Beethoven's Skull: Dark, Strange, and Fascinating Tales From the World of Classical Music and Beyond

by Tim Rayborn

  Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809)

  Dude, where’s my head?

  “Papa” Haydn (as his friends and students knew him) lived a long, productive, happy, and secure life, being in the service of the same patron (the Hungarian Esterházy family) for most of his years. He was born when Handel and Bach were at the height of their creativity, outlived his younger friend Mozart by nearly eighteen years, and lived long enough to see the young Beethoven (his pupil) established as a great composer in his own right. Yes, his was a life of contentment, job security, and stability.

  So why is he listed here? Well, the interesting thing is what happened after he died. Haydn was given a memorial with great honors in French-occupied Vienna on June 15, 1809, two weeks after his death. Mozart’s Requiem was performed at the service, and it was apparently all very moving. He was interred in a churchyard near where he had lived. In 1820, Prince Esterházy ordered that his remains be exhumed and reburied in the parish church at Eisenstadt, which was done on November 7.

  There was one slight problem, however: poor Haydn’s head was missing. It had apparently been stolen a few days after his death by his friend and admirer Joseph Carl Rosenbaum and prison governor Johann Nepomuk Peter. Just thinking about how that must have been done is enough to turn the stomach. Indeed, Rosenbaum noted in his diary that as he entered his carriage after the decapitation, head in hand, the smell was so bad that he nearly vomited. They were devotees of the pseudo-science of phrenology, which we will discuss in more detail in Part II, and sought out the skulls of the famous and talented. After residing in private hands for many decades (it must have made a splendid conversation piece), Haydn’s noggin was given to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (“Society of the Friends of Music”) in Vienna in 1895.

  Needless to say, this was all a bit embarrassing for the establishment back in 1820. Rosenbaum sent a skull to the prince to be buried along with the body in the new location. A slight problem: it turned out afterward that this wasn’t Haydn’s head, which Rosenbaum had no intention of relinquishing. After acquiring it, the Friends of Music were destined to possess it until 1954, when it was finally reunited with its body after nearly 150 years. It’s ironic that a man who lived such a placid life compared to many of his colleagues would have to endure such a strange and ghoulish drama after his death.

  A few other unanswered questions remain: What did the Friends of Music actually do with the head for all of those years? Presumably it wasn’t just on public display. And most chillingly, just whose skull rested with Haydn’s body for 150 years? In case you’re wondering, that second mystery skull still resides with the composer’s body.

  Johann Anton Fils (1733–1760)

  Step into my parlor

  The young Fils (or Filtz) was of German origin, having for a long time been thought to be a Bohemian (that’s a Czech, not a free-living, rebellious young person). He was talented and prolific, producing no fewer than thirty-four symphonies and thirty concertos in his short life, as well as many other works. He had a wife, a young daughter, and an enviable and well-paid position as cellist to the electoral court at Mannheim. Everything was going swimmingly, except that he died at the young age of twenty-six, narrowly missing admission to the 27 Club (see Part II).

  The exact cause of death is not clear, but the strangest accounts say that it was due to his habit of eating live spiders, as one does. Presumably consuming them for health reasons, or perhaps as some bizarre delicacy, he is said to have remarked that they tasted like fresh strawberries. If the story is true (the eating, not the strawberry taste), perhaps some venomous arachnid ended his life. This seems a very nasty way to go, especially since it was self-inflicted.

  Just remember to be wary of those new health food fads.

  Johann Schobert (ca. 1735–1767)

  Funny fungi

  Schobert’s exact birth year seems uncertain and has been listed as anywhere between 1720 and 1740, with a cautious consensus of 1735. Beginning in 1760 he was a harpsichordist in the service of the Prince de Conti in Paris. He had interactions with the Mozart family, specifically the father, Leopold, who reportedly said that his children could play Schobert’s music with ease. When you consider that one of his children was young Wolfgang Amadeus, who was already composing by the age of four, his statement isn’t quite as insulting as it first seems, though he probably meant it to be.

  Actually, Wolfgang was fond of Schobert’s work from childhood. However, papa Leopold also stated that “Schobert is not at all the man he is said to be—he flatters to one’s face and is utterly false,” so their relationship was certainly a bit complicated! Regardless, Wolfgang would teach his music for years, and he even quoted some of Schobert’s melodies in his own works.

  Yes, everything was going well enough for Johann and his family until a disastrous encounter with some of the local flora. He had picked some wild mushrooms, cooked them, and served them to his wife and child, as well as to himself. Apparently a local tavern keeper had warned him against doing this without proper knowledge, and he was right. The mushrooms were poisonous and killed all three of them, plus a servant and others. Mycology was not one of his strong points.

  Josef Mysliveček (1737–1781)

  The nose knows

  Mysliveček, as his name implies, was a Czech composer of the transitional period between Baroque and Classical. Born in Prague, he eventually found his way to Italy, and to a decent amount of acclaim. His admirers included the young Mozart, who arranged one of his works for voice and piano. Indeed, the two became good friends and corresponded for years. His operas were well received, and he even acquired a pet name: Il divino Boemo, “the divine Bohemian,” which sounds like the name of a contemporary hipster coffee shop or a vegan restaurant.

