Top of the pageBig Mama Cass (Cass Elliot) did not choke to death on a ham sandwich. It was a heart attack, but she was eating the aforesaid sandwich
The story that a jealous Salieri poisoned Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has long been exploded as false, for the medical cause seems to be acute nephritis. Mozart has long been said to have been buried in a pauper’s grave, the burial occurring during a blizzard, so that none of Mozart’s friends could follow the body to the cemetery. Not true! The Viennese weather bureau records show that the weather on the day was fine.
Mozart’s body was removed from its original individual location because the family neglected to pay the mandatory dues.
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi is also said to have been poisoned by a rival composer. He died of galloping consumption, just 26. No sooner had he ceased to live than he became the object of an interest only equal to the indifference shown him in his lifetime. In the rush to publish music by Pergolesi, unscrupulous publishers passed of the work of others as his. The ensuing entanglement has taken scholars centuries to unravel. Stravinsky thought he was using music by Pergolesi when he wrote his pastiche ballet Pulcinella in 1920), he was in fact using music by other lesser composers. The six Concertini for strings and continuo, long attributed to Pergolesi, were in fact written by Count Unico von Wassenaer, a Dutch nobleman and amateur musician. But never mind who the composer really was, the quality of the music remains constant.