Music History Events: Deaths
July 1, 1925 French composer/pianist Erik Satie dies of cirrhosis of the liver at age 59.
July 27, 1924 Italian composer/pianist Ferruccio Busoni dies.
August 2, 1921 Italian operatic tenor Enrico Caruso dies of peritonitis at age 48. Son Enrico Caruso Jr. attributes his father's downward health spiral to an onstage injury, having being struck by a falling pillar during a production of Samson and Delilah the year before.
March 25, 1918 French composer Claude Debussy dies from rectal cancer at his Paris home.
June 12, 1917 Venezuelan pianist and composer Teresa Carreño dies at age 63 in New York City.
March 24, 1916 After a German U-boat torpedoes the SS Sussex, a passenger ferry crossing the English Channel, Spanish composer Enrique Granados drowns while attempting to rescue his wife.
May 18, 1909 Spanish pianist and composer Isaac Albéniz dies at age 48 of kidney disease.
July 14, 1908 Boston-born composer William Mason dies at age 79.
May 1, 1904 Czech composer Antonin Dvorak dies at age 62 of an undetermined illness.
November 22, 1900 English operatic composer Arthur Sullivan (The Pirates of Penzance) dies of heart failure at age 58.
August 23, 1899 Dwight Hamilton Baldwin, manufacturer of the Baldwin Piano, dies in Cincinnati, Ohio, at age 78.
May 20, 1896 German composer Clara Schumann dies after suffering a stroke at age 76.
November 8, 1890 Belgian composer Cesar Franck dies of a respiratory infection at age 67.
November 2, 1887 Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind, who became famous for her role as Agathe in an 1838 production of Der Freischütz, dies at age 67.
May 12, 1884 Czech composer Bedrich Smetana dies at age 60.
February 13, 1883 German composer Richard Wagner ("The Ride Of The Valkyries") dies at age 69.
May 26, 1880 John Curwen, an English minister who co-founded the Tonic sol-fa system of music education, dies at age 64.
November 13, 1868 Italian composer Gioachino Rossini dies of pneumonia in Passy, Paris, France, at age 76.
November 4, 1847 German composer Felix Mendelssohn dies after a series of strokes at age 38.
September 23, 1835 Italian opera composer Vincenzo Bellini dies of peritonitis at age 33.
November 19, 1828 Austrian composer Franz Schubert dies in Vienna, Austria, at age 31. The cause is listed as typhoid fever, though some scholars believe it was syphilis.
March 26, 1827 Ludwig van Beethoven dies at age 56.
June 5, 1826 German composer Carl Maria von Weber dies of tuberculosis at age 39.
June 30, 1792 Classical era composer Antonio Rosetti dies at age 42.
December 14, 1788 Composer Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, son of Johann Sebastian Bach, dies Hamburg, Germany, at age 74.
November 15, 1787 Christoph Willibald Gluck, composer of Italian and French opera, dies of a stroke at age 73.
June 27, 1729 French composer Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre, known for her harpsichord pieces, dies at age 64.
May 9, 1707 Baroque composer Dietrich Buxtehude dies.
March 3, 1706 German composer Johann Pachelbel dies at age 52.
November 21, 1695 Baroque composer Henry Purcell dies at age 35 (or 36) from an indeterminate cause.
Back to Categories©2026 Songfacts®, LLC