MOZART Applied Anthropology Inquest

By Pierre-François Puech

Legend has it that Mozart’s body has disappeared forever among the bones of the mass grave in the St. Marx Cemetery in Vienna. The guide even states that a stone angel has been crying ever since, on a pathetic sepulchre that has been reconstituted, but remains empty. So why, then, is the composer’s cranium carefully preserved in the Mozart Museum in Salzburg?
The short life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), prolific and influential, ended in brutal circumstances and the writing of what turned out to be Mozart’s own Requiem followed by a burial in a mass grave was offered to myth makers. 
That is why methods of anthropology in the forensic sciences were so important after the skull was exhumed in 1801 and examined in 1986-1991 for identification by several scientists. The enquiry verified existing knowledge and made sense of newly discovered facts...
It was not until the International Mozarteum Foundation was asked to design an Amadeus exhibition to trace the life of Mozart and Salieri that applications of Anthropology to Mozart’s biography lost its legendary character and entered a scientific phase. The great project started... 
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Angelo Pontecorboli Editore
• Release date: Apr 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9788833841076

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