A retired surgeon’s research into the deaths of 70 of the best-known classical composers has led him to conclude that many of them were unfairly tainted with reputations for “venereal disease, alcoholism or sexual impropriety”.
Jonathan Noble, a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, has reviewed material – including letters and diaries where symptoms and ailments are detailed – relating to Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Beethoven and many others, and found that “an awful lot of them have been slighted by music critics and biographers”.
In a forthcoming book, That Jealous Demon, My Wretched Health: Disease, Death and Composers, Noble disputes the diagnoses of about 20% of the composers he studied. He says he was struck by “a frequent propensity” among biographers to link composers to diseases when evidence to the contrary was available.
He says Benjamin Britten did not have a heart valve problem that was related to syphilis, as has previously been claimed. “The evidence for that is scant,” Noblesays. The claim was based on hearsay and an elderly doctor who “had nothing to do with Britten’s care”.
Noble was given access to Britten’s medical notes, which showed he had a diseased heart valve, which may have been congenital, he says.
“The list of composers who had syphilis is short. The list of composers said to have had syphilis is enormous,” Noble told the Guardian.
A former orthopaedic surgeon, Noble has treated international cricketers, Manchester United footballers and professional musicians and dancers. Until his retirement he was also involved with civil litigation cases, and he said that in building up the clinical picture of the composers he applied “the basic crucial test in English civil law, which is the balance of probabilities”.
Where possible, Noble also pored over existing medical records. Having analysed the evidence forensically, he criticises music historians who have made assumptions without consulting medical professionals.
He did not find serious evidence for Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Mozart, Brahms, Britten or Beethoven having been alcoholic, despite alternative claims.
He says: “If you’re a true alcoholic, there’s no way you can go around composing operas, symphonies or string quartets.”
Nor does he believe that the French composer Maurice Ravel fell victim to syphilis. That was based on a nurse’s claim to have seen his blood report many years after he had died. Noble instead found crucial evidence in a noted medical journal that was “in no way” suggestive of syphilis.
He believes Schubert is one of only six of the major composers who had “assured cases” of syphilis. “Few, if any, others should be added on a balance of probabilities, despite alternative mythology.”
He goes on to say: “We all like a little bit of the salacious now and again.” But he concludes that too many composers’ reputations have been unfairly tarnished by scandalous commentary based on flimsy evidence: “This tendency to advance the potentially salacious, especially VD or alcohol, can render an awful disservice to the reputations of great men who deserve better.”
He adds: “The literature regarding the illnesses of Beethoven and the death of Mozart are enormous ... the vast majority of it is sheer nonsense.”
Noting that in the cases of Mozart and Beethoven more than 100 diagnoses have previously been advanced, he criticises the “appalling” character assassination of the latter by the 20th-century musicologist Ernest Newman: “A century after Beethoven’s death, Newman declared him to have been syphilitic, a drunkard and a ruthless cheat, allegations … quoted over subsequent years. The problem is that, once a careless or inappropriate statement attaches to a personality, it sticks like proverbial mud.”
Ultimately, Noble says, the great composers have done so much to enlighten people: “It’s a pity that other people have rushed around slagging them off when we actually are the custodians of their reputation.”