Thirty-five years old, a Requiem he never finished and a death certificate that has launched a hundred theories, none of them involving Salieri
VIENNA, 5 December 1791 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died shortly before one o’clock in the morning at his apartment near St Stephen’s Cathedral, aged thirty-five. He had written more beautiful music than most composers manage in twice the time, and he left behind a wife in debt, two small sons and a Requiem Mass that someone else would have to finish. The cause of death was recorded as “severe miliary fever”, a phrase that tells a modern doctor almost nothing. More than two centuries later, the argument is still going.
The Last Two Weeks
Mozart fell ill in late November. He developed a high fever, swelling in his hands and feet, vomiting and a rash. He grew steadily weaker, though he kept working on the Requiem in his bed, singing parts of it with friends gathered round the covers. Within about two weeks he was dead. The article on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart goes through the known facts. His doctor, Thomas Franz Closset, did what doctors did in that era and bled him, which can only have made a bad situation worse.
The Suspects: A Medical Line-Up
Over the years, doctors and historians have proposed more than a hundred possible causes. The leading contenders look like this. One is rheumatic fever, a complication of an untreated throat infection that attacks the joints and heart, to which Mozart seems to have been prone as a child. Another is kidney failure, possibly from a streptococcal infection. A 2009 Dutch study of Vienna’s death records for the winter of 1791 found a spike in deaths from swelling and oedema among young men, suggesting an epidemic of something nasty.
There is also the pork cutlet theory. In 2001, a doctor suggested that Mozart might have died of trichinosis from undercooked pork, citing a letter in which he mentioned eating a pork cutlet shortly before getting ill. And of course there is poison. It has long been rumoured that the composer Antonio Salieri did him in, a story made famous by Pushkin and, later, by the film Amadeus. It is, for the record, nonsense. Salieri was a respected colleague who taught Mozart’s son, and no serious historian believes he was a murderer.
What Would a Modern Doctor Make of It?
Here’s the surprising bit. Almost all the serious candidates are treatable. Strep infections yield to penicillin. Kidney trouble can be managed with fluids, medication or dialysis. Trichinosis, if that’s what it was, responds to antiparasitic drugs. Whatever got Mozart, a modern doctor would have run blood tests, taken a swab and a urine sample, and had a diagnosis within a day. He’d probably have been on the mend within a week, and writing a concerto by the end of the month. The whole thing might have been described, in modern terms, as a bad winter.
The Doctor’s Waiting Room, Vienna, 1791
Imagine Mozart in a modern GP’s waiting room. A receptionist asks for his name and date of birth. “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 27 January 1756.” “And do you have an NHS number?” “I have a Kapellmeister’s salary.” “Not in this system, love.” He fills in the form. At the bottom is a box for “Occupation”, and he writes “Composer”. The receptionist asks him to be more specific. “Court composer, chamber musician, teacher, performer, impresario and sometime billiards player.” “Self-employed, then.” The nurse takes his blood pressure. The doctor asks about his diet, his drinking and his sleep. Mozart, who famously wrote music late into the night with candles burning, would have been told to get more rest.
The Funeral Nobody Attended
Everyone knows the myth. Mozart, so it goes, died a pauper and was thrown into a mass grave for the poor, while a storm raged and nobody came. The truth is more mundane. Emperor Joseph II had recently introduced reforms that banned expensive burials, and a simple funeral with a shared grave was normal for a man of Mozart’s rank. There was bad weather, and mourners probably turned back at the city gates, as was the custom. His reputation was high, and the family’s debts were mostly the result of bad management. The Britannica biography of Mozart explains the real situation, which is less romantic and, as usual, less interesting.
What If He Had Lived?
This is the question that haunts musicians. In his last year alone, Mozart wrote The Magic Flute, the Clarinet Concerto, La clemenza di Tito and a good portion of the Requiem. Think of what he might have written if he had lived another thirty years. He might have met Beethoven properly, taught him, or been overtaken by him. He’d certainly have seen Napoleon sweep through Europe, and the world of music might have evolved in an entirely different direction. It’s a dizzying prospect. It’s also a very sad one, since the most valuable thing a modern doctor could have given the world was an extra three decades of Mozart.
The Verdict: Almost Certainly Treatable
With a swab, a course of antibiotics and a firm instruction to stay in bed, modern medicine would very probably have saved him. It’s a gloomy thought, but a hopeful one too: thousands of people who would once have died at thirty-five now live to ninety. Mozart’s real legacy may be that his death reminds us what we’ve gained. We just have to cope with the fact that he was cheated out of it.
Humorous Observations
- More than a hundred theories of his death, and not one involves a perfectly boring winter virus, which is probably the answer.
- Salieri has been accused of murder for two centuries and has never once been allowed to reply.
- Blaming a pork cutlet is, at least, a cheaper explanation than blaming a rival composer.
- Mozart wrote the Requiem while dying, and every composer since has used it as an excuse for missing deadlines.
- The doctors bled him as a matter of routine, which is the medical equivalent of “have you tried turning it off and on again”.
- If he had a modern GP, he’d have been told to cut down on late nights, and the Magic Flute would have had to be written before noon.
- He died with a half-finished masterpiece, which is the nineteenth-century version of leaving the washing-up.
- Even today, Vienna’s tourist shops sell Mozart chocolate, which is surely the most nutritionally suspect memorial in Europe.
Cyndi Himmelstiere is a satirical journalist at Prat.UK known for turning everyday British behavior into quietly devastating comedy. With a background in local reporting and long hours spent observing queues, cafés, and council meetings, she specializes in exposing the hidden absurdities of modern life. Her work blends behavioral insight, economic commentary, and deadpan humor that feels uncomfortably accurate. Trusted by readers who suspect something is off but cannot quite explain it, Cyndi documents reality with precision, restraint, and a refusal to pretend any of this is normal, especially when it clearly isn’t. She is the author of Could Modern Doctors Have Saved History’s Greats?
