When did Mozart die? Was he ill?

Answer 1

December 5, 1791

Final illness and death

Mozart's final illness and death are difficult topics for scholarship, obscured by romantic legends and replete with conflicting theories. Scholars disagree about the course of decline in Mozart's health – particularly at what point Mozart became aware of his impending death and whether this awareness influenced his final works. The romantic view holds that Mozart declined gradually and that his outlook and compositions paralleled this decline. In opposition to this, some present-day scholarship points out correspondence from Mozart's final year indicating that he was in good cheer, as well as evidence that Mozart's death was sudden and a shock to his family and friends. Mozart's last words: "The taste of death is upon my lips...I feel something not of this earth". The actual cause of Mozart's death is also a matter of conjecture. His death record listed "hitziges Frieselfieber" ("severe miliary fever," referring to a rash that looks like millet-seeds), a description that does not suffice to identify the cause as it would be diagnosed in modern medicine. Dozens of theories have been proposed, including trichinosis, mercury poisoning, and rheumatic fever. The practice, common at that time, of bleeding medical patients is also cited as a contributing cause.

Mozart died around 1 a.m. on December 5, 1791 in Vienna. Some days earlier, with the onset of his illness, he had largely ceased work on his final composition, the Requiem. Legend has it that Mozart was thinking of his own impending death while writing this piece, and even that a messenger from the afterworld commissioned it. However, documentary evidence has established that the anonymous commission came from one Count Franz von Walsegg, and that most if not all of the music had been written while Mozart was still in good health. A younger composer, and Mozart's pupil at the time, Franz Xaver Süssmayr, was engaged by Constanze to complete the Requiem. However, he was not the first composer asked to finish the Requiem, as the widow had first approached another Mozart student, Joseph Eybler, who began work directly on the empty staves of Mozart's manuscript but then abandoned it.

Because he was buried in an unmarked grave, but not a mass grave, it has been popularly assumed that Mozart was penniless and forgotten when he died. In fact, though he was no longer as fashionable in Vienna as before, he continued to have a well-paid job at court and receive substantial commissions from more distant parts of Europe, Prague in particular [citation needed]. He earned about 10,000 florins per year[4], equivalent to at least 42,000 US dollars in 2006, which places him within the top 5 percent of late 18th century wage earners[4], but he could not manage his own wealth. His mother wrote, "When Wolfgang makes new acquaintances, he immediately wants to give his life and property to them." His impulsive largesse and spending often put him in the position of having to ask others for loans. Many of his begging letters survive but they are evidence not so much of poverty as of his habit of spending more than he earned. He was not buried in a "mass grave" but in a regular communal grave according to the 1784 laws.

Though the original grave in the St. Marx cemetery was lost, memorial gravestones (or cenotaphs) have been placed there and in the Zentralfriedhof. In 2005, new DNA testing was performed by Austria's University of Innsbruck and the US Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory in Rockville, Maryland, to determine if a skull in an Austrian Museum was actually his, using DNA samples from the marked graves of his grandmother and Mozart's niece. However, test results were inconclusive, suggesting that none of the DNA samples were related to each other.

In 1809, Constanze married Danish diplomat Georg Nikolaus von Nissen (1761–1826). Being a fanatical admirer of Mozart, he edited vulgar passages out of many of the composer's letters and wrote a Mozart biography.

Answer 2

Died the night of December 5, 1791

Mozart died around 1 a.m. on December 5, 1791 in Vienna. Some days earlier, with the onset of his illness, he had largely ceased work on his final composition, the Requiem. Legend has it that Mozart was thinking of his own impending death while writing this piece, and even that a messenger from the afterworld commissioned it. However, documentary evidence has established that the anonymous commission came from one Count Franz von Walsegg, and that most if not all of the music had been written while Mozart was still in good health.

Answer 3

On 20th November 1791 Mozart took ill by a mystery illness and on the 14th day which would have been 4th December 1791 He collapsed and died. There was no autopsy and to this day there is controversy over how he died. There are myths that he was poisoned / murdered but books have been written that proved this was not true. So the actual reason is a mystery.

Answer 4

Mozart died around 1 a.m. on December 5, 1791 in Vienna. Some days earlier, with the onset of his illness, he had largely ceased work on his final composition, the Requiem. Legend has it that Mozart was thinking of his own impending death while writing this piece, and even that a messenger from the afterworld commissioned it

Answer 5

The actual cause of Mozart's death is a matter of conjecture. His death record listed "hitziges Frieselfieber" ("severe miliary fever," referring to a rash that looks like millet-seeds), a description that does not suffice to identify the cause as it would be diagnosed in modern medicine. Dozens of theories have been proposed, including trichinosis, mercury poisoning, and rheumatic fever. The practice, common at that time, of bleeding medical patients is also cited as a contributing cause.
He was only 35.

Mozart died around 1 a.m. on December 5, 1791 in Vienna.

Answer 6

Mozart died around 1 a.m. on December 5, 1791 in Vienna.

Mozart's last words: "The taste of death is upon my lips...I feel something not of this earth". The actual cause of Mozart's death is a matter of conjecture. His death record listed "hitziges Frieselfieber" ("severe miliary fever," referring to a rash that looks like millet-seeds), a description that does not suffice to identify the cause as it would be diagnosed in modern medicine. Dozens of theories have been proposed, including trichinosis, mercury poisoning, and rheumatic fever. The practice, common at that time, of bleeding medical patients is also cited as a contributing cause.

Answer 7

Then how did Mozart die if Salieri didn't kill him? Historians and modern physicians have concluded that Mozart died from a sudden attack of rheumatic fever which he often suffered as a child. The previous fevers had weakened Mozart's heart and by the last and fatal attack Mozart's heart failed. Certainly Mozart dying of heart failure is much less interesting and dramatic as Salieri driving him to death or being poisoned maliciously by a fellow rival.

The wonderful death scene of Mozart (which is one of my favorites in the entire movie) never happened in reality. To begin with, Mozart didn't collapse on the premiere night of "The Magic Flute" nor was he brought back to his apartment by Salieri nor did he die the next day. Mozart managed to conduct a few performances of "The Magic Flute" until his health wore away and he was confined to bed. Several months passed of the "Magic Flute"'s performance before Mozart died.

Constanza, though suffering from ill health herself, never left for the "spa" once her husband became seriously ill. She remained by Mozart's bedside with some members of her family and some singers who occasionally came to perform the few completed passages of "The Requiem" for him. The key point in this was Mozart was never left alone and therefore could never be brought back or attended to by Salieri.

Answer 8

"Mozart died of a mysterious fever at age 35 [in 1791]. Over the years various people have speculated that Mozart was murdered, perhaps by rival composer Antonio Salieri, but no proof exists to support that theory. In the year 2000 a scholarly panel suggested that Mozart died of rheumatic fever. "

Answer 9

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791 ) There is a suspicion he was actualy poisoned ... But he made some ill music huh?

Answer 10

5th December 1791
Historians and modern physicians have concluded that Mozart died from a sudden attack of rheumatic fever which he often suffered as a child. The previous fevers had weakened Mozart's heart and by the last and fatal attack Mozart's heart failed.