Igor Stravinsky loved and lived the Hollywood high life,
spending some 29 years of his life in Tinseltown. 20 of
those years were spent residing at the property presently
up for sale by Coldwell Banker. View the property via the
online listing at Redfin:1260 N Wetherly Drive, Los Angeles
After being listed for 167 days (at the time of writing this post) on Redfin,Igor Stravinsky's West Hollywood home remains on the real estate market. The quaint 2,612 square foot estate (with 3 bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms), located at1260 N Wetherly Drive,just above L.A.'s famed Sunset Stripwas the longtime U.S. home of the famed Russian-born composer, who moved into the property in 1941 nearly a year after his arrival on the West coast, then fresh off the heels of his marriage to longtime mistressVera de Bosset(former wife of famed Russian painter Sergey Sudeikin). Stravinsky, who would obtain American citizenship five years after his arrival on US soil, clearly bore affection for both Hollywood high life and home: in fact, the beloved 20th century icon – then revered as much in the United States as he was in Europe – would spend more years of his life in The Golden State than anywhere else in the world. Wetherly Drive, in particular, would prove more than agreeable: Igor would famously later purchase a neighboring home on the same street (#1218 N Wetherly Drive) after some 20 years spent at the primary residence – he would live on the adjacent property for over 9 more years before heading Northeast, where he would relocate to New York to live out his final two years, spent in the city's iconic Essex House, which had been recently acquired byMarriott Hotels in 1969. Stravinsky boasted a remarkably productive output during his years spent at 1260 N Wetherly Drive (which include, but are not limited to the maestro's adoption – and adaptation – of Austrian émigré Arnold Schoenberg's 12-tone technique; the composition of 1951 English-language opera “The Rake's Progress” based on the engravings of William Hogarth; a collaboration with the illustrious choreographer George Balanchine on “Agon;” and his single-handed influence on reviving the early music of Carlo Gesualdo through his poignant arrangements of three of the renaissance master's madrigali for orchestra (which were later incorporated into Balanchine's ballet Momentum a Gesuado– not to mention a completion of the murderous Italian's unfinished Tres Sacre Cantiones Liber Secundus, which Igor realised in 1956; in addition to arrangements of the works of Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, and a bold excursion into ethereal liturgical works following the maestro's increasing presence and deep interest in the Russian Orthodox Church).
Listen below to Stravinsky's arrangement of Gesualdo's "Sacrae Cantiones Liber Secundus." Stravinsky realised this work in 1957 (I) and 1959 (II & III), of which the original sextus and basses part books were lost. The video below is in a playlist format, containing three videos. Use arrow buttons or menu to navigate. I. Da pacem Domine, II. Assumpta est Maria, III. Illumina nos:
Stravinsky seemed to fit right in as an esteemed member of the Hollywood elite - he hobnobbed with film industry bigwigs – famously signing over rights toWalt Disneyfor the American magnate to use music from Le Sacre du Printemps for the 1940 blockbuster animated hit “Fantasia” (albeit for a rather paltry sum of $6000 USD) – and proved a giant among men among Tinseltown's illustrious artistic intelligentsia. Those in his inner circle included everyone from Surrealist maestri to great thinkers, poets and authors – the likes of Aldous Huxley,Dylan Thomas and W.H. Auden.
Just prior to moving into the property at N Wetherly Drive, Igor would try his hand at composing for film (though somewhat unsuccessfully - not for lack of talent, but rather for a refusal to relinquish sole control) with trial music for the former's screenplay adapted to the film “Jane Eyre,” starring Orson Welles (he ended up recycling previously written music for the project instead). Even the pop culture sphere opened it's doors for the world's most famous living composer: Stravinsky would make hisHollywood Bowlconducting debut the summer of his arrival in the U.S. in 1940 in which he led a rousing performance of theFirebird Suite.
These mentions account for merely a small portion of the maestro's accomplishments achieved in West Hollywood. Yet for all of Stravinsky's many connections in Los Angeles, and for all of his efforts at re-inventing himself both musically and spiritually, the only relic left standing – nay, the only relic to have ever stood - which would serve to both remember and celebrate the beloved icon's time and influence in the city (save for a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame) remain the former Stravinsky family homes on N Wetherly Drive – of which the aforementioned residence presently offered up for sale is one (a true injustice of the highest sort!)
The fact that the property is being quietly listed online with merely a passing reference to the composer is but another unfortunate reminder of a sadly seemingly absent memory on behalf of the inhabitants of the city. Absent – yet not forgotten. In the nearly half a year since the quaint white stucco and wood home has been on the market, at least one active musician has paid pilgrimage to the composer by attending an open house and walking among its hallowed walls. Could this small gesture be a promising sign of a much-delayed turnaround in WeHo to finally honor the internationally beloved icon who once called the city home, and whose contributions to Tinseltown's artistic realm have permeated the seams of time – the music composed there continuing to influence legions of subsequent composers both at home and around the globe? Be it as a converted tourist attraction/education site (a museum would probably be asking too much), as a modern-day “salon,” or as home to a present or future musician or patron of the arts – or even simply as a residential slice of heaven for a very lucky fan – the possibilities for Stravinsky's house on the hill are infinite. The present asking price for the property is $3.75 million USD. The listing may be viewed online on Redfin.
Related:watch below the acclaimed documentary, "Stravinsky in Hollywood," (dir. Marco Capalbo) which details the exploits and works composed whilst residing in the city (in three parts, L-R-BL, followed by the critically acclaimed autobiographical documentary "Once at a Border," featuring rare footage of Stravinsky and interviews many of his illustrious colleagues and family detailing more broad aspects of the composer's life. Directed by Tony Palmer):
Did You know?
This is not the first time Stravinsky's former home at 1260 N Wetherly Drive has hit the real estate market. Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen expressed interest in purchasing the property in 1996 only to pass given his fear of being haunted by the “ghost” of Igor, after he noticed indentations on the carpet where the maestro formerly rested his piano, and humorously, the hook where Stravinsky tethered his pet goat.
In other related news:
Giovanni Paisiello's former home in Taranto scores 500,000 euros to convert into museum honoring composer.
It’s time again for another installment of creepy classical music: 13 Frightening works* selected by Unraveling Musical Myths that are guaranteed to set the spine a-shiver thisAll Hallow’s Eve in a segment I am calling
13 SINISTER SPECIMENS YOU WON'T FIND ON A TYPICAL HALLOWEEN PLAYLIST (BUT YOU SHOULD)
*Note from the Author:In the interest of quicker loading times (and due to an injured hand that really should be resting!) I have opted to divide this post into two parts. Part II to follow shortly.
PART I: I-VI
I.MASKED BALL – Jocelyn Pook:
This chilling number written by modern film composer Jocelyn Pook brought the unconventional musician to prominence when it was featured in Stanley Kubrick's 1999 drama,Eyes Wide Shut. It's haunting blend of strings (Pook herself appears on viola) and a seemingly incomprehensible, Satanic-sounding chant is made even more disturbing to the listener when he one realizes what they are actually hearing is a fragment of Orthodox Liturgy - detailing"God's" instructions to his "apprentices"to pray to the Deity for the "peace, salvation...and forgiveness"of mankind's manifold sins, sung by Romanian monks in reverse - strongly suggesting the fall of Babel, and the salvageable man - forever lost in translation as he succumbs to his eternal and convoluted perversions.
This sinister gem is sure to become your next guilty pleasure:
It’s time for another installment of Mayhem Behind the Music: TRIVIA & HUMOR!
Today’s entry features a sizeable entrée of paranoia with a side of superstition for starters:
Good luckcharms and trinkets, rituals, and an occasional dabbling in the occult has long been associated with the great operas and masters of classical music: from famed tenor Luciano Pavarotti’sfamous handkerchief, which the dynamic singer employed as a good-luck charm; to Tchaikovsky’sfear over losing his head and his compulsive ritual of conducting with one hand clasped about his baton, and the other relegated to supporting his chin – to the desperate and depraved measures of Scriabin and 16th–17th century murderer-prince Carlo Gesualdo’s involvement with witchcraft, the history of Western Classical Music carries with it a motley brew of magumbo and sorcery.
