Beethoven Died During a Thunderstorm
The dying man abruptly lifted his head from Hüttenbrenner's arm and magnificently extended his own right arm, delivering instructions to an army like a general, at this awful peal of thunder. According to Thayer's account of Beethoven's demise, this only lasted for a split second before the arm sank back, he slumped back, and Beethoven passed away.
Throughout his latter years, including his so-called "Late phase" when some of his most admired works were composed, Beethoven's health deteriorated. The replacement final movement of the String Quartet No. 13 (Op. 130), which was written to take the place of the challenging Große Fuge and later released separately as Opus 133, was the last piece he was able to complete. Soon after, in late 1826, he experienced spells of vomiting and diarrhea that came dangerously close to taking his life.
His friends gathered to support him and offer their last respects when it became clear that Beethoven would not survive. Beethoven had four minor procedures to treat his ascites (abdominal swelling), the first of which led to an infection while the others did not. After receiving his final rites on March 24, he lost consciousness on March 26 and passed away that night in the early hours. Although there may have been other people in the home, such as Beethoven's brother Johann, Karl Holz, and a few acquaintances, Hüttenbrenner claims in his narrative from 1860 that only he and Beethoven's sister-in-law were in the room when the composer passed away. Alexander Wheelock Thayer, a biographer of Beethoven, wrote Hüttenbrenner's story of Beethoven's passing down in his notebook. Some versions of Hüttenbrenner's eyewitness account suggest that Beethoven "shook his fist towards the skies" just before passing away. Since it is hard to confirm any assumptions about the dying man's mental condition, current Beethoven scholars frequently brush over or disregard them as unimportant.
