On 5 December 1791, the composer
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died at his home in Vienna, Austria at
the age of 35. The circumstances of his death have attracted much
research and speculation.
The principal sources of contention
are: (1) Whether Mozart declined gradually, experiencing great fear
and sadness, or whether he was fundamentally in good spirits toward
the end of his life, then felled by a relatively sudden illness; (2)
Whether the cause of his death was from disease or poisoning; (3)
Whether his funeral arrangements were the normal procedures for his
day, or if they were of a disrespectful nature.
There are a range of views on each of
these points, many of which have varied radically over time.
The course of Mozart's final illness
The traditional narrative
Mozart scholarship long followed the
accounts of early biographers, which proceeded in large part from the
recorded memories of his widow Constanze and her sister Sophie Weber
as they were recorded in the biographies by Franz Niemetschek and
Georg Nikolaus von Nissen. For instance, the important biography by
Hermann Abert largely follows this account. The following is a
summary of this view.
When in August 1791 Mozart arrived in
Prague to supervise the performance of his new opera La clemenza di
Tito (K. 621), he was "already very ill". During
this visit, Niemetschek wrote, "he was pale and expression
was sad, although his good humor was often shown in merry jest with
his friends." Following his return to Vienna (mid September
1791), Mozart's condition gradually worsened. For a while, he was
still able to work and completed his Clarinet Concerto (K. 622),
worked toward the completion of his Requiem (K. 626), and conducted
the premiere performance of The Magic Flute (K. 620) on 30 September.
Still, he became increasingly alarmed and despondent about his
health. An anecdote from Constanze is related by Niemetschek:
On his return to Vienna, his
indisposition increased visibly and made him gloomily depressed. His
wife was truly distressed over this. One day when she was driving in
the Prater with him, to give him a little distraction and amusement,
and they were sitting by themselves, Mozart began to speak of death,
and declared that he was writing the Requiem for himself. Tears came
to the eyes of the sensitive man: 'I feel definitely,' he continued,
'that I will not last much longer; I am sure I have been poisoned. I
cannot rid myself of this idea.'
Constanze attempted to cheer her
husband by persuading him to give up work on the Requiem for a while,
encouraging him instead to complete the "Freimaurerkantate"
(K. 623), composed to celebrate the opening of a new Masonic temple
for Mozart's own lodge. The strategy worked for a time – the
cantata was completed and successfully premiered on 18 November. He
told Constanze he felt "elated" over the premiere.
Mozart is reported to have stated, "Yes I see I was ill to
have had such an absurd idea of having taken poison, give me back the
Requiem and I will go on with it."
Mozart's worst symptoms of illness soon
returned, together with the strong feeling that he was being
poisoned. He became bedridden on 20 November, suffering from
swelling, pain and vomiting.
From this point on, scholars are all
agreed that Mozart was indeed very sick, and he died about two weeks
later, on December 5.
Revisionist accounts
The view that Mozart was in near-steady
decline and despair during the last several months of his life has
met with skepticism in recent years. Cliff Eisen supervised the
reissue of Abert's biography in 2007 in a new edition, supplementing
it with numerous footnotes. While generally deferential to Abert,
Eisen expresses sharp criticism in the footnoting of the section
leading up to Mozart's death:
...in this context, the evidence
cited by Abert is selective and suits the intended trajectory of his
biography. With the exception of citations from Mozart's letters, all
of the testimony is posthumous and prompted by complicated motives
both personal and financial. Although it is 'authentic' in the sense
that it derives from those who witnessed Mozart's death, or were
close to him, it is not necessarily accurate. ... To be sure, Mozart
was under the weather in Prague. But there is no evidence that he was
'very ill' and it is not true that his health 'continued to
deteriorate'. As Abert himself notes later in this chapter, Mozart's
health improved in October and early November.
In the main biography article of the
Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia, Ruth Halliwell writes of the
decline-and-despair account:
While later sources describe
[Mozart] as working feverishly on [his Requiem], filled with
premonitions of his own death, these accounts are hard to reconcile
with the high spirits of his letters from most of November.
