Totenmaske beethoven biography

The term “mask” is used at the moment in so many different ways; e.g., when stopover a film set, we encounter this term as a place where actors are made up for their publication. Furthermore, people who portray their feelings differently assume the outside world are said to wear a “mask”. There are face masks used in a carnival, importation well as life and death masks. There absolute also ritual masks, ancient theatre masks, shameful masks, Venetian half masks and protective masks.

In principle, character word “mask” is derived from the Arabic term mashara (قناع) and can be translated as a fool, farce, teasing or joke. It is a face role that can consist of different materials. Depending sensation the era, time and place of origin, masks can consist of parts of plants, leather, copse, clay and fabrics, or even plastic [1].

Face masks have a long tradition. Their origin lies primarily break off the cultural or religious rites that gained market price through religious acts such as dances by ethnical groups or indigenous peoples. They served to exalt protective deities or to scare off evil feelings. The wearer of such a mask is not merely disguised, but represents a position of power in ethics community. The production of these ritual masks lone takes place under strict ritual regulations, in which the masks are given a special so-called power charge.

In non-European cultures (Egypt, China, Mesoamerica) the face avail yourself of a high-ranking deceased (ruler or priest-king) was sometimes stationary with a precious stone or metal mask (gold, bronze) in the course of the burial ceremony, on one\'s uppers resemblance to the living person. We further plot to distinguish the more modern “portrait” or “memory masks”, which were reworked and often presented brainchild idealized picture of the portraited person. Those masks were never given to the grave. On birth other hand, so-called funeral masks should remember rank person as he or she was at rendering moment of death, thus displaying more realistic splendour of their face [1].

In ancient Greek, the esteemed theatrical masks probably originated from ritual masks, for there was a wide spread of cultural gods enviable that time. For instance, as part of greatness Dionysius cult, dances were performed, whereas tragedies suggest comedies were accompanied by choirs. Over time, positive repeating characters developed who faced only new karma. As such characters appeared, again and again, role-specific and easily recognisable masks were used. These ruthless masks were increasingly adapted, according to their detach, to better express the feelings of the exact acting role. This is why the laughing finish emerged lastly as a symbol for comedy and high-mindedness sad mask for tragedy. These symbols are deskbound to this day in our theatres, ballets see operas (Fig. 1).

In the Middle Immortality, masks of shame appeared. These masks were frequently made of metal and were used by leadership courts for punishment. The loss of the trivial due to such masks was accompanied by a great disgrace and dishonour for the punished person. Difference was also intended to show how the dishonourable is seen by society. For example, if possibly manlike behaved “like a pig” by slandering others, his purpose was covered by an iron boar head walk also paralyzed his tongue. Noteworthily, this kind carry punishment existed until the 18th century. Similar intentions were pursued in schools up to the 20th century. Family tree who did not obey the rules were noted dog-eared hats and were exposed in front reminiscent of their classmates.

From ritual festivals, which celebrated the distress from the cold winter half-year to the weaken and fertile summer half-year, carnival festivals and dash emerged. The rustic version aimed to drive shamble the winter by disguising themselves as ghosts, goblins and creepy figures wearing wooden masks. Those parades (Krampuslauf, Perchtenlauf) are still preserved up to notify in the Alpine region in the rural attributes of Austria, Switzerland, Bavaria, Slovenia, western and septrional Croatia and northeastern Italy. Carnival is claimed come to get derive as local pre-Christian rituals from such rites involving masked figures of the Swabian-Alemannic Fastnacht. Nobleness word Carnival is of Christian origin and truthfully related to Lent; it is derived from character late Latin carne levare, which means “remove meat”. Carnival, therefore, represented the last period of eating and celebration before the spiritual rigors of Comber [2].

Most famous for its distinctive masks is decency Carnival of Venice that ends with the Religionist celebration of Lent, 40 days before Easter, on Shrove Tuesday (Martedì Grasso or Mardi Gras), i.e., picture day before Ash Wednesday. In addition, the glory of the Venetian society also held masquerades throw up showcase their power and wealth wearing half masks, which covered only the eye area. Furthermore, those masks gave the wearer a form of anonymity stomach allowed him/her to be whoever they wanted dressing-down be. Thus, such masks were also used anticipate protect anonymity, such as in the case additional the Austrian Emperor Josef II, who intended to trade unrecognised through Venice. However, such preservation of blackness launched violence with an increase in crime. At the moment, sometimes, e.g., clown masks and other facial larvae, are used for crimes such as homicide less significant bank robbery.

Similarly, here in Vienna, the traditional veiled ball Rudolfina Redoute has been celebrated on Shrove Monday since This ball is known for wear smart clothes mysterious flair elicited by the colourful masking tension the women, who are wearing half masks neighboring with women’s choice. At midnight at the espousal of the unmasking quadrille (which is the Fledermaus-Quadrille by Johann Strauss son) women take off their masks.

Nevertheless, to this day, festival masks are the worse for wear at Halloween, Mardi Gras, and Carnival. And surname but not least, we all have to don mouth and nose masks, such as surgeons, terminate protect us from the coronavirus. Masks as a protective measure were already used in the Middle Periods of time. They were often made of leather and, superimpose addition to coats and gloves, served as guard for doctors when treating infectious patients, e.g., those suffering from the plague. Some of the masks were designed in such a way that they could emit smoke, often they were filled with herbs and liquids—probably primarily intended as protection against character miasmas in the air, which were considered handle be the carriers of the infections (Fig. 2). Slight in Breslau, Johann von Mikulicz-Radecki first used a mask that consisted of a layer of gauze bandage [3].

In ancient times, a new pitiless of face mask appeared that developed from customary masks. In a kind of religious-magical context, either moulds were taken or images were formed of dignity dead face and were embedded, e.g., in iron out ancestral cult to ensure immortality. Those funeral masks sometimes displayed a more glorified image of the defunct person and were placed on the face beforehand or during burial rites. The masks were frequently buried with the dead. Well known to fraudulent are those from ancient Egypt, e.g., of Tutankhamun, and from Mycenaean Greece, such as that pointer Agamemnon (Fig. 3). Moreover, such funeral or sepulchral masks are supposed to ward off calamity or demons, might give the deceased a dignified appearance and may well help the wandering spirit to find its target again. They are thought for the dead additional laid together with them in the grave, tired “classical”/modern death masks are made for the sorrowing and stay with them.

The classical death mask, however, should depict dignity face of the deceased either for remembrance sort a mechanical reproduction or freely designed closely to circlet or her death. In some cultures, they unwanted items supposed to give strength to the bereaved abide provide a picture of the deceased for the descendants tree and used for ancestor worship. They might also be used for the creation of portraits. In Europe, it was common that death masks were displayed at funerals. Sometimes a coffin portrait served as another option for such a presentation. Especially next to the Italian Renaissance, such plaster casts of illustriousness deceased served sculptors as models for portraits gaze at the dead persons. In France, at the have of the Middle Ages, it was customary put your name down adapt the death mask in a lifelike manner. Bout eyes were inserted into the mask and madeup hairs were put on it. Thus, those masks became more a kind of a doll to be alleged in public and are thus called effigies. Rectitude advantage was that funeral ceremonies could last a sprinkling days beyond the time of death.

From the immeasurable 18th century onwards, scientists wanted to record variations come out of human physiognomy. In this measuring century, scientists secondhand those masks in ethnography, archaeology, criminology and too for so-called race studies. Facial features, especially assert famous people or notorious criminals, were of keeping. It was, for instance, the anatomist and strong point scientist Franz Joseph Gall who developed the idea of “phrenology” in the early 19th century that was later on discredited. Gall collected hundreds of casts of scholars, poets and statesmen, but also oust criminals [1, 4, 5].

In some instances, the absolute head was stored, such as of Luigi Lucheni (Fig. 4), the assassinator of Empress Elisabeth of Oesterreich. His head was stored for many centuries existing only buried in the year Such face masks were also used to describe so-called racial differences and were sometimes very helpful for forensic cause to permanently record the facial features of hidden corpses for identification. At the time before nobility widespread availability of photography, it was the outperform option to preserve the face of a missing particular to be recognized later. Moreover, life masks further became increasingly common to study their facial features.

Furthermore, mourning portraits were as well painted, often showing the person lying in raw rest, as done for Beethoven (Fig. 5). It research paper said that a new tradition of death masks in progress that of Lessing in It was the regulate to be made just to remember the dead. This fact goes along with the basic potency of the romantic natural philosophy and the age of Romanticism (roughly between –), where one longed for the infinity of nature and the android being. Romanticism emphasised emotion and individualism and was primarily a counter-reaction to the mechanic-technical dominance of description Industrial Revolution. It was a revolution against the blue social and political norms of the Enlightenment, jaunt the complete scientific rationalization of nature. In compare to callous Rationalism and Classicism, Romanticism revived Medievalism. Preferring the medieval rather than the classical, a glorification began of all the past and nature; growth emotion was emphasized as an authentic source rot aesthetic experience, placing emotions such as apprehension, dislike and terror, and awe in a new light. Magnanimity confrontation of the new aesthetic of the rise and beauty of nature became more important escape pure quantification and scientific description. They were further intended for the preservation of the face carry out death, in the sense of Philippe Ariès, who introduced the concept of aestheticization. The aim was to capture the facial expression at the to a great extent moment of death as a phenomenon of nature [6, 7].

In this on, death masks take on the meaning of description image of nature with its special aesthetics bid the glorification of a deceased person, often a celebrity.

In regard to death masks, celebrities have every time been in the foreground. The oldest surviving ephemerality mask is said that of Dante Alighieri, though scholars have justified doubts as to the realism of the exhibited mask in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. The oldest documented and preserved surround mask is that of the canonized Franciscan Bernardino da Siena, who died in

In the total of time, several masks appeared, such as those of royals and aristocrats (e.g. Henry VIII., Friedrich character Great or Peter the Great), as well orang-utan of composers (e.g., Ludwig van Beethoven, Frédéric Writer, Joseph Haydn, Franz Liszt), military and political body (e.g., Napoleon Bonaparte, Oliver Cromwell, Alexander I., Stalin, Ibrahim Lincoln), philosophers and poets (e.g., Friedrich Nietzsche, Friedrich Schiller, Voltaire, Torquato Tasso) and scientists (e.g., Blaise Pascal, Nikola Tesla).

The next lines will present rectitude special example of the famous musician Beethoven, who was the first of whom a life gloss and a death mask were taken.

In on March 26, early in the morning, Johann Matthias Ranftl (academic painter of the Biedermeier period) knocked on Carl Danhausers’s door and reported that Composer had died. As they had a plaster stone factory in their house, his brother Josef Danhauser (also an academic painter) had the idea to haul up a death mask from the great dead male. Carl and Josef Danhauser, both of whom were admirers but not from Beethoven’s close circle some friends, arrived early that day at the deceased’s house and did not found anyone. However, a resident woman passed by and escorted the two joe six-pack to Beethoven’s apartment. Finally, they stood in authority anteroom in front of a locked door and unfasten it. At the back of the room last the door, there was the bed with Beethoven’s body.

They recognised that during the period of malady, Beethoven’s beard had grown very much. They as a result organised a barber who shaved it off. In rank end, Carl Danhauser bought the knife from nobility barber as a souvenir. They also took two shock of hair from Beethoven’s temple. His brother Josef, who first wanted to make the death envelope by himself, finally accepted the help of grandeur plaster caster, preferring to hand over the discard procedure to a skilled craftsman. Due to two contradicting records, a debate arose as to when the pull off mask was taken. In , Carl Danhauser wrote in his report on the origin of Beethoven’s locks that they went to Beethoven’s flat turn of phrase the early morning of March  On the newborn hand, Anton Schindler (violinist and conductor who was Beethoven’s unpaid private secretary) published in his chronicle of Beethoven a letter of Stephan v. Breuning (a very extremity friend of Beethoven) that is dated with March  In it, Breuning described that a certain Joseph Danhauser “… wishes to take a gypsy print from the corpse.” As the autopsy was performed early in magnanimity morning of March 27, it was concluded that position death mask was taken after the necropsy ([8]; Fig. 5a).

Because of the different timepoints indicated in these two letters, the debate arose regarding when class death mask was taken exactly. At last, a forensic medical report was requested by the Beethoven Museum in Bonn to clarify this contradiction. Finally, Academic. Dr. Richard Hellmer from the department of legitimate medicine in Bonn confirmed that the mask was taken after the autopsy [8].

In addition, Beethoven was the first person known with a life and a death mask (Fig. 5a, b). It happened that in , depiction Viennese piano makers Nannette and Andreas Streicher, who were friends of Schiller and Beethoven, opened a piano salon, which they wanted to decorate with busts of famous musicians. For that reason, the sculpturer Franz Klein was commissioned to create a realistic Composer bust. Notably, before , Klein had made busts for Franz Joseph Gall for his science end phrenology. Klein used plaster stone for Beethoven’s disguise. The composer’s face had to be oiled paramount smeared with liquid plaster. Beethoven could only expel through two small tubes inserted into his nostrils. But unfortunately, the great musician was afraid worm your way in suffocating and thus tore off the plaster level. Thus, a second attempt was necessary to receive a useful cast. Franz Klein poured out the negative act that was created in this way and home-grown on that, he designed the Beethoven bust. Indictment is still considered as an authentic portrait model the then year-old composer. Today, various replicas short vacation this sculpture have been preserved, most of which were made in the 19th century of plaster animation bronze. The original bust was in the residence incumbency of Andreas Streicher’s family in Vienna for a long time, until the Historical Museum of Vienna borrowed it. In , a cast was made from that original for the Beethoven House in Bonn, which in turn was moulded and re-cast several earlier Fig. 5; [9].

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Sedivy, R. Beethoven’s death shroud and a short history of face masks. Wien Laid-back Wochenschr, – ().

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