# What are the elements of a good musical biography?



## Guest (Dec 20, 2021)

And can you identify one or more you've read when answering the question?

I'll start by saying readability; not having the book bogged down by pages of musical examples which require analysis. You get to know the composer as a human being, with all the joys and sorrows attendant with that; a good account of their musical journey which is coherent and relates to his/her musical development. 

For me, my quintessential biography is the Jan Swafford work about Brahms. Then the same author's work about Beethoven. Very much reflected the humanity of the composers and allowed an insight into their place in the musical firmament and that of their milieu. We got to know them both!!


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

I actually haven't read that many biographies but of those I have, one stands out, 'Malcom Arnold: Rogue Genius' by Anthony Meredith and Paul Harris.
It's hard to know where to start about Arnold's schizophrenic, chaotic yet brilliantly gifted and succesful musical life. The authors simply tell it as it was, the outrageous moments, the sad and funny moments and the shocks too. I couldn't put the book down and was moved from tears to howling laughter, seemingly page by page.
What makes a good biography? Well apart from the subject matter, I'd say authoritative, in-depth and accurate re-telling of events (ideally from witnesses too), with no glossing over the unpalatable bits, even if it does involve a composer standing on a piano in a restaurant and pulling his pants down. I also don't think music notation excerpts are essential.


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## Guest (Dec 20, 2021)

mikeh375 said:


> I actually haven't read that many biographies but of those I have, one stands out, 'Malcom Arnold: Rogue Genius' by Anthony Meredith and Paul Harris.
> It's hard to know where to start about Arnold's schizophrenic, chaotic yet brilliantly gifted and succesful musical life. The authors simply tell it as it was, the outrageous moments, the sad and funny moments and the shocks too. I couldn't put the book down and was moved from tears to howling laughter, seemingly page by page.
> What makes a good biography? Well apart from the subject matter, I'd say authoritative, in-depth and accurate re-telling of events (ideally from witnesses too), with no glossing over the unpalatable bits, even if it does involve a composer standing on a piano in a restaurant and pulling his pants down. I also don't think music notation excerpts are essential.


Great comments. I wonder if what you learned about Malcolm Arnold told you anything about the particular music he wrote? Was there a link between that and the chaotic musical life you discovered in the biography? Perhaps his music was the opposite of his personality, as was the case with Mozart - who composed with classical restraint in his non-operatic works - and whose personality could easily have been characterised by autism or ADHD, if you go by the letters!! (I long ago formed the view, having read the letters ed. Anderson in the late 80s) that Mozart behaved like a child because his father had removed from him his adult agency up until the time he married Constanza.)


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

It has to have a balance of the life of the subject away from the musical world but also in it; in the case of a composer it should discuss the music, the struggles to get it performed, reception etc, but not get mired in analytic detail. I don't like the constant use of letters. I do expect the book to be in somewhat chronological order. I want to get to know the human qualities both good and bad. There are bios that are so loving, almost brown-nosing that they are worthless and embarrassing to read. And I want a lot of pictures, where possible. 

Examples:

Bruno Walter, A World Elsewhere bu Erik Ryding and Rebecca Pechefsky. Excellent bio. You get to know the conductor from his early years, his acquaintances (Mahler), his successes and failures as a conductor and composer, his sometimes nasty attitude towards others in his profession, and you learn a lot about the music biz as it goes along. Just the right length at under 500 pages.

Tchaikovsky. by Anthony Holden. You won't learn much about the music, its creation or reception. A lot of the music is mentioned in passing. What you will learn a lot about is the homosexual underground in Russia, his many sexual exploits, his hypocrisy and near state of penury and his predilection for young (14-15) boys. There's hardly a single page where his sexuality isn't brought up as if that is the single most important aspect of the composer. You'll never listen to Nutcracker or Romeo & Juliet the same way again. There are many better bios of the composer and yet this one does one thing the others avoided: he doesn't hold back one bit in why Tchaikovsky died. But as a reference on the musical side of the composer, forget it.


