Franz Schubert, the great lyrical composer of the early 1800s, died at age 31. While his music is usually too melancholy for my taste, what a sadness.
Franz was lucky to get that many years. Biographer Christoper Gibbs reports that Schubert’s parents had fourteen children and “nine of their fourteen children died in infancy.” (The Life of Schubert, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 23).
The death rate for infants was appallingly high before the 1900s, as it was even for those who survived to adulthood.
Among musicians, here’s a partial list: Mozart died at 35, Carl Maria von Weber died of tuberculosis at age 40. Bellini died at 36, Chopin at 39, Bizet at 36, Glinka died after a cold at age 52, Mendelssohn at 38, Mussorgsky at 42, Schumann at 46, Purcell at 36, and Tchaikovsky died at age 53, most likely of cholera.
What a carnage.
Another reason to be thankful for the Enlightenment.
Related: Artist Michael Newberry‘s short commentaries on the great works in art history:
