Did These Seven Great Composers Really Die of Syphilis?

 by Emily E. Hogstad  March 26th, 2026

During the nineteenth century, syphilis was rampant in Europe, and quite a few composers are believed to have had it.

The 2024 article “The Syphilis Pandemic Prior to Penicillin: Origin, Health Issues, Cultural Representation and Ethical Challenges” estimates that during the 1800s, approximately fifteen per cent of European men were infected. Plus, infections were more common in urban areas, where composers tended to live and work.

In a time before antibiotics, syphilis was more than a medical condition: it was often a death sentence. On top of that, the mercury and arsenic “cures” on offer were often just as toxic as the disease itself.

You can imagine how the mental and physical effects of infection and treatment impacted these artists’ lives and work.

Of course, diagnosing composers from centuries away with absolute certainty can be a fool’s errand. But today we’re using historians’ best judgment and looking at seven composers who either are confirmed to have had syphilis, or are widely believed to have had it…as well as how those infections shaped (and in some cases, ended) their careers.

Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840)  

A native of Genoa, Italy, Niccolò Paganini was the greatest violinist of his generation…and maybe of all time.

He became famous for his demonic appearance and seemingly supernatural abilities.

However, although some people felt he was an otherworldly being, he was actually very human, and he struggled with bad health throughout his life.

Niccolò Paganini

Modern historians believe that he had Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome or Marfan Syndrome. Either would help explain his double-jointedness, which he put to good use while reinventing violin technique.

He was diagnosed with syphilis around 1822, when he was forty. His treatment included mercury therapy and opium. That in turn led to mercury poisoning and opiate addiction.

In 1828, when he was 46, he developed necrotising osteitis of the jaw that had to be operated on.

He also developed tuberculosis, which may have contributed to his dysphonia (loss of voice).

When Paganini met with composer Hector Berlioz in 1838, his voice was so inaudible that his young son had to put his ear next to Paganini’s mouth to hear his words, then translate for Berlioz.

He died in Nice in 1840.

We wrote about the turbulent final years of Paganini, including why he was denied a Catholic burial.

Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848)  

Donizetti was born in Bergamo, Italy, in 1797. He became one of the most popular opera composers of his generation.

Sometime in his teens or twenties, he came down with syphilis.

In 1828, at the age of thirty-one, he married his eighteen-year-old wife Virginia. She gave birth to three babies, but all died as infants, and the first one was deformed, suggesting he’d passed the disease on.

Portrait of Gaetano Donizetti by Francesco Coghetti

Virginia’s own health deteriorated, as well, and she died young in the summer of 1837. It may have been cholera, but it might also have been a syphilitic infection.

Donizetti eventually began exhibiting a host of alarming symptoms: fevers, headaches, paralysis, speechlessness, incontinence, and more.

He was only formally diagnosed in August 1845. His doctor believed he was no longer able to make sane decisions for himself, and so he was tricked and involuntarily confined in 1846.

It was a darkly ironic fate for someone who had written the most famous “mad scene” in operatic history.

He never lived on his own again and died in 1848.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828)  

Franz Schubert was born in Vienna in 1797. He became infected with syphilis in late 1822, when he was in his mid-twenties.

He first noticed symptoms in early 1823, when he began suffering from particularly acute feelings of depression, as well as a red rash and hair loss.

As time passed, and as he got sicker and sicker, he began feeling increasingly doomed, and his compositions started turning darker.

Franz Schubert

His fourteenth string quartet from 1824, nicknamed Death and the Maiden, dates from this time.

In 1828, he saw a physician who told him that the end was near. He began suffering from headaches, joint pain, and fever, and became unable to keep down food.

During the final weeks of his life, he moved in with his brother, who took care of him until he died in November 1828 at the age of thirty-one.

Historians today are split about whether he died from typhoid fever, mercury poisoning, syphilis, or some combination of all three.

Read more about how his illness impacted the composition of the “Death and the Maiden” quartet.

Robert Schumann (1810-1856)  

Robert Schumann was born in Zwickau, Germany, in 1810, and suffered from health issues throughout his life.

By his early twenties, he was wrestling with depressive episodes interspersed with manic ones. A later note he wrote about this time of his life reads, “In 1832, I contracted syphilis and was cured with arsenic.”

If the problem was syphilis, it had actually not been cured; it had only become latent. (This might explain why he apparently never passed it on to his wife, Clara.)

Robert Schumann

By his thirties, his symptoms were turning more physical, with his doctor in Dresden noting he was complaining of “insomnia, general weakness, auditory disturbances, tremors, and chills in the feet, to a whole range of phobias.”

In February 1854, he jumped off a bridge into the Rhine River. He was rescued and agreed to be sent away to a sanitarium. Unfortunately, his health continued to deteriorate there.

In the summer of 1856, he came down with pneumonia. His overtaxed immune system couldn’t fight the infection off, and he died that July.

During his illness and after his death, his wife, Clara, and his friends sorted through his music. One of the works they felt revealed his sickness was his violin concerto. It was suppressed until its rediscovery in the 1930s.  

Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884)  

Composer Bedřich Smetana married his wife, pianist Kateřina Kolářová, in August 1849.

They had four daughters between 1851 and 1855, but by 1856, three of them had died of either tuberculosis or scarlet fever, and Kateřina had been diagnosed with tuberculosis, too. She died in April 1859. He remarried the following year.

Unfortunately, his story wasn’t going to have a happy ending. A couple of years later, he began developing hearing issues, chief among them incapacitating tinnitus.

Although he went to see countless doctors and specialists, he grew more and more deaf over the following years.

Bedřich Smetana

Day-to-day life became excruciating. In January 1875, he wrote, “If my disease is incurable, then I should prefer to be liberated from this life.”

In his first string quartet, dating from 1876, he portrayed the experience of tinnitus by using long high notes in the violin.

A few years after he wrote the quartet, he began expressing fears that he was going mad.

In the early 1880s, his symptoms grew debilitating and included hallucinations and intermittent loss of speech.

By early 1884, he began acting out violently toward his family. In late April, he was committed to an asylum. He died there a few weeks later.

The official death certificate claimed that he’d died of dementia, but his family believed it had been syphilis.

Some twentieth-century doctors took issue with this diagnosis, or whether his hearing loss was due to a syphilitic infection, but it remains a leading theory.

An autopsy was done that revealed high amounts of mercury in his remains.

Read more about how Smetana incorporated autobiography into his first string quartet, including the simulation of tinnitus.

Hugo Wolf (1860-1903)  

Composer Hugo Wolf was born in present-day Slovenia in 1860.

From the beginning, two things were clear: Wolf was incredibly musically talented, and he lacked discipline, at least in part due to his depressive mood swings.

He came down with syphilis young, in his late teens, and became preoccupied with writing lied on themes of sin and suffering.

He had a few ups and downs physically and mentally, but he hit a low point in late 1891, when a combination of his depression symptoms and syphilis symptoms kept him from composing.

Hugo Wolf in 1902

A few years later, in 1897, he began feeling his mind deteriorating. He tried to write an opera, but only managed sixty pages before he became too ill to write.

He attempted to drown himself in 1899 but survived, and he spent the last few years of his life in an asylum before dying in 1903.

Frederick Delius (1862-1934)

Frederick Delius

Frederick Delius was born to a British family in 1862.

As a young man, he traveled to Paris to befriend artists and soak in the bohemian lifestyle there. It is believed that his syphilitic infection originated during these years.

In 1903, at the age of 41, he married a wealthy painter named Jelka Rosen. He had a number of affairs during their marriage, but she never left him.

In 1910, syphilis symptoms began to manifest, chief among them headaches, back aches, and blurred vision.

Within a decade, he could no longer move except with a wheelchair; he was completely blind; and he was on morphine for pain.

Jelka tried her best to take care of him, but she needed help. The couple hired a composer, conductor, and pianist named Eric Fenby, who would serve as Delius’s helper as he navigated the end of his life, dealing with syphilis-related health issues.

Delius’s farewell to music and to life was his setting of some poetry from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in his Songs of Farewell.  

Conclusion

Syphilis diagnoses – and the stigma and shame surrounding them – profoundly impacted the work of many major composers…and therefore, obviously, left a mark on the history of music.

For many composers, the diagnosis impacted not only their health but also the tone, intensity, and subject matter of their work, from Schubert’s haunting reflections on mortality to Smetana’s anguished depiction of his resulting deafness.

While this music offers us a glimpse into the despair and struggle of a pre-antibiotics syphilis diagnosis, what can’t be seen as clearly is, of course, all of the additional music that the disease deprived us of.

It’s a sad truth that without the scourge of syphilis and its deadly treatments, classical music history would look very different today.