Gustav Mahler
Superstition was the name of the game at the dawn of the twentieth century for famed Austrian composer Gustav Mahler. It was the year 1909, and Mahler had just put the finishing touches on his final[1]symphony Das Lied von der Erde.
The composer, ecstatic at completing his monumental work, sat for a tête-à-tête with his beloved spouse, Alma. His opus was complete, he informed his wife, and, in a manner most unusual for the stalwart composer, would be recorded in his books as a composition without a numerical assignation. The reason for Mahler’s reluctance to number his symphony (which was structured as such, with the integration of song) as No. 9 lay in the composer’s superstition and very real fear of the number as it related to music: 19th century composers Ludwig van Beethoven and Anton Bruckner, after all, had both perished upon penning their ninth symphonies,[2]with the latter composer failing to complete the work’s final movement before passing. Mahler, fearful of succumbing to the fates of his predecessors, subtitled his work as simply “Eine Symphonie für eine Tenor- und eine Alt- (oder Bariton-) Stimme und Orchester" ("A Symphony for Tenor, Alto and Large Orchestra”). Fellow 20th century composer and triskaidekaphobicArnold Schoenberg described for the public Mahler’s fear of the so-called “curse of the ninth” folklore in an essay on the superstitious composer:
“It seems that the Ninth is a limit. He who wants to go beyond it must pass away. It seems as if something might be imparted to us in the Tenth which we ought not yet to know, for which we are not ready. Those who have written a Ninth stood too close to the hereafter.”
Listen below to Das Lied von der Erde with mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig & tenor René Kollo and the
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under maestro Bernstein:
Footnotes:
[1] Completed. [2] The so-called "Curse of the Ninth" was heavily based in folklore and highly problematic. Discover more at the following link: Curse of the Ninth (at Wikipedia)
Giuseppe Verdi
Speaking of curses popular in the world of western classical music, 19th century composer Giuseppe Verdi, himself a suspected target of malocchio, and the focal point for overzealous protection by an obsessed mob following a disastrous premiere of the composer’s early opera,Alzira,would find not only his own person and works assailed by a sinister invisible culprit during the composer’s lifetime, but would also fall victim to such subterfuge even in the many years following his death by stroke in late January of 1901.La Forza del Destino, Verdi’s famous 1862 Italian opera, would fall victim to superstition by chanteurs following an unfortunate incident at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House involving American baritoneLeonard Warrenin March of 1960, wherein the singer, upon readying himself to perform the cabaletta“Morir, tremenda cosa” (“To die, a momentous thing”)in the opera’s third act, abruptly broke out into a fit of coughing and gasping for air, before allegedly uttering a cry for help before collapsing dead to the floor. Warren’s early death (he was 48 at the time of demise) by cerebral hemorrhage, prompted many a opera singer to conclude Verdi’s Forza to have been cursed, with tenor Luciano Pavarotti refusing the role of Don Alvaro altogether, and with others resorting to ritualistic 'means of protection:' famed Italian tenor Franco Corelliwas said to have seized his genitals on an occasional performance (why that particular part of his anatomy was especially designated for protection remains unknown) as a means of warding off any bad magumbo.
Listen below to the aria that formed the basis of the Forza Curse, Morir, Tremenda Cosa, as performed by
baritone Renato Bruson:
Did you know?
Galileo Galilei
...that the celebrated 16th century Italian composer, lutenist and music theorist Vincenzo Galilei,master of the late Renaissance and revered as a revolutionary pioneer of the Baroque period had an even more famous, more venerated offspring? Galilei’s first-born son, sired in February in the year 1564, would grow up to become none other than world-renowned astronomer, physicist and household nameGalileo Galilei– better known in the present era as simply “Galileo!”
Enjoy below Vincenzo Galilei's Contrappunto 24, Qual Miracolo Amore:
Orlando di Lasso
...that in spite of becoming the oracle of the mature polyphonic style of the so-named Franco-Flemish school and revered master musician of the late 16th century musical Europe, Netherlandish composer Orlando di Lasso(Roland/e de Lassus)endured very tempestuous first beginnings in the composer’s foray into the world of classical music? Although much music and the unblemished reputation as an innovator survive into the present era, details of the early life of di Lasso remain somewhat obscure. What is known to scholars of this period is that the late Renaissance composer suffered much indignity in his everyday life both on account of his many gifts and in spite of them. Entering into the realm of music at an early age, Orlando di Lasso was encouraged by elders to join the choir of a local church. So polished was the young Orlando’s voice, it is said that the juvenile singer was twice kidnapped on account of it – perhaps to serenade those in whom he was held hostage, or to provide the criminals with an outlet to make a lucrative living as a performing act! Things seemed to take a turn for the better when, by the age of 18, a teenage Orlando took up a post as maestro of music at Naples, which provided for the now young man a bridge to a more lucrative teaching position in Rome. His joy was however, short lived: shortly after arrival in the Italian capital Lasso was made aware of the poorly state his parents, who were both said to have been in ill health back in the Netherlands. Lasso set off for home immediately upon hearing the concerning news, but it was, alas, too late to bid his parents a fare thee well: both mother and father were discovered deceased on arrival. Enjoy below the gorgeous Pslami Poenitentialis by late Renaissance master Orlando di Lasso:
A note on this article: As mentioned in my posting on May 14, I will be posting for abrief periodat a slower than usual rate due to external obligations outside of this blog. The following entry was meant to be published last Friday (the 13th of May), but was not yet complete by the date desired (and remains a work in progress – hence the splitting of this entry intotwo postings- the second of which will be up as soon as I can dedicate the time to finish editing the piece). It is, however, my goal to not leave my audience without fresh material for extended periods, and so, in that vein, I present to the readerpart Iof my new article“13 Decidedly - and Unexpectedly - Frightful Works from the Realm of Western Classical Music,” based on works that I personally deem as either overtly horrific, or as naugthy devils in the disguise of beautifully melodic music (who appear as wolves in sheep's clothing). Keep checking back often for updates, as I will continue to post as my schedule permits. Part IIof this entry will be up soon!*
*(after a brief period as top posts, both entries will become backdated under the date of the 13th of May).
The post-in-progress (I-VI):
To celebrate this month’s superstitious Friday the 13th,unravelingmusicalmyths has gathered together thirteen of the most spooky and spine-tingling sounds to come out of the world of western classical music. I have made every attempt to steer clear of the stereotypical/clichéd “Hallowe’en” favorites (such as Camille Saint-Saëns’Danse Macabre,Giuseppe Verdi’sDies Iraechorusfrom his famousRequiem Massor Modest Mussorgsky’sNight on Bald Mountain) in favor of arias and lieder that are atypical of the common ‘horror genre’ of western classical music. Hidden amongst some intentionally frightful scores are works I personally deem to be horrifying in their own right: gooseflesh-inducing music which relies more on subtle and muted tones than in sudden startlesandjumpsbursting out from the orchestral fray. Among the horrifying gems I have selected for inclusion on this list of most frightful works include pieces of music that appear both pleasant and melodic on face value - but which have rather macabre undertones laying just beneath the surface, cleverly disguised within sinister lyrics. Now, without further discourse, I present to the reader a motley brew of sorcery, spirits andplain ole' spook to set your spine a-shiver:
Note from the Author:Welcome to unravelingmusicalmyths.blogspot.ca! More posts coming soon. In the interim, enjoy my inaugural Popular Posts Roundup and check back often for brand new scandalous and scintillating tales from the fascinating realms of Classical Music and Opera!
Click on an image above to read each visitor-favorite article (or select from list below). CLOCKWISE FROM L TO R:
October 16, 1590. The sun had set at the Palazzo San Severo in Naples, Italy - both below the horizon and in the private bedchamber of Donna Maria D’Avalos, first wife of Composer and Prince of Venosa Carlo Gesualdo.
Inside, the steamy quarters reeked with the stench of death. Amidst the blood-soaked enclosure, crumpled sheets and general disarray set-stage a scene of obvious whirlwind violence, leaving in it’s wake the grisly and horrific aftermath of plot, treason, and debauched primal furor. It was a hellish display of pre-determined destiny that would make the fate of Paolo and Francesca of Dante fame seem like a punishment fit for Paradise. Deep within the caverns and alcoves of this magnificent castle, elicit and treasonous carnal exploits would meet their due restitution - at the end of a dagger and by the barrel of a still smoking gun.
The Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza was born into nobility. Born in late March c.1566 he was the nephew of a Pope (his mother was niece of Pope Pius IV) and nephew of Calo Borromeo, (later made Saint Charles Borromeo.)
As the second surviving son of Fabrizio Gesualdo and Geronima Borromeo, the would-be Prince obtained carte-blanche status in Italy when he was crowned Prince of Venosa (a Principality handed down to Gesualdo through the paternal line via his grandfather, made First Prince of Venosa by the King of Spain) following the death of his elder brother, Luigi.
A dedicated Composer of madrigals and other sacred and secular works, accomplished lutenist and harpsichordist, Carlo Gesualdo would use his status as Prince to excess, obsessive in his display of dominion over music, his servants, his wife and her paramours, and later, toward his own person.
In 1586, Carlo would marry his first Cousin (a practice not uncommon among royal houses, dedicated to preserving the familial bloodline of future Princes and Kings), Donna Maria D’Avalos.
Donna Maria was a noted and celebrated beauty, and quickly caught the eye of a young Carlo. Unfortunately for Maria and for posterity, her charm and smouldering allure also grasped the attention of Gesualdo’s blood-uncle, Don Giulio.
Ever the provocateur, Giulio, after witnessing for himself Donna’s Maria’s comeliness, began a pursuit of unrequited romance in the form of trinkets, protestations and tears. They were all rebuffed. Giulio, however, fancying himself quite irresistible, persisted. It wasn’t long before Gesualdo's wife had had enough. Eventually, she put her foot firmly down, warning the wannabe Romeo that she would inform her husband, Prince Carlo Gesualdo, should he continue to pursue her.
This was enough to stop Giulio in his tracks - for the moment. What was to brew next inside of this bizzare love triangle was an episode so horrific, so full of brutality and betrayal that it shook Italy and the Gesualdo Principality to it’s core - creating shockwaves that still continue to permeate through the streets of Naples to this very day.
Donna Maria D'Avalos
Giulio would soon discover that Donna Maria, for her own transgressions, was also plagued by the elusive wandering eye and fickle heart. Already too deep into a passionate romance with the Duke of Andria, Don Fabrizio Carafa (himself a described “model of beauty”), Donna Maria would soon find herself, again, under the maleficent sombre wings of her Uncle-in-law.
And maleficent he was. Furious and feeling personally emasculated, Giulio set out to blackmail his niece in law - his idée fixe, now a whore in his eyes and her prettyboy lover had but two choices: either die steadfast and in the face of adulteries sin, or go out of this world in protest, kicking and screaming. Indeed, it wasn’t much of choice.
The jealous Uncle immediately informed Carlo of his wife’s indiscretion with the Duke, knowing full well ahead of time of Gesualdo’s penchant for possession and avarice. With this scandalous bit of information, both Uncle and Nephew would seal the fate of the adulterous traitors. The Gesualdo bloodline was wracked with inherited mental illness (perhaps as a result of incestuous marriages and the subsequent births resulting from their unions.) This ‘mutation’ of the Gesualdo gene pool would be on full display at the Prince’s home in an intricate series of well planned traps and a nefarious use of psychological warfare.
October 16, 1590. The bait was set. Carlo, set to go on a hunting excursion that evening, leaving Donna Maria alone in La Palazzo San Severo, calmly “left” the premises he shared with his various servants and wife, allegedly off to bring home a fresh kill for a later feast. The Lady Maria hadn’t suspected anything was amiss, despite the fact that her villainous Uncle in law had told her lover the Duke of Andria that their extra-marital dalliance had been revealed to the Prince. Donna Maria, suspicious of her uncles protestations, probably imagined this to be a false claim under the cloak of blackmail, intended to be used as a underhanded tactic to resume courting her. Indeed, Carlo had said nothing of the matter to her, or to the Duke.
Carlo Gesualdo
It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Carlo's' web was already spun. There was, in fact, no hunting excursion to be had that evening - at least, there was to be no hunting of wild game for sport or for sustenance. Instead, the fresh kill would be in the shape and form of his beloved Donna Maria and her paramour, Fabrizio Carafa, Duke of Andria.
Leaving all of the doors within the castle unlocked so as not to arouse suspicion of a coup d’état within the Gesualdo abode, wife Donna Maria and her handsome lover would find themselves succumbing to one another in her bedchamber. The two had already declared a pact between them, in the event her Uncle-in-law was telling the truth about revealing their relationship to Carlo.
In a dictated manifesto that read like a discourse on unyielding love, the two disgraced lovers vowed to die with and for one another. This was immediately preceded by a lamentation made by the Lady D’Avalos, who chastised the genial Duke as undeserving of a Knight and man, and therefore undeserving of her after he suggested they cool things off and let the dust settle. In an age where men were made Knights and Kings on the battlefield, this was an insult of castrating proportions.
Well into their conjugal tryst that autumn evening, Carlo, sneaking through the corridors of the Palazzo, burst into the bedchamber of Donna Maria D’Avalos, catching his wife and her lover in flagrante delicto. Overcome by her gall, and overpowered by rage, he stormed the chamber,
dagger (or possibly sword) in hand, accompanied by three of his trusted guards, and slit the throat of his philandering spouse, and repeatedly stabbed her for having the audacity to try to “make [him] a cuckold”.
In the end, it was difficult to tell who bore the greatest brunt of Carlos' and his henchmen’s brutality. Duke Don Fabrizio (described, oddly, as dressed in “only a woman’s nightdress with fringes at the bottom, with ruffs of black silk.”..this at a time where homosexuality and “sodomites” were considered agents of primal sin both blasphemous and injurious to Christianity, one can only imagine Carlos’ shock at espying his romantic nemesis in transgender garb) was himself repeatedly stabbed. His body was found “covered with blood and pierced with many wounds.”
He had also been shot:
“..an arquebusade through his elbow and side, with two shots, and an arquebusade on the eye on the side of the temples, which went from one side to the other, and a bit of the brain had oozed out; and he also had wounds on his head, face, neck, chest, stomach, kidneys, arms, hands and shoulders - wounds made by sharp sword thrusts, quite deep, many of them passing through the body from one side to the other...*”
when the Duke’s body was removed from the room, it was revealed he had been several times impaled through the torso and the floor underneath by a sword long enough to pass through the breadth of his chest and abdomen and leave tell-tale holes in the planks below his currently mangled corpse.
His now deceased inamorata also suffered a further abuse after her violent attack: Donna Maria, her throat already having been cut, had been stabbed in a count so numerous modern day detectives would label it overkill of a pre-meditated order. Carlo was seen leaving and then re-entering the domicile, his hands and clothes dripping blood, shouting “Kill that scoundrel, along with this harlot! Shall a Gesualdo be made a cuckold?” In all of his blind rage and inherited insanity, it seems he played his carte blanche privilege to it’s full reaches, unaware or unconcerned of any form of condemnation or punishment for his gruesome crime. After publicly shouting this murderous demand at his fellow executioners, Gesualdo himself took to Donna Maria, stabbing her already mutilated body another 28 times, declaring in a fit of insanity, “I do not believe they are dead!”
Of the contemporary accounts that survive, much is made of the additional crimes alleged to have been committed post-mortem. In those accounts, and, in current Neapolitan folklore, it has been suggested that Don Carlo ordered the corpses to be taken out of the Palazzo and splayed out in a crude fashion on the stairs leading up to the castle. (It has been regaled by contemporary local witnesses that the Lady D’Avalos was positioned spread eagle, and her corpse later violated by a passing Monk.)
Elizabeth I of England at her Coronation
Of course, these, and other similar claims could be the result of embellishment. On the other hand, however, 16th century Europe was far from immune to such ghastly displays of the flesh: over to the northwest in what is now part of the United Kingdom, a young Elizabeth Tudor, newly crowned, ruled over England, itself fresh from the public burnings-at-the-stake made popular by the previous, Catholic, Queen Mary I (“Bloody Mary.")
