The "Skull" porton of a BBC Radio 3 Broadcast, "A Study in Contrast" from July 10, 1992, narrated by pianist David Owen Norris, with Terry Harrision and Peter Frankl (courtesy of the BBC): contrast_skull.mp3

Derek Jacobi as Hamlet (1979)

Roger Rees as Hamlet (1984)

Mark Rylance as Hamlet (1989) with an exact replica of André's skull

Skull letter from Funeral Directors

Death Certificate

Roger Rees Hamlet Poster with André's skull

Portion of the Will

13. I HEREBY REQUEST that my body or any part thereof may be used for therapeutic purposes including corneal grafting and organ transplantation or for the purposes of medical education or research in accordance with the provisions of the Human Tissue Act 1961 and in due course the institution receiving it shall have my body cremated with the exception of my skull, which shall be offered by the institution receiving my body to the Royal Shakespeare Company for use in theatrical performance.

The bequest of André's skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company was a surprise, but Terry and Eve were determined that André's last wishes be honored. Terry telephoned playwright Christopher Hampton ("Les Liaisons Dangereuses"). Hampton lived in Oxford and they had become friendly when André decided to undertake an opera based on Hampton's play, "Total Eclipse." Hampton called a friend at the RSC, joint artistic director Terry Hands. Terry Hands:

"I was informed of the bequest immediately after André's death and asked Christopher Hampton how seriously felt was the request. It did seem serious. André was passionate about Shakespeare and had attended many performances at the RSC. We were honoured and we accepted. It was agreed that when next we played Hamlet, it would be used."

The funeral directors at Reeves and Pain who were handling the cremation refused to remove André's head, and further, they believed such a bequest was illegal. Terry contacted his legal advisors who in turn contacted the British Home Office. The Home Office decided the bequest was not illegal and the RSC could accept the gift. Reeves and Pain asked that the head be removed by a medical staff member at the hospital before they picked up the body. This was done. At virtually the last minute, Reeves and Pain was able to obtain André's remains from the hospital, sans cranium, in time to prepare his ashes for the memorial service on July 2. The head was turned over to a museum for processing.

The memorial service for André Tchaikowsky was announced in a letter from Terry Harrison:

André Tchaikowsky will be cremated at the Oxford Crematorium, Bayswater Road, Oxford, at 11 a.m. on Friday, July 2. We are following André's wish that the service not be religious. The cremation will be conducted by Chad Varah, the founder of The Samaritans and a very close friend of André's. At the beginning of the ceremony we shall have a performance of André's Trio Notturno which will receive its world premiere at the Cheltenham Festival on the evening of July 4. It was recorded for André by the trio he wrote it for Peter Frankl, Gy6rgy Pauk, and Ralph Kirshbaum -- three days before he died, and it was the last piece of music he heard. At the end of the ceremony we shall playa recording of the adagio from Schubert's Quintet in C major for Strings, Opus 163, which André particularly loved.

The genesis of the skull bequest comes from a conversation between André and his manager, Terry Harrison. André suggested to Terry that he would leave his skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company so that they might have a real skull for Hamlet productions. As Pascale Aebischer relates in his book, Shakespeare's Violated Bodies, André's skull could not be used in Hamlet because the actors always saw André instead of Yorick:

The extend of the skull’s capacity for extrafictional reference and its concomitant potential to substantially influence the interpretation of the scene first became apparent to me when I began my research on Ron Daniels’s second RCS production [in 1989]. In the middle of a stack of archival material about the production, I found a memorandum, dated 9 May 1989, that read: “If André Tchaikovsky isn’t actually playing Yorick this year, please can we have his skull back in the Collection for future reference, or whatever you do with skulls of dead pianists.” The story I managed to piece together from this point of departure is the following.

In 1980, André Tchaikovsky, an Oxford-based classical musician, saw Michael Pennington’s performance of the role of Hamlet in Stratford-upon-Avon. He was so taken by the macabre dialogue in the graveyard scene that on his way home to told his companion [Terry Harrison] of his intention to bequeath his skull to the RSC so that he - or at least a part of him - might appear as Yorick in a future production of Hamlet. A few years later, the property department manager for the RSC, William Lockwood, received a call from an undertaker [M. J. Duckworth for Reeves & Pain, Funeral Directors, Oxford] who asked whether the RSC might be interested in the cranium of a deceased client. Horrified, Mr. Lockwood passed the question on to Terry Hands (at the time the RSCs artistic director), who promptly accepted the bequest. A mere ten days later, to Lockwood’s discomfiture and evident delight of the department’s dog, Mr. Lockwood received a cardboard parcel containing the freshly processed golden-toothed skull of André Tchaikovsky. After extensive airing [two years on the roof of an RSC building], if found a provisional resting place on a shelf in the property department.

