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

by Tim Rayborn

  However, something unexpected came up: his seventy-sixth birthday. In that year—1951—an astrologer named Oscar Adler (who was also a musician) wrote to Schoenberg, warning him about the dangers the year would bring due to the numbers of his age: seven plus six equals thirteen. Schoenberg was horrified. Apparently, even with his devotion to numerology, it had never occurred to him to add together the digits of his age. He told friends that if he could only make it through the year, he would be safe again, at least for a while.

  As (bad) luck would have it, in July of that year there was a Friday the 13th, the last thing that he wanted to face. Schoenberg had stayed in bed all day, sick with worry and anxiety. At about a quarter to midnight, his wife tried to comfort him, telling him that since the day was over and he’d made it through, he didn’t have to worry after all. Apparently, he looked at her and died on the spot. The superstitious would love to say that it happened at thirteen minutes to midnight. It seems that he literally scared himself to death.

  Speaking of superstitious composers …

  Rossini, the great nineteenth-century opera composer, was also deeply superstitious and believed strongly in evil spirits and omens. Once, he received a fine gold watch from King Louis Philippe of France. When Rossini proudly showed it off to his friends, one of them noticed an engraving in Arabic on its face; none of them could decipher it, so no one could tell him what it said. Rossini took this as a bad omen and put the watch in a desk, never showing it to anyone again. He was also wary of the evil eye and its potential for harm. He always feared Friday the 13th, and sure enough, he died on November 13, 1868, a Friday.

  Once accused of dabbling in magic as a boy, Mozart was said to be superstitious and afraid of the dark, evil spirits, and ghosts. As we have seen, he may have believed that the commission for his Requiem came from the Angel of Death himself, so he was very reluctant to finish it, believing he would die when it was completed. It is rumored that an audience in Naples claimed he was wearing a magic ring and only played so well due to its supernatural power. He proved them wrong by removing the ring and playing the harpsichord with equal skill.

  When conducting an orchestra as a young man, Tchaikovsky was said to hold on to his chin because of a pathological fear of his head falling off while at the podium. If true, this habit was more likely due to nerves and stage fright than anything else—but the man was a hypochondriac and suffered from many ills, both real and imagined, so why not spontaneous decapitation among them? Actually, this story may have come from a critic mocking the way the composer conducted. Tchaikovsky did take long walks for creative inspiration, fearing that if he cut them short, even by a little, disaster might ensue. In his last days, Tchaikovsky refused a treatment involving immersion in a hot bath, probably since his mother had died of cholera while undergoing a similar procedure. This seems to strengthen the argument that he died of cholera, since he may have feared he would meet the same fate as his mother.

  The great conductor Leonard Bernstein always wore the same pair of cufflinks for every concert. They were a gift from fellow conductor and composer Serge Koussevitzky, and Bernstein would not perform without them. He and friends would kiss them for good luck before he went out on stage to conduct.

  The Spanish composer Manuel De Falla was a hypochondriac who tried to avoid seeing guests when there was a full moon or during the months of the equinoxes (i.e., March and September) because he believed that these times were bad for his health. He also feared drafts, and could spend five hours a day or more cleaning himself and preparing for the day, not eating breakfast until the afternoon.

  The English composer Gustav Holst had an interest in astrology and learned to cast horoscopes, which he did as a hobby for his friends, though it never became any kind of obsession for him. Instead, he was quiet about it, even a bit embarrassed. However, he did base his most famous work, The Planets, on the astrological qualities of seven planets—Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—rather than astronomical. This often surprises people who assume that this work, a precursor and inspiration for so many science fiction movie soundtracks, must have been a musical interpretation of the actual planets of our solar system: their colors, sizes, orbits, and other physical features.

  So what should we make of all this? It could be said that if even the brightest, most talented, and most gifted can succumb to these eccentricities and flights of irrational fancy, what hope is there for the rest of us? On the other hand, it’s the very nature of the creative mind to seek out new connections and relations that others don’t see or imagine. In view of scientific ideas such as chaos theory and the butterfly effect, who can say just what the exact relationship between two given things really is? The mind that fears the Angel of Death at the door or a conspiracy of numbers is also the mind capable of producing artistic masterpieces.

  8

  Some Final Musical Oddities

  And so we end with a few final stories that don’t quite fit into the other chapters: a potpourri of the peculiar, an inventory of invective, a miscellany of the musically odd, a grab bag of the grotesque. Learn how harsh weather may have helped make beautiful string music—or not; where the world’s most famous ringtone came from, which composers hated their own work, how Mozart’s skull may have been retrieved from his grave—or not; and why some pieces of Beethoven’s skull ended up in California—or not.

  The mystery of the world’s greatest violins

  Renowned Italian violinmaker Antonio Stradivari (1644–1737, a very long-lived fellow!) is famed for creating some of the greatest violins, violas, and cellos ever built. Stradivarius is world famous, an early brand name known even to casual classical music audiences and non-fans. The almost-mythic quality of these instruments has made them sought after by the greatest musicians in the world for more than three centuries. The level of craftsmanship and the limited availability have also made them insanely expensive, sorry to say to anyone who would like to own one as a conversation piece.

  Scholars, instrument makers, and fans alike have long puzzled over what it is that makes Stradivari’s creations so exceptional. While theories abound, some of the more interesting ideas have emerged in recent years. One seems like an elegant explanation on the surface: in the early 2000s, a tree-ring scientist and a climatologist proposed that the wood used in Stradivari’s instruments may have been affected by the unusually harsh climate of the time. The second half of the seventeenth century in Northern Europe was the time of the Maunder Minimum, a particularly cold point in the Little Ice Age that began in the later Middle Ages and may have helped to make that miserable era known as the fourteenth century quite a bit more miserable. Said Ice Age reached its peak in the seventeenth century, and as a result, trees grew more slowly and regularly all year round in response to the harsh climate. This slow, consistent growth can affect the quality of wood for the better, making it more resonant and better able to handle the stresses of being a part of a complex musical instrument.

  So, did such climate change inadvertently affect Stradivari’s violins and other creations, unintentionally making them masterpieces? Possibly, but quality of wood is only one factor in the construction of any instrument. Intriguing though it was, this study was doubted by many. A counter-theory suggests that it was the unique combination of chemicals in the mix used to treat the wood (which one recent study revealed included borax, iron salts, fluoride, and chromium, among others), probably to help preserve it before it was shaped and carved into various instruments.

  Interestingly and amusingly, researchers conducted a double-blind experiment at the Eighth International Violin Competition of Indianapolis in 2010. Three historical and classic violins, including a Stradivarius, were placed with three modern, though excellently made, counterparts. The testing panel asked a selection of twenty-one violinists to compare them for sound quality and playability. The musicians would have no idea which instrument they were playing at any given time. Care was taken to conceal the instruments’
identities by having the musicians play in dim light, and perfume was used to mask any individual wood aromas, among other controls. The result? Almost every time the Stradivarius failed to be the preferred instrument, either for sound quality or playability, losing in 80 percent of the evaluations when it went head-to-head with another violin. When the musicians were asked about their overall preference, the Strad also lost out, and a modern violin was the clear favorite.

  Now, this is by no means the last word on the subject, but it does present fascinating evidence that reputation, tradition, and hype can all play a role in establishing something as being great or otherwise. Strads are clearly wonderful instruments, but are they really in a class by themselves? Or is this legendary honor just the result of centuries of praise and even clever marketing on the part of Tony and his apprentices? Perhaps only the struggling trees in those Italian winter forests know for sure.

  The ringtone heard round the world

  It’s one of the most famous little tunes in the world. Everyone in the cell phone age knows it, and most people probably have had it on their phone at one time or another. We are talking, of course, about the Nokia ringtone. At the height of its use, it was estimated to be heard around the world about twenty thousand times per second; just imagine if royalties could be collected on it! What is the origin of this little piece, and how did it end up being the most-heard tune of all time?

  The simple melody is actually from a longer piece by the Spanish composer Francisco Tárrega (1852–1909), a guitarist of great skill who helped popularize the instrument for solo recitals. Tárrega’s childhood was actually quite troubled, or rather, he seemed to be quite the maker of trouble. Born in Villarreal on Spain’s central east coast, he showed an early talent for guitar but ran away from home more than once. When studying in Barcelona, he decided to try making a living as a guitarist in the city’s cafés and restaurants; he was all of ten years old. Hey, dream big. A few years later, he ran off to Valencia with a group of Roma (“gypsies”). His father found him, but once again he ran off; this habit was getting ridiculous. At some point his youthful wanderlust subsided, and he attended the Madrid conservatory beginning in 1874. His bad decisions about hasty departures seem to have ended, and he became a successful guitarist and performer over the next forty years.

  The tune in question comes from a section in Tárrega’s piece Gran Vals, written toward the end of his life in 1902; there was some speculation that this little melody was originally composed by Chopin, but the argument is not very convincing. This small snippet of music in an otherwise mostly unknown piece would seem an odd candidate to be the tune heard round the world. So what happened? Well, it had to do with lawyers and the need for a composer to be dead. Musician Thomas Dolby explained to the BBC:

  One night, a marketing guy stuck his head around the door of the engineering department and thought he heard somebody playing tunes with a phone. And in fact, the engineer said, “no, no, I’m just trying to tune it to get the most annoying frequency.”

  And the marketing guy said, “well, could you make it play some tunes?” so he knocked up half a dozen and they said, “these sound great, let’s ship it.” But it turned out that the lawyers then stepped in and said, “well, you can’t ship just a pop tune; there’s royalties to pay, there’s clearances to get—unless the composer has been dead for seventy-five years or more.”

  And they said, “are any of these by dead composers?” Well, that one that has now become famous as the Nokia theme was actually composed over 150 [sic] years ago by an obscure waltz composer, and so that was the one they went with and it became the most successful jingle in history.