Although brutal punishments like hanging, drawing, and quartering were left behind by the predecessors Tudor and their antecedents, Elizabeth I of England would, throughout the course of her reign, execute more Catholics than all of the protestants executed by her sister Mary and in the Spanish Inquisition combined. In then quite recent England, those convicted of treasonous offenses found their severed heads hacked off by a dull axe at the block, parboiled and left to rot on a spike over the River Thames, and their torso and limbs impaled and planted fermement in the ground as a warning at the borders of then-warring Scotland.
Also to the northwest in just under a mere two decades earlier, Catherine de Medici and her son, the future Henri IV, had orchestrated a devious coup to oust the Huguenots from the face of France by organizing a marital union between the Catholic house of Valois with the Protestant House of Bourbon through her only daughter, Margot, a Valois, and the King of Navarre, Henri III from the House of Bourbon. Scores of Protestants flooded Paris to witness the outdoor union at the Cathedral of Notre Dame. They were later slaughtered in the streets and pulled out of hostels as they slept and were made slain.
16th century Europe, for all of the wonders and social and political advancements of the Renaissance, was a very violent place to live. Church and State, for the most part still reigned supreme, with repeated uprisings and revolts across the continent (indeed, even after England’s Henry VIII broke from the Church of Rome in order to marry Anne Boleyn and establish the Church of England, the country would see the execution of Lady Jane Grey, the “Nine Day Queen," a Papal Bull and countless plots to overthrow Elizabeth in the Northern Uprisings and the notorious Babbington Plot that would leave Queen Mary of Scotland dead - her head hacked off by an executioner in the employ and command of her cousin Elizabeth I, no less.)
In matters of high treason or offences against the Church, public displays of brutality in the form of executions and the display of corpses was Standard Operating Procedure. It served two benefits: first, it acted as a “deterrent” (in reality, the outcome of its efficacy was highly negligible: a public suffering and death was considered amongst religious zealots to be a gateway into the realm of martyrdom.) Second, the mutilation of the flesh itself, it was believed, was a necessary evil to warn any would-be conspirators of a preordained refusal of the soul into afterlife..wherein the mutilated spirit, unaccepted by heaven and unwanted by hell, would be doomed to roam the earth, disassembled, for eternity.
Catherine de Medici's forced union between the Protestant Henri III
of Navarre and her Catholic daughter Margaret de Valois set off one
of the bloodiest massacres known to French history. The onslaught
would become known as the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre.
If one considers the barbarous brutality that went into punishments such as hanging, drawing, and quartering, Carlo Gesualdo’s alleged treatment of his scorned cadavers seems, rather..commonplace in an era that was still ages away from the dawn of the period of Enlightenment. What can be argued as inordinate and especially cruel was that Gesulado’s actions were committed outside of the Church and based solely on primitive jealousy and an overabundant sense of vanity.
Gesualdo would soon flee Naples, perhaps consumed by guilt, where further atrocities would be reported, one in the case of an unidentified infant (believed to be either his own offspring, or the illegitimate son of Donna Maria and Duke Fabrizio Carafa of Andria) who he is said to have ordered murdered by swinging in a bassinette hung from a palace balcony while his servant-musicians sang madrigals of death - his own compositions - below until the child expired, for reasons that range from jealousy to preventing the child from inheriting his barbarity and familial insanity (depending on which contemporary account one chooses to believe.)
He would also go on to physically abuse is second wife, a punishment likely as a result of her condemning his two female lovers as witches and ordering them to stand trial. It was said that Gesualdo became obsessed over one of his lady loves, and willingly participated in her explicit and disgusting (I will spare the reader the details) spells on him, so taken was he by her charms. That mock-trial ended in Gesualdo hosting the convicted ‘witches’ in his castle alongside his wife, both of whom were spared execution and given house arrest under his roof instead! Again, it would seem Carlo was untouchable. But, this sense of invincibility toward accountability would not last. Over the course of the last 15 years of his life, the troubled Prince of Venosa inflicted upon himself a seclusion that would last until his death.
A contemporary depiction of flagellents
Gesualdo rarely left his castle as his mental state rapidly began to deteriorate. He single-handedly cut down entire forests in a frenzied episode of schizophrenic-like paranoia around his castle by his own hand over the remainder of his life, afraid of unannounced villains who might be laying in wait outside of the fortress, plotting an attack; he procured a 3rd or 4th century BC ‘disk’, etched in hieroglyph-like carvings, and suffered upon himself a life long struggle with insomnia as he tried in vain night by mind-wracking night to decipher it’s mysterious code, even penning a letter to his alchemist, promising a large sum of money to enlist his services in cryptology (the disk exists today in a museum in Italy just on the outskirts of the scene of his horrific crime. It’s mysterious message remains unsolved.)
It is said the Composer-Prince became consumed by depression during this period, an impression made all the more palpable by a painting he had commissioned ("Perdono di Carlo Gesualdo" by Italian Mannerist Giovanni Balducci) of a pensive-looking Gesualdo, flanked by his uncle and gazing up to a pointing Redeemer - an unidentified cherub-like infant hovering above his head just below Christ Himself. Could this baby be that of his son? Could Gesualdo, now a recluse, finally have found remorse while idling away in his castle? The Prince was also rumored to practice self-flagellation, a religious ‘practice’ condemned by the Catholic church that involved whipping one’s own back in a display of penance, in Gesualdo’s case with an alleged three-tailed whip. Could this accusation also be true?
It is difficult to say either way. The Prince of Venosa kept a close circle of trusted men in his employ, and never ventured beyond the reaches of the now deforested landscape surrounding his castle.
Even in spite of his madness, Carlo Gesualdo remained acutely aware of the spoils of his own nobility. It is said the Prince would order his male servants to cling to his back while he slept in an effort to keep him warm. He continued to enjoy the carnal pleasures of his convicted ‘witches’, and committed himself to the composition of music. If he was indeed depressed, Gesualdo certainly was productive about it.
In his remaining 15 years, Carlo Gesualdo would shift his focus in between his deforestation efforts, cryptology and music. He
would produce some of the most chromatic vocal compositions the world
had yet seen or heard - and on a scale considered so progressive and
musically significant, its influential match would arguably not be seen
or heard of again until Classical music'sRomantic Period in the late 19th century in the works of prolific composer Richard Wagner and later, in the 20th century, Igor Stravinsky.
German Composer Richard Wagner
Much like Wagner and especially in the case of Stravinsky, who would cause a riot in Paris at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées some two centuries later with his and choreographer/ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky’s premier staging of “Le Sacre du Printemps”, Gesualdo’s style was equally controversial, widely panned by contemporaries and critics for their “ugliness” and unusual dissonances and peculiar harmonic tensions. Gesualdo penned works - now considered virtuosic - in a style and manner 16th century melophiles had never before heard. Like any unchartered territory, what was ‘new’ was considered ‘strange’. Certainly, this ‘new sound’ was far removed from the exquisite and ingenious innovations of Monteverdi in his use of polyphony. Monteverdi’s was a purer technique - a more blended sound.
It is of interest to note that while largely critically panned in his era, Gesualdo’s frequent use of chords that seemed to contrast in tonality would later be declared to be predecessive of Wagner in his exquisitely ground breaking ‘Tristan Chord’ over two hundred and fifty years after Gesualdo’s death in 1613.
‘Wagnerites’ and later scholars would cite Gesualdo’s madrigal “Moro Lasso” as being highly influential for the infamous and celebrated chord employed by Wagner wherein there exists “little tonal interrelation”, “strange harmonic tension” and “chords far apart in tonality”. Wagner’s Tristan Chord would enter into the realms of infamy and go on to become one of the most influential and extensively analyzed innovations to modern classical music - nay, to music itself.
Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre du Printemps” would also find virtuosic roots in posterity. Stravinsky himself acknowledged Carlo’s premature stylistic genius and would go on to pay homage to Gesualdo in his lifetime by making pilgrimage to Naples and composing a work entitled “Gesualdo Monument," in honor of the late murderous Composer.