Numbering a Symphony: Schubert’s Great, D. 944

by Maureen Buja  June 15th, 2026

Depending on your sources, Franz Schubert (1797–1828) has his final symphony, The Great, D. 944, variously numbered as Symphony No. 7 or Symphony No. 8 or Symphony No. 9 or Symphony No. 10. We now know, through style and paper studies, that many different works got confused in the numbering of the symphonies.

Wilhelm August Rieder: Franz Schubert, 1875 after 1825 watercolour (Vienna Museum)

Knowing the D. numbers is important here! D. stands for Otto Erich Deutsch (1883–1967), an Austrian musicologist who created the first comprehensive catalogue of Schubert’s works (just as Bach‘s works have BWV numbers and Mozart‘s have K. numbers, the D. numbers are for Schubert’s works).

George Fayer: Otto Erich Deutsch, 1927

The problem stems from two places: Only one of Schubert’s last symphonies was truly completed, and, as publishers started to publish the works, they didn’t want gaps in the numbering.

Symphony No. 7 in E minor, D. 729, written August 1821, never went beyond a draft. It was never completed by Schubert, who sketched out the entire work but abandoned it in the middle of scoring the first movement. It showed a radical change from his earlier symphonies, which were very much based on Haydn and Mozart. D. 729 was originally not given a number, but when later scholars and performers started to make editions of it, it received a number, bumping D. 759 and the following symphonies.

With the addition of the now-completed D. 729, the earlier numbered Symphony No. 7 in B minor, D. 759, we now know as Symphony No. 8, with the nickname of ‘The Unfinished’ because there are only two completed movements of it (a third movement only exists in sketches). It was written in October 1822 and sent by Schubert to his friend, Anselm Hüttenbrenner, as a thank-you to Hüttenbrenner’s Graz Music Society, which had given Schubert an honorary diploma.

There’s a hypothetical D. 849 symphony that was written between June and September 1825, which was referred to in Schubert’s letters. It has been nicknamed the Gmunden-Gastein Symphony after the place where Schubert was located when he wrote his letter.

There’s a Symphony D. 936a that exists only in sketches and might have been written in mid-1828. This is now known as Symphony No. 10.

Then there’s the symphony in C major, D. 944. Now known as Symphony No. 9, this is the only symphony among his late works that Schubert actually completed. No matter what the number of the symphony might be, keeping track of the D. numbers will help you sort them all out!

Although originally thought to have been written in Schubert’s last year (1828), we now know that it was begun when he was in Gmunden-Gastein. D. 849, as numbered by Deutsch, actually does not exist. The Great C major, D. 944, was begun in 1824 (as evidenced by the letter dated March 1824, and as evidenced by the use of paper from that time). It was completed in the spring or summer of 1826, and it was sent to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. Schubert couldn’t afford to have the orchestral parts copied, so he dedicated the work to the Gesellschaft. In response, they gave him a small payment, had the parts copied, and did a trial run-through sometime in 1827. They never did a public performance of the work, though, as they thought it too long and difficult for the orchestra on hand. It wasn’t until Robert Schumann saw the manuscript in 1838, 10 years after Schubert’s death, that a public performance took place. He brought a copy of the score, given to him by Schubert’s brother Ferdinand, back to Leipzig, where it was given its premiere at the Leipzig Gewandhaus on 21 March 1839, with Felix Mendelssohn conducting. Robert wrote an article of celebration for the work in his magazine, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, where he praised its ‘heavenly length’. When Mendelssohn took the symphony to Paris and London, orchestras refused to perform it because of its length and difficulty.

The work is considered Schubert’s finest work for orchestra, and the Scherzo movement is one of particular joy. The symphony is important in changing Schubert’s style from working solely on thematic development (as he learned from Beethoven) and focusing more on melody. The work is full of optimism and grand statements, starting from its opening horn call. The ‘joyous alfresco dance’ of the Scherzo develops from its opening statement to form a movement that is more monumental than scherzo movements were expected to be.

This recording was made in November 1957 in the Salle Wagram in Paris, with the Orchestre des Cento Soli under the direction of Ataúlfo Argenta.

The Orchestre des Cento Soli was a French classical orchestra based in Paris that began recording in 1953.