Constanze's earliest account, published in Niemetschek's biography of
1798, states that Mozart 'told her of ... his wish to try his hand at
this type of composition, the more so as the higher forms of church
music had always appealed to his genius.' There is no hint that the
work was a burden to him.
As for why Constanze might have been
"prompted by complicated motives both personal and financial"
(Eisen), Halliwell contends that "Constanze and Sophie were
not objective witnesses, because Constanze's continuing quest for
charity gave her reasons to disseminate sentimental and
sensationalist views." By
"charity" Halliwell
may be referring to the many benefit concerts from which Constanze
received income in the years following Mozart's death, as well
as, perhaps, the pension she received from the Emperor; see
discussion below as well as Constanze Mozart.
Christoph Wolff, in a 2012 book
entitled Mozart at the Gateway to his Fortune, disputes the view that
Mozart's last years represented a steady slide to despair and the
grave; he also disagrees with interpretations of the music as
reflecting late-life despair (for example) "the hauntingly
beautiful autumnal world of [Mozart's] music written in 1791".
Cause of death
Theories involving homicide
An early rumor addressing the cause of
Mozart's death was that he was poisoned by his colleague Antonio
Salieri. This rumor, however, was not proven to be true, as the signs
of illness Mozart displayed did not indicate poisoning. Despite
denying the allegation, Salieri was greatly affected by the
accusations that he had contributed to Mozart's death, which
contributed to his nervous breakdowns in later life.
Beyond the Salieri theory, other
theories involving murder by poison have been put forth, blaming the
Masons, Jews, or both. One such theory was the work of Mathilde
Ludendorff, wife of the German general Erich Ludendorff. Historian
William Stafford describes such accounts as outlandish conspiracy
theories.
Theories involving disease
Stafford described the effort to
determine what disease killed Mozart:
What did he actually die of?
Mozart's medical history is like an inverted pyramid: a small corpus
of primary documentation supports a large body of secondary
literature. There is a small quantity of direct eye-witness testimony
concerning the last illness and death, and a larger quantity of
reporting of what eye witnesses are alleged to have said. Altogether
it would not cover ten pages; some of it is vague, and some downright
unreliable. All too often later writers have used this data
uncritically to support pet theories. They have invented new
symptoms, nowhere recorded in the primary sources.
In the parish register, the entry
concerning Mozart's death states he died of "severe miliary
fever"; – "miliary" referring to the
appearance of millet-sized bumps on the skin. This does not name the
actual disease.
Mozart had health problems throughout
his life, suffering from smallpox, tonsillitis, bronchitis,
pneumonia, typhoid fever, rheumatism, and gum disease. Whether these
played any role in his demise cannot be determined.
Conjectures as to what killed Mozart
are numerous. The following survey is arranged in rough chronological
order.
Some ascribe Mozart's death to
malpractice on the part of his physician, Dr. Closset. His
sister-in-law Sophie Weber, in her 1825 account, makes the
implication. Borowitz summarizes:
When Mozart
appeared to be sinking, one of his doctors, Dr. Nikolaus Closset, was
sent for and finally located at the theater. However, according to
Sophie's account, that drama-lover "had to wait till the
piece was over." When he arrived, he ordered cold compresses
put on Mozart's feverish brow, but these "provided such a shock
that he did not regain consciousness again before he died.
A 1994 article in Neurology suggests
Mozart died of a subdural hematoma. A skull believed to be Mozart's
was saved by the successor of the gravedigger who had supervised
Mozart's burial, and later passed on to anatomist Josef Hyrtl, the
municipality of Salzburg, and the Mozarteum museum (Salzburg).
Forensic reconstruction of soft tissues related to the skull reveals
substantial concordance with Mozart's portraits. Examination of the
skull suggested a premature closure of the metopic suture, which has
been suggested on the basis of his physiognomy. A left temporal
fracture and concomitant erosions raise the question of a chronic
subdural hematoma, which would be consistent with several falls in
1789 and 1790 and could have caused the weakness, headaches, and
fainting Mozart experienced in 1790 and 1791. Additionally, an
episode of aggressive bloodletting used to treat suspected rheumatic
fever on the night of December 4, 1791, could have decompensated such
a lesion, leading to his death on the following day.