  Like many composers who would come after him, he was doomed to the “been there, done that” fate; people simply grew tired of his music. Tastes and styles changed and he didn’t keep up with the changes, or rather, just fell out of fashion. The money and fame dried up, and he died a pauper in Rome.

  Something strange happened a short time before his death. During a surgery, his nose was burned off. Now, one probably would not elect to have this procedure done voluntarily, so there has to be a reason. Sources conflict, but there seem to be two possibilities. The first is that it happened accidentally during a treatment for syphilis, and that the intention was never to remove the nose. Why they were poking around in his nose to cure the pox is a mystery, though it may have been to remove growths, and it all got a bit carried away. It is also sometimes possible for the nose of a person with advanced syphilis simply to fall off on its own, so maybe they were poking around for some other reason and—oops!

  Syphilis would be the scourge of many a tragic nineteenth-century composer living out the fantasy of the “Romantic life,” as we shall see in the next chapter; maybe Josef just wanted to get a head start. He did have a reputation for promiscuity during his “Mozart years,” so perhaps there is some truth to the idea.

  The other theory is that the operation was an attempt to treat a dental infection he contracted after a coach accident (perhaps a door hit him in the mouth?) and had nothing at all to do with syphilis. Another source even suggests that he had bone cancer. Regardless of the cause, it seems that the nose removal was an unintended consequence, and it’s perhaps just as well that he didn’t live long afterward.

  Jean-Baptiste Krumpholtz (1742–1790)

  Cry me a river

  Krumpholtz was a minor composer not well known nowadays, maybe because his last name sounds a bit like a Bavarian pastry. He was revered in his time as a skilled harpist, indeed one of the greatest of the later eighteenth century. He served in the employ of the Esterházys, a wealthy Hungarian noble family of ancient lineage who were great patrons of the arts. Haydn, who was also under their patronage, gave him lessons in composition during his stay. Eager to improve the structure and sound of his instrument, he was responsible for working on some new innovative desi
gns for the harps of his time with Jean-Henri Naderman, a well-known harp maker.

  His wife, Anne-Marie, was also a virtuoso harpist and had been his student. With the apparent thought that she could do better than poor Jean-Baptiste, Anne-Marie began an affair in 1788 with pianist and composer Jan Ladislav Dussek and allegedly ran off to London with him a year later. Dussek was eager to escape the dangers of revolutionary France, and taking refuge in England with someone else’s young wife seemed an appealing alternative.

  Dussek was apparently quite proud of his good looks, or at least his profile. When performing, he turned the direction of the piano by 90 degrees. Previously, pianists had faced the audience. But with this new configuration, audiences now viewed him in profile and thus were spared none of the thrill. Interestingly, the idea caught on and is still the preferred positioning of pianists on stage to this day, regardless of how dashing (or not) their profiles may be. Dussek grew tired of Anne-Marie and abandoned her in 1792. He married the singer (and yet another harpist) Sophia Corri in that year but also left her by the century’s end. He was a bit of a jerk.

  Back to Jean-Baptiste: he was so despondent over the whole thing that he jumped into the frigid waters of the Seine in Paris in February 1790 and drowned or froze to death.

  John Stafford Smith (1750–1836)

  The god of wine and the wrath of grapes

  Smith was an English composer, organist, and one of the first musicologists. He had a keen interest in early music, which is rather amusing if you think about it, considering that music from his own time is often considered an important part of the early music repertoire today. Smith’s interest lay in medieval and Renaissance music; he studied various manuscripts and produced several editions, including songs from an old trouvère manuscript that sadly was destroyed by fire not long afterward. In 1779 he produced what is considered the first scholarly edition of early music to be printed in England, A Collection of English Songs Composed about the year 1500. Taken from MSS. of the same age.

  Smith’s other big claim to fame is the composition of the song “To Anacreon in Heaven” for a gentlemen’s club, the Anacreontic Society, to which he belonged and which consisted of many amateur musicians devoted to the promotion of music, along with a celebration of good drink. Anacreon was a sixth-century BCE Greek poet whose words celebrated the stereotypical wine, women, and song. You may have heard this little ditty. The words of the first verse are:

  To Anacreon in Heav’n, where he sat in full Glee,

  A few Sons of Harmony sent a Petition,

  That He their Inspirer and Patron wou’d be;

  When this Answer arriv’d from the jolly old Grecian

  “Voice, Fiddle, and Flute,

  No longer be mute,

  I’ll lend you my Name and inspire you to boot,

  And, besides, I’ll instruct you like me, to entwine

  The Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s Vine.”

  Doesn’t ring a bell? This tune was later used by Francis Scott Key for his poem “Defence of Fort McHenry” during the War of 1812. It was later retitled “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Yes, the American National Anthem (officially designated in 1931) is a tune that was originally a British drinking song. Enjoy thinking about that for a while.

