Composers
Violin virtuoso so skilled that people believed he had sold his soul to the Devil
Niccolo Paganini
For nearly a century, this piece for solo organ has been associated with darkness and villainy, being featured in the films Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), and The Black Cat (1934).
J.S Bach Toccata and Fugue
According to a famous curse, many classical composers died after composing how many symphonies?
9
According to legend, this composer was commissioned to write his Requiem by a mysterious hooded figure. He would die just months later, leaving his requiem unfinished.
Mozart
This composer’s head was mysteriously removed from his dead body. His headless corpse was discovered in 1820, but the head was not reunited with the body until 1954
Joseph Haydn
This Piece by Camille Saint Saens tells the story of spirits and skeletons coming to life at the stroke of midnight. The solo violin represents the Reaper awakening the dead with the sound of the fiddle.
Danse Macabre
This interval (the space between two notes) that is known as the “devil’s” interval because of its jarring and dissonant sound.
Tritone
How did the composer Jean Baptise Lully die?
Gangrene after accidentally stabbing himself in the foot with a pointed staff while conducting.
Composer and visionary. Her published work Scivias, consists of 26 prophetic and apocalyptic visions she had during her lifetime
Hildegard of Bingen
This tone poem by Modest Mussorgsky’s tells the story of a Witch’s Sabbath, a gathering of witches on a high mountain
Night on Bald Mountain
Composer and spirit medium who claims that the ghosts of dead composers guides her composing
Rosemary Brown
Upon his death, Louis Vierne fulfilled a lifelong desire of his. What was that desire?
To die while performing the organ in the the cathedral of Notre Dame
This composer had an obsession with dead bodies, famously attending the exhumation of both Beethoven’s and Schubert’s remains. Both times, he rushed forward when the coffin was opened to hold and kiss the dead composers’ skulls.
Anton Bruckner
The fourth and fifth movements of this piece tells the story of a man’s execution and his banishment to the underworld where evil spirits mock him for his failed love life.
Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique
This composer’s violin concerto was published posthumously after two sisters allegedly held a seance where the dead composer told them the location of his missing manuscript
Robert Schumann
The composer Arnold Schoenberg suffered from the fear of the number 13. He would die on Friday the 13th at the age of 76 (the numbers 7 and 6 add to 13). What is the name of this phobia?
Triskaidekaphobia