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Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Mozart's Skull
This month marks the 250th anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's birth. As a part of the festivities the results of DNA testing on a skull believed to be his are to be released this Sunday!
Those of us who remember the movie (which is generally accurate historically, with drama, of course) will recall that he was buried in a pauper's grave after what was believed to be a bout of rheumatic fever or tuberculosis. More recent evidence suggests that rheumatic fever may not have been involved. From the linked article:
In 1991, a French scholar who examined it made the startling - though
unconfirmed - conclusion that Mozart may have died of complications of a head
injury...[based on] a fracture he found on the skull's left temple. Mozart, he
theorized, may have sustained it in a fall, and that would help explain the
severe headaches the composer was said to have suffered more than a year before his death.
Hmmm, interesting. Maybe they could make an alternative ending to the movie now? Like some bar room brawl where he suffers head trauma or a boxing match with Salieri?
Apparently "genetic material from scrapings from the skull was analyzed and compared to DNA samples gathered in 2004 from the thigh bones of Mozart's maternal grandmother and a niece." I guess they know for fact the identity of these relatives and therefore will be able to have a high statistical likelihood that the skull belongs to old Wolfie. Stay tuned.
Early reports coming in had Geraldo Rivera giving 2:1 odds that the skull actually belongs to Al Capone... - posted by wanderer @ 10:35 AM
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Oh excellent film! I'm surprised you've never seen it - I think you would enjoy it very much. I would put it on the top of your Netflix list, it's definitely one of my favorite movies.
They also found a portrait in Switzerland of Mozart, along with another one in Berlin last year.
It seems like this is the year for Mozart discoveries.
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It seems like this is the year for Mozart discoveries.
# posted by 
: 1/05/2006 4:00 PM
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