New research finds that Ludwig Van Beethoven's greatest musical works could be attributed to a heartbeat disorder.

Beethoven's music is known for its compelling rhythms, and a team of researchers from the University of Michigan and the University of Washington suggest some of these rhythms came directly from Beethoven's own heart.

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The deaf composer has been linked to many health sufferings. Historians have guessed the composer may have had an arrhythmia or an irregular heartbeat. Sudden, unexpected beat and key changes in some of Beethoven's music appear to match this variation in heart rhythm, researchers said.

The research suggests the connection between our minds and bodies frequently influences us, specifically in the arts.

A team that included a musicologist, a cardiologist and a medical historian spent time listening to several of Beethoven's compositions and studying each rhythm. They compared those rhythms to what someone with cardiac arrhythmia experiences when the heart beats too fast, too slow or irregularly.

One piece of music researchers studied was the final movement "Cavatina" in the composer's String Quartet in B-flat Major, Opus 130. This piece is often referenced as full of dark emotion, and music that causes disorientation and even "shortness of breath," something associated with cardiac arrhythmia.

"When your heart beats irregularly from heart disease, it does so in some predictable patterns. We think we hear some of those same patterns in his music," explained essay co-author Dr. Joel Howell, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School.

The study authors also said Beethoven's hearing loss might have sharpened his other senses and made him even more aware of his heartbeat.

The new research was published in the journal Perspectives in Biology and Medicine.

TagsBeethoven, irregular heartbeat, arrhythmia, cardiac arrhythmia, classical music, Cavatina, Opus 130