# Which composers were normal?



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

This question came up on another thread. Which composers were “normal”? I take that to mean well-adjusted, mostly kind to people, without strange fixations or unpleasant habits, and without controversial and negative views that they cling to in an almost “crackpot” fashion. In other words, people you would enjoy as friends and would have no problem introducing to others.

Who were they, in your opinion?


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Felix Mendelssohn.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

What is normal?


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## Xenakiboy (May 8, 2016)

Pugg said:


> What is normal?


People who are able to hide their bad habits and controversial opinions from others


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

I guess I'd say JS Bach.


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## bioluminescentsquid (Jul 22, 2016)

MarkW said:


> I guess I'd say JS Bach.


... if having 20 children with 2 wives qualifies as normal.
Although, I think it was common practice in those dark ages before antibiotics and vaccines, and with high infant mortality.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

bioluminescentsquid said:


> ... if having 20 children with 2 wives qualifies as normal.
> Although, I think it was common practice in those dark ages before antibiotics and vaccines, and with high infant mortality.


This is what I mean, who decides what's normal?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

bioluminescentsquid said:


> ... if having 20 children with 2 wives qualifies as normal.
> Although, I think it was common practice in those dark ages before antibiotics and vaccines, and with high infant mortality.


They kept dying, so you kept trying - and often dying in the process.


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## bioluminescentsquid (Jul 22, 2016)

I've heard an extremely relevant (at least to this thread) quote that ran something like "A man who sees a gourd and takes it for his wife is called insane because this happens to very few people."



Woodduck said:


> They kept dying, so you kept trying - and often dying in the process.


Ah, yes, back in the days when we were still R-strategists.


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## Fat Bob (Sep 25, 2015)

Antonin Dvorak was a pretty decent sort of chap from all accounts.


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## Aeneas (Jul 30, 2016)

MarkW said:


> I guess I'd say JS Bach.


I totally agree. He said: "I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well. " 
That "whoever" is encouraging.
But I've always been thinking that he said that only to do not discourage human beings like us..


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Normalcy is an overrrated and sometimes dangerous notion.


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## Abraham Lincoln (Oct 3, 2015)

I always thought Bach's 20 children indicated a raging libido.


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## Ginger (Jul 14, 2016)

Probably_ being a composer_ already isn´t normal? But Pugg is right, first you have to define "normal". In many societies artist and composers weren´t or still aren´t considered as "normal" in a sense of "average person with average profession".


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

Meyerbeer , Rossini and Offenbach.


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## Guest (Aug 2, 2016)

Who wants normal? Give me the out-of-the-ordinary composers anyday.


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## Lenny (Jul 19, 2016)

Florestan said:


> Felix Mendelssohn.


Yes! But on the other hand, we do not necessarily know much about him. Sure, he most likely didn't any really visible crazy things like Gesualdo, who killed his wife and her lover, but who knows what else Mendelssohn was up to? He was in position to cover things up, unlike Mozart or Beethoven, who were poor people.

Let me clarify with more recent example. As much as people have tried to hide all the weird stuff C.G. Jung was doing, we now know he was totally nuts. I mean, when he was thinking himself as incarnation of Goethe, that's still in a range of okay for such a great man, but when he after some serious active imagination sessions started to think himself as a lion headed Mithraic God Aion, he kinda lost it (Richard Noll).


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## Guest (Aug 2, 2016)

Lenny said:


> Yes! But on the other hand, we do not necessarily know much about him.


Not quite as 'normal' as one might think?

_Although the image was cultivated, especially after his death in the detailed family memoirs by his nephew Sebastian Hensel,[SUP][58][/SUP] of a man always equable, happy and placid in temperament, this was misleading. The nickname "discontented Polish count" was given to Mendelssohn because of his aloofness, and he referred to the epithet in his letters.[SUP][59][/SUP] Mendelssohn was frequently given to alarming fits of temper which occasionally led to collapse. On one occasion in the 1830s, when his wishes had been crossed, "his excitement was increased so fearfully ... that when the family was assembled ... he began to talk incoherently, and in English, to the great terror of them all. The stern voice of his father at last checked the wild torrent of words; they took him to bed, and a profound sleep of twelve hours restored him to his normal state".[SUP][60]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Mendelssohn#Personality[/SUP]_


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## Lenny (Jul 19, 2016)

Ok, I'll take it back on Mendelssohn..... 