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## Guest (Dec 20, 2021)

I know exactly what you mean!! Tchaikovsky travelled extensively; to hear tell it from your description of Holden's book you'd never know it. But this experience must have had an impact upon the soul and music of Tchaikovsky. He would surely have met Dvorak, just to name one? There is Tchaikovsky in Dvorak and vice versa. 

Letters can be useful in a biography but there still needs to be Mike375's 'authoritative, in-depth and accurate re-telling of events'. What always interests me, and which I found in Swafford, was the composer's musical exposure to other composers/musicians and how this shaped his (mostly his, of course) creativity. This was more the case in Brahms than it was with Beethoven.

And I do like musical examples lucidly explained and linked to a coherent argument, since I can play these snippets on the piano to get the gist of the argument. But not too much music!!


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## Michael122 (Sep 16, 2021)

Christabel said:


> For me, my quintessential biography is the Jan Swafford work about Brahms. Then the same author's work about Beethoven.


Swafford's bios grew to be overwritten. His Ives and Brahms bios were great.
With Beethoven he starts going into too much detail on irrelevant or only slightly important material. 
After finishing his Beethoven effort, realized purchasing his next bio would not be the best way to spend my money. With Mozart, he went way overboard.
He goes on and on for pages and pages on history of this person or that place that has little or nothing to do with the subject.
He does the same for quite a few of Mozart's compositions; just on and on about counterpoint, structure, rondo, keys, time signature, ETC.
He probably can't help himself, given his well steeped and highly credentialed background.
Then he does it again for a few of the opera performances, particularly Figaro & Giovanni, just rambles about them to the point of ad nauseam describing the plots on a scene by scene basis, characteristics of the actors/singers, etc., again, all or little of which is material to why you probably wanted to read this.
Jan does this type of dismissive narrative for a double-digit percentage of the book. It's a shame, really, because it detracts from what would otherwise, quite possibly, be the best biography on Mozart and simply a darn good read.
Read my copy from the library and darn glad I did not pay money for the Mozart Bio. The folly of writers being paid by the word; don't know that for a fact, here, but definitely suspect it.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

You know what's really sad when I think about it? The last composers who are important enough, well-known, and likely to have biographies written are already gone. Same with conductors. Heck, there still isn't a bio of Ormandy even after all his fame and accomplishments. There's no bio of Leroy Anderson one of the most successful and popular composers of the 20th c. Is there a composer out there that someone will write a bio for in 100 years? Probably John Williams, but who else?


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## Guest (Dec 21, 2021)

Michael122 said:


> Swafford's bios grew to be overwritten. His Ives and Brahms bios were great.
> With Beethoven he starts going into too much detail on irrelevant or only slightly important material.
> After finishing his Beethoven effort, realized purchasing his next bio would not be the best way to spend my money. With Mozart, he went way overboard.
> He goes on and on for pages and pages on history of this person or that place that has little or nothing to do with the subject.
> ...


Very useful information to know. I wonder if focus on the musical material with analyses etc. is a subterfuge for lack of on-the-ground research about the composer??


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## Guest (Dec 21, 2021)

mbhaub said:


> You know what's really sad when I think about it? The last composers who are important enough, well-known, and likely to have biographies written are already gone. Same with conductors. Heck, there still isn't a bio of Ormandy even after all his fame and accomplishments. There's no bio of Leroy Anderson one of the most successful and popular composers of the 20th c. Is there a composer out there that someone will write a bio for in 100 years? Probably John Williams, but who else?


I'd like to see a biography of the conductor Klaus Tennstedt who had such an individual personality and interesting life. He defected from the old East Germany and was plagued by insecurities much of his lifetime. He drew the great admiration of audiences and especially in London where he regular conducted the London Philharmonic. These musicians were very fond of Tennstedt and he was one of the very few conductors admired by Carlos Kleiber (speak of which, where's his biography in English?). Tennstedt was in the fire service in Dresden and after the fire-bombing of that city he had to pull charred corpses out of the rubble at the tender age of 19!! It seemed to make him jittery his whole life.


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## ObsoleteUtopia (Nov 8, 2020)

I enjoyed an older (1978) biography of Mahler by Egon Gartenburg, an author I never heard of before or since. I got a sense of Mahler as a person, and it felt realistic because nobody in the narrative was either a saint or a monster. There was very little musical analysis, but I did get a strange sense of how his sprawling symphonies obliquely reflected his driven, ambitious, and very self-critical (mixed with a healthy ego) personality.