  The early 1990s was still the stone age of cell phones (the silicon age?). Two of Nokia’s executives decided, on the basis that Tárrega was conveniently quite dead, that the piece had merit as a ringtone and selected four bars of music that had the right feel. These measures contained the now-famous melody, and the ringtone debuted in 1994. It has been tinkered with and modified over the years, but the tune remains and is famous in a way that its composer never could have imagined when he was a boy fantasizing about wowing crowds in Barcelona coffee shops.

  Composers who hated their own works

  It seems like a constant curse of the artist to feel somehow compelled to create, but then, after laboring over a new work for days, weeks, months, and more, to be unsatisfied or even hostile to the final product. Some composers have shown the particularly bad habit of never-ending tinkering with their work that makes things like dating said pieces or assigning opus numbers more than a bit difficult. Chopin notoriously liked to make small changes to his pieces, for example. It’s damned inconsiderate to biographers and admirers.

  Many composers suppress or discard their “juvenilia,” that is, the works that they wrote when they were young and still new to the whole composition business. George Butterworth destroyed many of his works before going off to World War I, not wanting them to be discovered in case he didn’t return. Holst referred to his youthful compositions as his “early horrors.” Vaughan Williams lamented that he was still making money off music written as a young man, calling these payments the “ill-gotten gains of such sins of my youth as ‘Linden Lea’ [a song from 1902] which becomes every year more horribly popular.”

  The idea of not being satisfied with one’s work is often actually a good one; it shows that the person is willing to improve. However, this attitude can be self-defeating and destructive if taken too far. So if you sometimes feel that your best isn’t good enough, or that you are receiving recognition you don’t deserve (the dreaded “imposter syndrome”), here is a small sampling of composers who have shared your views. They’re pretty good company to be in.

  Wagner’s early opera Rienzi was written before he had fully developed his mature style. Set in medieval Italy, it tells the story of a populist outlaw who stands against wealthy oppressors. It also has the dubious distinction of being one of many inspirations for Hitler, who later in his life possessed the original manuscript. Despite the success and acclaim that it brought him, Wagner himself found the work “repugnant.”

  Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture is one of his most famous works, commemorating the victory of Russia against the armies of Napoleon. It was written as a commission, and Tchaikovsky declared that it was “very loud and noisy and completely without artistic merit, obviously written without warmth or love.” He hated the piece and the fact that it became popular. As we saw earlier, he disliked many of his works but did feel that he finally had produced something of value in his Pathétique Symphony only shortly before he died.

  Edward Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 contains the quintessential theme of higher education, played for graduation ceremonies and in film or television scenes set at a university. It was a major hit for Elgar, but its popularity meant that his other works were overlooked, and this would later annoy him. He had actually succeeded in rubbing academia the wrong way in 1905 when he delivered a series of talks, the Peyton lectures, at the University of Birmingham, where he had recently taken the position of Chair of Music. Unfortunately, these talks were a rambling mess of ideas and an artistic manifesto that opposed many other English musical movements of the time. The establishment reaction to his lectures was so hostile that he withdrew from academia and returned to concentrating on composition. He saw increasing criticism of his music as time went on.

  Elgar’s younger contemporary, Gustav Holst, experienced a similar problem with The Planets. The inspiration for endless science fiction movie soundtracks, this work is by far the most famous thing he ever composed. Even most classical music fans are hard-pressed to name another of his pieces. This proved to be a problem for him throughout the 1920s. It had been a huge success so everyone expected him to compose The Planets Part II, but he wanted to move on and write other things, a perfectly reasonable position to take. Critics and audiences were not very understanding of this wish, and his popularity faded as the decade progress
ed. This didn’t really bother him, however, and he went on composing what he wanted. He was philosophical about it, once saying, “It’s a great thing to be a failure. If nobody likes your work, you have to go on just for the sake of the work. And you’re in no danger of letting the public make you repeat yourself.”

  In between whippings and other eccentric behavior, Percy Grainger was, as we saw, a brilliant concert pianist. One piece always bothered him, however—a setting of a Morris dance called “Country Gardens.” Made as a birthday present for his strange and controlling mother, it sold absurd amounts as sheet music (something like twenty-seven thousand copies a year by the mid-1920s!) and became a concert favorite. Every audience that saw him perform demanded it as the obligatory encore, and if he tried to exit the stage without playing it, he would essentially be prevented from doing so; the crowds simply would not leave. He eventually loathed this fairly insipid tune, a jaunty little number that brought him enormous amounts of money over the years but came to define him in ways that he hated.

  Ravel’s Boléro is another world-famous piece, and that is part of its problem. Although it is hardly the best thing that he ever wrote, its popularity has overshadowed many of his other works. Its endless repetition came in for some harsh criticism when it was first performed in 1928, but for whatever reasons, there was enough demand for it that it came to be associated with him more than his other, better pieces. This surprised him; he didn’t like it much and always wondered why orchestras wanted to play it and audiences wanted to hear it. Several decades after his death, the popularity of the movie 10 only made things worse.