Results for Classical Composers' Bizarre Deaths

Henry Purcell
His wife got so tired of him staying out late at night that one evening she instructed their servant to lock him out. The consequence was that: Purcell caught a cold and later died from it. Purcell lived from 1659 - 1695, and was the greatest English composer of the period.

Mahler
He was so worried he would die, like so many composers, whilst writing his ninth symphony, that he decided to call the work a 'song cycle' instead. 'Das Lied von der Erde' translates as 'The Song of the Earth'.

Enrique Granados
He died in 1916 on a ship that was torpedoed by a submarine. He died returning from a trip to New York during the First World War.

Lully
He stabbed himself in the foot with one of the heavy staffs used by conductors of the era, contracting a fatal case of gangrene.

Tchaikovsky
He committed suicide after a letter containing what piece of information was sent to the Tsar. The revelation about him being a homosexual was so shameful that he decided to take his own life.

Robert Schumann
He went mad towards the end of his life. He tried jumping into the Rhine. Schumann died in 1856, having earlier actually signed himself into a mental asylum.

Mozart
In popular myth, Salieri rival composer might have killed Mozart was spun out into a highly successful film, Peter Shaffer's 'Amadeus'.

Composer Alkan
He died when he was reaching for a book and toppling a bookcase onto himself. He is supposed to have been reaching for a copy of the Talmud when his bookcase crushed him.

Chastelain de Coucy,
He was a troubadour and he died whilst on a pilgrimage to Palestine. He had his heart sent back to the woman he had had an affair. Her husband cooked it and fed it to her.The woman died of shock and heartbreak soon afterwards.

Anton von Webern
He died having been shot by an American soldier, after breaking a curfew to leave his house and smoke.