Disentangling facts and opinions about what illnesses have caused when composing their music. That is the task the authors set themselves: debunk myths and seek out truths. The book is bursting with music analyses by musicologist Yves Knockaert and medical bulletins. The latter come from Frieda Matthys, em. prof. dr. psychiatry and psychology VUB. Take Beethoven now. What happens when his ability diminishes to listen to what he writes?
That is what the first chapter is about. It is immediately a bull's eye: how did Beethoven deal with his deafness? The authors compile the facts and opinions they know about composers who must reckon with illnesses in their careers that do more than hinder their profession. Should the listener worry about that mental and physical health? Can you see or hear anything in that oeuvre of Beethoven, and in his behavior, of how he deals with that increasing deafness? Is there resistance against that fate, does he want to be the hero fighting against it? Only later does acceptance come to him, he stops as a soloist and composes less for piano. "But how does someone manage to write complex compositions without being able to test them aurally?" It remains an unanswered question. His last works? Pure brainwork some say, all too cerebral. Beethoven himself: "Have I not always been a sick person?" We learn that a number of other well-known (Gabriel Fauré, Ralph Vaughan Williams) and lesser-known composers had to deal with deafness.
But of course there are other ailments that can cross the life path of composers. And you certainly read this book gladly to learn more about those few great names who dealt with them without you already knowing. Take now the declining eyesight of Bach and Handel: stare or cataract. Both operated on at the end of their lives by the same traveling quack "eye surgeon" John Taylor and yet both died blind. Another great name takes up a large part of the chapter about syphilis: Franz Schubert. He contracted that disease in 1823 but remains "inhumanly diligent" because, he writes himself, "pain sharpens the mind and strengthens the spirit". And in that pain arose a heap of dark masterworks: his Der Tod und das Mädchen, his Winterreise, his ninth symphony, his last piano sonatas. Yet his sudden cause of death turns out to be enteric typhoid, due to a salmonella bacterium. Other syphilis sufferers were among others Niccolò Paganini, possibly poisoned by the then mercury treatment for syphilis, Gaetano Donizetti, who despite that disease was still able to write 65 operas, including the madness scene of Lucia di Lammermoor…
Each chapter begins with a clear exposition of all those diseases that composers suffered from. So too about tuberculosis, which until the early 20th century in Europe was responsible for 25% of deaths. You naturally think of Chopin. He had lung problems from a young age but science still does not dare to attribute his death to tuberculosis. A persistently weak health, that certainly. Often despondent, almost always catching cold and coughing, but he remained productive. George Sand about his compositions: "it was the most painful labor I ever witnessed". Purcell, Pergolesi, Boccherini, Carl Maria von Weber and Szymanowski are those who actually died of tuberculosis.
It is rather sad to read that list of ailments. But on the other hand, it makes us realize that an artist's life is not always smooth sailing and it also commands respect for their perseverance. Mahler, with his heart disease, always carried a pedometer (!) in his pocket! Knockaert analyzes sharply how Mahler dealt with the word "heart" whenever he encountered it, for instance when setting Das Lied von der Erde. Bellini wrote his Casta Diva in the hell of his relentless intestinal disease. Lili Boulanger, also suffering from intestinal disease, wrote the song Dans l'immense tristesse in 1916. Two years later she dies.
There are also those who simply grow old and become demented, papa Haydn for instance. Ravel too had neurological problems, underwent brain surgery but that ended fatally. Was it too much vodka and cigarettes for Shostakovich? Lung cancer in any case but perhaps at the end also ALS? Alcohol and other intoxicants we see in "café pianist" Satie and also Sibelius "Can I give up drinking? It remains a pious hope". Yet he became 91. Knockaert: "The row of composers who drank (too) much alcohol, is endless". The authors also discuss mood disorders. Who hasn't had them? In any case Schumann did. Was Wagner bipolar and did Mozart have ADHD?
But despite the many uncertain medical bulletins of that time, all those ailments do not necessarily prevent the splendor and productivity of their compositions. The book thus contains not only sadness, it is on the contrary a pleasure to read those many anecdotal details about composers and their time. And also because of the many sometimes extensive analyses that Knockaert writes about how and what they compose during their illness. And all of that seasoned with contemporary and current medical insights that co-author Frieda Matthys shares with us. The whole book is actually an ode to the work ethic and resilience of those many composers who probably would have lived another life had they been treated with the knowledge of current medical science. Sick and sighing, composers: they remain a tough breed.
ISBN 978 94 6371 595 9