Enough Schubert

[Pabmusic]

I'm sure the BBC will hail this last week as a success (can you imagine anything else?). So, when will they repeat it? (I mean, 'reprise' the whole week)?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

My (metaphorical!) money's on a Haydn saturation week in June next year.

[kernelbogey]

I now have a Schubert earworm - just a fragment of piano accompaniment that won't go away, and I've little hope of identifying the song.

[Norfolk Born]

My (metaphorical!) money's on a Haydn saturation week in June next year.

So there really is no haydn place.....

[Serial_Apologist]

So there really is no haydn place.....

If you're from India you can always play Haydn Sihk

[Norfolk Born]

If you're from India you can always play Haydn Sihk

...that could prove to be a bit of a Lark...

[Resurrection Man]

I now have a Schubert earworm - just a fragment of piano accompaniment that won't go away, and I've little hope of identifying the song.

Is there a recognisable theme? Do you by any chance have access to Dictionary of Musical Themes by Denys Parsons? Marvellous book. Take a theme and write down the first 15 notes. No musical knowledge required. Just the ability to decide if each note, relative to the preceding note, is Up, Down or Repeat (ie the same). Write down the sequence such as UUDDR RDUUD DRDRU and look it up in the book. I have said book so if you'd like to PM me the theme I can have a stab at locating it for you.

[Don Petter]

That is indeed a remarkable book. You wouldn't think such a simple scheme would work, but it really does!

Damn - Now you've reminded me I have to find my copy from the depths somewhere.

[I presume it's the same Denys Parsons who wrote 'Can it be True?' and all those other similar titles. Great favourites of mine, and sitting on the loo shelf under 'Humour' where they can also entertain our guests.]

[Dave2002]

I have actually listened to more music off R3 than in recent months this week, and I believe I have captured most of the event so far on my FreeSat PVR. One thing which I've been ignorant about for many years, and indeed still am, though I think Donald M touched on it in COTW is Schubert's syphillis. Does anyone ever ask how he got it? Is it still a taboo subject? In Schubert's time there would perhaps have been more ways of contracting this than the very obvious. Indeed, it does seem that syphillis was quite prevalent before the 20th Century and the development of antibiotics.

Looks like a very nasty disease indeed - definitely one to avoid if at all possible.

[MrGongGong]

Looks like a very nasty disease indeed - definitely one to avoid if at all possible.

I'll bear that in mind Dave

[kernelbogey]

[...]One thing which I've been ignorant about for many years, and indeed still am, though I think Donald M touched on it in COTW is Schubert's syphillis. Does anyone ever ask how he got it? Is it still a taboo subject? In Schubert's time there would perhaps have been more ways of contracting this than the very obvious. Indeed, it does seem that syphillis was quite prevalent before the 20th Century and the development of antibiotics.

Looks like a very nasty disease indeed - definitely one to avoid if at all possible.

We had a couple of posts (278 & 305) on the Schubert on 3 thread, mine in response to a reference last Sunday by Sean Rafferty to the disease and a suggestion that there would be more said about it*. Grove is rather reticent on the subject, and the most common opinion seems to be that he died of typhoid fever. There are a lot of medical articles, if you have the patience to pursue them, referenced by a Google search. (Maybe the last CotW programme had detail.)
* EDIT: see post 87 below

[kernelbogey]

Also, here is the Sean Rafferty piece interviewing Dr Beatrix Patzak, director of the Federal Pathology and Anatomy Museum, about Schubert's syphilis.

[french frank]

Indeed, it does seem that syphillis was quite prevalent before the 20th Century and the development of antibiotics.

It was very prevalent. In the correspondence between Mozart and his father they discuss WAM's friend Josef Mysliveček in a way that points to his illness, from which he died in 1781, as being syphilis. Leopold also gives 'advice' to his son who assures him that he is well aware of the problem and is far too sensible to run any risks.

At the end of the 19th century, many people were certified as having died from GPI - or General Paralysis of the Insane. This was the result of tertiary syphilis (I had two great uncles who died of it and it was on their death certificates )

[Pabmusic]

...Indeed, it does seem that syphillis was quite prevalent before the 20th Century and the development of antibiotics.
Looks like a very nasty disease indeed - definitely one to avoid if at all possible.

Because syphilis was (most likely) introduced into Europe as late as about 1500 (the 'great pox', a gift to us from the New World - we gave them smallpox in exchange), there was no natural immunity among the population and it spread like wildfire. The most commonly used treatment was mercury, which has very unpleasant side-effects, but which did give rise to the saying, "one night of Venus and a lifetime of Mercury". It was penicillin that stopped it in the 1940s.

It has always been a sexually transmitted disease, so we don't have to have much imagination to guess how Schubert got it. I have seen references to 'hereditary syphilis' in relation to Schumann, which suggests a second way of transmission, but I'm no expert.

There are loads of references in cultural history, but a favourite is the folk-song "The young sailor cut down in his prime". It was popular, and eventually crossed the Atlantic to become the cowboy ballad "The streets of Laredo". But it was originally about a young sailor who died of the pox - syphilis. "Had she but told me about it in time/I might have got tablets and pills of white mercury/But now I'm cut down at the height of my prime" [version collected in Dorset by George Gardiner].

At the end of the 19th century, many people were certified as having died from GPI - or General Paralysis of the Insane. This was the result of tertiary syphilis.

The best contemporary musical example would probably have been Delius.

[Dave2002]

I'll bear that in mind Dave

I did look at wikipedia, and some of the pictures were XXX rated.