Darrell Acree quotes the Washington Post Science Page:

>Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's premature death, the subject of speculation
>for more than 200 years, may have been caused not by rheumatic fever,
>heart attack or poisoning by court composer Antonio Salieri, but by
>eating tainted pork chops.

It's not enough for a good historian to make assertions just about past
times.  If a biographer claims to know truly the historical significance
of his subject --whoever may he be--, he must dare to predict new facts
about him.  That the subject is long dead ago is not an obstacle for a
prediction, because all we know that things happens to people even after
death.  Concerning Mozart, If we have to pay credit to all his biographers,
we'll reach the conclusion that he was affected, at least, by a dozen of
different diseases at the moment of his death.  Syphilis, poisoning and
consumption were opportunely discarded.  But periodically, new diseases
appears.  Now is the turn for trichinosis, under the shape of deadly pork
chops.  I would like to know what will be the next Mozart's death cause:
suicide?, opium abuse?, influenza?, car crash?.  When will we have in our
book shops a decent "Tanatopaedia Musicalis", a handbook of forensic
musicology that can provide us some help among this confusion?.  Doctors
in the list, please answer!!!.

Seriously, here goes my question:

What has been, in your opinion, the freakest and weirdest cause of death of
a composer (major or not so)?

Pablo Massa
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