If anything positive can be drawn from the tragic life of the Prince of Venosa, it is this: that even drowning beneath the turbulent and undulating undercurrent of mental illness, it’s iron fisted grip on the fragile human psyche cannot undermine the hidden genius that exists in man... that in judging any given event in any given region in the annals of human history, one must consider the social, economical and political factors that surrounded the State in it’s epoch.
One simply must take into account the violent and dogmatic time in which men like Gesualdo lived in order to have for him or herself a concise picture in mind of the period in which the transgressor and victims met their fates. Abstract analysis favors neither the condoning nor excusing of actions.
Perdono di Carlo Gesualdo, 1609.
In the case of Carlo Gesualdo, certainly, one inevitably finds indisputable criminal brutality. This finding however, is foreshadowed by a class warfare, immature scientific discovery in the annals of medicine, and in a particularly archaic and misogynistic series of laws that seemed to favor the privileged man. Laws that may have left the critically insane like Carlo Gesualdo free to engage in unpunished criminal behavior. Indeed, it was custom in Italy at the time of the slaying of Donna Maria D’Avalos and the Duke of Andria, for the cheating wife of a man and her lover to be tried and sentenced to death for adultery. Had this not been the case, had the disastrous effects on the human psyche and products of incest been common knowledge, and had mental illness been recognized as an actual condition, instead of the protestations of an angry God, punishing mankind for it’s manifold sins, perhaps the crimes of the Prince of Venosa would have been taken more seriously, and perhaps - just perhaps - the biography of Carlo Gesualdo may have read differently.
But then, that is a lot to have expected from that distant period. Indeed, it is a lot to expect today, where, in various parts of the world, sin is still punished by death, and examples are still being made by exacting the ultimate punishment through a barrage of unbridled violence and brutality. Many of the tortures and punishments the world sees today are in fact nothing more than archaic methods, inherited by modern man that have continued to exist since some of humanities most primitive times..the bedchambers and boudoirs of yesteryear become today’s battlegrounds and bunkers. Mankind continues, and will continue for the foreseeable future, to live and die by their ‘honor,’ by their station in this world, and by God.
If you listen closely, it is said you can hear the anger, angst, passions - and perhaps even guilt - in the music of Carlo Gesualdo.
Carlo Gesualdo's Moro Lasso, Al Mio Duolo from book IV, Madrigali Libro Sesto.
When studying the lives of the great innovators and composers of Opera and Classical music in times past, one trend seems to run so rampant amongst these prolific minds that it seems to jump off the page. I am speaking of the markèd appearance of mental derangement amongst many of the 16th to 20th century composers who lay at the forefront of Western Classical Music, each of whom shared, in varying degrees of severity, a cognitive degradation which would manifest itself over time, as a result of physical disease and aberrant psychological pathology.
Conductor Carlos Kleiber
As we have already seen in my posts on late sixteenth century Murderer-Prince and Secular Composer Carlo Gesualdo and in the lives of twentieth century conductors Erich and Carlos Kleiber - and not to mention the famous patrons of Wagner and his contemporaries - mental illness, in it’s vast and varied forms, ran the full gamut from depression and it’s resulting anxieties, to obsessive compulsions and megalomanics (I admit, as in the case of Wagner), all the way to the opposite end of the wellness spectrum with hyper-sexual pedophiles (as seen in one Aleksandr Scriabin), to murderers and proponents of suicide. We have also seen a rampant "supernatural cultism" (in the form of superstitions and their believers) emerge from followers of Verdi and Paganini, who considered the ‘cosmic reality’ found in the works of these virtuosos as being so ethereal, they believed the musicians themselves to be of a paranormal origin: in the case of Verdi, a deity on earth. In Paganini, il diavolo possessed (the former a school of thought we would see again in the life of - and indeed, after the death of - the late soprano Maria Callas.) Others would take 'occultism' one step further, as in the case of Gesualdo and Scriabin, both of the criminal sub-set of society. Whilst each were undoubtedly exceptionally erudite characters from a creative perspective, both composers considered themselves proponents and practitioners of the ‘art’ of 'witchcraft.' This is not to suggest that any form of mental illness is a requirement for genius, as is commonly believed. As we will see, particularly in the case of Anton Bruckner, (and as already noted in my post on Gesualdo), many of the ailments suffered by so many of our most beloved composers and members of the classical arts were, at least in part, very much a product of the times in which they lived. In most instances, medical advancements in the area of psychology still had much room to grow (one can successfully argue that this field remains in it’s infancy stage even today) and, in some cases, germ-theory was practically non existent, resulting in catastrophic degrees of disaster and repeated states of religious turmoil. We begin our descent into madness with a select group of composers, performers and musicians, each of whom were considered to be ‘touched’ (a highly derogatory term formally used to describe the mentally afflicted) not only by a prolific genius, but also by something considered far more sinister by their contemporaries:
GLENN GOULD
20th century pianist Glenn Gould.
This native of Toronto, Canada was afflicted with a case of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) that presented itself with dips of incapacitating anxieties related to germs and general human interaction. The renowned pianist would leave the touring circuit at the height of his success and extricate himself from his own mother’s death bed (so afraid of the germs in hospitals was Gould.) A common recluse for most of his adult life, it is debatable whether this innovator of Bach’s Goldberg Variations lived in a state of severe depression due to his self-imposed lack of social interaction, or whether he found solace and comfort in isolation (much about OCD is highly misinterpreted and misunderstood - even amongst many of the professionals who diagnose it.)
The virtuoso once claimed to “love the night and darkness”, had dreamed about vacationing to the uninhabited polar regions of Canada (a dream and likeness I share!) and famously debased the touring circuit and it’s residual fame as unnecessary and gauche when he declared ‘audiences en masse’ to be “hideous...a force of evil.”
It is said that outside of a few romances (one of which carried with it children), Gould had almost no friends at all - likely as a result of his isolation. It is believed the reclusive pianist shifted his idle focus onto his own person in his later years of life, becoming one inch shy of turning into a full blown hypochondriac. The pianist allegedly kept a detailed log of any physical manifestations or imperfections he’d find whilst examining his body, and visited a series of doctors in order to create for himself a 'perfect cocktail' of drugs which he would take at his leisure as a result of the prescriptions he had obtained while ‘doctor shopping’. The infamously mysterious and eccentric pianist died alone, in October 1982 in his hometown of Toronto, Canada.
GUSTAV MAHLER & ARNOLD SCHOENBERG
Austrian Composer Arnold Schoenberg
Late 19th-early 20th century Viennese composers Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg, respectively, also suffered from depression-induced self-isolation and OCD-like symptoms (while not at the threshold of Gould, who used to soak his hands in water so hot, they glowed a bright hue of red.)
OCD is not relegated only to the musical
realm - one famous victim of the illness,
twentieth century tycoon and aviator Howard
Hughes suffered incapacitating symptoms
which were so ill managed by the end
of his life that the handsome entrepreneur who
seemed to have it all (much like our beloved
composers) was reportedly unrecognizable
at the time of death - a result of years of
malnutrition culminating from the time spent
performing cleansing rituals - and possible
alleged drug use (chronic pain often goes
hand in hand with OCD. The common school of
thought would seem to suggest an unconscious
desire for control over environment in lieu of
control over pain.)
Schoenberg famously brought the topic of Triskaidekaphobia (an intense fear of the number 13) to light, and tried to avoid the number at all costs through most of his adult life, compulsively seeking the ‘visions’ of astrologers. It is said the composer’s greatest fear was that he would meet his demise during any year that was a multiple of the number 13. He would spend many a birthday in a self-imposed seclusion, terrified at the thought of what might happen.
In 1939, Schoenberg had a friend consult an astrologer to get the final word on his limited mortality, so afraid was the composer of turning sixty five the following year (1940: 9+4 =13.) His birthday, of course, came and went without incident. That didn’t stop the obsessive Austrian from again consulting his band of astrologers, who, to Schoenberg’s horror, informed the composer of another 13 - this time hidden in his age at 1950: seventy-six (7 and 6, of course, equal 13.) The astrologer wrote in his correspondence to Schoenberg, not of a fatality per se - but rather of something of undetermined significance that would be occurring that year. Oddly enough, the year 1950 would be the ill-fated composer’s last. He died, twelve minutes before midnight - on Friday, the thirteenth day of July, 1951. He had just missed his 77th birthday by two months..which, bizarrely, would have been on September thirteenth, 1951.