  Smith lived a long life without conflict or troubles. At his death, his remarkable and vast library, which likely contained many priceless volumes (2,191 devoted to music, over 500 of which were manuscripts), was passed to his daughter, who was declared insane in 1844. And what happened to these precious works? Infuriatingly, they were not acquired by a university, such as Oxford or Cambridge, nor were they bought by the British Library. The books were auctioned off to private collectors, and many were undoubtedly lost forever over the next century. No adequate catalog of the collection was even made.

  There was one ironic twist to the end of his long life: he died at the advanced age of eighty-six, not from old age or illness, but allegedly by choking on a grape pip which had become stuck in his windpipe. You may recall that a similar tale had long been told about the death of Anacreon himself, so Smith was in good company. It seems that Bacchus’s vine did him in after all.

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)

  An end shrouded in mystery

  Dearly beloved Mozart, along with Beethoven, is probably the most famous composer in history. Even people who know nothing about classical music have heard of him, and some of them even know how to pronounce his name. His story is irresistible: a young musical prodigy gifted beyond all belief, adored by the courts of Europe as a boy, but as he grows up he is increasingly ignored and neglected, has family and financial problems, turns to drink, burns out, and dies at the age of thirty-five, buried in a pauper’s grave. He could be a model for the Romantics that followed.

  Someone should make a movie based on his life, or at least a play.

  In reality, some of these biographical details are not as true as many believe. He was deeply devoted to his wife and father, and his money troubles had much to do with his wife’s poor health and the need to maintain a fine wardrobe to impress potential patrons. The legend of his being buried in an unmarked grave for the poor is not entirely correct either. In 1783 the Emperor Joseph II declared that cemeteries in Vienna’s city limits were to be closed and that new burials were only to be allowed outside the city at new sites. This new regulation was not only for the poor, and it was common for bodies to share graves, which would later be reused.

  However, Mozart did have some eccentricities that were legendary in his own time. His love of scatological humor and his inappropriate behaviors have led to many theories about underlying conditions. A 2007 paper in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry explored the possibility that he may have had ADHD, OCD, or even Tourette’s syndrome, as many of his actions were consistent with these diagnoses. It’s difficult, however, to prove medical theories when looking back across the centuries. He may well just have been a socially clueless young man whose extraordinary gifts prevented him from having anything like a normal childhood.

  Speculation about Mozart’s untimely demise has filled dozens of books with analysis, history, rivalries, marital difficulties, conspiracy theories, juicy facts and hypotheses, and just plain made-up nonsense. It’s right up there with the “did Shakespeare write Shakespeare?” debate. The wonderful film Amadeus, based on Peter Shaffer’s play, explores this all in delicious detail, playing up the rivalry with the less-talented Salieri (which was only true to a point; more on Salieri below) and implicating him in the young man’s death.

  So what was the actual cause of this most gifted musician’s death? There are many theories. Although initially recorded as a severe miliary fever—a kind of contagious, epidemic sweating sickness—later researchers have suggested that the cause of death was Schönlein-Henoch syndrome, rheumatic inflammatory fever, exhaustion, etc. The list goes on.

  A number of suggestions—including uraemia, Bright’s disease, nephritis, and renal failure—are symptomatic of kidney disorder and failure. This is usually thought to be the likely cause of his death, though the debate continues because no one can resist speculating. There are plenty of medical journal articles that discuss Mozart’s death in minute detail, for anyone interested in getting into complex medical terminology and gory details.

  But what did Mozart himself think was happening in his last months as his health deteriorated? Well, he may have believed that he was being poisoned, and he knew he wouldn’t last long. Having been sickly at many times in his life, he apparently had long believed that he would die young. He was right.

  A commission from a mysterious benefactor to write a Requiem Mass (a mass for the dead) came to him in July 1791. In fact, the offer seems to have come from a certain Count Franz Walsegg, a wealthy amateur musician, or rather a wannabe. He had the very unpleasant habit of commissioning works from composers, paying them well, and then trying to pass off their work as his own; in short, he was a musical plagi
arist. Guess who was next on his list?

  Mozart took the commission from the stranger at his door. Since he was rather superstitious, some say he came to think that this messenger was Death himself. Believing that he was writing his own Requiem, he struggled with finishing the work; he thought that once it was done, he would be done, so to speak.

  At the same time, he was finishing his wonderful opera The Magic Flute. This whimsical and strange work contains rich Masonic symbolism (Mozart had been a member of a Masonic Lodge since 1784), though there are no outright references to Freemasonry. Nevertheless, as his health deteriorated, he may have suspected that the Masons were not happy with his having “disclosed” such themes in a symbolic way in a mere comic opera, and that they might be responsible for poisoning him.

  This suspicion, coupled with the mysterious request for the Requiem, could have fueled his superstitious imagination. In his last days he became obsessed with the death mass, though ultimately he died before its completion. His widow, Constanze, gave the unfinished work to Mozart’s pupil, Franz Xavier Süssmayr, who had discussed with the composer how the remaining structures were to be written and organized. He completed the piece and it became Mozart’s last composition, part his and part his student’s.