It is cold. I have five layers on plus my Koala hat with ears. I am listening to Biosphere’s Scan of Waves from Angel’s Flight, 2021.[i] My favourite track, – No, I think it’s ‘Faith and Reverence’ from an album based on Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131.
I am reminded of the end of Franz Schubert. He experienced headaches, fever, swollen joints, and vomiting, unable to keep down solid. Five days before his death, his friend the violinist Karl Holz and his string quartet visited to play Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14. This was the last music Schubert wanted to hear.[ii]
Classic-fm played continuously in the last weeks of my mother’s life. As she slowly lost consciousness on her way to becoming a corpse, what was the last piece of music she heard/recognised/enjoyed? Beethoven? Tchaikovsky? Bach? As I write this, VOCES8 are singing ‘The Seal Lullaby’ by Eric Whitacre & Christopher Glynn. ‘Oh! hush thee, my baby, The night is behind us.’
The last piece of music I wanted to hear during my final dose of radiation was Severed Heads ‘Dead Eyes Opened’, from ‘Since the Accident’, 1983.
‘By strange coincidence, a thunderstorm had been brewing when Mahon, doing his grisly work at the bungalow, was dealing with the most grisly job of all – the head, the woman’s head. He had severed it from the trunk, built a huge fire in the sitting room, placed her head upon it . . .’
[i] Biosphere is Geir Aule Jenssen (born 1962) is a Norwegian electronic musician and composer.
[ii] Schubert died ages 31, officially from typhoid fever, but perhaps syphilis. He was buried, at his request, near Beethoven’s grave, in the village cemetery of Währing on the edge of the Vienna Woods. A year earlier he had served as a torchbearer at Beethoven’s funeral. Days after Beethoven’s funeral, one of the grave-diggers was offered a substantial sum of money to remove the head from the grave. His friends put a watch put on the grave. Both composers’ remains were moved in 1888 to the Vienna Central Cemetery. My mother is scattered on the outskirts of Worthing, Sussex.
