Musicological Mysteries.... Mozart's death

Possibly the greatest composer of the eighteenth century, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s life and death have spurred debate among experts of many disciplines. A child prodigy, Mozart was touring Europe by the age of seven and composed more than one hundred and fifty complex, original works before his death at the age of thirty-five. While the life and work of Mozart was fascinating, his death maybe even more so. Despite the popularity of Mozart’s work, he died in debt and was buried in an unmarked grave. Over the years a number of theories to his cause of death have circulated including murder, suicide and mass conspiracy. This paper will outline a few of the various theories surrounding Mozart’s death and the realities of each.
The most exciting explanation for Mozart’s death is that he was murdered. This suspicion first arose in 1791 because of an article in an issue of Musikalisches Wochenblatt, a Berlin newspaper, which stated, “Mozart is…dead. He returned home from Prague a sick man, and continued to get worse; he was said to be dropsical , and he died in Vienna at the end of last week. Because his body swelled up after death, some people believe that he was poisoned.” There are also reports that Mozart expressed suspicions to his wife Constanze towards the end of his life that he was being poisoned.
The most popular suspect of Mozart’s murder is Antonio Salieri, a fellow Viennese composer. Though many of Mozart’s letters suggest that they were friendly , musical historians have suggested that Salieri was extremely jealous of Mozart and used his position as court composer to limit Mozart’s career opportunities. The idea that Salieri “poisoned” Mozart’s career (and possibly Mozart himself) has appeared in many biographic works on Mozart and has inspired a number of dramatic pieces including the opera, Mozart and Salieri as well as the film Amadeus . The evidence which pins Salieri to Mozart’s death the confession which he gave in 1823 when he was admitted to Vienna General Hospital after committing to this and other terrible crimes and attempting suicide by cutting his own throat. As weak as this evidence is, the evidence against Mozart’s other “murderers” is weaker. Both Franz Hofdemel and Franz Xaver Sussmayr are suspected merely on the basis that they had reason to be jealous of Mozart . With even less evidence is the conspiracy that Mozart was poisoned in a great conspiracy by his fellow freemasons for revealing their secrets in his opera, The Magic Flute. While this theory is scintillatingly scandalous and explains why Mozart was buried in a mass grave when he died with many wealthy and well-connected friends, it is missing many important details, such as why the librettist of The Magic Flute, Emanuel Schikaneder, lived to the ripe old age of sixty-one . Another almost far-fetched theory is that Mozart poisoned himself with an overdose of Mercury, which he administered in an attempt to cure himself of Syphilis. Again, this is a very entertaining theory with little evidence to support it, aside from the fact that the swelling of Mozart’s body could possibly be a symptom of Mercury poisoning.
The most popular and most credible explanation for Mozart’s death, mentioned in every Mozart biography as well as the official report of death, is that of natural causes. Kidney failure caused by scarlet or rheumatic fever both illnesses suffered by Mozart in his lifetime, though this is not very exciting, and will never be entirely proved without an autopsy, it remains to be the most likely explanation.