The diseases and destinies of the composers – Celebratory Year 2013 (Gesualdo, Corelli, Gretry, Wagner, Verdi, Britten)

Celebratory years with vast number of composers are rare. After 1985 (Bach, Haendel, D. Scarlatti) and around 2010 (Haydn, Schumann, Chopin), there comes the great year of 2013. These composers are highly sensitive with occasionally severe mental disturbances and lived past 60 years on average, in accordance to the period in which they lived. The composers we considered worthy of special mention are Gesualdo, Corelli, Gretry, Wagner, Verdi and Britten. The composers mentioned above lived relatively long con-sidering that their siblings (and fellow citizens) of that era were dying at half their age. In the earlier centuries the causes of death were usually infectious diseases-plague at first followed by tuberculosis (Gretry), etc.). In later centuries, thanks to better diagnosis, degenerative diseases were dominant (Wagner, Verdi, Britten)