Classical Considerations: Classical Music Myths
We like our classical music myths big: deaf geniuses, murderous rivals, unlettered savants plucking greatness from the air. But like most big stories, the myths we’ve selected for this week’s Classical Considerations fall apart under close inspection. That’s not a loss. The truth is often more fascinating—more human—than the legend. Below, we take on five of the most persistent myths in classical music history and explore what really happened.
Was Beethoven Completely Deaf When He Composed the Ninth Symphony?
The image of Ludwig van Beethoven composing his Ninth Symphony while unable to hear it has become iconic—a tragic genius, shut off from the world. This story has been so widely circulated that it has even spawned corollaries, including that the great composer’s hearing loss had so run its course that he couldn’t even hear the thunderous applause at the Symphony’s premiere and had to be turned around to see the audience’s reaction. Given that Beethoven’s hearing loss was profound by the 1820s, this dramatic portrayal isn’t entirely baseless.
However, recent scholarship has complicated this narrative. Analysis of Beethoven’s conversation books, a contrivance he employed to communicate, indicates that he retained some hearing in his left ear as late as 1824. Professor Theodore Albrecht of Kent State University has shown that Beethoven could still hear low frequencies, certain musical tones, and voices even after the Ninth Symphony was completed. The miracle isn’t that he wrote music in utter silence, but that relying on a mix of inner hearing and the scraps of sound he could still perceive, he was able to compose some of his most enduring works. His achievements remain monumental, but not quite as superhuman as the myth would suggest.
Did Salieri Murder Mozart?
Thanks to Pushkin’s play, Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera, and the Oscar-winning film Amadeus, many people believe Antonio Salieri murdered, or planned to murder, Amadeus Mozart out of jealousy. The tale is operatic in scale: an envious court composer, threatened by Mozart’s divine talent, secretly poisons the young genius, who dies tragically in his mid-thirties. Combining rivalry, intrigue, and death, the story of Salieri and Mozart has been told over and over, becoming one of the most widely believed myths in music history.
Unfortunately for the dramatists, historians overwhelmingly agree that this is fiction. Mozart’s death certificate cites “severe miliary fever,” a vague term common in 18th-century medicine, and his symptoms (fever, swelling, and pain) align with natural illnesses like rheumatic fever or kidney failure—not poisoning. While rumors swirled during Salieri’s later years, the evidence suggests these were confused statements made during illness and later denied by Salieri himself. He even taught Mozart’s son after Mozart’s death. The myth endures for its drama, but the reality was, thankfully, much less murderous.
Were Handel and Bach Bitter Rivals?
Handel and Bach: the two towering composers of the Baroque era, born just a few weeks apart in 1685 in different parts of Germany. It seems inevitable that they would have been aware of each other, competed for recognition, and maybe even clashed artistically. In modern imagination, and even some old music histories, this has been cast as a vicious rivalry, with each composer vying for supremacy across the European music halls.
The truth is, they never even met. While Bach spent his life in central Germany focusing on church music and counterpoint, Handel made his career abroad, particularly in London, with operas and oratorios. Bach attempted to meet Handel on at least two occasions, but missed him once by mere days and had to cancel another attempt due to illness. Any notion of personal competition is a projection from later centuries, particularly the late 1800s when some Bach devotees were resentful of Handel’s international fame compared to Bach’s more local legacy. Far from being foes, the two composers respected one another from afar.
Did Vivaldi Die in Obscurity?
Antonio Vivaldi, the Baroque composer who dazzled Europe with his violin concertos, is often said to have died destitute and forgotten, buried in a pauper’s grave in Vienna. After years of composing in Venice and dazzling the courts of Europe, this purported fall from grace makes for a classically tragic arc. The story goes that by the late 1730s, Vivaldi’s music had fallen out of favor, and in 1740 he left Venice, hoping to secure patronage from Emperor Charles VI. Unfortunately, the Emperor died shortly after Vivaldi arrived in Vienna, and the composer passed away less than a year later, in 1741.
While he was no longer wealthy, calling him a pauper is a gross exaggeration. He received a standard funeral service at St. Stephen’s Cathedral and was buried in an ordinary grave (as opposed to a mass pauper’s grave as is often claimed). Though Vivaldi’s star had dimmed and his music was largely forgotten for nearly two centuries, he had been among the most successful composers of his time, reportedly earning over 50,000 ducats. His decline was real, but his end wasn’t as bleak as the popular story suggests.
Was Haydn an “Idiot Savant”?
Franz Joseph Haydn’s story often gets simplified into a classic “rags to riches” tale: an uneducated peasant with a gift for music who rose by sheer genius to become one of the greatest composers of his age. Born in a small Austrian village in 1732, Haydn undoubtedly came from humble origins. His father was a wheelwright, his mother a cook, and the family had no formal connection to the musical world. The image of a rustic autodidact overcoming adversity has proven irresistible to modern listeners—and the occasional historian.
But this version of Haydn’s life glosses over a substantial early education. At the age of eight, Haydn joined the choir at St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, where he spent a decade receiving rigorous training in singing, violin, harpsichord, and theory. Though he never attended university, Haydn studied the works of C.P.E. Bach and took lessons with prominent musicians like Nicola Porpora. Far from a self-taught savant, Haydn was a disciplined, lifelong learner who combined natural talent with deep, structured training.
Dramatic narratives have a way of sticking. The deaf composer writing a choral masterpiece, the jealous rival bringing down a genius, the battle of the Baroque titans—all of these stories add drama and romance to music history. But the true stories that trace the constellation of musical history are just as worthy of telling as they reveal the more complex, altogether more recognizable, lives of our greatest musical geniuses.
– Matthew Young
From Beethoven and Mozart to Haydn and Vivaldi, you’ll hear many of these composers regularly on The Classical Station. Visit our Summer 2025 Highlights to see what’s on air, or request your favorite via our Request Programs.