Poor health since childhood
Musical ability is hardly the only talent that is inherited. Melodies have always been heard in the Mozarts’ home of professional musicians. No wonder that at the age of four Wolfgang Amadeus was already composing music, and at the age of seven he wrote his first concerto. From that moment, his childhood ended and his working life began. His father took his son all over the country, expecting to surprise and amaze the noble public with the young talent. Some biographers consider his father to be the indirect cause of Wolfgang Amadeus’ frail health. Mozart paid for his worldwide recognition and fame after his death as a child with exhausting rehearsals, heavy travel from city to city and constant illness.
It is known that in childhood the little genius often caught colds, at the age of six he fell ill, as they said at the time, catarrh of the throat with high fever and painful bright red rashes on the body the size of a coin. Twice – at the ages of 6 and 10 – he was diagnosed with fever with severe pain in his knee joints. At 10 Amadeus suffered typhoid fever, at 12 – chicken pox, at 16 – jaundice. Then until the age of 28 nothing noteworthy happened. But at 28 and 31 there were episodes of severe fever with abdominal pain and vomiting. In the last year of his life, the composer was often troubled by headaches, loss of consciousness and depression. According to contemporaries, in the thirty-fifth year of his life, the always cheerful and cheerful Mozart began to have thoughts of death. He was convinced that someone had poisoned him with a slow-acting poison containing arsenic and lead. The composer even claimed to know its name – acqua Toffana – in honor of the compiler of the deadly recipe, the Neapolitan sorceress Toffana. This poison was the most popular in the eighteenth century.
The bloodletting didn’t work
Mozart’s last illness lasted 15 days. His wife Constanza and his pupil Süßmeyer recalled that poor Wolfgang was tormented by high fever, sweating and frequent vomiting. His legs and arms were so swollen that it was immediately obvious. The pain in his lower back made any movement unbearable, there were small rashes on his skin and a foul odor emanating from his body. Mozart was practically paralyzed, but he continued to work, giving orders to Süßmeier about his compositions and even humming the viola part of his famous Requiem.
Mozart was treated with bloodletting, a common treatment for fever in those days, but it seems that the loss of blood only brought him closer to death. Two hours before his death, he lost consciousness and never regained consciousness again. The posthumous diagnosis made by the doctors was: “Acute rash fever”.
Wolfgang Amadeus was buried in a common grave: at that time, the family of the famous composer, who was mired in debt, had no money for a decent funeral. For a long time there were no identifying signs over the grave of the great composer. Only a simple tailor planted a willow tree on it.
Assumptions about the cause of Mozart’s death
From the moment of the genius composer’s death to the present day, many versions have been put forward as to the causes of his death: pneumonia, rheumatic fever, acute renal failure, self-medication with arsenic for syphilis, and the machinations of all sorts of poisoners, from the Freemasons to his wife Constanze. The most popular version of Mozart’s death is known even to a first-grader – he was allegedly poisoned by Antonio Salieri, an envious composer and colleague. Salieri spent the rest of his days in a psychiatric hospital, where from time to time he made statements about Mozart’s poisoning, then denied them. And although the composer’s body was terribly swollen after his death – as happens with poisoning, the version of violent death is very controversial. None of the descriptions of Wolfgang Amadeus’s illness show the characteristic symptoms of poisoning by the poisons popular at the time: mercury, lead and arsenic. Modern researchers give Mozart other diagnoses. Here are three of the most widespread versions.
- Parasitic infection. The authors of this hypothesis, American doctors, believe that the cause of the composer’s untimely death was trichinellosis. This disease is caused by the larvae of small roundworms living in poorly fried meat. 44 days before his death, Mozart wrote to his wife Constanze: “What do I smell? Pork cutlets. What a great flavor! I eat them for your health.” Parasites living in the meat of an infected animal do not spoil its flavor, but once in the human body, quickly multiply in muscle tissue and affect vital organs. Moreover, the incubation period of the disease – 50 days – coincides with the interval between the ode to cutlets in the letter and the death of the composer. And the symptoms of trichinellosis – high fever, pain in the joints, swelling of the entire body – fully coincide with Mozart’s condition during the hours of agony.
- Rheumatic heart disease: It is possible that Mozart had a severe infection in childhood, characteristic of angina or scarlet fever, which ended in rheumatism and its complications – glomerulonephritis (chronic kidney disease) and endocarditis (inflammation of the inner lining of the heart), which often leads to valve damage and the formation of heart defects. As a rule, rheumatism or inflammation of connective tissue provokes streptococci that affect the upper respiratory tract. This is why frequent sore throats, tonsillitis, pharyngitis become a springboard for rheumatism. It is usually contracted between the ages of 5 and 15, but its effects last a lifetime. The disease probably caught up with little Wolfgang Amadeus at the age of six after suffering scarlet fever with skin rashes and soon developed into a rheumatic attack (pain in the knee and ankle joints). Touring in wet and cold weather contributed to the development and chronicization of the disease. But the most unpleasant complication of rheumatism remained in the shadows until now – this disease stealthily “eats” the heart of its victim. Rheumatic heart defects take more than one year to develop, so it is not surprising that until the last moment the composer did not complain of chest pain until the fateful winter of 1791 he developed secondary infective endocarditis. Its symptoms – fever, edema, foul body odor, vomiting, lower back pain, headache and weakness, body rashes, sweating and the rapid development of renal failure – are quite consistent with Mozart’s condition on the eve of his death.
- Congenital anomaly of the kidneys. The version about a congenital defect of the composer’s urogenital tract was put forward by the American pathologist Rappoport on the basis of… Mozart’s left ear. It turns out that the shell of his left ear was somewhat abnormally developed. The composer hid his mark under a wig. How do we know this? In 1828, Mozart’s widow decided to publish her husband’s biography. In order to put an end to rumors about the illegitimate origin of Mozart’s youngest son, on page 586 she placed a drawing of her husband’s ears, made by an anatomy expert. One of them was clearly deformed. This served as the best physical evidence, since their son’s left ear was exactly the same. But the salt was different: Dr. Rappoport provided statistics supporting the link between deformed ear shape and urogenital birth defects, namely kidney dysfunction. By the age of 35, the sluggish kidney failure had reached its final stage. Scientists add that the onset of death was accelerated by excessive bloodletting, which Mozart tried to treat.
The true cause of the maestro’s death is unlikely to be established. Nor will it be possible to decipher the secret of the healing effect of the composer’s music. Some explain the “Mozart effect” by the harmonious rhythm of his works, while others speak of the composer’s own personality – spiritualized and free.