Gustav Mahler is a special case: having survived the deaths of six of his young siblings (mostly from scarlet fever and diphtheria - two highly fatal infectious diseases that would not see a curb in mortalities until the ‘accidental’ discovery of penicillin by Sir Alexander Fleming in September of 1928) and having witnessed the suicide of another young brother, Otto, who shot himself to death in 1895 when Mahler was 35.
Austrian Composer Gustav Mahler
Gustav was especially close to Otto, and his death prompted the then-middle aged composer to famously declare "I am thrice homeless, as a native of Bohemia in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew throughout the world. Everywhere an intruder, never welcomed" – an indication of destiny’s decree to thrust upon him a life tampered with forced periods of isolation and seclusion, remarkably affecting the composer’s outlook on life. Sadly, tragedy would strike again for down-trodden composer, when his own kin, daughter Maria Anna (his eldest by his wife and fellow composer Alma Mahler) died at the untimely age of four from a sinister culprit well known to Gustav: scarlet fever and diphtheria. Mahler’s only reaction to a life filled with such catastrophe was to immerse himself in music - themes of death were a regular occurrence in his compositions, most notably (and ironically) in his setting to music of the so-named “Kindertotenlieder” - a series of poems by famed German poet Friedrich Rückert, which deal with the psychological impact of the deaths of children, which he had commenced just six years prior to Maria Anna’s death.) Conversely, it can be seen later in life that Mahler seemed to resign himself to an intense desire to experience self-imposed isolation. He had confided in his wife that he wished nothing more than to “experience a life in isolation” with her, and, later, in a letter to his beloved, he mused on the spiritual aspects of such a life: “...when one spends longer periods on one’s own, one comes to a unity with nature...this is only normal. Isolation helps us to find ourselves, and from there it is but a small step to God...”
A disheveled portrait of Russian composer
Modest Mussorgsky as he appeared
just days before his death.
Obsessive Compulsives and complex phobias weren’t the only illnesses to manifest themselves in the lives of the Great Composers. The physical (and mental) effects of drug abuse and alcoholism would claim the lives of noted librettists Paul Marie Verlaine and Charles Baudelaire, whose toxin of choice was Absinthe (a alcoholic tonic later made famous by famed author Oscar Wilde), and in Baudelaire’s case, a toxic mixture of the drink, laudanum (an extract of an opiate similar to morphine) and opium (a drug famously used and propitiated by French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz, who famously composed La Symphonie Fantastique under it’s influence in 1830.) Much like the late Verlaine, composers Modest Mussorgsky and Johannes Brahms would suffer cirrhosis of the liver and it’s unsightly side effect of jaundice, and in Brahms case, a lifelong addiction to alcohol and an already diseased liver would later turn into cancer of the same organ. In both instances, drink would kill both megalithic composers.
Schizophrenia would rob from the stage a Russian (and indeed, a Parisian) icon in internationally celebrated ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, who, after a period of forced sabbatical in Budapest during the first world war, would unsuccessfully try to initiate a tour of South America in 1917. Two years later, an underlying illness that had only formerly manifested itself as Obsessive-compulsive in nature would be diagnosed in the form of Schizophrenia when telltale symptoms of the illness began to rear their head following the dancer's arrest in Hungary and a failed tour. He would live the rest of his life (some thirty years) in and out of mental asylums, never once returning to the stage. A great many prolific composer were said to suffer from "Severe Depression" (now known as Major Depression):
Russian composer Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky
There is Sergei Rachmaninoff, who famously dedicated his Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor to his psychiatrist, Hector Berlioz(also afflicted with OCD and who had once attempted a murder-suicide), Composer-Prince Carlo Gesualdo(alleged to have suffered a lifelong depression following his criminally culpable murder of his ex-wife, her lover and child in the 16th century) and Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky, who is believed to have committed suicide by intentionally drinking cholera-infected water following a lifelong struggle with homosexuality - and that's just to mention a scant few. As remains the case today, there existed those whose obsessions and/or depressions were so great they may have taken suicidal measures as an antidote:
Italian (and later French) composer Jean-Baptiste Lully
French composer and director of the Académie Royale de Musique,Jean Baptiste Lully was said to be so obsessed with, and so overcome by the shunning of King Louis XIV of France due to the former's homosexuality, that he initiated a frenzied performance of his setting of the Te Deum (which he had composed especially for the King) in 1687, violently pounding a largeconducting staff to the floor. In an overabundant display of emotion, the hapless conductor accidentally missed his mark and stabbed himself through the foot instead. 17th century Europe was far from the age of medical revolution. After a brief period of cupping, blood-letting and leech therapy, infection set in. The stalwart Lully could think only of the King, whom he had once taught to dance, and refused what likely would have been a life-saving amputation. The enamored musician was warned of the the consequences of failing to have the operation, but it was of no use - Baptiste would have none of it. He needed to dance with the King - and therefore the leg needed to stay.
Unfortunately for Lully, gangrene set in, traveling to and infecting his brain, killing the love-struck composer.
Erich Kleiber
Fellow conductors, this time of the 20th century,Erich and Carlos Kleiber (father and son, respectively), are both rumored to have committed suicide (although in both cases, this is speculative.) The patriarch Kleiber was found by a young Carlos, submerged in a tub, in a pool of his own blood inside of the family bathroom in January of 1956 following his rejection as music director of the Vienna State Opera. Erich was said to have mourned greatly for this oversight prior to his death. Some sixty years later, Erich’s consummate son Carlos, would himself be found dead under mysterious circumstances. Carlos was notorious for his need to self-isolate, rarely even finding himself on the podium (as compared to contemporaries.) He was considered to be a troubled genius of mammoth proportions, yet little is known about his private life. What we do know, from the interviews of his personal physician, is that Carlos was diagnosed late in life with a treatable form of Prostate Cancer. We know that the recently retired Carlos refused any form of treatment, and, following the death of his beloved wife Stanka, holed himself high up in the hills of Slovenia, just adjacent to the burial ground in which his wife lay. His body would later be found by his daughter on a visit to the home some six days post-mortem. Whether the enigmatic icon committed suicide (as it is alleged his father had sixty years prior), and by what method - or simply died as a result of the untreated cancer flowing through his veins - will likely never be known, and if there exists anyone who does know, it seems fitting that the legacy of the intensely private conductor live on in an lasting and enigmatic mystery. One thing about Carlos’ mental state at the time of his death can be said for certain: the conductor was quite bereaved at the loss of his beloved Stanka. Certainly, it is reasonable to infer from her passing and the circumstances surrounding his own demise a suggestion of prolonged suicide: Carlos had to have known, after all, that refusing any treatment for his cancer diagnosis would be an exercise of almost certain futility. Even if a ‘quick’ method of suicide were not a distinct possibility, the decision to let nature run it’s course certainly would have been a fatal one.
English conductor Sir Edward Downes
There is another conductor, this one who lived in more recent times, who also had a hand in his own death. Much like the understandably difficult physical and mental experiences of Beethoven and Bach, who had gone deaf and blind respectively (whilst still in their productive years), 20th century English conductor Sir Edward Downes would meet his end both visionless and anacusic.
The good conductor surely must have empathized with the tragic plight of Bach, who had the misfortune of undergoing a botched cataract surgery - performed by the 18th century's most nefarious ‘quack’, the Chevalier John Taylor - whose questionable methods had left him completely blind.
Like the baroque maestro, Sir Edward Downes knew of the mental anguish that accompanied the loss of such important senses (tragic for anyone - especially so for a conductor) that he, at age 85, alongside his wife, Lady Joan Downes took the modern (and what I believe to be the respectable) approach, when they applied for, and were granted, the services of physician-assisted suicide at the infamous Dignitas Clinic in Zürich, Switzerland on July 10th, 2009.
Both drank, under the supervision of a qualified pro-end-of-life physician, a lethal cocktail of antimetics and barbiturates, before succumbing peacefully into oblivion.
John Taylor was a known ‘oculist’ who would perform
surgeries in the public town square, and was said to leave
town ‘before the bandages came off’. His solution for his
disastrous surgery on Bach was remedied by the common
‘quack’ methods of the day: blood letting and cupping!