Ataúlfo Argenta

Spanish conductor Ataúlfo Argenta (1913–1958) studied at the Madrid Royal Conservatory and held his first positions with the Orquesta Nacional de España (Spanish National Orchestra), becoming the second conductor in November 1946 and, by January 1947, joint director. By 1950, he began conducting the Paris Conservatory Orchestra, appearing with them until his accidental death in 1958. He also started appearing with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande from 1954. This recording brings out his energetic approach to Schubert’s music.

Performed by
Ataulfo Argenta
Orchestre des Cento Soli

Recorded in 1957

Official Website

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Seven of the Most Popular String Quartet Videos on YouTube

 by Emily E. Hogstad  April 13th, 2026

Have you ever wondered what the most popular string quartets are?

There’s no easy objective way to answer that question, but one way to try is by looking at which YouTube videos of string quartet performances have garnered the most views over the past twenty years of YouTube’s existence.

We searched for string quartets, sorted by most viewed, and here’s what we found.

But first, a few caveats…

• If a video only consisted of audio with a static image or a score, we didn’t count it. We wanted to focus on video performances today, not audio.
• We didn’t count electric violin repertoire; we stuck with acoustic instruments.
• We also didn’t count pop music rearranged for string quartet. The arrangements of pop songs that are played on Bridgerton are great fun, but today we wanted to focus on traditional repertoire.

So with all that said, here in reverse countdown order are seven of the most popular string quartet videos on YouTube, as of early 2026.

We promise you, there are some surprises.

7. Ravel String Quartet  

Ravel was just 28 years old when he wrote his impeccably crafted string quartet.

The second movement is a fiery scherzo featuring bursts of pizzicato fireworks. (That’s the movement featured in this particular video.)

Maurice Ravel in 1925

Its fascinating colour and texture also foreshadow how Ravel’s genius for orchestration would develop over the course of his career.

The quartet was not an immediate success at its premiere. Critics were lukewarm, noting the debt it owed to Claude Debussy’s string quartet from ten years earlier, and fretting about its “vagueness of significance, incoherence, and weird harmonic eccentricities.”

However, it kept being programmed and played, and today it is widely considered one of the great string quartets of the twentieth century.

According to the YouTube heat map, the most popular part of this video is the first few seconds. That’s understandable, since the opening contains that unforgettable plucky theme.

6. Schubert String Quartet No. 14   

In 1824, Franz Schubert was 27 years old and staring down the barrel of his own mortality. Two years earlier, he had contracted syphilis, and the illness was haunting his thoughts and music.

One of the pieces born out of his anxiety was “Death and the Maiden” quartet, one of the most searing works in the entire chamber repertoire.

Franz Schubert

The quartet’s dramatic nickname comes from the second movement, where Schubert transforms the melody of his earlier song “Der Tod und das Mädchen” (Death and the Maiden) into a set of variations.

The outer movements rage with a stormy intensity, while the slow movement contains one of the most moving meditations on death in all of classical music.

The quartet was put away for two years after it was written. Its premiere was at a private home in 1826. It wasn’t published until after Schubert died. It wasn’t composed for money or fame; it was composed simply because Schubert had to express himself.

Today, it resonates with listeners for its blend of despair and defiance.

5. Stockhausen “Helicopter String Quartet”   

Yes, this is exactly what it sounds like: a piece written for string quartet being played in four helicopters.

Karlheinz Stockhausen was one of the most polarising composers of the twentieth century, and works like his Helicopter String Quartet are why.

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Conceived in 1993 as part of his epic seven-opera cycle Licht, the piece consists of four string quartet members performing in four separate helicopters. They listen to each other via headphones, and the piece is mixed for the audience, who watch live from an auditorium.

Stockhausen dreamed of making the tremolo sounds resemble the whirring of the blades.

As you can imagine, the piece is incredibly expensive to mount. It is also objectively unhinged.

However, that quality clearly makes it perfect for a YouTube video. It really is one of those things that you have to see to believe.

4. Glass String Quartet No. 3, “Mishima”  

Philip Glass is one of the most famous living composers. His calling card is his propulsive minimalist style.

His third string quartet began life as music for Paul Schrader’s 1985 film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, a biopic of the Japanese author Yukio Mishima.

Philip Glass

Glass arranged six movements from the film score into a quartet, each movement brief and tightly structured.

The music alternates between shimmering stillness and driving pulse.

Although the music is (by design) repetitive, it’s also deeply, strangely touching.

