If this is Mozart, was he in One Direction?
NewsScientists in Austria have reconstructed what Mozart might have looked like from the structure of his skull.
He looks like a disaffected member of a short-life boy bank
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Another failure of A.I.
Aren’t there any contemporaneous paintings of Mozart? I recall some from his childhood, along with members of his family. Then, there is one which represents him with a large nose, full lips, rather “pouting,” with strong muscles around the sides of the mouth. He does not have a vacuous expression as this A.I. “representation” has.
I do wish, as a music lover and as an artist, that so-called scientists would stop fiddling with our mental images of what composers looked like, and/or what they died of. Just leave them to rest in peace, and let us enjoy the music. It’s not what one looks like that makes the music; it is what is in the Spirit of the composer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klTvTF10cxE
All those paintings are fabrications. The only authentic one is the unfinished portrait by his brother-in-law Josef Lange, husband of Aloysia Weber. It tells us all, and hangs in my study.
Yes, a wonderful portrait.
He was in Coronation Street wasn’t he?
Came here to say the same thing! Martin, married to Gayle Tilsely
Sean Wilson is now a quite respectable artisan cheese maker.
https://www.artisan-farm.co.uk/
This is exactly what I like about SD…….the shock and surprise of finding (albeit) small community of Corrie watchers
Also a bit like Martin Short, the American actor in “The Three Amigos”.
He looks like a Coronation Street actor from decades ago, who actually played Mozart in a fantastic TV play. Wish I could remember his name.
Martin Platt, played by Sean Wilson
I think he looks like a young Brendan Fraser.
Not quite as handsome as Brendan Fraser was, but close!
(Susan skulks off to fan herself, suddenly a bit warm in here)
How did they obtain his skull? He was buried in a communal grave and the site is, I believe, now part of a public park. If they managed to model the skull from paintings, that is not in itself reliable as we don’t know how precise the relative dimensions are.
For my part, I am not convinced by these modern conjectural pictures; what do they do for us? Do they enhance the enjoyment of the music? Do they shed any light on the source of his genius? We should be thankful that over 600 of his works have survived to this day and we can still hear them to give comfort to our souls.
They are ways of publicising a very important branch of forensics. I used to work with people who taught this skill – it’s incredible and helps bring peace and justice to families of victims of crimes and natural disasters
The site is not a public park but the St. Marx Cemetery, which has a statue at the approximate site of the communal grave.
Exactly.
https://www.visitingvienna.com/footsteps/mozarts-grave/
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/university-mozarteum
It’s a good question. The alleged Mozart crown is held at the Salzburg Mozarteum. As the story goes (source: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/university-mozarteum)…
“In 1902 the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria, came into possession of what was said to be Mozart’s skull. Missing its lower jaw, this skull matched a historical record indicating that Joseph Rothmayer, a gravedigger, had taken the skull from the group grave in which Mozart was buried ten years after his death in 1791.
“Though often said to be buried in a mass or pauper’s grave, Mozart was actually buried in a grave with only four or five other bodies in it, a standard middle class burial procedure in those times. According to the story, the gravedigger attached a wire to the skull so that he’d know which one was Mozart’s when he went to retrieve it. (That he would have waited ten years to do so, however, casts some doubt on this claim.) From there, the skull passed through various hands, a sexton, one Dr. Hyrtl’s phrenological collection (which, excluding Mozart’s skull, would go on to become the Mütter Museum’s skull collection) before ending up in the hands of the Mozarteum in 1902.”
As the story goes on to say, subsequent DNA testing against known members of the Mozart family didn’t yield a match — and layering more mystery upon mystery, the DNA of those family members didn’t match one another’s!
Call me a cynic but on reading the first line I guessed that alleged provenance of the skull would be fake news. What I have though is a cylinder recording of Bach playing his Minuet in G on his own harpsichord. Who will open the bidding…
There is no definite skull.
Mozart ☠gibt’s nicht.
Peter Ustinov x Dustin Hoffmann = Mozart
He looks a bit like actor Jeremy Allen White.
I love projects like this. Hadi Karimi’s work is an excellent example, as is this haunting video of Chopin moving backward then forward in time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MTQf0E10gY
This reconstructed image may be compatible with the description given by the musical comedian Victor Borge, who often kept a bust of Mozart on the concert piano and (gesturing with his hand extended horizontally across his chest) would explain to the audience that “You see, Mozart was only from here up.”
Mozart was black.
No, Chet- you’re thinking of his bestie, Joseph Baloney,
That’s Barry Manilow’s twin brother.
Reminds me of a young Dustin Hoffman
“a short-life boy bank”.
That sounds very sinister. A pervert’s dream.
What is that — “a short-life boy bank”? A British expression?
typo: “short-lived boy band”.
That reminds me — the Bavarian State opera once had a forensic team do a facial composite of Wolfie. Had more character and did not assume a missing skull.
It is Elijah Wood….maybe a good choice to play Mozart in the inevitable re-make of Amadeus?
I doubt whether such reconstructions can be true. A couple of years ago I joined a phrono.. phrenology experiment, for fun, and had my skull measured to see if my face corresponded with it. Bit it turned-out my face was all wrong.
Sally
This cannot be Mozart.
It is Martin Platt in1985.
https://coronationstreet.fandom.com/wiki/Martin_Platt?file=Martin_Platt_1985-0.jpg
Ask Professor Google!
I see a resemblance to the Josef Lange portrait, probably the most authentic likeness we have.
https://www.gettyimages.es/detail/fotograf%C3%ADa-de-noticias/wolfgang-amadeus-mozart-by-joseph-lange-fotograf%C3%ADa-de-noticias/640483977?adppopup=true
Reconstructing faces from the remains of a skull is a many decades-old forensic technique.
It is unlikely to produce an exact likeness but it is likely to produce a strong resemblance.
One study of the validity of this technique found that “…the majority of the surfaces of the facial reconstructions showed less than 2.5 mm error and 90% of the male face and 75% of the female face showed less than 5 mm error. ”
Five mm in the wrong place could be a lot, however.
So, Mozart looked like Michael Tilson Thomas. Apparently. Thanks, AI.
Is that his real hair in the Lange portrait, or a brown powedered wig?
If Michael Tilson Thomas and Martin Short’s gene pool were melded.
Well looks to me more like they dug up the wrong guy.
The real Mozart is still ‘haydn’.
Looks like Spiderman Tobey Maguire.
No wonder A.I. stock Nvidia lost 1/3 of its hyped value.