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From: mike@alice.UUCP (Michael Hawley)
Newsgroups: net.music
Subject: Scriabin's greusome death
Message-ID: <2541@alice.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 24-Jan-84 20:39:59 EST
Article-I.D.: alice.2541
Posted: Tue Jan 24 20:39:59 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Jan-84 08:20:45 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 25

Oscar Nierstrasz (Twentieth Century Classical Music Primer)
mentioned Scriabin's lip tumor.
S's death was among the most disgusting in the history of music.
History books politely say "he died of a cold sore,"
or "he succumbed to a fever blister."  The gruesome and gory details:

S. developed a nasty blister on his lip, probably syphilitic.
It became infected, and he ignored it, letting it fester.
After about two years of festering, said blister had made
spectacular advances.  In fact, it had taken control of S's
entire face.  He took ill, with a pus-filled face.
Doctors attempted to save his life by stabbing the thing
to drain off the nastiness.  Likely as result of this treatment,
S got blood poisoning, which did him in two days later.
His face was so horribly mutilated, they say, that the usual
death mask couldn't be made.

It seems a disproportionate number of composers died horrible
deaths...  Like Bach, with his painful eye operations;
Chopin, of TB; Schumann, who attempted suicide by jumping in
a river, and died later in an insane asylum, victim of a social
disease; Gershwin, of a brain tumor; Lully, of a misplaced
downbeat; and Sam Cooke, as we know all too well.
And then there was poor, old Tuttelheimer -- one of the greatest
composers of all time -- what a death he died.