Newsgroup: it.arti.musica.classica
Titolo: Ancora su Georg Tintner

 "Klaus Heymann"
Ed ora la lettera di Tanya Tintner
=-------------------------------------------------------=
      Subject:  Re: Good News Regarding a Georg Tintner
                Memorial Edition CD
         Date:  12 Oct 1999 20:44:10 GMT
         From:  
gtin...@is.dal.ca
 Organization:  ISINet, Nova Scotia
   Newsgroups:  rec.music.classical.recordings
van...@my-deja.com
 wrote:
- some very kind comments, for which I thank you.
As some odd things have been written about my husband's state of health,
and his last few weeks, I would like to post here some comments I have
made elsewhere:
Georg Tintner had an aggressive form of melanoma (but not skin cancer)
which was incurable but had been controllable, for the last six years. As
the disease kills 90% within five years, he had done extraordinarily
well, a combination of good treatment combined with a fine immune system
and sheer will-power.
This year the pain had increased significantly. He underwent an
experimental procedure in summer which left him in considerable pain and
despite his belief that he could withstand any amount of pain he was
obliged to start taking pain relief, much to his disappointment.
Unfortunately he found that the medications caused debilitating side
effects while providing little relief, though he tried all the
available drugs.
Quite recently he had a second operation to remove some residual tumour
and for a skin graft - he was rehearsing four days later. However, the
cancer had not metastasised beyond the local area and was not (as far a
is known) in any vital organ. Apart from the cancer, he was in remarkably
good health, and was far from being in imminent danger of dying.
Much has been written about how he decided to kill himself once he
realised he couldn't read his scores. This is also not correct. I might
note that he did an excellent concert five days before he died. He had
evidently been contemplating ending it all for some time. He had always
said that he did not want to live at any price, but while he had something
to give he wanted to do so. Nevertheless, he found the continuous trips in
and out of hospital and the clinic visits and the treatments and the tests
and all the rest of it just did not represent how he wanted to live his
life - it was not life as he understood it. He knew that all of it was
just delaying the inevitable. No criticism is implied here of the doctors
and nurses treating him, who did their very best.
He decided about two weeks before he died that this is what he wanted to
do. Some of you may have seen relative will themselves to die (or perhaps
stay alive); I think this is what he did. The day after he told me he
wanted to die, he began to lose words, confusing one word with another,
and being unable to finish sentences. He became disoriented, and found he
could not read or concentrate or study his scores. I am trying to make it
clear here that this happened as a CONSEQUENCE of the decision to die, and
was not a precipitating factor in his decision as everyone assumes. The 
morphine was contributory to the disorientation, but probably not a cause.
The weight loss was also a consequence, because there was no obvious
reason why he should be losing weight; he was eating well enough that it
should 
not have been happening, and as noted already there was no vital-organ 
metastastis.
His decision to jump, however, I am sure was entirely rational, and
not the result either of disorientation or morphine.
Statements that have been made claiming that he killed himself because he
had cancelled two concerts are incorrect and simple-minded. But in the
larger picture it is true that the prospect of his not being able to give
any more, to make music any more, made living with the pain and suffering
no longer worth it. He did not want to just "crumble away", a
burden to himself and others.
He died as he lived, a man of principle.
Tanya Tintner

la vedova del grande direttore.  Indubbiamente alcuni di
Grazie.
-- 
Questo e'cio'che la musica e'per me: una delle maniere di dire che
l'universo in cui viviamo, che ci e'stato dato, e'grande e bello.
(John Coltrane)
Ciao,Alessandro.
ICQ: 38945186
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