He briefly left the shelf for a photo-session with Roger Rees for the poster of Daniels’s 1984 production, but was immediately sent back to rest, a fibreglass cast of his cranium taking his place in the theatre. André Tchaikovsky’s first genuine chance to star as Yorick came only in 1989, when Mark Rylance started to rehearse the title role of Hamlet in Daniels’s production. A rehearsal note dated 13 February 1989 records: “Mark Rylance has asked whether it would be possible to use the real skull that was donated to the RSC as Yorick’s skull?” The property department complied, and Tchaikovsky appears to have spent one month in the rehearsal room preparing the role of Yorick.

On 23 March 1989, however, the first indication of trouble is casually mentioned in a rehearsal note: “we will be using the real skull for Yorick but will need a standby in case of accident.” What accident? Although Tchaikovsky must have been aware that playing Yorick would entail being “knocked about the mazard with a sexton’s spade” (5.1.85-6), Rylance’s desire to grant Tchaikovsky’s wish seems thus to have been paradoxically checked by a simultaneous desire to honour the dead. Eventually, squeamishness about the rough handling of real human remains seems to have triumphed. Claire van Kampen, the production’s musical director and later Mark Rylance’s wife, remembers that:

“As a company, we all felt most privileged to be able to work the gravedigger scene with a real skull... However, collectively as a group we agreed that as the real power of theatre lies in the complicity of illusion between actor and audience, it would be inappropriate to use a real skull during the performances, in the same way that we would not be using real blood, etc. It is possible that some of us felt a certain primitive taboo about the skull, although the gravedigger, as I recall, was all for it!”

On 7 April 1989, a last rehearsal note records how Tchaikovsky was finally defeated in his quest for on-stage remembrance, although touchingly, the understudy to replace him was to be an exact look-alike: “We are no longer using the real skull as Yorick but would like to use a cast of it (complete with teeth).”

In spite of his early retirement to the shelf in the property department, Tchaikovsky’s presence in the rehearsal room left a deep mark on the production’s interpretation of the tragedy’s concluding moments. The graveyard scene opened with the gravedigger (played by Jimmy Gardner, the actor implicitly accused by van Dampen of having an inappropriate attitude towards Tchaikovsky’s remains) using the skull as a pawn with which to illustrate the legal intricacies of Ophelia’s inquest, Rylance’s accusatory tone when his Hamlet commented that, “That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once” (5.1.74), while ostensibly referring to the (at that point anonymous) fictional owner of the skull within the world of the play, was charged with an additional, reproachful meaning in its reference to the two actors’ disagreement over the proper treatment of Tchaikovsky’s head.

When quizzing the gravedigger about the decomposition of bodies, Hamlet jumped into the grave to get a closer look at it all. It was thus in the grave that was shortly to be Ophelia’s that he was handed Yorick’s skull atop the Gravedigger’s spade, when as eleven years later in Lester’s hands, it became a puppet that was mused over by a wistful Hamlet who strained to hear Yorick’s silent answers to his question, making the skull come back to life as his chopfallen interlocutor. The aimless existential despair of Rylance’s Hamlet was here converted into focused, intense mourning and tenderness for the skull. Yorick seemed to have taken over the roles of the Ghost and Polonius as the old mole/perturbed spirit/foolish prating knave in the grave hovering on the brink between life and death, remembrance and oblivion.

Hamlet’s composure in his confrontation with Laertes in the graveyard seemed to spring out of this encounter with death and memory in the shape of Yorick, whom he lovingly carried into the next scene, his cradling of the cranium mirroring Laertes’s mournful rocking of Ophelia’s body in the grave. Yorick was casually tucked under Hamlet’s arm during his dialogue with Osric, deposited on the floor for Hamlet’s handshake with Laertes and finally carefully set down on a mantelpiece, where Hamlet “turn[ed] it so that its eyeless sockets faced the action, as a talisman during his duel with Laertes.” How closely this performance choice was linked to Tchaikovsky’s presence in the rehearsal room is clear from van Kampen’s comment that “Probably it was this very realness [of the skull] that fired Mark [Rylance]’s imagination to believe that the power of Hamlet’s father’s old jester was so great that, as a kind of talisman, or fetish, Hamlet takes him through Act V to his, Hamlet’s own death.”

