If this is Mozart, was he in One Direction?

If this is Mozart, was he in One Direction?

News

norman lebrecht

June 24, 2024

Scientists 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

Comments

  • Margaret Koscielny says:

    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.

  • Gary says:

    He was in Coronation Street wasn’t he?

  • Christopher Morley says:

    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.

  • Herbie G says:

    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.

    • Jonathan says:

      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

    • Conductor Jan says:

      The site is not a public park but the St. Marx Cemetery, which has a statue at the approximate site of the communal grave.

    • Byrwec Ellison says:

      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!

      • Herbie G says:

        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…

    • Herb says:

      There is no definite skull.

    • Wiener says:

      Mozart ☠ gibt’s nicht.

  • Philipp Lord Chandos says:

    Peter Ustinov x Dustin Hoffmann = Mozart

  • Andy says:

    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

  • SlippedChat says:

    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.”

  • chet says:

    Mozart was black.

  • Paul Brownsey says:

    That’s Barry Manilow’s twin brother.

  • professional musician says:

    Reminds me of a young Dustin Hoffman

  • Barney Burnham says:

    “a short-life boy bank”.

    That sounds very sinister. A pervert’s dream.

  • IP says:

    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.

  • Jon says:

    It is Elijah Wood….maybe a good choice to play Mozart in the inevitable re-make of Amadeus?

  • John Borstlap says:

    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

  • Philipp Lord Chandos says:

    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!

  • Robert says:

    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.

  • Anthony Sayer says:

    So, Mozart looked like Michael Tilson Thomas. Apparently. Thanks, AI.

  • GUEST says:

    Is that his real hair in the Lange portrait, or a brown powedered wig?

  • Save the MET says:

    If Michael Tilson Thomas and Martin Short’s gene pool were melded.

  • zandonai says:

    Well looks to me more like they dug up the wrong guy.
    The real Mozart is still ‘haydn’.

  • zandonai says:

    Looks like Spiderman Tobey Maguire.
    No wonder A.I. stock Nvidia lost 1/3 of its hyped value.

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