- Show everything (1835)
- Released as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1514)
-
Credits on others' music (322)
- Tracks on others' music (996)
Has been in these groups
Has this family
In the News
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Aug, 20 2009
If the seven weeks (and counting) wait to find out what caused the death of Michael Jackson is still playing on your mind, be assured that you won't have to wait for an explanation as long as Mozart fans have had to wait. 218 years after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's unexplained death in 1791, researchers in Amsterdam, Holland believe that they've finally uncovered the most likely scenario. Mozart's final illness, which saw him develop rashes, fever, fatigue and swelling, was previously suggested to be rheumatic fever, the effects of a deliberate poisoning by a rival composer, or trichinosis, a parasitic disease caused by eating undercooked pork. The newest theory says that it was a sore throat. "Our findings suggest that Mozart fell victim to an epidemic of strep throat infection that was contracted by many Viennese people in Mozart's month of death, and that Mozart was one of several persons in that epidemic that developed a deadly kidney complication," Richard Zegers of the University of Amsterdam told Reuters. Strep throat is easily treatable now with penicillin pills, but they weren't developed until the mid-20th century.
