Some of music's greatest composers departed this world in a variety ways as dramatic, tragic, or downright bizarre as their art.
While we often imagine these towering figures dying peacefully at their desks or pianos, the reality was sometimes stranger than fiction. From mysterious illnesses and freak accidents to bizarre coincidences and legends steeped in rumour, the circumstances of their deaths have intrigued and bewildered historians and music lovers alike.
Below, we delve into 11 of the strangest and most curious composer demises, revealing stories that range from the eerily poetic to the shockingly absurd. These tales remind us that even musical geniuses were not immune to life’s twists of fate—and that sometimes, truth is stranger than any opera plot. Read on to discover the peculiar ends of some of classical music’s most celebrated names, and the enduring mysteries that still surround their final days.
Let's begin with....
1. Beethoven: death on a dark and stormy night 🌩️
The great German composer famously suffered ill health, including increasing deafness, depression and a tempestuous relationship with his nephew Karl – who himself attempted suicide by a gunshot to the head, but astonishingly survived the ordeal.
As he neared the end, Beethoven suffered a fever, swollen limbs, coughing and breathing difficulties. As a wild thunderstorm raged in March 1827, his parting words are reported – apocryphally – to have been, ‘I shall hear in Heaven’.
According to his friend Anselm Hüttenbrenner, at about 5pm there was a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder. ‘Beethoven opened his eyes, lifted his right hand and looked up for several seconds with his fist clenched. Not another breath, not a heartbeat more.’ He was just 56.
2. Haydn: death under siege ⚔️
We continue our list of troubled composer deaths with a composer whom we're more likely to associate, musically at least, with serenity and cheerfulness. Joseph Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Esterházy family, and enjoyed significant success throughout his life.
By the end of his long years, however, he suffered from increasing periods of ill health, including dizziness, inability to concentrate and, like Beethoven, painfully swollen legs. Distressingly, although he continued to have fresh musical ideas, he was no longer able to develop these into fully-fledged compositions.
Haydn's final days were less serene than he might have hoped... In May 1809 the French army under Napoleon launched an attack on Vienna and on 10th May bombarded his neighbourhood. He was appeased, however, when, two weeks before his death at the age of 77, a French officer named Sulémy sang an aria from his own Creation to him.
3. Chausson: a tragic bike ride 🚲
French Romantic composer Ernest Chausson was born to an affluent bourgeois family and studied composition with Jules Massenet and César Franck.
Out for a cycle ride at his country retreat in Limay in June 1899 at the age of 44, he was killed instantly when he crashed his bicycle into a brick wall at the bottom of a steep hill. Although likely an accident, some have suggested that Chausson’s death was suicide, as he had been prone to depression.
4. Lully: stabbed by his own conducting baton
Next, one of the more gorily captivating entries in our list of composer deaths. A French Baroque master, best known for his operas, Jean-Baptiste Lully spent much of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He also struck up a lasting friendship with the playwright Molière, with whom he collaborated on several comédie-ballets.
Poor Lully, however, met a tragic end. In 1687, while conducting a Te Deum to celebrate King Louis XIV’s recovery from illness, Lully was using the traditional method of beating time with a long staff. In a moment of misfortune, he accidentally struck his own foot with the heavy baton.
The wound became infected, leading to gangrene. Stubbornly refusing amputation, fearing it would end his dancing career, Lully’s condition worsened, and he died soon after. His bizarre death is often cited as a cautionary tale about pride—and about the dangers of early conducting methods!
5. Granados: a heroic drowning 🌊
The Spanish composer Enrique Granados is best known for works including Goyescas, the Spanish Dances, and María del Carmen.
When World War I began, the European premiere of his Goyescas was cancelled. The work was premiered instead in New York in January 1916. Shortly afterwards he was invited to perform a piano recital for President Woodrow Wilson.
His journey home involved a ship to England and a passenger ferry across the English Channel. When the ferry was torpedoed by a German U-boat, Granados dived into the water from a lifeboat to save his wife. He perished in the attempt, at the age of 46.
