(Inside Science) — The second movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony begins with a minor-key rhythm in the cellos. It sounds like a background rhythm, which it becomes when the violins introduce a second, soaring and entirely different melody. One half the Baltimore Symphony is on stage playing one thing; the other half, another. Next to me, my wife, Carol, leans forward and smiles.
Beethoven must have been in a good mood when wrote this, perhaps a bit nostalgic, whimsical. Carol appears to appreciate what he was doing.
That surprises me. Carol understands very little these days. Sixty-nine years old, she is six years into early onset Alzheimer’s disease, halfway through what former President Ronald Reagan, who also had Alzheimer’s, called “the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life.”
But in this moment, Carol reacts to music fully and appropriately. People with Alzheimer’s retain the ability to understand music until the very last moments of life because the part of the brain where music processing resides, scientists have discovered, is the very last to go.
