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Unforgettable Moments In Music History That Shocked The Media

Khalid Elhassan March 8, 2023 32 min

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Deadly Enthusiasm for Music

In 1653, Lully attracted the attention of fourteen-year-old King Louis XIV, with whom he danced at a ball. He was soon thereafter appointed royal composer for instrumental music. Lully became one of the king’s closest companions and friends, and spent the remainder of his career and life at court. There, he earned a reputation as a libertine, with many romantic and physical relationships with both men and women. By 1686, Louis had started to sour on Lully and his increasingly dissolute lifestyle and homosexual escapades.

On March 22^nd, 1687, Lully conducted a Te Deum to celebrate the king’s recovery from a surgery. He tried too hard to regain Louis’ favor with a fervent display of happiness at his royal patron’s return to health. Lully got carried away as he enthusiastically kept the beat by banging a long staff on the floor, and accidentally smashed it hard on his big toe. The toe became gangrenous, and it spread to his leg. Lully did not want to give up dancing, and refused to have the leg amputated. The gangrene spread into his body, and killed him.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.