Triskaidekaphobia

July 13, 1951 — Only fifteen minutes before midnight, the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg passed away in Los Angeles. He died in terror, convinced that the date was cursed.

Schoenberg suffered from a lifelong dread of the number 13. His 76th year especially haunted him, since the digits 7 and 6 add up to 13 — a fact a friend had ominously reminded him of. And July 13, 1951, fell on a Friday.

His wife Gertrud later described the strange end:

“About a quarter to twelve I looked at the clock and said to myself: another quarter of an hour and then the worst is over. Then the doctor called me. Arnold’s throat rattled twice, his heart gave a powerful beat, and that was the end.”

As a young man, Schoenberg had revolutionized modern music by creating the 12-tone technique, a radical break from tonal tradition. When the Nazis rose to power, his music was branded “degenerate,” and he fled Europe for America. Settling in Los Angeles, he composed, taught, and even played tennis with his neighbor George Gershwin.

His superstition about the number 13 haunted him for decades. He once shortened the opera title Moses und Aaron to avoid its 13-letter spelling, and he brooded over the 13th song in his Book of the Hanging Gardens. To the end, he believed 13 would be his undoing. And on Friday the 13th, it was.