Of Course Jeffrey Epstein Was a Beethoven Fan
The complicitous silence of cultural capital
On November 6, 2016, banker and author Robert Lawrence Kuhn received a birthday email from financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Kuhn was surprised — Epstein had beat even Kuhn’s own family in wishing him many happy returns of the day.
“I cant [sic] avoid remembering numbers,” Epstein explained.
“You’ve got a jumbo-sized right superior parietal lobe,” Kuhn replied, linking to a Scientific American article. And then, somehow, things got weirder.
“for me it is tied to music,” Epstein responded in his lazily-punctuated and typo-ridden style. “beethovens fifth, is 555-3. though unbeknownst to most people the first note (you can verify, [by] looking at the score), is a rest note (silent) so 0-555-3.”1
Kuhn wrote back: “Didn’t know. Meaning of the rest note? Mahler’s 5th opens with the same rhythmic motif (but 4th note is the same as the first three, not lower as in Beethoven’s) - Mahler’s 5th is my favorite symphony.”
Epstein …
