ABSTRACT
Ludwig’s three older brothers committed suicide: Hans and Rudi before the war, and Kurt in front of his troops on the Italian front, on Armistice Day. His surviving older brother, Paul, a gifted pianist, was taken prisoner in Russia and lost his right arm. It was for him that Ravel composed the Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, in 1930. That year, Ludwig read anthropologist Frazer’s book, 1 and observed in his Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough 2 :
A whole mythology is deposited in our language. Casting out death and slaying death; but on the other hand he is also represented as a skeleton, as if he were in some sense dead himself.
