They’re all dead, of course. C’mon, it was nearly 2000 years ago. (Well, maybe not that Jesus guy. Some people reckon he’s still alive. And his mum.)
Oh, alright. Here’s what the rest of their lives were like:
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Born in 1873, Sergei Rachmaninoff was one of the greatest Russian composers of the Twentieth Century, and one of the last Russians to compose in the Romantic style. In addition, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest pianists in history. Ironically, his greatest fame came after he moved to the West in the wake of the 1917 Russian revolution. His works – which include four concertos, three symphonies and 24 preludes – tended to emphasize the piano, the instrument he knew and loved best. As a writer for piano, he explored a wider range of its capabilities than almost any other composer.
Rachmaninoff was diagnosed with melanoma in late 1942, although only his family was told of the diagnosis – he himself was not. He died a few months later, only four days short of his seventieth birthday, and was buried in a cemetery in New York. His will had called for him to be buried on his property in Switzerland, the Villa Senar, but World War Two made that impossible.
By Kubey-Rembrandt Studios (Philadephia, Pennsylvania) – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress‘s Prints and Photographs division
under the digital ID cph.3a40575.
This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information., Public Domain, Link
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Spam didn’t used to have anything to do with enlarging your penis or getting cheap medicines of dubious quality.
It was originally the name of a certain kind of meat, although the ‘dubious quality’ part is well-enshrined in urban legend – known backronyms devised for it include “Something Posing As Meat”, “Stuff, Pork and Ham” and “Spare Parts Animal Meat.” Oddly enough, Spam wasn’t even the original name of the product – it was introduced because the previous name – Hormal Spiced Ham – was losing market share.
It wasn’t until Monty Python and Joel Furr got involved years later that the word assumed its modern meaning.
By the way: according to Hormel’s trademark guidelines, Spam should be spelled with all capital letters and treated as an adjective, as in the phrase “SPAM luncheon meat” – strange but true.
By Judgefloro – Own work, CC0, Link
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Spam — Save Ferris
Spam — Weird Al Yankovic
Spam Song — Monty Python
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, OM, GCVO was one of the greatest English composers of the pre-WWII era. He wrote across a range of styles of music, influenced more by European composers (especially Dvorak and Handel) than his English predecessors (indeed, he was noted for his dislike of the English folk music tradition). He also was one of the first composers to experiment with and understand the potential of the gramophone, and recorded music in general.
His reputation has varied over the years – he fell out of favour after the First World War, but his work has been re-assessed by critics since the 1960s. His best known work today is The Engima Variations.
By Unknown – http://www.geocities.com/hansenk69/elgar3.jpg (broken link), Public Domain, Link
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One of the most popular and influential of all French composers, Claude Achille Debussy was on August 22, 1862. Debussy was a tireless experimenter who was not satisfied to stay within the bounds of what his teachers taught, and this quality informs the majority of his compositions. For instance, he was the first European composer to show the influence of gamelan. By the turn of the century, he was not merely seen as one of the greatest living composers in France, but in most of Central Europe.
Debussy’s death from cancer occurred during the final months of World War One. He died in Paris while that city was being bombarded by the German Spring Offensive. As such, despite being one of the nation’s most honoured sons, he was buried with a minimum of ceremony. After the war concluded, he was reinterred in a style more fitting his influence and status.
By Atelier Nadar, Paris – Bibliothèque nationale de France. Also published on the cover of Debussy’s Nocturnes, Durand, Paris, 1909., PD-US, Link
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A composer of the Romantic school, Johannes Brahms in his 64 years associated with many of the other greats of his era, such as Liszt and Schumann. His works include a dozen sonatas, four symphonies, four concertos, a number of waltzes and a great number of variations, a form which he is particularly known for.
Brahms developed cancer of either the liver or the pancreas which eventually killed him. He is buried in the Zentralfriedhof of Vienna, where he lived in his last years.
By C. Brasch, Berlin (biography) – http://wicr.uindy.edu/Education/Composers/BrahmsJ.html, Public Domain, Link
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Green Onions — The Blues Brothers
Decomposing Composers — Monty Python
One of the greatest of the German composers, Wilhelm Richard Wagner is best known for his Ring Cycle, or Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) in full. His earlier Tristan and Isolde is seen by some as marking the start of modern music (by which, of course, they do not mean pop music).
Wagner was 69 when he died, and he left behind a towering legacy. He influenced almost all later composers, although in some cases (such as Debussy and Tchaikovsky) this influence was seen in their efforts to avoid his shadow. A friend of Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher’s first major work was a glorification of Wagner’s compositions (although the prickly Nietzsche later found fault with his one time idol). Finally, Wagner’s popularity also popularised his views – which included large elements of racism and anti-semitism – views which would continue to dominate German culture until at least 1945, when his greatest German fan committed suicide.
By Franz Hanfstaengl – fr:Image:RichardWagner.jpg, where the source was stated as http://www.sr.se/p2/opera/op030419.stm, Public Domain, Link
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Born in 1791 in Germany, Giacomo Meyerbeer was one of the foremost exponents of the musical and theatrical form known as ‘The Grand Opera’. In his day he was one of the most famed composers in all of Europe, but his reputation has suffered since his death – largely due to the attacks on his character and works by his former student Richard Wagner.
The motivation for these attacks is complex – Wagner was clearly jealous of his teacher’s success and the wealth that it brought him, but also despised Meyerbeer due to the older man’s Jewishness. Among other wild accusations, Wagner accused Meterbeer of bribing critics to ensure favourable reviews.
Of all the great philosophers, none is quite so famous for being, well, a raving loon, as Friedrich Nietzsche.
Born in Rocken, near Leipzig, on October 15, he would become the most famous German philosopher of the 19th century. His best known works include the posthumous “Will To Power”, “Ecce Homo”, “Beyond Good and Evil” and “The Spake Zarathustra”.
Nietzsche was widely seen, in Germany and elsewhere, as a supporter of German militarism – and his work was influential to Hitler and other Nazis (although they were selective in their use and interpretation of him). Later, he was seen as a forerunner of the Existentialists. However, his most lasting contribution to Western culture may be the concept of the Übermensch, or Superman.
By Friedrich Hartmann – https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/04/10/0b/04100baec90c105729b47f33c371476b.jpg, Public Domain, Link
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Franz Peter Schubert was only 31 when he died of what doctors diagnosed as typhoid fever (although others claimed that it was tertiary syphilis). The Austrian was one of the most prolific composers of his era, writing more than 600 songs, 7 symphonies – not including his famous “Unfinished Symphony” (of which he wrote two movements before his death) – 5 operas and 21 sonatas.
His 600 songs were primarily Lieder, and Schubert’s greatest influence is found in this form – understandably, as in doing so many of them he explored nearly every possible variation of them. There is no telling what he might have accomplished had he lived longer – even in his relatively brief span, his style changed and evolved markedly. His epitaph reads “Here music has buried a treasure, but even fairer hopes” – and rarely has anyone had a more accurate epitaph.
By Wilhelm August Rieder – Original is in Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, Public Domain, Link
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