Interestingly, according to the YouTube heat map of where people have rewound to, there is no spike anywhere. Listeners take the movement in as a whole.

3. Beethoven String Quartet Op. 59, No.1, “Razumovsky”   

When Count Andrey Razumovsky, the Russian ambassador to Vienna, commissioned Beethoven to write a set of string quartets in 1806, he couldn’t have begun to imagine the impact the works would have on the history of chamber music.

Beethoven’s three Razumovsky quartets pushed the boundaries of the genteel attitude toward quartets set by Haydn and Mozart, paving the way for the Romantic Era by creating music that was symphonic in both scale and emotional impact.

Christian Honeman: Ludwig van Beethoven, 1803 (Beethovenhaus Bonn)

The first of the set, Op. 59 No. 1, is a massive emotional journey. Like the others in the set, it is so large and so complicated that it takes professional musicians to play (or very talented, devoted amateurs with lots and lots of rehearsal time).

Early audiences were baffled by what they heard. Violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh’s quartet, who premiered the quartets, reportedly struggled to get the works under their fingers.

According to legend, when he heard about Schuppanzigh’s complaints, Beethoven reportedly said, “Does he really believe that I think about his silly fiddle when the muse strikes me to compose?”

That defiant spirit clearly still speaks to modern audiences.

2. Haydn String Quartet No. 62; Op. 76, No. 3, “Emperor”   

Joseph Haydn is called the “father of the string quartet” for a reason: he wrote some of the first string quartets, and over the course of his career, composed nearly seventy of them.

The Op. 76, No. 3 in C major, nicknamed the “Emperor”, is number 62. It contains one of the most famous examples of theme and variations in classical music history.

Thomas Hardy: Franz Joseph Haydn, ca. 1791 (London: Royal College of Music Museum of Instruments)

The second movement presents a noble hymnlike melody, with each instrument taking turns “singing” the theme.

Haydn originally wrote it as an anthem in tribute to the Austrian Emperor Francis II. It later became the German national anthem, Deutschlandlied.

The music’s cultural impact, as well as its sheer beauty and importance in the history of the development of the genre, helps explain why it’s at number two on this list.

However, only one work can top the list, and if you’re a classical musician, you knew in your bones this was coming…

1. Pachelbel Canon   

The runaway champion of “the most popular string quartet” on YouTube is Johann Pachelbel’s Canon in D.

That said, we acknowledge we’re stretching the definition of string quartet here a bit, since the Pachelbel was written for three violins and basso continuo instead of the modern instrumentation of two violins, viola, and cello.

So if you’re one of the classical musicians who break out in hives when listening to Pachelbel’s Canon, feel free to pretend that Haydn won the countdown!

Johann Pachelbel

The story of this work is wild. It was written in the late seventeenth century, then languished in obscurity for over two hundred years.

It was rediscovered in the early twentieth century and published in 1919, but it only became a staple of the repertoire after a couple of recordings went viral in the late 1960s. People heard it on the radio and lined up outside record shops to buy copies.

The Canon quickly became a staple at weddings and on soundtracks, and although many classical musicians feel it’s overplayed, its popularity simply cannot be denied.

Conclusion

From Pachelbel’s Baroque ground bass to Stockhausen’s midair experiments, the string quartet has proven itself to be endlessly adaptable over centuries.

Taken together, these pieces, written over the course of three hundred years, have attracted millions and millions of YouTube views.

Despite all the handwringing about the future of classical music, the popularity of these performances proves that there will always be something special about what happens when a string quartet sits down to play.

The Best Waltzes by the Great Composers

by Emily E. Hogstad  March 2nd, 2026

Few musical forms have evolved as extensively as the waltz. It began as a rustic Austrian dance in triple meter, scandalous for bringing men and women together so physically close. By the 19th century, it had shaken off its early controversy and conquered Vienna’s glittering ballrooms. By the 20th, it had become ironic, decadent, grotesque – even apocalyptic.

Using just three beats per bar, the waltz can suggest intimacy, seduction, nostalgia, aristocratic splendour, demonic frenzy, or even civilizational collapse.

The following ten works trace the evolution of the waltz from Schubert’s salon to Ravel’s catastrophic whirl and beyond. Together, they show how composers transformed a simple dance into one of classical music’s most versatile and revealing genres.

Franz Schubert – Valses nobles, D. 969   

Schubert wrote hundreds of dances – waltzes, Ländler, etc. – for domestic music-making in Vienna. But the Valses nobles, D. 969, written in the final year of his life, are something finer.

These aren’t ballroom miniatures; they’re personal statements. Harmonies turn unexpectedly inward; phrases stretch and sigh. Each is fleeting.

Their interiority and small scale make them an intriguing early evolution of the genre. They mark one of the first moments when the waltz became something to listen to, rather than something to dance.

Frédéric Chopin – Waltz in C-sharp minor, Op. 64, No. 2   

Chopin rarely intended his waltzes for dancing; they’re more psychological studies disguised as salon music.

His Waltz in C-sharp minor, Op. 64 No. 2, alternates between elegant charm and darker introspection.

Its shifting moods and subtle rubato transform the triple meter into something fluid and conversational. At times, it gets sarcastic or even acerbic, due in part to its minor key and unstable middle section.

Franz Liszt – Mephisto Waltz No. 1   

Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1 was not a waltz written for polite society.

Inspired by a scene from Nikolaus Lenau’s verse drama Faust, the Devil interrupts a village wedding and seduces the dancers into frenzy. The music is dazzling, demonic, virtuosic beyond reason.

Here, the waltz becomes temptation itself: it’s seductive, theatrical, dangerous.

Johann Strauss II – The Blue Danube, Op. 314   

If one piece defines the Viennese waltz, it is The Blue Danube.

Over the course of his career, Strauss perfected the formula: a graceful introduction, a sequence of unforgettable melodies, and then a glowing coda.

The rhythmic lilt feels effortless, as though the orchestra itself is gliding. This is the traditional Viennese waltz at its most radiant: aristocratic, irresistible, and intoxicating.

Johannes Brahms – Waltz in A-flat major, Op. 39, No. 15   

Brahms was a huge admirer of Strauss’s work, but his own waltzes are more private.

The A-flat major Waltz, Op. 39, No. 15, is brief and tender. Its warm harmonies and gentle phrasing feel nostalgic, or even autumnal.

Brahms distills the Viennese dance into something intimate and reflective. It’s a waltz meant for a quiet room, not a grand ballroom like Strauss’s.   

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – Waltz from Swan Lake    

In Tchaikovsky’s hands, the waltz became a theatrical spectacle.

The Act I Waltz from his ballet Swan Lake is sweeping and luminous, filled with expansive melodies and rich orchestration.

It evokes aristocratic celebration, but Tchaikovsky’s gift for bittersweet harmonies also lends it an undercurrent of melancholy longing.

Claude Debussy – La plus que lente    

By 1910, almost a century after the genre’s ascendance, some waltzes had become nostalgic, even ironic.

Debussy’s “La plus que lente” (“slower than slow”) is both affectionate and gently mocking. The harmonies drift, colours blur, and the musical gestures seem to sigh.

This is a waltz that is filtered through French aesthetics and weary Belle Epoque sophistication.

Maurice Ravel – La valse   

Ravel’s La valse begins in a murky haze. Gradually, fragments of rhythm emerge from darkness, eventually coalescing into a glittering Viennese dance.

But then the elegance grows distorted. The orchestration becomes violent, grotesque, even unhinged.

Ravel always claimed that La valse wasn’t meant to be a portrait of the collapse of Europe after World War I. But it still feels like an autopsy of the collapse: the waltz falling victim to its own sophistication and grandeur.

Sergei Prokofiev – Waltz from Cinderella        

After Ravel’s shattering waltz, Prokofiev restores glamour to it – but with a similar edge.

The grand waltz from his ballet Cinderella is lush yet harmonically angular. The melodies shimmer, but the harmonies and rhythms here carry a modern bite.

This is fairy-tale elegance viewed through the darker, more jaded lens of the turbulent 20th century.

Dmitri Shostakovich – Waltz No. 2 (Suite for Variety Orchestra)    

By mid-century, the waltz had become a vehicle for irony as much as elegance.

Shostakovich’s Waltz No. 2 sounds charming at first, almost kitschy. But the sweetness is slightly exaggerated, the orchestration a touch garish. There’s something theatrical and faintly tragic beneath the surface.

This waltz music is smiling through clenched teeth.

Conclusion

From Schubert’s Viennese miniatures to Shostakovich’s Soviet irony, the waltz has proved remarkably adaptable.

It can whisper or seduce. It can glitter. It can burn the ballroom to the ground…all in ¾ time.

