Misconceptions about Famous Composers- mental_floss on YouTube (Ep. 48) | Mental Floss

Hi, I'm Elliot, and this is Mental Philosophy Video. Today I'm going to talk about some misconceptions about famous composers

Misconception number one, Mozart was poor. This myth probably emerged because Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was buried in an unmarked grave

While that sometimes was a sign of poverty, Mozart and his wife did not struggle financially too much

They did spend some time in debt, but that was very common at that time. His grave probably wasn't marked because that was normal in Austria at the time

Emperor Joseph II had encouraged people to make funerals more basic. Misconception number two

Mozart's wife was unintelligent and didn't support his career. Many believe that his wife, Constanza, was immature, didn't understand his career

and caused those non-existent money problems I just mentioned. And the film Amadeus definitely encouraged this myth

But it turns out that most negative stories about Constanza didn't emerge until years after Mozart died

so they're not too reliable. According to Mozart expert Paul Johnson, Mozart never expressed criticism of her household management

The truth, so far as I can judge, is that Constanza was always a good wife and mother

ran the household well, but was out of action a large part of the time, either pregnant or nursing or in Baden in desperate attempts to regain her health and strength Misconception number three Mozart was poisoned by a rival composer There a popular story that he was killed by Antonio Salieri and Salieri allegedly confessed to doing so but evidence suggests otherwise

First of all, Mozart died of a fever, and his doctors did not suspect that he was poisoned. Secondly, Salieri later claimed

I can assure you on my word of honor that there is no truth in that absurd rumor. You know that I'm supposed to have poisoned Mozart

But no, it's malice, pure malice, tell the world. Okay, heavy words, man

Plus, experts aren't even convinced that the two had a huge rivalry. Salieri was already a popular composer when Mozart was just starting out, so he probably wasn't that threatened by him

Misconception number four, Beethoven was born deaf. For about 26 years of his life, Ludwig van Beethoven actually was able to hear

Then in the late 1700s, he developed tinnitus, which made it difficult, and this got worse and worse throughout his life

But he learned how to play the piano when he was a child and still had decent hearing. Which brings me to misconception number five, Beethoven wrote his best music while he was deaf

Beethoven was already an established composer when he started going deaf, which is part of the reason why he took it so hard

We don't know for sure when the tinnitus became debilitating, but there is a letter from 1801 in which he wrote to his friend, quote

And that's probably around when it happened. By that time he already written some of his most popular pieces like many of his string quartet and piano sonatas And he didn go completely deaf for another couple of decades so he was able to hear enough to continue composing But the story goes that he composed the Ninth Symphony while almost totally deaf

Misconception number 6. Tchaikovsky composed nationalist Russian music. A lot of people classify Peter Tchaikovsky's pieces as Russian music, but his views on

nationalism changed over the course of his life. Between around 1870 and 1876, he was attracted to Russian nationalist music and composed

quite a bit of it. But most experts agree that he grew disinterested with nationalism after that

he started composing music more influenced by Western trends, like German Romanticism

And if you don't believe it, here's a Tchaikovsky quote. Born Russians, we are at the same time even far more Europeans, and we have so resolutely

and deeply fostered and assimilated their forms that to tear ourselves from them, we

would have to strain and do violence to ourselves. Misconception number seven, Schubert died before he achieved fame

Nope, Franz Schubert was a successful composer in the early 19th century. He was well known to the people of Vienna as a composer

This myth probably got its start because his fame increased after his death, and some of his pieces weren't performed in public until after he died

Misconception number eight, Bach wrote all of the pieces attributed to him. It turns out that there's a lot of debate on which pieces said to be written by Johann Bach were actually

written by him, and he's not the only composer with this problem. Many of Mozart's works

are still debated because it difficult to confirm the genuine author As far as Bach goes there a theory that his second wife Anna Magdalena wrote some of his music for him And a handful of Bach pieces have already been attributed to other people like his uncle and his father Misconception number nine all composers of classical music were men

Since I mentioned Bach's wife, it's worth noting some confirmed famous women composers, like Louise Ferranc, who composed music throughout the 19th century

She also insisted that she would pay the same amount as male composers. Good for you. Even earlier in time was Hildegard von Bingen, who lived from 1098 through 1179 and composed over 70 pieces

and there were tons of other women who composed classical music. Misconception number 10, there's a curse of the ninth symphony

Okay, we're going to end this with a fun superstition. The story goes that whenever a composer writes their ninth symphony, it will be their last

Examples have included Gustav Mahler and Beethoven, but stories of the curse are often debatable

For instance, people say Schubert suffered from it, but his final symphony was actually his seventh

though some now listed as his ninth because they include his unfinished works. And tons of composers have written more than nine symphonies, including Tubin, Schumann, and many more

Say that with me, Tubin, Schumann, and many more. It's actually a song that I'm working on. Thanks for watching Misconceptions on Mental Philosophy Video

If you have a topic for an upcoming Misconceptions episode that you would like to see, of course, let us know what it is in the comments and we'll check it out

I'll see you next week. Bye