1. The
great Baroque violinist Jean-Marie Leclair was brutally stabbed to
death in a dangerous Parisian neighbourhood in 1764. But whodunnit? Was
it his ex-wife, intent on financial gain? Or Leclair’s nephew,
appropriately named Vial. Or could it have been the work of another
musician envious of Leclair's brilliance? We may never find out.
2. Who was Beethoven’s ‘immortal beloved’?
Beethoven
was a bit of a failure when it came to romance, falling impractically
in love with elegant, society women, including one he addressed as
‘immortal beloved’ in a famous love letter of July 1812. The recipient
of the letter has been the subject of much speculation. The two
candidates most favoured today are Antonie Brentano (pictured) - an
Austrian patroness of the arts - and Countess Jozefina Brunszvik de
Korompa, who received at least 15 love letters from Beethoven in which
he swore his eternal devotion to her.
3. How did Tchaikovsky die?
Tchaikovsky died at
the age of 53 on 6 November 1893. The official cause was reported to be
cholera, most probably contracted through drinking contaminated water
several days earlier. However, his death is still a mystery. If he did
contract cholera, it is impossible to know precisely when or how he
became infected. Or did he commit suicide after facing a 'court of
honour' investigating his sexual behaviour? Was the Tsar of Russia
himself behind the great composer's death? Or did Tchaikovsky end it all
after falling for his nephew, Bob? All possible, all very tragic.
4. The case of the missing Sibelius symphony
Sibelius
worked on his Symphony No.8 from the mid-1920s until around 1938, but
never had it published. He repeatedly refused to release it for
performance, while continuing to assert that he was working on it even
after it was claimed it had been burned in 1945. It was only in the
1990s that experts raised the possibility that some of the music may
have survived in notebooks. Three short manuscript sketches – comprising
less than three minutes of music – have been recorded by the Helsinki
Philharmonic Orchestra, but will the full work ever be discovered and
performed?
5. Who killed Stradella?
The Italian Baroque
composer Alessandro Stradella was stabbed to death in 1682 but his
killer was never caught. Admittedly the composer was not without
enemies: he had attempted – and failed – to embezzle money from the
Church and had enough high-profile affairs with women to make him pretty
unpopular among the great and the good of Rome and Venice.
6. Where are the remains of Thomas Tallis?
The
great English composer Thomas Tallis died at his home in Greenwich in
1585. He was buried in St. Alfege’s Church in Greenwich. To this day,
the exact location in the church of Tallis's remains is unknown. It’s
feared they may have even been discarded by labourers between 1712 and
1714, when the church was rebuilt.
7. What was Elgar’s ‘enigma’?
For
his Variations on an Original Theme for Orchestra, Elgar wrote a set of
14 variations on a hidden theme that is, in the composer's own words,
'not played'. Various musicians have proposed theories about what the
missing melody could be, although Elgar never actually claimed his theme
was a melody. It could be something else - such as a symbol or a
literary allusion. Elgar rejected all of the solutions proposed in his
lifetime, and took the secret with him to the grave.
8. The tomb of the two-headed composer
Eight
days after the funeral of Joseph Haydn in May 1809, two phrenologists
stole his head hoping to see if the composer's genius was somehow
reflected in the bumps and ridges of his skull. Eleven years later,
Haydn's patron Prince Nikolaus Esterházy II wanted to have Haydn's
remains transferred and was furious to find they had no skull. The
phrenologists gave him a different skull to bury with the rest of the
body. In 1895, the real skull turned up again when it was willed to a
music society in Vienna. In 1954, it was finally reunited with the rest
of Haydn’s body – but the substitute skull was never removed. There are
now two skulls in Haydn’s tomb - but which is his?
9. The mystery of the women who channeled composers
In
the 1970s, Londoner Rosemary Brown caused a sensation when she claimed
that dead composers were dictating new musical works to her. Debussy,
Grieg, Liszt, Chopin, Stravinsky, Bach, Brahms, Beethoven, Schumann and
Rachmaninov were all queuing up to get their compositions through to
her, she said. Reportedly a mediocre pianist herself, Brown even
channelled a 40-page sonata from Schubert, as well as Beethoven's 10th
and 11th Symphonies. Experts said the pieces were just sub-standard
re-workings of some of those composer's better-known compositions. Well
they would, wouldn't they?
10. Was Beethoven killed by his doctor?
There is
much disagreement over how Beethoven died. An autopsy revealed
significant liver damage, which may have been caused by heavy alcohol
consumption. Then there is the speculation - of syphilis, infectious
hepatitis, sarcoidosis and even the gastro-disorder called Whipple's
disease. More recently, examination of hair clippings from Beethoven
(pictured) have led to the assertion that he was poisoned to death by
excessive doses of lead-based treatments administered under instruction
from his doctor.
