Joseph Haydn is rightfully remembered as a titan of Western classical music. The “Father of the Symphony” and the “Father of the String Quartet” spent his long life building the structural foundations of the Classical era, mentoring a young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and teaching a tempestuous Ludwig van Beethoven. When he passed away in Vienna in 1809 at the age of 77, the musical world wept. Yet, while his musical legacy remained perfectly intact, his physical body was about to endure one of the most grotesque and surreal misadventures in music history. Haydn’s death coincided with the Napoleonic occupation of Vienna. Because of the wartime chaos, the celebrated composer was hastily buried in a simple, unglamorous grave at the Hundsturm cemetery. A proper, grand burial would have to wait. But just days after his funeral, under the cover of darkness, two men bribed the local gravedigger, exhumed the composer’s fresh corpse, and cleanly severed his head. They stuffed the skull into a sack and vanished into the night, leaving a headless icon behind. https://tunitemusic.com/post/the-composer-with-two-heads-the-bizarre-macabre-afterlife-of-joseph-haydn/
