unexpected changes in pace and keys appear to match the asymmetrical patterns of irregular heartbeat - too fast, too slow or irregular, say the researchers. 
 
 For example, one of the pieces they studied is the "Cavatina" final movement of Beethoven's String Quartet in B-flat Major, Opus 130. Beethoven said this passage made him weep. 
 
 In the middle of the Cavatina, the key changes abruptly to C-flat major. Together with the unbalanced rhythm, this sudden change evokes a dark emotion and disorientation that some have described as akin to "shortness of breath." 
 
 "The arrhythmic quality of this section is unquestionable," note the authors. 
 
 Did 'heavy of heart' mean Beethoven felt pressure on his heart? 
 
 In his directions for playing the piece, Beethoven uses the German word "beklemmt" to indicate "heavy of heart." The authors suggest that while "heavy of heart" could be taken to mean sadness, in a more literal sense it could mean a feeling of pressure, which is associated with heart disease. 
 
 The team also spotted arrhythmic patterns in some of Beethoven's other pieces. They found them in the Piano Sonata in A-flat major, Opus 110, and the opening of the "Les Adieux" Sonata opus 81a in E-flat major, which Beethoven wrote during Napoleon's attack on Vienna in 1809. 
 
 Prof. Goldberger comments: 
 
 "While these musical arrhythmias may simply manifest Beethoven's genius, there is a possibility that in certain pieces his beating heart could literally be at the heart of some of the greatest masterpieces of all time." 
 
 In August 2014, Medical News Today reported how increasing the amount or intensity of exercise can decrease risks of developing arrhythmia. This was the conclusion of a Stanford-led study of older women that found, compared with the least active, the most physically active women had a 10% lower risk of developing atrial fibrillation - a heart condition that causes arrhythmia. And this was true even if the women were obese.
– As Beethoven went deaf, he may have started listening to his heart. In a new study published in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, a cardiologist, an internal medical specialist, and a musicologist point out that three of the German composer's works exhibit "rhythmic shifts and punctuations" that weren't typical of music during his time but that closely resemble various forms of heart arrhythmia. Although the Los Angeles Times notes that Beethoven's heart was found "structurally sound" in an autopsy, no one knows for sure what medical conditions he suffered from. The study analyzed Beethoven's Piano Sonata in E flat major, the String Quartet No. 13 in B flat major, and the Piano Sonata No. 12 in A flat major. In the first sonata, researchers noticed a "distinctive 'galloping' rhythm" in one section, and another section evoking irregular heartbeats both slow and fast; in the string quartet, the "shortness of breath" evoked is like a "short paroxysm of an atrial tachyarrhythmia"; and in the second sonata, a "repetitive run of notes … 'bears some resemblance to rapid tachyarrhythmia.'" In what co-author Zachary Goldberger acknowledges is "entirely speculative," they theorize as Beethoven went deaf, he may have become more "attuned" to his heartbeat, though they admit "similar rhythmic intricacies" are present in other musicians' compositions. "While these musical arrhythmias may simply manifest Beethoven's genius, there is a possibility that in certain pieces his beating heart could literally be at the heart of some of the greatest masterpieces of all time," Goldberger says, per Medical News Today. (A music teacher recreated a Beethoven piece lost for 200 years.)