The skull of Tchaikovsky and/or Yorick thus had the effect of doubling Hamlet’s quest for revenge and confrontation with death with Mark Rylance’s desire to honour the last will of Tchaikovsky, who became the company’s own uncomfortable memento mori and its Ghost clamouring for posthumous remembrance. Because the property disturbingly kept its extrafictional and extratheatrical identity as the property (in the sense of ownership) of André Tchaikovsky the pianist, it resisted the company’s attempted to appropriate it as an accessory. Instead, it became an “improper property” that defied theatrical decorum.

In a company such as the RSC that generally uses non-Grotowskian techniques, decorum dictates that theatrical signs which pertain to the human body (by they objects such as bones or blood or physical expression such as pain or orgasm) should stay at a distance from their referent, a distance which, as Claire van Kampen put it, is bridged by “the complicity of illusion between actor and audience.” Only when the real skull, with its real identity as André Tchaikovsky’s head, was replaced by an identical-looking fake was the company able to adopt the property as an iconic sign that could stand primarily for Yorick rather than Tchaikovsky.

Aebischer's guess that it was the 1980 RSC Hamlet production that stirred André skull bequest could not be correct because the Will was signed in October, 1979. A better guess would be the 1979 production at the Old Vic Theatre in London, with Derek Jacobi as Hamlet.

Typical of the obituary notices is one by Alan Blyth of The Daily Telegraph, which appeared on June 30. (All of the obituary notices contained errors, the most common of which were that both of his parents were killed during the war and that he was smuggled out of Poland to Paris.)

André Tchaikowsky, pianist and composer, died on the weekend in Oxford. He was 46, and although ill since the beginning of the year, he recovered sufficiently to resume playing in May. He also managed to complete an opera based on "The Merchant of Venice."

He was born in Warsaw on November 1, 1935. Both his parents were killed under the Nazi occupation, but he was smuggled out to Paris. After the War he studied there and also in his homeland before winning the coveted Chopin Prize in the Polish capital in 1955, completing his studies with the Polish pianist, Stefan Askenase. His British debut was in 1958. He decided to make his home in Britain while continuing to build an international career as a pianist with a wide-ranging repertory. His particular loves were Bach and Mozart.

Over the past 20 years, he devoted about half his time to composing. His list of works included the Piano Concerto written for Radu Lupu and given its first performance by him 10 years ago. Apart from his opera, Tchaikowsky had also completed a Trio Notturno for piano trio. It will be given its premiere at the Cheltenham Festival on Monday.

His playing tended to be ebullient and full of an instinctive feeling for the style of the composer. He was an inveterate follower of his fellow pianists and until his last illness could be seen at practically every recital of note in London.

In Germany, a Frankfurt newspaper reported:

Composer and Pianist -- The Death of André Tchaikowsky

The well-known and highly regarded pianist André Tchaikowsky died from cancer on June 26 at the age of 46, near his home in Oxford. He was one of the most talented pianists of his generation, and a Mozart player of the first rank, with individual and subjective interpretations in comparison to the "classic" interpretations. Tchaikowsky gave to his performances a rare feeling of color and contour. His Chopin playing was witty, often with strong rubato and changes in tempi -- sometimes a bit over the top -- but always revealing the structure of the composition. To summarize, André Tchaikowsky thought musically first, and pianistically second.

In Poland, André's passing was memorialized with a series of seven radio programs of two hours each. he programs, organized by Jan Weber of Polish Radio, included André as pianist, and André as composer, interspersed with interviews of his friends, in particular, with Halina Wahlmann-Janowska, who read portions of the letters she had received over the many years of their correspondence. Although André never returned to Poland after 1956, he remained well-known there, and interest in both his piano playing and composing has remained high.

The museum entrusted with André's skull returned it, processed, to Reeves and Pain on July 18. Reeves and Pain then reported to Terry Harrison on July 22, "André's skull was delivered to the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-on-Avon on Tuesday, 20th July." Up to this point, the bequest had remained private. Mr. Duckworth, funeral director at Reeves and Pain, was interested in publishing the story of André's skull in a funeral directors' professional magazine and asked Terry Harrison for his opinion. Terry responded on August 4:

Eve and I have no objections to your reporting the bequest of André's skull in your professional magazine. However, could you let me know whether you would particularly want to use his name, or were you thinking the deceased would be nameless? My present thought is that we would not mind his name being used, but I would just like to think about that point a little more.

