# Strange deaths



## yofaka (May 27, 2019)

Hi all,

A bid morbid in these times, I know, but do you know any anecdotes about composers/musicians who died in a remarkable way? 

For example Prokofiev who died on the same day as Stalin, and Lully who hit his foot with his conducting staff.

Stay safe,
Ilja


----------



## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Good reading material:
THE 13 STRANGEST COMPOSER DEATHS IN CLASSICAL MUSIC

Lully, Purcell, Scriabin, Berg, Webern, Leclair, Mozart, Alkan, Chausson, Wolf, Granados, Tchaikovsky, Vivier.


----------



## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Of course there are a number composers in addition to Granados, who died in the world wars of the 20th century: e.g. Alain, Butterworth, and perhaps most remarkable, Magnard, who died defending his home against the invading Germans.

Johann Schobert died after eating poisonous mushrooms that he insisted were edible.


----------



## Helgi (Dec 27, 2019)

Fritz Wunderlich (supposedly) stepped on his shoelaces and fell down a stairway in his friend's country house.


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

I've never listened to any of his music, but Frantisek Kotwara's death is quite famous.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frantisek_Kotzwara

On September 2, 1791 while he was in London, Kotzwara visited a prostitute named Susannah Hill in Vine Street, Westminster. After dinner with her in her lodgings, Kotzwara paid her two shillings and requested that she cut off his testicles. Hill refused to do so. Kotzwara then tied a ligature around the doorknob, the other end fastened around his neck, and proceeded to have sexual intercourse with Hill. After it was over, Kotzwara was dead. His is one of the first recorded deaths from erotic asphyxiation


----------



## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

The only one I know of is Lully
https://www.thepiano.sg/piano/read/...ucting-staff-ironic-death-jean-baptiste-lully


----------



## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

What has been seen cannot be unseen! Norman bates...


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

and while not particularly strange in itself, there's the curious particular about Schoenberg who had Triskaidekaphobia (fear of the number 13), and was obsessed by the number, and he died on July 13 1951.

https://interlude.hk/friday-the-13tharnold-schoenberg-and-triskaidekaphobia/


----------



## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Was it friday?


----------



## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Flamme said:


> Was it friday?


yes, apparently


----------



## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

I wrote these two for a limericks thread:

There was a composer named Lully
Who in business was a bit of a bully
But then: a misplaced baton,
A bad infection came on,
And he died of a foot wound, most cruelly

Despite young Scriabin's ineptness
His mystic-chord music’s infectious
But a boil on his lip
Paid for Sasha's last trip
To the Mysterium he went via sepsis

Not strange, but part of the set:

Robert Schumann composed to great fame
But in the end died confined and insane
For back then ‘twas no joke:
One infelicitous poke
And foul syphilis devoured ones brain


----------



## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Kewl, u can decently RAP on this...


----------



## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

There were some unusual causes of death among lesser known composers:

Marc Blitzstein was stabbed after attempting to pick up three sailors in Martinique.
Wallingford Riegger died after tripping over the leashes of two fighting dogs. 
John Barnes Chance was adjusting a tent in his back yard when the metal pole came in contact with an electrified fence. 
Norbert Burgmüller drowned during an epileptic seizure. 
Carlo Pedrotti committed suicide by jumping into the Adige River. 
Ascanio Trombetti was murdered by the husband of his lover.
Alessandro Stradella was murdered by a hired killer.
Thomas Stoltzer died by slipping while crossing a flood-swollen river in Carpathia, losing his footing and being swept away by the current.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

"Anton Cajetan Adlgasser (sometimes Anton Cajetan Adelgasser; 1 October 1729 - 23 December 1777) was a German organist and composer at Salzburg Cathedral and at court, and composed a good deal of liturgical music (including eight masses and two requiems) as well as oratorios and orchestral and keyboard works.
Born in Inzell, Bavaria, he moved to Salzburg, where he studied under Johann Ernst Eberlin. From 1750 he was organist at the Salzburg Cathedral, where he remained the rest of his life. After a visit to Italy in 1764-5 he set Metastasio's La Nitteti (his only opera) performed in Salzburg (1767), and in 1767 he collaborated with Mozart and Michael Haydn on the oratorio Die Schuldigkeit des ersten Gebots. Mozart, who had a high regard for Adlgasser's music, succeeded him as Organist at Salzburg Cathedral in 1777. Adlgasser's first marriage, in 1752, was to Maria Josepha, the daughter of his predecessor, J.E. Eberlin, at Salzburg Cathedral. Four years later he married Maria Barbara Schwab, and in 1769 the court singer Maria Anna Fesemayer (1743-82), who sang in Die Schuldigkeit and created the role of Ninetta in La finta semplice. Leopold Mozart stood witness to the third wedding.
He died at Salzburg in 1777 of a stroke suffered while playing the organ."

[ 1:30 ]


----------



## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Alkan was popularly "known" to have been crushed by a falling bookcase -- but I think that was shown to be apocryphal.


----------



## annaw (May 4, 2019)

Helgi said:


> Fritz Wunderlich (supposedly) stepped on his shoelaces and fell down a stairway in his friend's country house.


And he was only 36 years old...


----------



## wkasimer (Jun 5, 2017)

The French tenor Louis Cazette died from tetanus after being accidentally cut by a stage prop (a trident) during a rehearsal of Mireille. He was 34, and clearly destined for stardom:


----------



## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

Helgi said:


> Fritz Wunderlich (supposedly) stepped on his shoelaces and fell down a stairway in his friend's country house.


From what I've heard, he was drunk at the time, and speaking more generally maybe a little overindulgent in drink. (Maybe this is why his Das Lied von der Erde is so damn good).

A real tragedy. I think he was my favorite tenor by a wide margin. (Not familiar enough with all of the vocal soloists out there to say more definitively, but he towers over the rest).

My favorite strange death is Arnold Schoenberg, who so loved the number 12 that he devoted the latter half of his career to inventing a system of harmony which allows each of the 12 tones of the chromatic scale an equal voice, and who so feared the number 13 that he actually died on Friday the 13th. He made it almost to midnight, but not quite. Moreover, in his latter years he had consulted astrologists and numerologists for advice in day-to-day living, one of whom warned him that his 76th year would be a foreboding one (7+6=13), something he hadn't even thought of, and lo and behold, that was the year he died. Amazing.


----------



## caracalla (Feb 19, 2020)

The Italian Baroque composer Alessandro Stradella had a sideline in embezzling money from the Church, but was best known for seducing the wives and/or daughters and/or mistresses of his aristocratic employers. (Warning: Do NOT try this at home if you want to make old bones in 17thC Italy). Much of his career was spent on the hoof, fleeing from Bologna, to Rome, to Venice, to Turin and finally Genoa with hired assassins in hot pursuit. They caught up with him in Turin and left him for dead, incidentally causing an international incident. Perforated but undaunted, he then decamped to Genoa where he managed to upset the bigwigs in his usual manner, and was finally stabbed to death by a local hitman at the age of 38.


----------



## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Ernest Chausson collided with a wall when riding his bike. Suicide was suggested but I wouldn't have thought that was the most fool-proof way of going about it.


----------