Maybe we need to define "composer"? Because it apprears almost as if the "level of greatness" is the key here.

Example: my fellow countryman Joonas Kokkonen. Extremely profilic and influential composer here, but I guess not so much elsewhere. To my knowledge, he was quite normal. Kinda grumpy chainsmoker, but besides that pretty much normal. No killings, no scandals. No mental institutions.

So maybe it takes some serious international success to blow up ego like those examples we've seen.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Well it certainly was not normal for a musically inclined kid to be given a chamber orchestra to play with as was done by Mendelssohn's wealthy parents.


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## Orfeo (Nov 14, 2013)

SiegendesLicht said:


> Normalcy is an overrrated and sometimes dangerous notion.


Point very well taken, as history has taught us. It was normal to follow Hitler and his party during the 1930s, even though the end results could not be anymore disastrous and tragic. It was normal to follow Leninism and Stalinism, even though the end result was the deaths of over 18 million people. The McCarthy era in the 1950s was supported by the majority, even if plenty of lives and livelihoods were adversely affected, the lives the victims knew them destroyed, gone. Heck, even Jim Crow and institutional racism were normal, until a group of leaders and their followers said, "hell no, our society was much better than that." In fact, it was even normal for certain proms in the state of Georgia (in particular) to remain segregated, until a group of far-seeing, far-reaching students saw how ridiculous that was in 21st Century Americana and decided to do something about it (only a few years ago if I recall correctly).

You get the drift, I'm sure. The greater the emphasis for the sake of normalcy, the greater the risk for mediocrity or worse.


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## Alydon (May 16, 2012)

To be a composer, especially one who writes 'serious music' defies to notion of normality, but Hubert Parry and Edward Elgar have always struck me as being decent straight-laced types.


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## Barois (Aug 2, 2016)

Normal? For me a normal person is like me, so than it must be Beethoven... Silent and always seemed angry...


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## Hildadam Bingor (May 7, 2016)

Abraham Lincoln said:


> I always thought Bach's 20 children indicated a raging libido.


If 20 confirmed orgasms (that's assuming Maria Barbara and Anna Magdalena weren't bringing in outside help) in a lifetime indicates a raging libido, I'm in trouble.


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## Hildadam Bingor (May 7, 2016)

MacLeod said:


> ... he began to talk incoherently, and in English, to the great terror of them all.


Oh come on, it's not SUCH an ugly language.


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## Abraham Lincoln (Oct 3, 2015)

Hildadam Bingor said:


> If 20 confirmed orgasms (that's assuming Maria Barbara and Anna Magdalena weren't bringing in outside help) in a lifetime indicates a raging libido, I'm in trouble.


Most people at that time only had about half as many children.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Normal is boring. My friends aren't normal. 

But perhaps Joseph Haydn fits the bill.


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

Alydon;11009 21 said:


> To be a composer, especially one who writes 'serious music' defies to notion of normality, but Hubert Parry and Edward Elgar have always struck me as being decent straight-laced types.


No, not Elgar. Superficially normal, but underneath the buttoned-up tweed he was a bundle of neuroses and odd habits. Terribly insecure and overly fond of young women to whom he was not married.


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## Five and Dime (Jul 8, 2016)

Jean Cras - composer, naval officer, family man. No complexes.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Robert Schumann. Perfectly normal except for the jumping in the river and going insane parts.

Another: Hans Rott. Normal most of the time except for pulling a gun and claiming that Brahms was trying to blow up his train with dynamite. He also died in an insane asylum. They were so strict in those days!


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Forget composers. Are any of us normal?


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

KenOC said:


> Robert Schumann. Perfectly normal except for the jumping in the river and going insane parts.
> 
> Another: Hans Rott. Normal most of the time except for pulling a gun and claiming that Brahms was trying to blow up his train with dynamite. He also died in an insane asylum. They were so strict in those days!


Smetana ended his life in an asylum. Deaf too.


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## Johnnie Burgess (Aug 30, 2015)

GreenMamba said:


> Smetana ended his life in an asylum. Deaf too.


