Birmingham-Southern College alum Dr. William Meredith has helped with groundbreaking DNA research about legendary composer Ludwig van Beethoven. The research has garnered national and international media attention since a study detailing the findings was published in March in the journal Current Biology.

Beethoven’s maladies – which included gastrointestinal issues, severe liver disease, and most famously, hearing loss – have intrigued researchers and historians as much as his music. Before he died in 1827 at the age of 56, Beethoven declared that he wanted his ailments to be studied. Meredith has been part of a group researchers that have taken steps to honor that request by analyzing Beethoven’s DNA from preserved locks of his hair and sequencing the composer’s genome for the first time. 

“This is the most spectacular thing that I’ve been involved in,” Meredith says. “It was more than 30 people working together; it wasn’t just me. I was the one that helped get the eight samples together that we tested. But you needed everybody working together. And I think that’s a great model for when you’re doing something that’s complex is that you involve the humanities and the sciences working together to accomplish your goal.” 

Meredith has dedicated his life’s work to studying the music and the life of Beethoven, serving as the founding director of The Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San José State University from 1985 through 2016.  

“Imagine if you write your dissertation on Beethoven, and Beethoven is the composer that you love, and then you get to be the director of the only Beethoven center in the country,” Meredith says. “That’s a fantastic job, right?!” 

Besides serving as director of the Center, Meredith also taught courses each semester in the School of Music and Dance for both undergraduate and masters students. Additionally, he taught as adjunct faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, for a few years.

Even in retirement, Meredith continues to do research with other Beethoven scholars and is working on two books.  

“I just always thought music was the best.” 

Meredith can’t remember a time in his life when he didn’t love music.  

“My parents were churchgoers — good Methodists,” he says. “We started going to church when we were little kids and I was in the choir. Then when I went to elementary school in New Jersey, they had a really good band program. So, I started playing trumpet and [other] instruments in the band. I just always loved music. I loved singing and I liked playing instruments, and I just thought music was the best.” 

Meredith was born in South Carolina but grew up in New Jersey. During his junior year of high school his family relocated to Vestavia Hills, Alabama. After high school, Meredith attended BSC to study music with a concentration in choral conducting.  

“When we were freshmen and sophomores, one of the things that the music majors got to do was go and be ushers at the [Alabama] Symphony Orchestra concerts,” Meredith says. “This was an opportunity for us to hear the greatest performers come to Birmingham.” 

Meredith says his time at BSC expanded his artistic horizons.  

“We took a January interim to Europe where we saw operas in Europe for three weeks, which was another great experience,” Meredith recalls. “Things like that just showed us what the world was outside of Birmingham. We heard probably 13 or 14 operas in three weeks. It was a really great experience of just showing us what the world of the arts was like.” 

Meredith still remembers his favorite professor – William Baxter, who taught him music theory. In fact, Meredith credits Baxter with teaching him how to teach.  

“There was no student that he would not teach,” Meredith says of Baxter. “He was so compassionate that there wasn’t a stupid question. He never made fun of a student. He always just wanted to teach. And that became my model for how I wanted to teach as well. If someone asked you a question, answer it, be respectful, share your enthusiasm for it.” 

Meredith says that another influential professor at Birmingham-Southern was Tom Gibbs, who taught music history.  

“He got me excited about music history,” Meredith says, “and that’s how I ended up writing the paper that I used for my application to Chapel Hill.” 

Meredith got a masters of music history and did his doctoral work at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill before starting his work at the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San José State University. 

From despair to joy and hope 

Along with the medical and scientific benefits of genome research, Meredith believes the study of Beethoven’s ailments are of interest to people across disciplines because his music transcends culture and resonates with so many.  

“That music – people love it all over the world,” Meredith says, “And they know his biography is tied into his medical history.” 

Because of his medical ailments, especially his hearing loss, Beethoven suffered from deep depression. Yet, in his music – particularly the Ninth Symphony – Beethoven offers a message of moving from despair to hope and joy. 

His solution to finding joy is that you have to do it through recognizing that we’re all one people,” Meredith says.  “And that message has become really important to people all over the world.”