Crazy Composer Stories Part 1 "OMG"

The modern music world is no stranger to scandal and weirdness. Chris Brown hitting Rihanna. Ozzy Osbourne biting the head off a bat. Phil Spector's murder trial. But stuff like that isn't limited to the modern day.

Pre-21st century composers may seem boring, but sometimes they were anything but. From mysterious deaths, to visions of ghosts, to crazy fans, the lives of composers were fraught with drama.
Below are twelve strange stories about some interesting composers  in two parts.

                                              Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Perhaps the creepiest story in the classical canon, Mozart was anonymously commissioned to write a requiem (a song for the dead) in 1791. His contemporaries wrote that composing it made him think of his own death, and that Mozart eventually began to feel like he was writing the requiem for himself. Soon after starting, Mozart fell ill but kept feverishly working on the requiem. He died before it could be completed and it was then performed at his funeral, making Mozart’s premonition come true.

                                                            Carlo Gesualdo
Gesualdo's Wikipedia entry describes him as: "an Italian nobleman, lutenist, composer, and murderer." Way to bury the lead, Wikipedia. Gesualdo discovered that his wife and a duke were having an affair, so it’s speculated that he pretended to leave for a hunting trip, and then stabbed them both with the help of his servants.Some argue Gesualdo shouldn’t be demonized because, at the time, it would have been shameful if he didn’t murder them both. But he dressed the duke in a woman’s nightgown and then displayed the pair to the public, which just seems excessive.

Bach used to teach a student choir whose members resented him because he was younger than a lot of them. As Bach walked home one day, a student carrying a large stick accused Bach of insulting his bassoon and, when Bach denied it, began hitting him. Bach managed to draw a sword he carried around for these types of situations, but the student wrestled Bach to the ground. The church that ran the choir later had a hearing and while the student got a mild reprimand for attacking his teacher, Bach got in trouble, too, for referring to the student as a "nanny goat bassoonist." (Ooh, burn.)

                                                  Ludwig van Beethoven

In his later career, Beethoven’s personal grooming fell by the wayside. People avoided his dinner table at the inn due to his "uninviting habits," according to painter Blasius Hofel. He was even arrested for wandering around an Austrian town in Austria dressed as a hobo and peering in people’s windows. He gave the 19th century equivalent of the "Don’t you know who I am?" defense but the cops didn’t believe him.Many people,including Leo Tolstoy and Beethoven himself, thought he was legitimately crazy.

 

             

                                                          Franz LisztLiszt was basically the first rock star, causing hysteria -– dubbed "Lisztomania" ... when he performed in Berlin in 1842. The term may seem tame now in our post-Beatlemania era, but at the time, women under Liszt’s spell were seen as actually being ill as they fought over his discarded cigar butts and broken piano strings. A book about him says, at the time, "there was a risk that the experience of Liszt could become exclusively physical, all sensual pleasure, devoid of moral or intellectual engagement. Applause for Liszt thus teetered on the edge of the illegitimate abyss of pure sensuality."

 

           

 

                            

                                                          Clara Schuman
In 1849, there was an uprising in Dresden after the Saxon king refused to accept a proposed constitution. The rebels expected able-bodied men to join them, and while Clara's husband, fellow composer Robert Schumann, sympathized with them, his weak health wouldn’t allow him to fight. Clara kept him hidden as long as she could, but was eventually forced to help him and their oldest child escape. She later returned to retrieve the rest of her children -- ranging in age from a year and a half to six years old -- while dodging armed rebels and soldiers, and led them to safety. As if this wasn’t badass enough, she was seven months pregnant at the time.
  
Hey , look ,  I'm walking the crazies .

What a hard way to make a living ... oh well , it has to get better ...HeHe