In a 2000 publication, a team of two
physicians (Faith T. Fitzgerald, Philip A. Mackowiak) and a
musicologist (Neal Zaslaw) reviewed the historical evidence and
tentatively opted for a diagnosis of rheumatic fever.
The hypothesis of trichinosis was put
forth by Jan V. Hirschmann in 2001.
A suggestion is that Mozart died as a
result of his hypochondriasis and his predilection for taking patent
medicines containing antimony. In his final days, this was compounded
by further prescriptions of antimony to relieve the fever he clearly
suffered.
A 2006 article in a UK medical journal
considered several theories for Mozart's death and, based on his
letters from his last year, dismisses syphilis and other chronic
diseases. The attending physicians wrote he died with fever and a
rash, and a physician they consulted wrote later "this malady
attacked at this time a great many of the inhabitants and not for a
few of them it had the same fatal conclusions and the same symptoms
as in the case of Mozart." The article's conclusion was
"death came as a result of an acute infectious illness."
In 2009, British, Viennese and Dutch
researchers performed epidemiological research combined with a study
of other deaths in Vienna at the time of Mozart's death. They
concluded that Mozart may have died of a streptococcal infection
leading to an acute nephritic syndrome caused by poststreptococcal
glomerulonephritis. In Austria this disease was also called
"Wassersucht" (dropsy/edema).
In a journal article from 2011, it was
suggested that Vitamin D deficiency could have played a role in
Mozart's underlying medical conditions leading to his death.
Funeral
The funeral arrangements were made by
Mozart's friend and patron Baron Gottfried van Swieten. Describing
his funeral, the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians states,
"Mozart was buried in a common grave, in accordance with
contemporary Viennese custom, at the St. Marx Cemetery outside the
city on 7 December." Otto Jahn wrote in 1856 that Salieri,
Süssmayr, van Swieten and two other musicians were present.
The common belief that Mozart was
buried in a pauper's grave is without foundation. The "common
grave" referred to above is a term for a grave belonging to a
citizen not of the aristocracy. It was an individual grave, not a
communal grave; but after ten years the city had the right to dig it
up and use it for a later burial. The graves of the aristocracy were
spared such treatment.
A description of Mozart's funeral,
attributed to Joseph Deiner, appeared in the Vienna Morgen-Post of 28
January 1856:
The night of Mozart's death was dark
and stormy; at the funeral, too, it began to rage and storm. Rain and
snow fell at the same time, as if Nature wanted to shew her anger
with the great composer's contemporaries, who had turned out
extremely sparsely for his burial. Only a few friends and three women
accompanied the corpse. Mozart's wife was not present. These few
people with their umbrellas stood round the bier, which then taken
via the Grosse Schullerstrasse to the St. Marx Cemetery. As the storm
grew ever more violent, even these few friends determined to turn
back at the Stuben Gate, and they betook themselves to the "Silver
Snake". Deiner, the landlord, was also present for the funeral.
As Slonimsky notes, the tale was widely
adopted and incorporated into Mozart biographies, but Deiner's
description of the weather is contrary to records kept of the
previous day. The diarist Karl Zinzendorf recorded on 6 December that
there had been "mild weather and frequent mist".
The Vienna Observatory kept weather records and recorded for 6
December a temperature ranging from 37.9 to 38.8 degrees Fahrenheit
(2.8 °C–3.8 °C), with "a weak east wind at all ... times
of the day".
Aftermath
Following her husband's death,
Constanze addressed the issue of providing financial security for her
family; the Mozarts had two young children, and Mozart had died with
outstanding debts. She successfully appealed to the Emperor on 11
December 1791 for a widow's pension due to her as a result of
Mozart's service to the Emperor as a part-time chamber composer.
Additionally, she organized a series of concerts of Mozart's music
and the publication of many of her husband's works. As a result,
Constanze became financially secure over time.
Soon after the composer's death a
Mozart biography was started by Friedrich Schlichtegroll, who wrote
an early account based on information from Mozart's sister, Nannerl.
Working with Constanze, Franz Niemetschek wrote a biography as well.
