by Tim Rayborn
Copyright © 2016 by Tim Rayborn
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
Cover design by Rain Saukas
Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-1271-3
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-1272-0
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Introduction: The Grim and the Unusual in the History of Western Music
Part I: The Strange Lives, Stranger Deaths, and Odd Fates of Composers
1. Ancient Greece and Rome
Terpander (seventh century BCE, ca. 675)
Lamprus of Erythrae (early fifth century BCE)
Harmonides (fourth century? BCE)
Nero, Emperor of Rome (37–68 CE)
St. Cecilia (later second century CE)
Boethius (ca. 480–524/25 CE)
2. The Middle Ages
Deor (tenth century, or earlier)
Adémar de Chabannes (998/99–1034)
Taillefer (mid-eleventh century)
William IX (1071–1126)
Peter Abelard (1079–1142)
Marcabru (fl. 1129–1150)
Bertran de Born (1140s–ca. 1215)
Richard I (1157–1199)
The Monk of Montaudon (fl. 1193–1210/11)
Folquet de Marselha (fl. 1179–1195, d. 1231)
Châtelain de Coucy (fl. 1186–1203)
Guilhem de la Tor (fl. 1216–1233)
Goliards (twelfth and thirteenth centuries)
Jehan de l’Escurel (d. 1304?)
Grimace (late fourteenth century)
3. The Renaissance
Antoine Busnois (ca. 1430–1492)
Gilles Joye (1424/25–1483)
Henry VIII, King of England (1491–1547)
David Rizzio (or Riccio) (ca. 1533–1566)
Thomas Morley (1557/58–1602)
John Bull (1562/63–1628)
Carlo Gesualdo (1566–1613)
Tobias Hume (ca. 1569–1645)
Thomas Weelkes (1576–1623)
Alfonso Fontanelli (1557–1622)
Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625)
4. The Baroque Era
Giulio Caccini (1551–1618)
William Lawes (1602–1645)
Alessandro Poglietti (early seventeenth century–1683)
Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–1687)
Alessandro Stradella (1639–1682)
John Abell (1653–after 1716/24)
Marin Marais (1656–1728)
Henry Purcell (1659–1695)
Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741)
Benedetto Marcello (1686–1739) and Rosanna Scalfi Marcello (d. 1742)
Francesco Maria Veracini (1690–1768)
Giuseppe Tartini (1692–1770)
Jean-Marie Leclair (1697–1764)
John Taylor (1703–1772)
Louis-Gabriel Guillemain (1705–1770)
5. The Classical Era
Frantisek Kotzwara (1730/31–1791)
Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809)
Johann Anton Fils (1733–1760)
Johann Schobert (ca. 1735–1767)
Josef Mysliveček (1737–1781)
Jean-Baptiste Krumpholtz (1742–1790)
John Stafford Smith (1750–1836)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)
Antonio Salieri (1750–1825)
Jakub Jan Ryba (1765–1815)
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
6. The Romantic Era
The Syphilis Scourge
Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840)
Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826)
Hector Berlioz (1803–1869)
Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849)
Franz Liszt (1811–1886)
Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813–1888)
Anton Bruckner (1824–1896)
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921)
Modest Mussorgsky (1839–1881)
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893)
Karel Komzák II (1850–1905)
Ernest Chausson (1855–1899)
Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924)
Gustav Mahler (1860–1911)
Claude Debussy (1862–1918)
Enrique Granados (1867–1916)
Alexander Scriabin (1871/72–1915)
7. The Modern Era
Composers in World War I (1914–1918)
Richard Strauss (1864–1949)
Erik Satie (1866–1925)
Louis Vierne (1870–1937)
Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951)
Percy Grainger (1882–1961)
Anton Webern (1883–1945)
Alban Berg (1885–1935)
Wallingford Riegger (1885–1961)
Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953)
Peter Warlock (1894–1930)
Sins and Omissions
Part II: A Dark and Weird Musical Miscellany
1. Odd Musical Origins
Biological origins: singing fish
Biological origins: cavemen choirs
Mythic origins: the Egyptian music goddess with a violent past
Mythic origins: the god who made a lyre from a turtle
2. Magic in Music
The myths of Orpheus
A boil on your nose: the power of the Celtic bards
Fairy music and its dangers
Bacchanalian rites in ancient Greece
Music and magic in the chilly north
Composers and magic
3. Plague and Penitence: the Rather Awful Fourteenth Century
The flagellants and their gruesome spectacles
Kyries: lovely music for awful occasions
The Fawn-Colored Beast: anti-establishment satire
The Fumeurs: avant-garde artists or medieval stoners?
