What do Mozart, Beethoven, Emmanuel Swedenborg and Goya all have in common? Apart from being dead, their skulls have been sold, traded and kept. A skull to remember mortality. A full skeleton is closer to a jestering creature, compared to the staring of hollow empty eyes.In art in general the skull is there to remind us, the world's most famous skull, featured in Hamlet. Yes, I'm aware of the fact that I've sort of seemed like the most morbid person in northern Europe lately, but I promise it's not about that. We see things in oppposite pairs. Love-hate, light-dark, night-day, dry-wet, hot-cold and here - life and death. How can we see life without seeing death, and what symbol, beyond all other showcases death? The skull, naturally.
So I say, when Hamlet holds the skull of Yorick in his hand, he's actually holding life and speaking to the final frontier of it. Hamlet is all about death as it is. No need to poke fun, but the end isn't really that exciting, after death there is no life, it leaves no room to imagine what will come next. Something I personally admire in a text, how it manages to attach itself to my mind and continue evolving into something completely different.
Back to death. It is fair. We will all die, and in death we will all be disgusting, we'll all decay, fade to dust, feed the worms, whatever. There is a comfort in that, opposites again, the cliché of "Life isn't fair", must by these standards mean that death is. And it will happen to all of us, might as well get used to the idea.
They kind of go together though, don't they? Memento mori, carpe diem.
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"The Decomposing Composers"
Written by Monty Python's Flying Circus
Performed by Michael Palin
Beethoven's gone, but his music lives on,
And Mozart don't go shopping no more.
You'll never meet Lizst or Brahms again,
And Elgar doesn't answer the door.
Schubert and Chopin used to chuckle and laugh,
Whilst composing a long symphony.
But one hundred and fifty years later,
There's very little of them left to see.
The decomposing composers,
There's not much anyone can do.
You can still hear Beethoven,
But Beethoven cannot hear you.
Handel and Haydn and Rachmaninoff
Enjoyed a nice drink with their meal.
But nowadays no one will serve them,
And their gravy is left to congeal.
Verdi and Wagner delighted the crowds
With their highly original sounds.
The pianos they play are still working,
But they're both six feet underground.
The decomposing composers,
There's less of them every year.
You can say what you like to Debussy,
But there's not much of them left to hear.
Claude Achille Debussy. Died, 1918.
Christof Viliborg Kralk. Died, 1787.
Carl Maria von Weber. Not at all well, 1825. Died, 1826.
Giacomo Meyerbeer. Still alive, 1863. Not still alive, 1864.
Modest Mussorgsky. 1880, going to parties. No fun anymore, 1881.
Johann Nepomuck Hummel. Chattin' away 19 to the dozen with his friends down at the Pub every evenin', 1836. 1837, nothing.
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