Swafford's bio of Ives was very interesting, partly because I'm an old Yankee myself and even though Connecticut has changed drastically since he was growing up there, traces of that culture remain and can be recognized in his music. Ives himself was tough to get to know, but that's kind of a Yankee thing too.



mbhaub said:


> Is there a composer out there that someone will write a bio for in 100 years? Probably John Williams, but who else?


Maybe Philip Glass, maybe somebody like Meredith Monk who's a sort of cultural icon in some circles. John Cage, if there isn't one already. Who else can you think of who is (a) musically significant, (b) influential in some way, and/or (c) interesting enough, having a wide enough circle of friends, acquaintances, and bitter enemies, and/or with a long and indiscreet diary, to leave a trail that a competent biographer can make come alive? (God, that's a terrible sentence, but a reasonable question might lurk somewhere.)


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## Michael122 (Sep 16, 2021)

Christabel said:


> Very useful information to know. I wonder if focus on the musical material with analyses etc. is a subterfuge for lack of on-the-ground research about the composer??


Seriously doubt it. In fact probably more toward the opposite is true.
The understanding is that Mr. Swafford is very hands on with all his bios in that he travels to the places, researches local & national archives of the instant areas, interviews descendants, as well as familiarizing himself with past biographies.
As mentioned in my previous post, his last 2 bios would have been a much better book and more of an outstanding read if most, if not all, of the dismissive narrative had been removed.


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## Guest (Dec 21, 2021)

Michael122 said:


> Seriously doubt it. In fact probably more toward the opposite is true.
> The understanding is that Mr. Swafford is very hands on with all his bios in that he travels to the places, researches local & national archives of the instant areas, interviews descendants, as well as familiarizing himself with past biographies.
> As mentioned in my previous post, his last 2 bios would have been a much better book and more of an outstanding read if most, if not all, of the dismissive narrative had been removed.


OK, but generally it would be easier to analyse music than be an in-depth researcher!!??


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

Christabel said:


> Great comments. I wonder if what you learned about Malcolm Arnold told you anything about the particular music he wrote? Was there a link between that and the chaotic musical life you discovered in the biography? Perhaps his music was the opposite of his personality, as was the case with Mozart - who composed with classical restraint in his non-operatic works - and whose personality could easily have been characterised by autism or ADHD, if you go by the letters!! (I long ago formed the view, having read the letters ed. Anderson in the late 80s) that Mozart behaved like a child because his father had removed from him his adult agency up until the time he married Constanza.)


Sorry Christabel, I missed this.
In Arnold's case, the mercurial personality is most definititely on the manuscript page. He, like Mahler, thought nothing of contrasting trite or distorted popular song elements with sometimes brutal dissonance and manic phrases. His work can be perplexing but after reading the biography, understanding became easier for me and enhanced my relationship to his work. 
So there's another element in answer to your OP - a biography that deepens understanding and appreciation of a composer's music.


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## Guest (Dec 22, 2021)

mikeh375 said:


> Sorry Christabel, I missed this.
> In Arnold's case, the mercurial personality is most definititely on the manuscript page. He, like Mahler, thought nothing of contrasting trite or distorted popular song elements with sometimes brutal dissonance and manic phrases. His work can be perplexing but after reading the biography, understanding became easier for me and enhanced my relationship to his work.
> So there's another element in answer to your OP - a biography that deepens understanding and appreciation of a composer's music.


Couldn't agree more with your last sentence. I know nothing of the concert music of Malcolm Arnold, except the fact that he wrote quite a lot of music for film which included two for my hero David Lean: "Bridge on the River Kwai" and "Hobson's Choice" (yes, that was a unique score!). I only watched "The Sound Barrier" three days ago, strangely enough, with Sir Ralph Richardson and Ann Todd (a former wife of David Lean) - not realizing until now it had a score by Malcolm Arnold. After I'd watched the film I asked the spouse, "why were they bothering with the sound barrier back then?" and he said, "it's like Mt. Everest; it's there"!!


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