TonMus

PECULIARITIES

There are many parallels between Bach and Handel. Born within a few weeks of each other, and about 130 kilometres apart, Bach in Eisenach and Handel in Halle, they never met. Bach visited Halle at least twice, but Handel was already in London. At the end of their long lives, there were further similarities. They both suffered from cataracts, and were losing their eyesight. Bach had a type of cataract operation performed with primitive instruments, to remove the opaque lens. Infection set in, he died soon after of a stroke, but caused by the infection resulting from the operation. Eight years later, Handel also had the same operation, with the same surgeon, with similar results. The surgeon was the British optician John Taylor who plied his trade in Saxony and London. What a legacy! The assassin of Bach and Handel!

John Bull (c.1562-1628), in addition to his virtuosity as a keyboard performer and composer, was skilled at getting into trouble. 1596 he became the first professor of music at Gresham College on the recommendation of Queen Elizabeth. He was forced to leave this post after he pre-maritally impregnated a maiden named Elizabeth Walter. He hastily took out a marriage license two days after his dismissal. He thus lost his best source of income as well as his quarters. In October 1613 Bull secretly and with hastily fled to the Low Countries, leaving England for good, the charge this time being adultery.
William Trumbull, the English envoy in the Low Countries, after first attempting to cover for him—but later fearing for his own position if he continued to do so—wrote to the King in early 1614:

... Bull did not leave your Majesties service for any wrong done unto him, or for matter of religion, under which fained pretext he now sought to wrong the reputation of your Majesties justice, but did in that dishonest matter steal out of England through the guilt of a corrupt conscience, to escape the punishment, which notoriously he had deserved, and was designed to have been inflicted on him by the hand of justice, for his incontinence, fornication, adultery, and other grievious crimes.

Bull remained in Flanders, where it seems he stayed out of trouble. He continued his career as an organist, organ builder and composer. He died in Antwerp on 15 March 1628.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) and William Yeates Hurlstone (1876-1906) have many similarities in both their lives and deaths. Both came from South London (South Norwood), both were students at Royal College of Music, often commuting there together. Both collapsed mortally ill at railway stations, dying shortly after at their homes. Hurlstone from the bronchial asthma from which he had suffered since infancy, Coleridge-Taylor from pneumonia type symptoms. Delirious, near to death, both conducted imaginary performances of their most recent compositions.
In the composition class of Charles Villiers Stanford, a class which included both Holst and Vaughan Williams, Hurlstone was cited by Stanford as the most gifted of his pupils. Aged just 28, Hurlstone was appointed as professor at RCM in 1905, an appointment that was to be short-lived. In May 1906 he caught a chill while waiting at Victoria Station. Nine days later he was dead.
Coleridge-Taylor, the illegitimate son of a Sierra Leone doctor and English mother, was raised by his mother following his father’s return to Africa, unable to find patients who were prepared to be treated by a black doctor. His most famous work is Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, a setting of Longfellow's famous poem. Surely a strange subject choice for an Afro-Englishman! In spite of Hiawatha’s success, for which he received but a pittance from Novellos, he was constantly beset by money worries. He was horribly overworked. In 1912 collapsed on the platform at West Croydon railway station, having bought a ticket to Crystal palace. Unaided, he staggered home. A doctor diagnosed pneumonia and prescribed rest. Here he worked on in bed on the manuscript of his violin concerto, dying four days later.
Coleridge-Taylor, mysteriously, had a premonition of his own death. He had just began a rare holiday from his normal schedule of extreme overwork. Coleridge-Taylor said to his wife ‘I had a dream where I met William Hurlstone (who had died six years earlier). We could not shake hands however. This means I will die shortly!’ Indeed, within a week he was dead.
His two children both became musicians, the son, Hiawatha, making somewhat of a career conducting his father’s music. Just imagine the posters for the concert! Don’t confuse him with the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge!

A similar case is that of Victor Hely-Hutchinson (1901-1947). He was revising a symphony, written using some of the film music. At the beginning of 1947, temperatures in England plummeted to below freezing point for weeks on end. Such was the financial exhaustion of Britain that fuel had to be saved. Victor refused to switch on the radiators in his office, eventually developing a cold. Returning to work before he had fully recovered, the cold turned to pneumonia, from which he died in March.

Harry Lillis “Bing” Crosby died while playing golf, no doubt, the manner which he would have selected. It occurred at La Moraleja course outside Madrid.

Francis Poulenc died at home of a heart attack. No drama here, nothing untoward at all. Unusually, however, for a still active composer, there were no works in progress, all were finished, nothing new had been started. Very neat!

Sergei Prokofiev died on March 5 1953, the same day as Joseph Stalin. Obviously the Soviet’s priorities were elsewhere on that day. Less than a dozen people attended his funeral.

Rossini was born on February 29, 1792, he celebrated his 19^th birthday year 1868 at the age of 76. Being superstitious, he was wary of Friday the thirteenth. He died later that year on November 13, a Friday!

Arnold Schönberg was very superstitious about the number 13. For the last few years of his life, spent in Hollywood, he suffered from asthma attacks. As he turned 76 he received a letter from an astrologer warning him that due to the sum of the digits which made up his age (7+6=13), that year would be particularly dangerous for him. The thirteenth of each month was a day of concern for him. On 13^th July, 1951, he died at fifteen minutes before midnight. His wife reportedly said how ironic it was, for in Europe it was already the 14^th.