The ship subsequently broke in two, and one side – ironically containing Granados’s cabin – was towed to port, along with most of its passengers. Granados and his wife left six children.
6. Webern: shot after curfew 🔫
Austrian composer, conductor and musicologist Anton Webern was a radical proponent of the atonal 12-tone method, along with his mentor Arnold Schoenberg and colleague Alban Berg. He was also an early convert to psychotherapy following a breakdown in 1912. At times a critic and at others an apologist for fascism, Webern's atonal music was banned by Nazis.
With the Red Army approaching Austria in April 1945, the Weberns fled west, traveling partly on foot to Mittersill, where other family members were based. Though they arrived safely, Webern made the mistake of stepping outside his son-in-law’s house for a quick smoke despite the curfew in force. He was shot by a US soldier at the age of 61.
7. Berg: death by insect sting 🐝
A colleague of Webern (see above), Alban Berg combined Romantic lyricism with the 12-tone method, also known as Serialism. He achieved much acclaim for his operas Wozzeck and Lulu, which had at their heart a deep understanding of the human condition.
Like Webern, Berg’s modern works suffered critically from the wave of anti-Jewish feeling sweeping Austria and Germany throughout the 1930s. He died at the age of 50 in Vienna after ill-advisedly allowing his wife Helene to treat an insect sting on his back with a pair of scissors. The wound turned septic, leading to his death on Christmas Eve, 1935.
8. Schumann: a tragic suicide attempt
Next, one of the composer deaths with which you may be familiar. Robert Schumann, the prolific and much-celebrated early Romantic composer and pianist famously married the daughter of his teacher, Friedrich Wieck, despite the latter’s bitter opposition. Clara Schumann (née Wieck) was herself an exceptionally talented pianist and composer, who supported her husband through periods of severe mental and physical ill health.
A year after meeting the prodigiously talented Brahms in 1953, Schumann’s mental health deteriorated gravely. He threw himself into the River Rhine but was rescued and taken to a private sanatorium in Endenich near Bonn. There he lived for more than two years, unable to see his beloved wife. He eventually died there in July 1856 at the age of 46.
9. Karłowicz: death by avalanche ⛷️
The Polish conductor and late Romantic composer Mieczysław Karłowicz was a great admirer of Tchaikovsky, and also of Richard Wagner.
In February 1909, at just 32 years old, Karłowicz was on a skiing trip in the Tatra Mountains near Zakopane. Passionately fond of the Tatras and photography, Karłowicz left the villa Lutnia for a solitary skiing expedition. While traversing a forested area, he was caught in a sudden avalanche. Rescue teams later found his body beneath the snow, along with his skis and camera.
Karłowicz's untimely death shocked the musical community, cutting short a promising career just as he was gaining recognition for his lushly orchestrated, late-Romantic works. Today, Karłowicz’s death is remembered as both tragic and chillingly abrupt.
10. Purcell: locked out in the cold 🔒
According to legend, the great English composer Henry Purcell died of pneumonia after his wife locked him out of their house late at night. He had returned home late after a performance: exposed to the cold night air, he allegedly contracted a fatal illness.
In fact, the locked out in the cold story is one of three theses about Purcell's death. Officially, his death is often attributed to a respiratory illness, probably tuberculosis or pneumonia, both of which were common - and lethal - in 17th-century London. Other theories propose that the great British composer simply died from natural causes exacerbated by his era's poor sanitary and living conditions.
11. Parsons: drowned in a river
A contemporary of William Byrd, The English Tudor composer Robert Parsons (1535-72) was active during the reigns of King Edward VI, Queen Mary I and Queen Elizabeth I. He is noted for his compositions of church music. But he was also, alas, the subject of one of the more tragic composer deaths.
Parsons is believed to have died in January 1571 at the age of 37. Travelling to his vicarage, he fell into the then swollen River Trent in Nottinghamshire and drowned. The eulogy at his funeral lamented the fact that his life had been cut short at a young age. There is no record of Parsons's body ever having been retrieved from the river following his death.
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