Hans Rott was in an asylum and died from tuberculosis only 25. He had roomed with Gustav Mahler.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Rott died from TB but was confined for insanity. "Rott was committed to a mental hospital in 1881, where despite a brief recovery, he sank into depression. By the end of 1883 a diagnosis recorded 'hallucinatory insanity, persecution mania—recovery no longer to be expected.' He died of tuberculosis in 1884, aged only 25."


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## OldFashionedGirl (Jul 21, 2013)

I suppose all composers were normal up to a certain point.


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## Johnnie Burgess (Aug 30, 2015)

KenOC said:


> Rott died from TB but was confined for insanity. "Rott was committed to a mental hospital in 1881, where despite a brief recovery, he sank into depression. By the end of 1883 a diagnosis recorded 'hallucinatory insanity, persecution mania-recovery no longer to be expected.' He died of tuberculosis in 1884, aged only 25."


Confined after he attacked someone telling them that Brahms had filled the train with dynamite.


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## Lenny (Jul 19, 2016)

OldFashionedGirl said:


> I suppose all composers were normal up to a certain point.


Agreed. Before they did any serious work, maybe before 5th birthday? 

Which leads me to the next thought. Because it seems like the obsession and hard labour plays at least some part in this equation, how come quite many very competitive professional musicians appear very normal, almost like businessmen or sportsmen? So what's the real difference in playing an instrument seriously and in composing?


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## Xenakiboy (May 8, 2016)

OldFashionedGirl said:


> I suppose all composers were eggs up to a certain point.


But there is no normal, it doesn't exist.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Xenakiboy said:


> But there is no normal, it doesn't exist.


I tried to define "normal" for our purposes in the OP. But maybe it's just like Norman Bates: "I wouldn't harm a fly." And he loved his mother!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Lenny said:


> Agreed. Before they did any serious work, maybe before 5th birthday?
> 
> Which leads me to the next thought. Because it seems like the obsession and hard labour plays at least some part in this equation, how come quite many very competitive professional musicians appear *very normal, almost like businessmen *or sportsmen? So *what's the real difference in playing an instrument seriously and in composing?*


Huge difference. Performers often know next to nothing about music. They just know where to put their finger on the string.

Normal, like businessmen...?


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Florestan said:


> Forget composers. Are any of us normal?


Ouch................:lol:


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## Xenakiboy (May 8, 2016)

Florestan said:


> Forget composers. Are any of us normal?


I'm going to take that as a serious comment for a second. The answer is the same for composers as it is for any other person.


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## Lenny (Jul 19, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> Huge difference. Performers often know next to nothing about music. They just know where to put their finger on the string.


I don't buy this. Maybe we need to start a thread on wacko performers


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Lenny said:


> I don't buy this. Maybe we need to start a thread on wacko performers


Make a new poll


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

I consider myself very normal.

If only the world were normal too...


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## Xenakiboy (May 8, 2016)

Pugg said:


> Make a new poll


You'd have to be wacko to practice for 42 hours a day!


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## Xenakiboy (May 8, 2016)

aleazk said:


> I consider myself very normal.
> 
> If only the world was normal too...


I was normal once....back before the world became boring and vanilla


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

I was normal too... then I decided not to vote for Trump.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

aleazk said:


> I was normal too... then I decided not to vote for Trump.


You actually had to _decide_ that???


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## Guest (Aug 3, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> You actually had to _decide_ that???


From this side of the Atlantic, there seem to be plenty of people who are going to vote for Trump. I don't claim to know much about US politics, but I can't believe all of them won't have actually had to decide to do so (the alternative presumably being to vote on the basis of an instinctive emotional reaction.)

On the idea of 'normal', I envisage a line from 0 to 100, the extremes at each end, 'normal' in the middle, and individuals not occupying a 'spot' position (as if behaviours can be averaged out), but spread across a range (say, 40-60 being 'normal').

That allows for us all, including composers, to reach extremes at times.

Whether Gesualdo's murder of his wife constitutes a momentary extreme act or his range was 1-20 (or 80-100) I'll let others decide.


