Sick notes

“To flee from Bolshevism only to die from the Spanish flu in New York! What a morbid joke!’’

It was October 1918 and Stravinsky was lying under a heap of blankets, his teeth chattering and beret pulled down over his face. As his wife Katya staggered about their house dispensing medications to the composer and his two sick children, he bemoaned the cancellation of his concert tour. In New York City, Rachmaninov had barely unpacked his luggage from a transatlantic voyage when he and his daughters became sick. With debts to pay, the Russian composer left his sickbed against doctors’ orders in order to prepare for a 36-city recital tour and to finish an arrangement of . Bartók, meanwhile, was bedridden for 23 days in the Hungarian countryside, battling fever and a worrisome ear infection. Unable