Terry wasn't permitted the luxury of further thinking. Someone informed the press about the strange bequest and the story hit, first, the London papers, then the international news services, in particular the Associated Press. The news of André's skull quickly spread worldwide, from the US to Australia and beyond. Mr. Duckworth wrote an immediate letter to Terry Harrison assuring him that Reeves and Pain was not responsible for the news leak. Terry responded on August 24:

I was away for two weeks so missed the news escaping about André's skull. My secretary Claire heard the broadcast of this news item on Independent Radio and she told me she didn't think it was offensive. I would have preferred that the news had not come out, but quite honestly I don't think it is particularly bad that people know, as André was rather an extraordinary person and it would have touched his sense of whimsy to know that he caused some consternation. So don't worry about the matter. I presume it must have been leaked by somebody connected with the hospital.

A sampling of the newspaper articles suggests the stir caused by André’s final eccentricity. From The Times in London on August 14:

Pianist’s Skull Waits in Wings

Mr. André Tchaikowsky , the Polish-born concert pianist, asked in his will that his skull be given to the Royal Shakespeare Company for use in future productions of Hamlet. Mr. Michael Duckworth, a partner in Reeves and Pain, an Oxford firm of undertakers, said Mr. Tchaikowsky, who died at his home near Oxford in June, apparently had a lifelong ambition to be an actor. The RSC said the skull had been delivered and would be stored. The company does not have plans to stage "Hamlet" in the immediate future.

From The Daily Telegraph in London on August 14 by Anthony Hopkins:

Hamlet Gets a Skull in Bequest

"This same skull, sir, was Yorick's skull, the King's jester." "Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest." -- Hamlet

A man who nursed a lifelong ambition to go on the stage has bequeathed his skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company for use in productions of "Hamlet." Mr. André Tchaikowsky, a concert pianist and composer, died at his home at Cumnor, near Oxford, in June, aged 46. Now his skull has been delivered in a box to the RSC. A spokesman for Mr. Terry Hands, the RSC's joint artistic director, said that Mr. Tchaikowsky had been an avid Shakespeare enthusiast with a love of the stage. "We were staggered when the executors of the Will asked if we wanted the skull."

Mr. Michael Duckworth, a partner in the undertaking firm of Reeves and Pain, said: "Mr. Tchaikowsky's friends and executors desperately wanted to fulfill his wishes and we are here to do what we can for our clients."

The RSC has no immediate plans for a production of "Hamlet." "But when we stage it again we hope to use Mr. Tchaikowsky's skull," said a spokesman. Meanwhile, the skull, still in its box, is in store at the RSC's headquarters in Stratford-on-Avon.

In 1984, the Royal Shakespeare Company did produce "Hamlet." Actor Roger Rees (Hamlet) remembers the situation:

''I'm afraid André's skull was not used directly on stage for the actual production of 'Hamlet.' We found long ago that a real head is too fragile to be used in the rather rough-handling gravedigger scene, so we use plastic skulls which hold up better. However, the RSC was delighted to have a real skull for their various needs. When they first got the skull, they put it outdoors for a few months, in the sunlight, to dry it out completely and to bleach it bone white.

"The skull was used as part of the 'Hamlet' poster for the 1984 production in Stratford and the 1985 production in London. I had to pose for this poster, two hours a day, for three days running. In my hands, I hold a skull, and that's André's skull. The artist was Phillip Core and he remarked that it must be a real skull because it still had bits of gristle around the ear ports, and various places. So indirectly, André's skull was used for Hamlet."

André, of course, had never wanted to be an actor on the stage. He was, instead, a great enthusiast of theater and loved the works of Shakespeare. But what was the real reason for the bequest? When his friends heard about the skull, no one seemed surprised. "Typical André," was the comment most often heard. Michael Menaugh remembers:

"Unfortunately, the fact of the skull will not go away for any of us. It is something that ultimately we have all to come to terms with, to reconcile with the André we knew and loved. I don't think André realized the effect such a bequest would have, both on his friends and on his own reputation. André didn't always understand that the world of ideas and the world of real people, real reactions and real events just did not coincide.

"He had spoken to me of leaving his skull for the RSC to use in Hamlet back in 1966 when he wrote the music for my Oxford Hamlet. In my undergraduate way, I thought the idea wonderfully entertaining. When a great actor may hold the skull of a real man, a real man who 'set the table on a roar,' a wonderful man who had his 'gibes and gambols and songs,' when that great actor says, 'A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy,' might not that electrifying flash of truth (transmitted by the actor) light up the play? André would have liked that idea, I think.