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## Dr Johnson (Jun 26, 2015)

Arthur Sullivan? Vaughan Williams? Sibelius? William Alwyn? Myaskovsky? Khachaturian? Borodin?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Gesualdo's murder of his wife may have been a temporary aberration from his normalcy, but his feelings of guilt leading him to have a servant "beat him at stool" cast some doubt on his stability.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Alydon said:


> To be a composer, especially one who writes 'serious music' defies to notion of normality, but Hubert Parry and Edward Elgar have always struck me as being decent straight-laced types.


Yes I believe it was Elgar who postponed a recording session of his violin concerto because he wanted to go to the racrs!


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## Dr Johnson (Jun 26, 2015)

DavidA said:


> Yes I believe it was Elgar who postponed a recording session of his violin concerto because he wanted to go to the races!


Seems entirely reasonable.


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## Judith (Nov 11, 2015)

To be able to compose such beautiful music and be such a genius, there has to be some abnormality!! Some of them were child prodigies.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Dr Johnson said:


> Arthur Sullivan? Vaughan Williams? Sibelius? William Alwyn? Myaskovsky? Khachaturian? Borodin?


I like the question marks: that's normal, isn't it?


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Salieri.........................................for his perfectly normal jealousy.


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## Abraham Lincoln (Oct 3, 2015)

TxllxT said:


> Salieri.........................................for his perfectly normal jealousy.


Except...not.

Y'all stop accusing Salieri of being jealous, it upsets him.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Xenakiboy said:


> You'd have to be wacko to practice for 42 hours a day!


That's what you do, aren't you?


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## Hildadam Bingor (May 7, 2016)

Abraham Lincoln said:


> Most people at that time only had about half as many children.


J. S. Bach had exactly the average number of children for a man in his time: 0.

Maria Barbara likewise had about the average number for a women in her time: 7.

Anna Magdalena on the other hand was indeed an exceptional case with her 13. And yet only one of them became a composer we still sort of care about today.

Hey, there's a thought: The genes of J.S. and Maria Barbara produced C.P.E. Bach, and thus, in a sense, Haydn, while the genes of J.S. and Anna Magdalena produced J.C. Bach, and thus, in a sense, Mozart.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Florestan said:


> Forget composers. Are any of us normal?


No, but we do have to abide by an unspoken covenant that we will not go ape-####.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Normal: John Williams, Leonard Bernstein, Sing Along with Mitch, Herb Alpert, Lutoslawski, John Cage, David Diamond, Aaron Copland, Anton Webern, Burgmüller, Danny Elfman, Marius Constant, Lalo Schifrin, Jackie Gleason, Henry Mancini...


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## Xenakiboy (May 8, 2016)

Pugg said:


> That's what you do, aren't you?


No, I'm not a practising/performing musician. When I was in my early teens I used to practice guitar way too much though. 
Are you a wacko musician?


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Xenakiboy said:


> No, I'm not a practising/performing musician. When I was in my early teens I used to practice guitar way too much though.
> Are you a wacko musician?


Wacko no, ( very rude by the way) Musician yes .


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## Xenakiboy (May 8, 2016)

Pugg said:


> Wacko no, ( very rude by the way) Musician yes .


What's the difference between a wacko musician and a rude musician???


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

Hildadam Bingor said:


> J. S. Bach had exactly the average number of children for a man in his time: 0.
> 
> Maria Barbara likewise had about the average number for a women in her time: 7.
> 
> ...


And his other genes were Levi's, and produced Fromental Halévy.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

If composers were normal, they wouldn't have been composers.

They would have been doctors, lawyers, wall street traders....something that paid better....with less aggravation.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

hpowders said:


> *If composers were normal, they wouldn't have been composers.*
> 
> They would have been doctors, lawyers, wall street traders....something that paid better....with less aggravation.


Ya beat me to it. I was going to say,

What is normal? Isn't being a composer already outside of normal?


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Florestan said:


> Ya beat me to it. I was going to say,
> 
> What is normal? * Isn't being a composer already outside of normal?*


My short answer is "Yes". But thank the Lord these great composers had the genius ability to think outside the box and provide us with so much incomparable enjoyment.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Show me a composer deemed normal through a battery of psychological tests and I will show you a composer whose music is not worth listening to.

Geniuses aren't "normal". If they were, none of the rest of us would be.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Xenakiboy said:


> What's the difference between a wacko musician and a rude musician???


Just see this, you are gone, I miss you, still, good luck wherever you are .


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