Within four short months, the composer would be dead.
Astonishingly, the Chevalier Taylor performed the same
procedure on Georg Friedrich Händel - who he also blinded.
The psychological effects of physical disease are not always secondary or psychosomatic in nature. Serious infections, if left untreated, can manifest themselves in a variety of aberrant and involuntary behaviors, often resulting in fatality. This was the case for the following slew of prolific composers, all of whom suffered from varying degrees of psychopathy as a direct result of a virulent strain of syphilis:
Franz Schubert -died in November 1828.
Although the official cause of death is listed as typhoid fever, later re-examinations into the death of Austrian composer and prolific pianist Franz Schubert has indicated a cause of death resulting from the use of mercury as a means of treatment for the tertiary (late) stages of Syphilis. Although there is scant literature available that dialogues the mental state of the late composer, there does exist a wealth of information in the form of reports concerning the physical symptoms that would seem to support the mercury theory. It is said the beloved pianist experienced a wide range of maladies: headaches and swollen joints, fevers and vomiting so severe Schubert is believed to have starved to death, unable to keep down any food.
Mikhail Glinka -died in February of 1857.
Although the composer is said to have died following a seasonal viral infection, Glinka’s own memoirs detail the psychological ramifications of syphilis:“thoughts [are] crowded my brain unasked” (a sign of a severe condition known as "General paresis of the insane" which strongly mimics the symptoms of schizophrenia, brought upon by late-stage syphilis). The composer also alluded to “musical hallucinations” prior to his death (typical of general paresis).
Hugo Wolf -died in an insane asylum in February of 1903, in a state of psychosis - the result of syphilis.
Wolf was only 43 when he died, and had only recently survived a failed suicide attempt.
Gaetano Donizetti - died in April of 1848 in a state of psychosis (believed to be bi-polar disorder) and paralysis brought upon by an untreated case of syphilis, which had later developed into the more serious, and fatal neurosyphilis (when the infection reaches, and spreads, throughout the brain and/or spinal cord of the victim.)
Robert Schumann -died in July of 1856.
Schumann is an interesting case. The German composer and pianist suffered from a lifelong case of mental illness, described by contemporary physicians as any and every psychopathy known to man, from ‘melancholic depression’ to ‘bi-polar disorder’ and ‘schizophrenia’ just to name a few.
He was also syphilitic.
One modern belief is that the hallucinations, suicidal tendencies (he survived a failed suicide attempt in 1854 after which he entered into an insane asylum in Endenich, near Bonn, entirely of his own volition) and the depressive nature experienced by the composer later in life were the result of the beginnings of neurosyphilis. Supporters of this ‘diagnosis’ believe the pianist first became infected as a youth, and the notoriously slow-moving virus would not reach the brain until relatively close in time to his death. They note the similarity in the aberrant psychopathy displayed in Schumann with that of neurosyphilis and the unfortunate results of mercury poisoning (the primary method of treatment at the time.)
Ludwig van Beethoven -died in March of 1827.
Doctors who performed the autopsy on Beethoven would cite the cause and manner of death to have been acute liver damage brought about by alcohol abuse. Since then, modern scholars of this period, medical professionals and scientists alike would re-examine those results. What really caused the death of Beethoven remains under hot debate, with causes ranging from alcoholic cirrhosis and infectious hepatitis, to lead poisoning and syphilis.
It seems the infamous range of moods exhibited by the composer in his final years may not have been the result of (only) his complete loss of hearing.
Bedřich Smetana - believed to have died as a result of advanced stages of syphilis, (in all likelihood neurosyphilis).
This Czech composer’s death in May 1884 was initially thought to have been the result of senile dementia. It was through the protestations of his family, and modern scientific analysis of biological material that a conclusion of syphilis (and it's resulting mental derangement) would be made. Alternative "diagnoses" abound regarding the true cause of the death of Smetana. An alternative theory, posited at the dawn of the present century by Czech facial surgeon Jirí Ramba (who examined the composer's skull as part of an anthropological research study) believes Smetana suffered from a chronic case of bone inflammation - the result of a horrific childhood accident involving the explosion of gunpowder to the face. According to the doctor, an 11-year old Smetana was engaged in a dangerous game with childhood friends which involved the burial of a glass bottle filled with gunpowder into a field. It initially failed to explode, prompting young Bedřich to investigate. The glass is said to have exploded in the boy's face, sending shards of glass and fertilized soil into his skin. Smetana is believed to have hastily washed his wounds in dirty water from a nearby pond, leading to what Ramba calls "a chronic [case of] inflammation."
Not all agree with Ramba's findings however - and the case for syphilis remains a distinct possibility as the the cause of death for the composer.
Unfortunately for our above described beloved composers, much like in the case of Gustav Mahler, the disease which robbed them of their livelihood and life existed in a free-for-all state until the advent of penicillin, which, in 99 percent of the cases mentioned, would not be discovered until the following century.
Germ theory itself would not begin to become realized until the late 18th century, when two Parisian ‘men of reason’, professor and physician Jean Noël Hallé, and his unwitting assistant unexpectedly stumbled upon a germ-infection-disease connection while attempting to figure out why ‘smells’ seemed to have a propensity to ‘kill’[1] in the midst of the French Revolution. Such a mammoth discovery, yet so infantile in contemporary perspective.
Europe, as we have seen in the above examples with our composers, still very much practiced the quack medicine from days of yore, when it was commonly believed that disease and pandemics (the bubonic plague of the 14th century being one) were result of mankind’s manifold sin and an angry God punishing them through the deployment of miasmas (foul, diseased air from the bowels of hell), to the ancient practice of Galenic medicine based on a dubious humoral theory. The cure-all was a mixture prayer for the former, and of natural tonics, penance, blood letting and a monitoring of the bodies four ‘humours’ and their corresponding 'temperaments' through naked-eye urine examination for the latter.
The 'Four Temperaments' as defined by their
respective four humors: phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine and melancholic.
See: external link: four humors wiki
It is quite easy, even after the scientific breakthroughs made in France at the height of the revolution, to imagine a skeptical populous. For so long they had relied upon faith and natural healing. The addition of mercury to the equation was no different: at the time of treatment of many of our above mentioned composers, mercury - although showcasing some dental and epidermal side effects - was not known to the afflicted patients or to their contemporaries as toxic, and certainly, not fatal.
The primary method of treatment at the time, mercury had taken precedence over the practice of boiling and inhaling the vapor of the sudorific wood Guaiacum, or Guayaco and its resin, derived from the Caribbean-native Guaiacum tree. It had long been professed that once inhaled (and the body immersed in hot compresses soaked in the solution), the so-called "holy wood" would begin to rebalance an infected patient's "humors" by inducing perspiration ("sweating out" the evil, and thereby, the disease itself.) This earlier method of treatment first appeared in medical recipe-related literature in the early 16th century. It was evident to sufferers however, that a stronger approach was needed: although the adverse effects experienced by syphilitics employing this method paled in contrast to those experienced by patients undergoing mercury treatment, it's efficacy in curing the disease proved as negligible. Unfortunately, for many musicians and citizens residing in the cities occupied by Napoleonic armies in the nineteenth century, the disease which ran rampant in the bordellos and whorehouses frequented by the troops quickly spread into the general population, wreaking havoc upon its residents and killing droves of otherwise robust men (and women) well before their time.
Anton Bruckner
I will close this post with none other than Austrian composer Anton Bruckner, whose curious psychopathy consisted of a mélange of disorder, including a possible case of non-sexual necrophilia.
This 19th century romantic composer suffered from numeromania (a symptom of OCD, consisting of a compulsive need to count items and perform repetitive behaviors in a order and count specific to that individual), crippling bouts of insecurity and a possible obsession with the composers Richard Wagner and Ludwig van Beethoven.
Of these many ailments, the most destructive and certainly the most peculiar of the bunch was Bruckner's alleged morbid, non-sexual curiosity with corpses.
