# How were these composers like as a person?



## Guest (Mar 23, 2019)

Love their music, not too familiar with the man, personality-wise.

1. Schumann
2. Schubert
3. Chopin
4. Vivaldi
5. Mahler


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Schumann was also a critic and expert writer and married Clara whom Brahms loved all his life. Schumann was the most famous manic-depressive among name composers. He had great period of inspiration and production followed by lengthy periods of depression. He once attempted suicide by jumping out the window of a mental hospital onto a frozen lake.

Schubert was more of a good old Viennese boy that gathered with friends for musicmaking. His habit of having prostitutes led to his syphilis, the disease that with Mercury poisoning (they used Mercury to treat VD) helped destroy his health. His declining health led him to write music for Winterrise -- a song cycle about a man going slowly insane -- the was published age 31, the final year of his life.

Chopin was a delicate China doll genius, sickly most of his adult life, and had a feminine persona. The writer George Sand (a woman) pursued him relentlessly; it was like a man chasing a woman only the other way around. This is played out beautifully in the wonderful film "Impromptu" that also shows their relationships with Liszt and Delacroix, the French artist.

Just about nothing is known of Vivaldi's life except the "Red priest" wasn't a religious official, he spent many years at a school for castoff girls, and wrote many of his hundreds of compositions for these girls whom he taught to play. He also wrote for country or traveling musicians, the inspiration for his famous "Alla Rustica" concerto.

Far more is known of Mahler, a contradictory person of Jewish birth who had a compulsion with the concept of Christianity and wrote a symphony about Christian resurrection. He was a tortured soul in many ways; his music was often ridiculed in his time and, as a famous conductor in both Vienna and New York, it had to be difficult to endure the rejection. When his daughter died he wrote music to Kindertotenlieder, songs on the death of children, against the wishes of his wife who said it would kill him. When his own heart ailment took over his thoughts he wrote the Symphony No. 9, his swansong in the symphonic venue with its lengthy, introverted threnodies front and end interrupted by comic sections. I think of this as typical of his contradictory nature.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

larold said:


> Schumann was also a critic and expert writer and married Clara whom Brahms loved all his life. Schumann was the most famous manic-depressive among name composers. He had great period of inspiration and production followed by lengthy periods of depression. He once attempted suicide by jumping out the window of a mental hospital onto a frozen lake.
> 
> Schubert was more of a good old Viennese boy that gathered with friends for musicmaking. His habit of having prostitutes led to his syphilis, the disease that with Mercury poisoning (they used Mercury to treat VD) helped destroy his health. His declining health led him to write music for Winterrise -- a song cycle about a man going slowly insane -- the was published age 31, the final year of his life.
> 
> ...


These descriptions are good enough to go in a book!


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

larold said:


> When his daughter died he wrote music to Kindertotenlieder, songs on the death of children, against the wishes of his wife who said it would kill him. .


He wrote the Kindertotenlieder four years before the death of his daughter. Alma was against it, as she feared it would tempt fate - and her fear came true.


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## Dimace (Oct 19, 2018)

Our friend ''larold'' has written superbly, left me margin only for small additions. 

Schumann> Clara's father rejected him because of his mental instability. After the rejection and Claras departure he has composed his 1st sonata. Here we have for the first time the theme c LA Ra (La re English C/D) which after will be the trademark of his music. He managed with his Fantasy in C something unique in the music history> The tonality has nothing to do with the CM. Only is ending in this tonality. Between all these, he tried to lengthen his fingers, believing that this way he will be better piano player. He used small metallic weights, bound to his fingers. He was sleeping months with them. What he only managed was to provoke serious injuries to his fingers...


Schubert> Franz was a little bit a caricature figure. Small and fat. And very shy. The result was to be rejected many times from the women he want to have alongside him. And they were a lot of them, because Franz was continuously in love! At the end he ended... in the bordellos, where, as larold has written, he found not love but the syphilis...


Chopin> Frederic was all his life ill. His health was very fragile. This made him a very difficult character. Georgia was trying to help him and without her he hadn't survived to 39 years of age. His 4th Ballade (1842) revels the way he was thinking near at the end of his life. FFFFFFF it! 


Mahler> He loved the isolation. He was composing all the day long (fact makes him a very boring man) and was searching without end the musical perfection. He found it in some of his symphonies. I'm not sure if he was a very good Christian or simply superstitious. (he was VERY superstitious) 


Vivaldi> Does anyone wait from me to know something about him? :lol:


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## CR Santa (Mar 31, 2019)

Another interesting composer whose name you did not list was Edward Elgar. He was as patriotic English composer who was self taught and had many interests including a patent on a chemistry experimental teaching apparatus. He was an avid puzzle solver and even created his own puzzle which the world did not solve until just a few years ago. His enigma (original theme and variations, Opus 36) was created based on a jape (unintentional humorous situation). He was very fond of japes, and puns, especially those based on nursery rhymes. He included a pun on a well know nursery rhyme as part of his enigma. He was a man of great integrity and refused to give away the answer to his enigma although he was constantly asked about it. Because he would not give away the solution to his enigma, his integrity was challenged by some of his friends who wrote that he would not acknowledge that Auld Lang Syne was the solution, or maybe there was no solution and it was a trick to fool the public. After Dora Baker (nee Penny) published those words he never communicated with her although they had been very close friends. Thus he never received credit for this clever puzzle that he crafted but the music resulting from that craft remains one of the most popular pieces of classical music. Shortly before his death at age 74 he wrote three sentences about the music that were seemingly innocuous but each sentence contains a hint at the enigma thus confirming the true solution. He is my hero.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Dimace said:


> Mahler> He loved the isolation. He was composing all the day long (fact makes him a very boring man) and was searching without end the musical perfection. He found it in some of his symphonies. I'm not sure if he was a very good Christian or simply superstitious. (he was VERY superstitious)


_"Mahler was the first to believe in a superstition surrounding ninth symphonies. He freaked out and developed an obsession with the curse. After he completed his eighth symphony, Mahler came up with a clever plan to beat it. He wrote a piece of music (Das Lied von der Erde) that was a symphony in everything but name, but refused to actually call it a symphony. Then he got to work on Symphony No. 9, resting easy at the thought of beating the curse. But the powers that be didn't buy Mahler's trick play, and struck him down after he set to work on Symphony No. 10."_

moral of the story: you can't cheat fate


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