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Was Mozart Murdered?
Was Mozart murdered? Inspired by the film Amadeus, many people have also heard the more obscure rumor that Mozart was murdered by a jealous husband in 1791, and not Salieri, as the film implies.
Here are some curious facts about Mozart's final days.
First of all, it is rumored that Mozart was having an affair with Magdalena Hofdemel, a beautiful young piano student.
Wolfgang and Magdalena
Wolfgang and Magdalena shared weekend retreats at a country house in the Vienna woods. The excitable husband Franz Hofdemel caught wind of Mozart's affair with his wife.
Hofdemel was a wine merchant and had plied the avid drinker Mozart with many fine wines. He had done so over many years. These wines, in the opinion of some, were filled with increasing doses of a South American poison that kills slowly, but is very hard to trace.
Mozart's Illness
To support this conjecture, the fact is that Mozart complained of an entirely mysterious illness in the weeks before he died.
Hofdemel stabbed Magdalena almost to death on the very day of Mozart's death as a reprisal for his wife's affair with Mozart. Hofdemel then committed suicide, guilty of both Mozart's and Magdalena's murder.
The Solution Of The Crime
Some contemporary accounts say that Magdalena came home, stricken with grief over the death of the great master and her lover Mozart.
Hofdemel then attacked his wife in a fit of jealous rage. Knowing he was also guilty of the poisoning murder of the great Mozart, Hofdemel committed suicide.
Current historians are convinced this is the true story of Mozart's death.
REFERENCES
Music History
What Killed the Golden Age of the Piano
Carl Tausig Cooks His Cat
I Meet Aaron Copland
George Sand Killed Chopin
Why Brahms Must Have Been Fat
Artur Rubinstein Was A Vampire
Igor Stravinsky Loses His Cool
Vladimir Horowitz Goes To The Racetrack
Beethoven Was No Beauty
The World’s Largest Blue Danube Waltz
Beethoven’s Rage Over A Lost Penny
Franz Schubert, The First Bohemian
Chopin’s Singing Piano Tone
Stravinsky’s Good Luck
Tchaikovsky’s Greatest Fan
Hector Berlioz and the Orchestral Train Wreck
Piano Lessons with Papa Bach
Piano Lessons with Frederic Chopin
The Great Piano Craze of 1910
The American Piano Wars
Why Hugo Wolf Went Insane
Rachmaninoff and the Evolution of Pop Songs
Musical Feuds
Piano In The Past Was Better
The Master’s Hands
Einstein’s Piano
Einstein’s Violin Improvisations In Gypsy Style
A History of Piano and Numbers
Ryan Seacrest’s Piano Concerto #2