The composer was known to frequent graveyards, often visiting burials unannounced (at the funerals of total strangers, no less), once even losing a lens from his pince-nez in the exhumed coffin of Beethoven, so curiously adamant was Anton to get a closer view of the rotting corpse. As in the case of almost all of the musicians mentioned in this post, the psychological ‘diagnoses’ of the times, and, even of more modern re-examinations, remain speculative and, in some instances, controversial.
In the case of Anton Bruckner, one also has to look at the social and political state of the country, and indeed, the era itself. As we have already seen in our syphilitic patients who partook in mercury treatment, a diagnosis of mental illness and the symptoms which accompany it can effectively disguise itself as psychosis instead of the residual result of poisoning.
Not to be outdone by 19th century
successors, the body snatchers' Burke,
Hare or Holmes, anatomist and
historically renowned 'father of modern
surgery' John Hunter not only
knowingly received stolen corpses,
he was also known to
solicit from resurrectionists cadavers by
means of bribery, notoriously purchasing
for himself the cadaver of
famed 18th century "freakshow"
carnival attraction Charles Byrne
in 1783 for 500 pounds (although
some reports suggest the figure paid to
have been even less)
In Brucker’s case, the public dissection of cadavers was all the rage in nineteenth century Europe. As anatomists welcomed the beck and call of the birth of modern surgery in the late 18th and well into the 19th century, an entire industry of body-snatchers was born (the most infamous being the two Williams - Scottish thieves-turned murderers Burke and Hare,and, across the Atlantic Ocean to the West, in the city of Chicago, one H.H. Holmes:former body-snatcher,[2] present architect, conman and killer), one that was notoriously supported on the sly by such prolific and innovative surgeons like John Hunter, now regarded by many as the ‘father’ of modern surgery. So widespread was the public display of cadavers during this period, body-snatchers even had a name: “Resurrectionists”. Following the passing of the Murder Act of 1752 in the United Kingdom, which allowed judges to transpose the post-mortem judicial sentences imposed upon executed killers from public display (a sentence designed to act as a deterrent for any would-be criminals, in which the executed corpse is left to publicly rot amongst the elements - usually by hanging in a suspended cage attached to a tree) to being used as medical cadavers for a public display of legal medical dissection.
Many a 'ressurectionist', having previously supplied to anatomists cadavers by entirely legal means would succumb to an overwhelming sense of greed and would, such as in the cases of Burke, Hare, and Holmes,[2] resort to a series of murderous rampages and grave-robbing (illegally exhuming corpses from graveyards, usually under the cover of night) in order to secure for themselves financial gain. Hunter himself was known to receive such victims, fully cognizant of their suspect origins. It is easy to imagine, in the course of his travels, Bruckner visiting one of these dissections made famous by anatomists of the stature of Hunter. It is highly possible that Bruckner, along with many 19th century contemporaries simply possessed a desensitization to the sight of lifeless flesh, along with a budding curiosity in a rapidly expanding medical sector and it's dark and seedy demi-monde that seemed to rule the popular press of the day, and that perhaps, just perhaps - he was simply curious to see his old idol and muse in Beethoven. It seems, in the area of medicine, almost anything - especially where mental health is concerned - is open to speculation.
Footnotes:
[1]The physician Jean Noël Hallé, and his unwitting assistant, one Mitarbeiter Boncerf, would become one of the early pioneers of Germ Theory quite by accident. Responding to the very vocal laments of the Parisian public regarding noxious odors permeating the residences surrounding the River Seine, Hallé and Boncerf set out on a mission to discover the etiology of the smells, and to map for the French citizens the most densely impacted areas which presented it’s inhabitants with a motley brew of olefactory nightmares and grievances. Setting up a 10 kilometer perimeter alongside the River Seine – a common latrine and waste ground for human and animal flesh – the good doctor and his cohort began in the west at the Pont au Change mud bank, ripe with freshly human waste fed by the open sewers of the Châtelet district, whose inhabitants, Hallé observed, had scarcely grown accustomed to the noxious odors provided by the detritus dumped by local slaughterhouses into the channel. So pungent was the East, as reported by locals, that Hallé set off M. Boncerf alone to document the causative agents of the foul aromas. It is said that within a half hour spent inside the eastern perimeter, Boncerf had already found himself assaulted with an ulcerative throat and swollen jaw. It would only be after Boncerf’s recovery from his most mysterious aliment that Hallé and his aide began to hypothesize on the idea of smell differentiation: those that merely assaulted the senses, and those that carried with it the prime ingredients required to brew up a motley concoction of harm. In retrospect, Hallé’s primitive yet revolutionary findings can arguably be considered an early foray into the idea of Germ theory at best - at the very least, it laid the foundation for it’s further analysis. It would be through the identification of both chemical and biological waste products brought about by the process of tanning that Hallé would first make his most notable connection between organic matter and disease. Hallé’s experiments alongside Monsieur Boncerf, which were geared toward proving the idea of germ- disease/infection - death (a largely underground theory in the time of the physician) and largely involving butcheries and the tanneries densely packed alongside the Île-de-France région in Paris during the period of French revolution would be instrumental in the ‘field’ of germ theory, which at the time of Hallé’s revolutionary discoveries, existed only as a fleeting hypotheses amongst a few yet densely numbered sects of physicians and scientists who often found themselves at odds with the humorists and theologians, whose theories largely relied on the belief of the existence of ‘miasmas’ - foul mists emerging from the bowels of hell which were sent to earth by an omnipotent and vengeful God who employed them as a means of combating what contemporary laymen referred to as "carnal sin." The byproduct of in/organic waste – in particular odors - caused by chemicals used in local factories and the excrement of animals were also widely regarded by contemporary laymen as a causative agent of illness and early mortalities. The odorous effects of the practice of tanning animal hides by means of treating animal carcasses, stripping it of it’s flesh, and immersing the hide in mixtures of lime and both human and animal urine and excrement in the Île-de-France région were believed to be the direct cause of a slew of deaths alongside the now buried river Bièvre in late 1700’s Paris. It would be through the staggering incidences of these early fatalities that Hallé found his curiosity emboldened, and he would use this newfound confidence alongside such statistical data as a means to facilitate the practice of experimentation based on the ideas held by fellow germ theorists.
Louis Pasteur
Whilst Hallé’s findings would cause a sensation amongst germ theorists – and would arguably be considered he beginning of true and widespread analyses supporting the idea (with dissenters taking a closer look at the fantastical idea), Germ Theory, in essence, would not be fully realized until later in the 19th century by fellow Frenchman and physician Louis Pasteur and the German physician Robert Koch, who, drawing on the extensive groundwork provided by theorists who shared the beliefs of Hallé, would go on to identify, through experimentation, the bacteria responsible for some of contemporary Europe’s most fatal diseases: the bacterium vibrio cholerae (Pasteur) (which was the causative agent of the water-borne illness cholera) and mycobacterium tuberculosis, which, at the time of discovery boasted a mortality rate of 1 in 4 infected patients across Europe and the United States. It would be Pasteur who would hog most of the spotlight through posterity. His groundbreaking discovery of an effective vaccination for anthrax on the use of cattle, goat and sheep at the Paris farm of Veterinarian and Germ-theory opponent Hippolyte Rosingnol in the late 19th century, considered the "first effective bacterial vaccine," would lay the foundation for the widespread acceptance of innoculation from disease - a method which continues to hold significant importance and yield grossly effective results to this very day.
It would be the physician's early experiments with the use of heat as a means to kill off yeast spores responsible for the deterioration of wine and other related tonics, and his use of the same premise to impede the pasteurization of milk that would lend to the food market Pasteur’s name: in drink we have the term “pasteurized milk” and in food, “pasteurized cheese.”
H.H. Holmes
[2]Holmes stole his victims not from graveyards, but rather from the morgue which he had direct access to during his tenure as a medical student at the University of Michigan in the late 19th century. He would proceed to disfigure, defile and defoul his cadavers before claiming the deceased to be victims of a 'terrible accident' in order to collect insurance monies courtesy of the policies he had taken out on his victims. It is believed Holmes chose to enroll at the University due to it's reputation as a hub for body-snatchers.
Analysis of / Image used in Title Card: The artistic embodiment of Syphilis, from Angolo Brozino's An Allegory with Venus and Cupid, c. 1545