Much later, Constanze assisted her second husband, Georg Nikolaus von
Nissen, on a more detailed biography published in 1826. See
Biographies of Mozart.
Mozart's musical reputation rose
following his death; 20th-century biographer Maynard Solomon
describes an "unprecedented wave of enthusiasm" for
his work after he died, and a number of publishers issued editions of
his compositions.
What may have been Mozart's skull was
exhumed in 1801, and in 1989–1991 it was examined for
identification by several scientists.
Remembrances of Mozart's death
An 1857 lithograph by Franz Schramm,
titled Ein Moment aus den letzten Tagen Mozarts ("Moment from
the Last Days of Mozart"). Mozart, with the score of the
Requiem on his lap, gives Süssmayr last-minute instructions.
Constanze is to the side and the messenger is leaving through the
main door.
A portrayal by Joseph Heicke of the
journey of Mozart's coffin through a storm to the cemetery. Engraving
from about 1860, a few years after the Deiner story appeared.
Individuals present at the time of
Mozart's death eventually committed their memories to writing, either
on their own or through interviews by others. The stories they told
are often contradictory, which may be due in part to some of the
events not being recorded until the 1820s, when the witnesses'
memories might have faded.
Benedikt Schack, Mozart's close friend
for whom he wrote the role of Tamino in The Magic Flute, told an
interviewer that on the last day of Mozart's life, he participated in
a rehearsal of the Requiem in progress. Schack's questionable account
appeared in an obituary for Schack which was published in the 25 July
1827 issue of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung:
On the very eve of his death,
[Mozart] had the score of the Requiem brought to his bed, and himself
(it was two o'clock in the afternoon) sang the alto part; Schack, the
family friend, sang the soprano line, as he had always previously
done, Hofer, Mozart's brother-in-law, took the tenor, Gerl, later a
bass singer at the Mannheim Theater, the bass. They were at the first
bars of the Lacrimosa when Mozart began to weep bitterly, laid the
score on one side, and eleven hours later, at one o'clock in the
morning (of 5 December 1791, as is well known), departed this life.
Biographer Niemetschek relates a
vaguely similar account, leaving out a rehearsal:
On the day of his death he asked for
the score to be brought to his bedside. 'Did I not say before, that I
was writing this Requiem for myself?' After saying this, he looked
yet again with tears in his eyes through the whole work.
The widely repeated claim that, on his
deathbed, Mozart dictated passages of the Requiem to his pupil
Süssmayr is strongly discounted by Solomon, who notes that the
earliest reference for this claim dates to 1856. However, Süssmayr's
handwriting is in the original manuscript of the Requiem and Sophie
Weber did claim to recall that Mozart gave instructions to Süssmayr.
An 1840 letter from the composer Ignaz
von Seyfried states that on his last night, Mozart was mentally
occupied with the currently running opera The Magic Flute. Mozart is
said to have whispered the following to Constanze in reference to her
sister Josepha Hofer, the coloratura soprano who premiered the role
of the Queen of the Night:
Quiet, quiet! Hofer is just taking
her top F; — now my sister-in-law is singing her second aria, "Der
Hölle Rache"; how strongly she strikes and holds the B-flat:
"Hört! hört! hört! der Mutter Schwur" [Hear! hear! hear!
the mother's oath].
Solomon, while noting that Mozart's
biographers often left out the "crueler memories"
surrounding his death, stated, "Constanze Mozart told Nissen
that just before the end Mozart asked her what [his physician] Dr.
Closset had said. When she answered with a soothing lie, he said, 'It
isn't true,' and he was very distressed: 'I shall die, now when I am
able to take care of you and the children. Ah, now I will leave you
unprovided for.' And as he spoke these words, 'suddenly he vomited
—it gushed out of him in an arc— it was brown, and he was dead.'"
Mozart's older, seven-year-old, son Karl was present at his father's
death and later wrote, "Particularly remarkable is in my
opinion the fact that a few days before he died, his whole body
became so swollen that the patient was unable to make the smallest
movement, moreover, there was stench, which reflected an internal
disintegration which, after death, increased to the extent that an
autopsy was impossible."
