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@ArchivistsAlley @JustinHowe Robert Schumann. It's actually pretty tragic. The version of the story I told Justin was what my morbid music history prof told us, from a book titled HOW THEY DIED (about composers). pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3538703/ Apparently his skull grew spikes that pierced his brain.On twitter.com
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@ArchivistsAlley @JustinHowe (Or that's what our prof explained.) Looking around, it seems the consensus is that it was likely a mix of syphilis and some other kind of mental illness, and the weird stuff seen inside his skull was not related? brianjump.net/2016/07/13/the-frayed-ends-of-schumann/ I dunno.Permalink On twitter.com
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@ArchivistsAlley @JustinHowe He was composing even when he was losing his mind. Our prof played an example of a late orchestration to demonstrate a common bad habit of novice orchestrators (over-doubling). Bernstein re-orchestrated a lot of his work so it sounded less soupy and over-doubled.Permalink On twitter.com
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@ArchivistsAlley @JustinHowe (Though some people have disputed that, and just said it sounds like that to modern people but wasn't necessarily unusual for the time. But the fact it was so unusually dense does stick out, to a lot of people. I dunno what to make of it, to be honest.)Permalink On twitter.com
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@ArchivistsAlley @JustinHowe But anyway, poor guy met a terrible end, seeing things and hearing voices and terrified. :( But the Erl King (from years earlier) is a pretty amazing song. I mean, it's basically a horror story set to music: oxfordlieder.co.uk/song/1420Permalink On twitter.com
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@ArchivistsAlley @JustinHowe "A week into his musical hallucinations, Schumann began experiencing a new, more bewildering phenomenon—he began hallucinating ghosts who dictated music to him. According to Becker, Schumann believed the spirit of Franz Schubert came to him one night and gave him a melody" !!!!Permalink On twitter.com
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@ArchivistsAlley @JustinHowe What's weirder is that this is creepily close to something in a story I was writing a few years ago and have been thinking about returning to lately.Permalink On twitter.com