If you had to choose a favourite, which waltz would it be?

Franz Schubert’s Illness: The Melancholy of an Autumnal Sunset

 by Desiree Ho  October 7th, 2011

“I am the most unhappy and miserable person in this world… my health will never improve, and in such despair, things will only become worse instead of better…” – Franz Schubert

Austrian Composer Franz Schubert (1797-1828) is enshrined as the pillar of Romantic Western Classical Music who follows after Beethoven*. He had completed a tremendous collection of hundreds of lieder, symphonies, operas, and a large body of chamber and piano music that adds up to over 1000 works during his career. This was prolific for a man who only lived for 31 years. Franz Liszt described him as “the most poetic musician who ever lived.” On his deathbed, Beethoven is said to have looked into some of the younger man’s works and exclaimed, “Truly, the spark of divine genius resides in this Schubert!”

Yet, a number of Schubert’s musical works such as ‘Winter Journey’, ‘the Unfinished Symphony’ and ‘Death and the Maiden’ are said to be filled with elements of death. Indeed, Schubert’s despair during his life is reflected in his own writing, “the brightest hopes have come to naught, to whom the joy of love and friendship can offer nothing but pain at most… Every night as I retire to my bed, I always hope that I would not wake up. Yet every day, the morning breaks into the pains of yesterday’s wounds.”

Why was Schubert so sad?

For most of his adult life, Schubert suffered from cyclothymia, a mental illness that resulted in severe mood swings that fluctuated between hypomanic and depressive episodes. His condition became far more extreme during his mid-twenties, and his friends reported periods of dark despair and violent anger.

Physically, Schubert’s life was haunted by varying periods of sickness. In 1822, Schubert began to suffer from headaches, intermittent fever and skin rash. The next year, his scalp began to itch so intensely, that he had his patchy head shaved and bought a wig. He was subsequently admitted to Vienna General Hospital, where he wrote part of ‘Die schöne Müllerin’. Hence began the battle with the illness throughout his life.

Schubert was also an introvert personality who was not considered very attractive. Standing at barely five feet tall, he was a shy, stumpy person whose facial features included a round nose, a long oval face and a deeply cleft chin, topped off by very severe short-sightedness. Romance was hence difficult for the composer, and it is said that was why he turned to prostitutes. This may explain why, at the young age of only 21, he had contracted the sexually transmitted disease syphilis. Although syphilis was prevalent in Vienna at that time, the secondary effects of the disease were so stigmatizing that after his death, Schubert’s friends burnt his letters and diaries so that the true nature of his illness could never be officially announced.

As a composer, Schubert’s work received little recognition during his lifetime. The only two operas he composed were poorly received by the critics. One of them only managed a mere 6 shows before it was forced to close down. Publishers were reluctant to print his works, because he was fairly unknown at the time. As a result, Schubert had no choice but to turn to friends to print his works, but the royalties he could collect were barely enough for even one meal. It was only until Schuman and Franz Liszt performed his work after his death that his work became known.

The Treatment that killed Franz Schubert

In today’s world, people often disregard syphilis, because an early prescription of penicillin is sufficient to treat the condition. Unfortunately for Schubert, the popular treatment by physicians then was to place the patient in a sealed room, and cover the patient’s body with mercury. The patients were therefore forbidden to change their underwear or bed sheets.

The treatment would cause the mouth cavity to heat up and taste of metal, which adversely affected the patient’s appetite. The consequences included mouth cavity pains, difficulty swallowing, excessive drooling, diarrhea, vomiting and excess urination. The doctors explained to the patients that these were simply the side effects of effective treatment. But in fact, these are symptoms of mercury poisoning.

Schubert lived his final days in one of these tightly sealed rooms, and by then he had lost his appetite for more than 10 days. After his death, many articles claim that he died of ‘typhus abdominalis’, but such a disease was not prevalent in Vienna then, nor did he possess the symptoms typical of typhus abdominalis.

Therefore, although Schubert did in fact contract syphilis, it was the mistreatment of his disease that really killed him. Schubert passed away in Vienna in 1828 at the age of only 31.

Music critic Philip Hale’s take on Schubert’s work quite accurately concludes the composer’s life, “when Schubert smelled the mould and knew the earth was impatiently looking for him…it is the melancholy of an autumnal sunset, of the ironical depression due to a burgeoning noon in the spring, the melancholy that comes between the lips of lovers.”