Classical fans enjoy the occasional visit, especially when it gives us the chance to venerate our dearly departed musical idols at their final resting places. Here are ten of these sites, which I'm thankful I found at Bachtrack.com.
1. Vienna Central Cemetery
The St. Charles Borromeo Cemetery Church in Vienna's Central Cemetery
© Bwag | Wikimedia Commons
To
start off, the big daddy of them all. The list of famous composers
interred in the largest of Vienna’s 50-plus cemeteries reads like a roll
call of some of the most influential figures in music from the
Classical era up to the 20th century: the remains of Gluck, Antonio
Salieri, Schubert, Beethoven, the Strauss dynasty (Johann I and II, plus
Josef and Eduard), Ligeti and Schoenberg all ended up in this huge
necropolis, which opened in 1874, either being laid to rest there
initially or moved there from another site. It’s also a popular
destination for musicians outside the classical realm: Edgar Froese of
Tangerine Dream and Weather Report’s Joe Zawinul are also buried here.
2. Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris
Père Lachaise cemetery
© Paris Tourist Office | Fabian Charaffi
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Scientific studies of Paris’ Père Lachaise cemetery have found that the
area is incredibly rich in the elusive substance known as “cool”. Jim
Morrison, Proust, Edith Piaf and Oscar Wilde all set up shop here when
they shuffled off this mortal coil, and it’s a popular spot for
composers, too: Ignaz Pleyel, Cherubini, Chopin (minus his heart, which
rests in Warsaw), Bizet, Ernest Chausson, Enescu and Poulenc are just
some of the classical musicians buried here (even Rossini was buried
here after his death in 1868, but he was relocated to the Santa Croce
Basilica in Florence almost two decades later). It wasn’t always such
prime real estate for the dead: after setting it up in 1804, the
cemetery’s managers struggled to drum up enthusiasm for the spot. It
took a PR stunt involving the reinterment of the remains of Molière and
Jean de La Fontaine in the cemetery to convince the public that Père
Lachaise was the only place to be seen dead in.
3. Tikhvin Cemetery, St Petersburg
The grave of Tchaikovsky
© Steven N. Severinghaus | Wikimedia Commons
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If you’re a music fan of Russophile bent, then there really is no
greater place of moribund pilgrimage than the Tikhvin Cemetery, part of
the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in St Petersburg. In life the “Mighty
Handful” together forged a distinctly Russian style of music; in death
all of them – Mussorgsky, Cui, Rimsky-Korsakov, Balakirev and Borodin –
rest together in this cemetery. Tchaikovsky, Anton Rubinstein, Glinka
and Glazunov can also be found here, alongside Dostoevsky and
Stravinsky’s father, the opera singer Fyodor Stravinsky.
4. St Marx Cemetery, Vienna
Mozart's memorial stone
© Schaub-Walzer / PID
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Believe it or not, it isn’t conclusively known where the remains of
Mozart – arguably the most famous composer ever to have lived – actually
lie. In late 18th-century Vienna, it was common practice to bury those
who could not afford a private funeral in an unmarked plot (which could
then be re-used). This is what happened to Mozart when he died in 1791,
and it wasn’t until years later that his wife Constanze returned to the
St Marx Cemetery to try to ascertain where her husband had been buried.
All she had to go on were the memories of the cemetery staff, but a
memorial stone was eventually placed on the spot they decided on in
1859. The stone was eventually moved to the Vienna Central Cemetery to
mark the centenary of Mozart’s death, and a different stone memorial
placed over the St Marx “grave”. As for the composer’s physical remains,
the Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg is in possession of a skull
supposedly belonging to him, but testing has not been able to confirm
its veracity.
5. St Thomas Church, Leipzig
Bach's grave in Leipzig's St. Thomas Church
© DerHHO | Wikimedia Commons
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The practice of burying in unmarked graves is also at the centre of the
controversy surrounding the whereabouts of Bach’s remains. In 1894, over
100 years after his death, a group of enthusiasts exhumed what they
thought were the bones of the old master from the cemetery of Leipzig’s
Johanniskirche. After some tests, they interred the bones in the church
itself, but when that was completely destroyed by bombing in WWII, they
had to be moved again to the Thomaskirche. In the late 1940s, a surgeon
named Wolfgang Rosenthal studied the bones, surmising that they were
Bach’s because they displayed a condition he termed
Organistenkrankheit –
an abnormality he believed was shared by living organists. More recent
scholarship has cast doubt on such a condition and indeed over whether
the bones really belonged to the Old Wig.
Liszt's burial place at Bayreuth Town Cemetery
© Ag Andras | Wikimedia Commons
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6. Bayreuth
While Liszt became less close with his son-in-law Wagner later in
life, he still conducted the orchestra of the memorial concert when the
music-drama innovator died in 1883. Indeed, the Hungarian spent his last
days in a house overlooking the Villa Wahnfried, the mansion where
Wagner and Liszt’s daughter Cosima had lived together and where the
former was buried. Perhaps as a result of Liszt’s somewhat testy
relationship with his daughter, the devout Catholic was buried – against
his wishes – in the Lutheran City Cemetery of Bayreuth. Where he came
to rest is within walking distance of the grave of the fellow composer
with whom he’d had such a significant relationship.
Cimetière de Passy
© Paris Tourist Office | Marc Bertrand
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7. Cimetière de Passy, Paris
During
the early years of Napoleon’s reign as emperor, burials within the city
walls of Paris were outlawed, and four new necropolises were proposed
to meet the new law. Like Père Lachaise (as well as Montmartre and
Montpanasse), the Cimetière de Passy was part of this scheme. Opened in
1820, it is small compared to the others, but with such musical lights
as Fauré and Debussy buried there, alongside visual artists like Manet,
it still packs a cultural punch.
Westminster Abbey
© Σπάρτακος | Wikimedia Commons
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8. Westminster Abbey, London
If
the ground beneath Britain’s most well-known ecclesiastical building
could make a sound, it would positively hum with the sound of English
(or, to be picky, Anglo-German) music. In the north choir aisle, Henry
Purcell lies where the organ once stood, not far from the plot where the
ashes of Ralph Vaughan Williams and his wife Ursula are laid. In the
south transept, at his personal request, the remains of Handel are
interred in a lead coffin, watched over by a statue whose face was
supposedly modelled on the composer’s death mask.
The grave of Robert and Clara Schumann
© Sir James
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9. Alter Friedhof, Bonn
Accounts
of Robert Schumann’s last years spent in mental asylum make for
depressing reading, but for those of a romantic bent, his final resting
place suggests a modicum of poetic justice. He was buried in Bonn’s Old
Cemetery, set up in 1715 initially as a place for military graves. His
wife and fellow composer Clara survived him by a full 40 years, but when
she finally passed away she was buried alongside her troubled partner.
The Boulanger tomb
© Mark Pullinger
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10. Montmartre cemetery, Paris
The
family that gets buried together, stays together. For all eternity.
We’ll never know the full extent of what the world lost when Lili
Boulanger’s life was tragically cut short at 24, though her sister
Nadia’s influence as a composer and teacher is incalculable. When she
died over 60 years after her sister, she was interred in the same tomb
as Lili and both their parents at Montmartre cemetery. Similarly, both
of Hector Berlioz’ wives were exhumed in order to be interred next to
him at Montmartre. Jacques Offenbach is also buried here, and it’s a
good one for art buffs too: Edgar Degas and Francis Picabia can be found
amongst the gravestones.
Resource:
Ten Final Resting Places of Famous Composers. Bachtrack.com. Accessed August 16, 2020.
(c) August 2019. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.