4. Blood and Guts
The malevolent Pied Piper of Hamelin
The historical Dracula
Joan the Mad and singers for her husband’s corpse
La Marseillaise and the French Revolution
Blood-letting and a haircut
5. The Dead Speak
They just decomposed
Schumann’s violin concerto, brought back from the dead
Haunted concert halls and opera houses: where the dead keep giving encores
Music from beyond
6. Nursery Rhymes: the Good, the Bad, and the Downright Awful
Three Blind Mice
Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary
Jack and Jill
London Bridge Is Falling Down
Ring around the Rosy
Georgie Porgie
Sing a Song of Sixpence
7. Musical Curses, Bad Luck, and Superstitions
The curse of “Gloomy Sunday”
Tchaikovsky’s cursed symphony?
The Babe’s piano
The 27 Club
Superstitions about the ninth symphony
The yellow clarinet
Unlucky Friday—or at least a noisy one
Morning singing brings tears
Circus band superstitions
Sexist superstition at the first American musical
Schoenberg and the number thirteen
Speaking of superstitious composers …
8. Some Final Musical Oddities
The mystery of the world’s greatest violins
The ringtone heard round the world
Composers who hated their own works
Mozart’s skull
Beethoven’s skull
Last Words
Suggestions for Further Reading
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Photo Insert
Introduction
The Grim and the Unusual in the History of Western Music
Admit it, we all love a good gruesome story. The lure of the morbid and the grotesque, the forbidden and the terrifying fuels an endless number of horror movies, video games, novels, tabloid news outlets, conspiracy websites, reality TV shows, and boy bands. In this book, you will read about a hidden history, a behind-the-scenes look at some of the most unusual and frequently awful moments in music over the last two thousand years and even earlier.
When you ask people what their favorite subject in school was, History rarely seems to be at the top of the list. This is unfortunate and rather sad, because it’s a wonderful and thrilling topic, one that is increasingly important in our very complex world. Far too many folks seem to associate the whole thing with endless boring names, dates, lists, battles, and goings-on in countries that no longer exist, involving dead people with unpronounceable names.
When you ask people what their favorite genre of music is, so-called classical music is also rarely at the top of the list, at least in the United States. Many in Europe and Asia love it, and to be fair, it has a devoted, if not huge, following in the USA. But many people wrongly associate it with snobbery, pretentiousness, and a general incomprehensibility: long, boring works written by dead composers with even less pronounceable names. It seems that the Euro-American culture that gave birth to this music has somewhat abandoned it for newer and cooler genres. The rise in popularity of music downloading (legal and otherwise) has made the idea of the “classical record album” seem even more obsolete. Then again, vinyl records have made a big comeback recently, and very few people saw that coming.
So in an effort to either completely obliterate the last remaining chances of making either genre interesting, or in the hope that two negatives will add up to a positive, this book combines both subjects to give the reader a sort-of introductory history to classical music, but with a significant, morbid twist. One thing to note: a few stories here go beyond the “classical” label, because they were simply too good and grim to pass up! There is a bit of jazz, some rock and pop, a smattering of folk, and some other music that defies categorization. Seriously, what genre is “fairy music” exactly? Pseudo-Celtic? Mythical crossover? Music of the Rich and “Fey-mous”? (Note: this may not be the last pun that you encounter in this book; there will be no apologies for this.)
No matter, the pages that follow will not bore you with mere dates and lists or expect you to pronounce a barrage of unfamiliar names on the first try—though maybe on the second or third. Instead, you will be treated to all manner of strange and surprising stories: tales of violence, revenge, blood and guts, death, disease, love won and lost, despair, decapitation and the removal of other specific body parts, ghosts, horrific nursery rhymes and fairy tales, magic, murder, war, and worst of all, cell phones.
Part I will introduce you to a good number of composers, from ancient Greece to the twentieth century. You will know some. Others will be new to you. Others you might want to forget. What they have in common is that they all led very odd lives and/or met with particularly unpleasant ends, and their fates were sometimes quite funny. These are the stories you don’t often find in CD notes, or even in music history classes. You have been deprived, and now is the time to fix that!
People often believe that artists of any kind must suffer for their art for it truly to be “great.” The romantic notion is of the painter, the poet, or the composer living in splendid squalor in a Parisian dive. Here he avoids creditors, sends away his pregnant mistress, knocks back hard liquor, and pounds out tortured masterpieces that will only be appreciated after his untimely death from liver disease, a self-inflicted gunshot wound, or a broken heart. Or perhaps it’s the haunted Gothic writer or pianist. He creates after midnight (a dark and stormy one, of course) and lives a reclusive life in a lavish room lit only by a few candles (their light flickering in the empty eye sockets of a skull on the desk). He also knocks back hard liquor and pounds out tortured masterpieces that will only be appreciated after his untimely death from liver disease, a self-inflicted dagger wound, or a broken heart.
