We can find only one incident of a carriage fatality.
Considering the poor conditions of travel there must surely be many more.
The violinist Charles-Phillipe Lafont,
a student of Kreutzer and of Rode, who once engaged in a violin-playing competition with Paganini,
was killed in a carriage accident whilst on a tour of Southern France in 1839.
His accompanist, Henri Herz, survived, living until 1888.
The American composer Stephen Albert, (1941-1992)
who won a Pulitzer prize for his symphony RiverRun died in a car crash on Cape Cod.
Australian composer Ian Bonighton, teaching at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, died after a road accident there.
Dennis Brain, one of the all-time great horn players,
and who read motoring magazines during rehearsals, died when he drove at high speed,
returning to London after a performance, when his car hit a tree.
Cornelius Cardew, avant-garde composer and founder of ‘The Scratch Orchestra’ died in in 1981,
the victim of a hit-and-run car accident near his London home in Leytonstone. The driver was never found.
Louis Cazette is on the unfortunate accidents page.
Greek composer Jani Christou and his wife
both died in an automobile accident on his 44th birthday.
Ernest Chausson rode his bicycle
into a brick wall on his estate, dying from the resultant cerebral haemorrhage.
César Franck was struck by a bus, dying from the injuries soon afterwards.
Finnish opera tenor Peter Lindroos
died at the age of 59 in November 2003 in a car accident in Sweden.
Isaac Nathan (1790-1864), born in Canterbury, England,
emmigrated to Australia in 1841, becoming one of that country's first composers,
writing Don John of Austria, the first opera to be wholly composed and produced in Australia.
Nathan was killed while alighting from a city horse-tram.
Willem van Otterloo (1907-78), Dutch conductor who used to drive Porsches at very high speeds on the European motorways,
died in suburban Melbourne when a car in which he was a passenger was hit by a truck.
Having been rejected for active service because of his frail physique,
Maurice Ravel served at
the front as an ambulance driver during the First World War.
In the 1930’s he was involved in a car accident, suffering head injuries.
Although he recovered, he still experienced difficulties in muscular co-ordination
and aphasia, symptoms indicative of a cerebral malady. He composed no further works.
A further operation was performed, unsuccessfully, and Ravel died 9 days later.
Ossy Renardy, born Oskar Reiss in Vienna in 1920, was killed in a car accident in 1953.
The car in which he was a passenger skidded on an ice slick and, while out of control, was hit by another car coming in the opposite direction.
The other were not seriously injured, and his Guarnerius [the Carrodus] was undamaged.
Renardy made the first complete recording of Paganini’s caprices.
Returning home late at night after the final rehearsal for the musical Sunset Boulevard,
due to open the following day, Australian conductor Brian Stacey,
died in October 1996, after his motorcycle and a car collided.
The “show did go on” opening with as planned, but with an alternative conductor.
Bessie Smith who was known as The Empress of the Blues,
was a larger-than-life stage and recording star of the 1920s. When the blues craze subsided and the
Great Depression hit, Smith’s career began to lag. Still popular in the southern United States, she
toured extensively during the 1930s. While on tour in 1937, she was killed in a car accident in Mississippi.
For years the story was that Bessie, an African-American, was refused admittance to a whites-only hospital and as a
result bled to death. Now it’s believed that she died of her injuries at the scene of the crash.
ON THE RAILS
See also Arthur Eaglefield Hull.
The day before British concert singer Gerwase Elwes
(1866-1921) was due to sing in Boston he took a train from New York.
Upon arrival in New York, he was walking along the platform when he realised that he had taken someone else’s coat.
Rushing back to the train, which was now pulling out, he threw the coat for a guard to catch.
In so doing he lost his balance and fell between the carriages, dying a few hours later from injuries.
Leonid Kogan died on the train at the Mytishcha railway station, en route to
a concert engagement
Thomas ‘Fats’ Waller died on board the Santa Fe Chief
train from pneumonia, in December 1943.