Roll over Beethoven, and tell Mozart the news
Could researchers have found the skull of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart?
Is there any way we can treat this in some cheap fashion, like the opening of Al Capone’s vault by Geraldo?
Researchers said Tuesday they’ll reveal the results of DNA tests in a documentary film airing this weekend on Austrian television as part of a year of celebratory events marking the composer’s 250th birthday.
The tests were conducted last year by experts at the Institute for Forensic Medicine in the alpine city of Innsbruck, and the long-awaited results will be publicized in “Mozart: The Search for Evidence,” to be screened Sunday by state broadcaster ORF.
If you’re wondering how someone as legendary as Mozart can have the indentity of his skull in question, the short answer is that people from olden times were idiots. The long answer is that his grave was never marked because he died in poverty. However, the likely area of his burial has been known since 1855, as the article points out.
Legend has it that a gravedigger who knew which body was Mozart’s at some point sneaked the skull out of the grave. Through different channels, the skull — which is missing its lower jaw — came to the Mozarteum in Salzburg in 1902, according to Dr. Stephan Pauly, the foundation’s director.
Just a slew of bonehead moves. This sounds like a bad episode of “CSI,” which is to say an episode of “CSI.”
January 5th, 2006 at 11:06 am
Everybody knows that Mozart’s skull is the holy grail of 18th century composer skulls.
January 5th, 2006 at 11:25 am
the college i work for found an original beethoven manuscript in their library achives and sold it in england for 2 mil. i of course still make under $30,000.