A surprising number of composers, if not exactly living the script to a Hammer Horror film, had to deal with some pretty violent, morbid, and completely strange events as a background to their creativity. It wasn’t just their inner worlds that were in turmoil; many of them were also hit with hardships and tragedies from outside, often due to their inability to cope with life and all of its ups and downs. Alcohol, drugs, or retreats into delusions were frequently their only escapes from the stresses that “normal” society imposed on them, but out of these troubles could come great works of music that have endured through the years.
There were others who just seemed to have no luck, drew the short stick, and got dealt a bad hand in life. Some held very odd beliefs or did very strange things. Some engaged in criminal activities and/or behaviors that were frowned upon by either church or state, sometimes both. The ability to put pretty musical notes on paper was no guarantee of being an upstanding citizen, and there were those in our cast of musical stars (or rogues’ gallery) who were reprobates of the very worst sort.
Here is an assortment of grotesque, bloody, tragic, macabre, or just plain odd facts, fancies, truths, and legends about some of the most famous (and most obscure) composers and musicians in Western music history. They appear in roughly chronological order, divided by the eras in which their music is usually classified: ancient, medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and modern—these eras coincide more or less with those also used in art history. Some of these tales are doubtful or even outright fabricated, more so the further back in time that one looks. The facts have never gotten in the way of a good story, then as now. There were no fact-checkers, social networks, blogs, or comment sections to keep them honest. Some stories, however, are very real and well documented. This mixture of fact and fiction should provide you with a good sense of just how strange and often twisted the history of Western music can be. So if you think you’re having a bad day, try reading through a few of these and you might feel better.
In Part II, the search goes further afield and presents all kinds of surprises, a veritable bazaar of the bizarre. From strange truths to hoaxes and urban legends, you will discover a whole world of the unusual and the fascinating, the darkly amusing, and the downright horrible. As with Part I, many of these accounts are true. Some are speculation. Some were long believed to be true until proven otherwise. Some are lies that are so good, they’re irresistible.
We will look at everything from the biological and mythological origins of music to some of the most gruesome examples of stories involving music and musicians. Did you know that Dracula really existed, and may have been even more horrible than his fictional counterpart? You might be surprised to learn that the Pied Piper may have been based on a real account, too. Why would a Renaissance queen insist that her musicians continually
sing for her husband’s corpse? And is there a cursed song that allegedly has driven any number of listeners to suicide? Would you have the courage to listen to it?
We’ll look at why many believe that a composer must stop writing symphonies after the ninth, and various other superstitions associated with the art of music making. Those sweet little nursery rhymes you sang as a child? Some of them may have very gruesome origins, indeed! Is music a form of magic? Can it alter reality or drive ordinary people mad? Many ancient cultures believed so.
And of course, no discussion would be complete without looking at some of the ghostly phenomena associated with music over the centuries, a topic so vast that we can only glance at it here. Regardless of your beliefs on the subject, these accounts will certainly make you wonder, and maybe send a shiver down your spine. Those campfire ghost stories from your childhood have nothing on these tales of musicians and others who wouldn’t stay dead.
Finally, we’ll look at some of the odd after-life experiences of two of our greatest composers, Mozart and Beethoven (hint: these have to do with their skulls), and a few other tales from the musical grab bag.
Weirdness, it seems, is as ordinary a part of human experience as the ordinary itself. Wherever there are people, there will be strange stories about them and their activities. Unsolved mysteries and strange phenomena will always fascinate us. The sheer number of tales herein—and we’ve only scratched the surface—should be enough to give one pause about what exactly the “ordinary” is, anyway.
Some of these stories are funny, while others are poignant and tragic. Some are downright horrifying. There’s certainly no intention to mock the pain and suffering of others, but rather to simply reflect on just how unexpected, for good or for ill, life can be. We shouldn’t take things for granted, and these tales may actually be an inspiration to do our best in the face of adversity—a reminder of the shortness of our time here.
You do not need a special knowledge of classical music—or any music for that matter—to explore and enjoy these excursions. The book is not technical, and there won’t be any quizzes at the end. It isn’t a textbook or an academic tome filled with lots of boring footnotes. Consider it a fun chance to dip into a pool of the peculiar. You can read the whole thing in order if you’d like, which will give you some appreciation of how this music developed over time. You can also just open up anywhere and start reading. If it inspires you to seek out some of the music explored here, then so much the better.
