|
The composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died on 5 December 1791 at the age of 35. The circumstances of his death have attracted much research and speculation. Some principal sources of contention are as follows. *Whether Mozart declined gradually, experiencing great fear and sadness, or whether he was fundamentally in good spirits toward the end of his life, then felled by a relatively sudden illness. The former hypothesis held sway for most of the history of Mozart biography, but the latter has been advanced by contemporary scholars. *The actual cause of his death, whether it was from disease or poisoning. The poisoning hypothesis is widely discredited; but the particular disease that killed Mozart is unknown; only plausible conjectures can be offered. *His funeral arrangements, and whether they were the normal procedures of his day or rather, were neglectful and the basis for pathos. Here, modern scholarship generally supports the view that the funeral arrangements were normal for Mozart's time. ==The course of Mozart's final illness== Mozart scholarship long followed the accounts of early biographers, which proceeded in large part from the recorded memories of his widow Constanze and her sister Sophie Weber as they were recorded in the biographies by Franz Niemetschek and Georg Nikolaus von Nissen. For instance, the important biography by Hermann Abert (1923/2008:1305-9) largely follows this account. The following is a summary of this view. When in August 1791 Mozart's arrived in Prague to supervise the performance of his new opera ''La clemenza di Tito'' (K. 621), he was "already very ill" (Abert, p. 1305). During this visit, Niemetschek wrote, "he was pale and expression was sad, although his good humour was often shown in merry jest with his friends."〔Quotation cited from Solomon (1995:487)〕 Following his return to Vienna (mid September 1791),〔Abert (1923/2004: 1245)〕 Mozart's condition gradually worsened.〔For this point cites an article in the Berlin ''Musikalisches Wochenblatt'' ("Musical Weekly"), written shortly after Mozart's death.〕 For a while, he was still able to work and completed his Clarinet Concerto (K. 622), worked toward the completion of his Requiem (K. 626), and conducted the premiere performance of ''The Magic Flute'' (K. 620) on 30 September. Still, he became increasingly alarmed and despondent about his health. An anecdote from Constanze is related by Niemetschek: On his return to Vienna, his indisposition increased visibly and made him gloomily depressed. His wife was truly distressed over this. One day when she was driving in the Prater with him, to give him a little distraction and amusement, and they were sitting by themselves, Mozart began to speak of death, and declared that he was writing the Requiem for himself. Tears came to the eyes of the sensitive man: 'I feel definitely,' he continued, 'that I will not last much longer; I am sure I have been poisoned. I cannot rid myself of this idea.' Constanze attempted to cheer her husband by persuading him to give up work on the Requiem for a while, encouraging him instead to complete the "Freimaurerkantate" (K. 623), composed to celebrate the opening of a new Masonic temple for Mozart's own lodge. The strategy worked for a time – the cantata was completed and successfully premiered 18 November. He told Constanze he felt "elated" over the premiere.〔 The words are as related by Constanze decades later to the visiting English diarist Mary Novello.〕 Mozart is reported to have stated, "Yes I see I was ill to have had such an absurd idea of having taken poison, give me back the Requiem and I will go on with it." Even so, Mozart's worst symptoms of illness soon returned, together with the strong feeling that he was being poisoned. He became bedridden on 20 November, suffering from swelling, pain and vomiting. From this point on, scholars are all agreed that Mozart was indeed very sick, and he died about two weeks later, on December 5 (see below). However, the view that Mozart was in near-steady decline and despair during the last several months of his life has met with skepticism in recent years. Cliff Eisen supervised the reissue of Abert's biography in 2008 in a new edition, supplementing it with numerous footnotes. While generally deferential to Abert, Eisen expresses sharp criticism in the footnoting of the section leading up to Mozart's death: It should be noted that, in this context, the evidence cited by Abert is selective and suits the intended trajectory of his biography. With the exception of citations from Mozart's letters, all of the testimony is posthumous and prompted by complicated motives both personal and financial. Although it is 'authentic' in the sense that is derives from those who witnessed Mozart's death, or were close to him, it is not necessarily accurate. ... To be sure, Mozart was under the weather in Prague. But there is no evidence that he was 'very ill' and it is not true that his health 'continued to deteriorate'. As Abert himself notes later in this chapter, Mozart's health improved in October and early November (Abert/Eisen 2008:1305). In the main biography article of the ''Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia'', Ruth Halliwell expresses her skepticism of the decline-and-despair account thus: While later sources describe () as working feverishly on (Requiem ), filled with premonitions of his own death, these accounts are hard to reconcile with the high spirits of his letters from most of November. Constanze's earliest account, published in Niemetschek's biography of 1798, states that Mozart 'told her of ... his wish to try his hand at this type of composition, the more so as the higher forms of church music had always appealed to his genius.' There is no hint that the work was a burden to him. As for why Constanze might have been "prompted by complicated motives both personal and financial" (Eisen), Halliwell contends that "Constanze and Sophie were not objective witnesses, because Constanze's continuing quest for charity gave her reasons to disseminate sentimental and sensationalist views."〔From Halliwell's article "Mozart" in ''The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia'', p. 332.〕 By "charity" Halliwell may be referring to the many benefit concerts from which Constanze received income in the years following Mozart's death, as well as, perhaps, the pension she received from the Emperor; see discussion below as well as Constanze Mozart. Christoph Wolff, in a 2012 book entitled ''Mozart at the Gateway to his Fortune'', likewise decries the view that Mozart's last years represented a steady slide to despair and the grave. As a corollary, he is critical of interpretations of the music as reflecting late-life despair (for example) "the hauntingly beautiful autumnal world of () music written in 1791".〔Wolf 2012, "Prologue". The quotation, of H. C. Robbins Landon's book ''Mozart's Last Year'', appears on p. 2.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|