New To Las Vegas

Joseph Haydn

Near the front of Wiener Zentralfriedhof, the grand cemetery of Vienna, Austria, sit the final resting spots for a murderer’s row of history’s most celebrated classical composers. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), Franz Schubert (1797-1828), Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), to name but a few. There’s even a monument to Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791), although he’s actually buried in an unmarked grave in another Vienna cemetery.

But missing is perhaps the greatest composer of all: Joseph Haydn (1732-1809). Besides writing a lot of great music, he’s considered the father of symphonies and string quartets. Haydn is now entombed 40 miles away in Eisenstadt, capital of the rural Austrian state of Burgenland, where he composed and debuted so many of his famous works.

However, herein lies a tale full of deception, chicanery and just plain un-believability. Four days after Haydn’s death in Vienna in 1809, associates severed his skull, supposedly for scientific research. Initially buried in Vienna, the rest of Haydn’s body made it back to Eisenstadt in 1820 while the head remained in Vienna, first hidden but later bequeathed by will, passed around and sometimes put on public display!

It wasn’t until 1954–a full 145 years after Haydn’s death at age 77–that his real skull and body came together again where they are now. That’s in a marble mausoleum attached to the Bergkirche (Hill Church), an ornate 18th Century Catholic church built by Haydn’s musical patrons, the noble Esterházy family, and informally known as Haydn’s Church. It’s largely pay-per-view. The church today charged me, a tourist far from the New To Las Vegas world headquarters, three euros ($3.30 at current exchange rate) to open the thick mausoleum door on the side of the main sanctuary. Revealed was the sarcophagus, protected by bars, containing all of the great man–and, as it turns out, a little extra. Stay with me on this.
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