The
mystery into the death and burial of my favorite composer has intrigued my mind
since I first learned of his demise in detail during my trip to his hometown of
Salzburg some years back. What truly became of the greatest mind of musical
composition the world ever knew? How is it that there is no definitive record
of his actual burial? Many claims that some were there and none were there. As
tradition of the times his wife Constanze remained home in mourning but did his
friends stand by on that calm day to make sure he was carefully put into the
ground by the gravedigger? It is said that he was abnormally thrown into a
pauper’s grave with fifteen to twenty other coffins but if that was the case
then someone was there and was able to see what had become of him. We will never
know the truth and the location of this mysterious grave is a mystery. How odd
it is that his wife didn’t visit his grave until seventeen years later. How odd
it is that he may have been poisoned. When his sister-in-law Sophie inquired
for a priest to give him is last rites the priests in Vienna refused saying
that Mozart lived his life in sin. That he was not a good Catholic. A man lying
on his deathbed should never be rejected a last rite. What sin aside from
murder, rape and molestation of a child, none of which Mozart was accused,
could be so bad to turn away the men of God? Politics I imagine. The power of
politics and corrupted influence. Maybe it was the jealousy of Mozart’s fame
and his egotism of his unbelievable talents. It is all a wonder and puzzlement
to me what happened leading up to five minutes to one in the morning on
December 5, 1791 when he breathed his last breath, his sparse funeral in the
lobby of St. Stephen’s cathedral and the supposed burial in a pauper’s grave. A
man of his stature never received such ill treatment in the history of Vienna
at that time, before or since. Could his gigantic debts have played into this
monstrosity? Surly there were friends and family that would have taken up a
collection for him even if his bitter wife refrained. It bothered me then when
I first learned about it and it bothers me still today. Was Mozart’s coffin
really only filled with rocks and put into the pauper’s grave to mislead a
curious public and his remains secretly buried elsewhere? Did his wife actually
visit is grave regularly along with friends and all of them taking the actual
location of Mozart’s body to their graves with them? As curious as it would be
to learn the truth maybe it is better off that he rests in peace wherever he
lays, hidden, away from the prying utensils of science.
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