justification - the Father of the , the Father of . Their motive? Simple enough: They were in- the , and the Father of Modern Instrumental terested in phrenology, as were medical friends of theirs. Music. And, what is more, he lived to enjoy his status. They wanted to measure the skull and make phrenological Yet, living moderately and securely, he aged. In 18o3 he experiments on it. After all, Haydn was a great composer, was seventy -one; that year he conducted for the last time wasn't he? And how often do phrenologists, professional -a performance of The Seven Last Words. In 1805, a rumor or amateur, get a crack at a skull like his? Who could got around that Haydn had passed on. Cherubini corn- blame them? posed a cantata in memoriam; Kreutzer composed a violin Well, Prince Esterhazy, for one, could - and did. He concerto (based on themes by Haydn); and Mozart's set the police on their trail. The police went to Peter. Requiem (Mozart had died early, in í79t) was sung in No skull. He had given it to Rosenbaum (along with a Paris. Then came a letter from the old man saying that he lovely baroque case that had glass windows and a satin was "still of this base world." He added that had he known pillow). So the police went to Rosenbaum. No skull. of the occasion in time he would have come to Paris to At least not a findable one. As it turned out, Therese conduct the Requiem himself. Gassmann, Rosenbaum's singer wife, had taken the skull His last appearance in public was at a performance of to bed with her and refused to admit the police because , given at the University of Vienna in cele- she was, she groaned, oh so terribly ill. bration of his seventy -sixth birthday. Everyone was there The police were in a dilemma. If they turned up without - almost everyone. The Princess Esterhazy sat next to the skull, the prince might take drastic action. But no skull. him and put her own shawl around his shoulders. As he At this point, Rosenbaum offered a skull, no questions left the auditorium Beethoven knelt unostentatiously and asked. He wanted money, and apparently was not at all kissed his hand. In 1809, with the Napoleonic armies rag- reluctant to whittle the coin on both sides. He got little ing outside of Vienna, he said: "Children, be comforted. enough for his pains, but the police accepted the skull. I am well." Then he died. In Vienna, Mozart's Requiem It wasn't Haydn's skull. It was just some old skull Rosen- was sung again. baum happened to have knocking around in the cupboard. All of this, I suppose, is quite beside the point. It is But it was a skull. simply meant to call again to mind that really So the wrong skull was dutifully attached to the rest of was a great man. and that his greatness was known in his what was left of Haydn - whether by "an expert" or not long, beloved lifetime. It is background for the unseemly has not come down in history - and there the composite comedy that followed. skeleton lay in the church at Eisenstadt. It looked splendid. Haydn's body was buried with honors in the Hunde- If matters had stopped there, no doubt everyone would sturm Cemetery (the name of the cemetery alone is enough have been satisfied. Eisenstadt would have had a complete to strike the grotesque note) largely because of the war's representation of the mortal remains of Haydn, and unsettlements. Soon Prince Esterhazy was granted per- Prince Esterhazy could have rested content that he was no mission to move the body to Eisenstadt. Times were still longer being selfish and hoarding distinguished bones. far from settled, though, and in 1814 Sigismund Neukomm, But this was not to be. finding the tomb in what seemed to him a shocking state Rosenbaum finally died - as all men must, and pass to of disrepair, placed on it a marble slab with Haydn's favorite dust - leaving the echt skull of Haydn to his old friend and tag from Horace: "Non omnias moriat," set as a five - fellow grave -robber, Peter, with the proviso that it be part canon. willed by him to the museum of the Society of the Friends Some half a dozen years later, the Duke of Cambridge of Music. At this point, the plot becomes a little bit con- said, as though envyingly, to Prince Esterhazy, "How fused. What seems to have happened is that Peter, on his fortunate is the man who employed this Haydn in his death - presumably after having made all the cranial lifetime and now has possession of his remains." This measurements he cared to make - willed according to the set the prince to thinking, and he ordered Haydn's body entail. But then the skull could not be found. It had exhumed and re- entombed in the Eisenstadt city church, been taken by a fellow phrenologist. He on his death, be- where he had in life so often conducted his masses. queathed the skull to the University of Vienna. Officers moved to obey the prince's order, but in pro- Then ensued a long legal tangle, with three litigants cess of carrying it out, they opened the coffin itself. To claiming Haydn's head: the Friends of Music; the uni- their enormous shock: No head! Here was Haydn, ready versity; and the Esterhazy estate. Finally - on what to be moved to Eisenstadt. But where was his head? grounds it is very difficult to imagine - the Friends of The officers told the prince. The prince called the police. Music were given title to the disputed object, and from He ordered them to find Haydn's head. The police went 1895 until this June 5, there it sat on its pedestal in the away. Prince Esterhazy had not said "look for "; he had Musikverein building. said "find." So, the police dutifully turned up with a In 1932, the Haydn bicentennial rolled around, and the head. Orders, after all, 'are orders, and a head is better Musikverein offered the skull to the Esterhazy family - than no head at all. for a price. The price was too high to be mec, at least at As it turned out, one Carl Rosenbaum, formerly a secre- that time, so the skull stayed in Vienna and the skeleton tary to Prince Esterhazy, had connived with one Johann stayed in Eisenstadt. At the time of the Nazi Anschluss, Peter, a prison official, and the two had bribed the grave- there was great talk about putting Papa Haydn together digger in Vienna to open the casket and steal the head of again, but no action was taken. Continued on page 108

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