As creative geniuses, the world’s great composers often led strange and passionate lives. Yet stranger still, are the intriguing and unusual ways in which so many famous composers died. With apologies for the morbid subject matter, below are a selection of the most tragic and sometimes peculiar composer deaths.
Ludwig van 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 beathing 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.
Joseph 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.
Hi 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.
Ernest Chausson – a tragic bicycle ride
French Romantic composer 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.
Jean-Baptiste 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, Lully spent much of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France. He also stuck up a lasting friendship with the playwright Molière, with whom he collaborated on several comédie-ballets.
At the age of 56, he stabbed his own foot with his long conducting stick during a performance of his Te Deum. He subsequently refused to have his toe amputated before succumbing to gangrene three months later in March 1687.
Enrique Granados – heroically drowned
The Spanish composer 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.
Anton Webern – shot after curfew
Austrian composer, conductor and musicologist 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, his 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.
Alban Berg – death by insect sting
A colleague of Webern (see above), Berg combined Romantic lyricism with the 12-tone method. 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 antisemitism 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.
Robert 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 Weick) 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.
Mieczysław Karłowicz – death by avalanche
The Polish conductor and late Romantic composer was a great admirer of Tchaikovsky, and also of Richard Wagner.
Passionately fond of the Tatra Mountains and photography, in February 1909 Karłowicz left the villa Lutnia at Zakopane for a solitary skiing expedition. He was swept up in, and buried by, an avalanche at the age of 32.
Robert Parsons – drowned in a river
The English Tudor composer 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.
- William Byrd, Elizabeth I’s Catholic composer
- Four pieces of music especially composed for kings and queens
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.