# Composers and their politics



## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

The political compass is a quite useful tool for elucidating how people feel about various political ideas:

https://www.politicalcompass.org/

And (by their own admission) just for fun, they have created a chart on where various composers stood:

https://www.politicalcompass.org/composers

Huge variety, which just goes to show that music exists in its own world.

As far as I know, this board frowns upon political discussions, so let's not turn this into a debate on current affairs - we are here more interested in powdered wigs than orange ones.

I find it interesting that some composers were very political, and others not at all. Does a composer's politics (or lack thereof) influence the type of music he/she will compose? Would some composers have created better work if they kept their noses out of political issues (or, conversely, were more active in it)?

Somewhat similarly, some composers were far more interested in extra-musical affairs than others - Mozart and Bach had few other interests, while Prokofiev (for example) was a keen chess player and Saint-Saëns had a whole string of hobbies ranging from mathematics to butterflies (and apparently excelled in those too).

I'd be interested to hear some more examples of composers with unusual views or hobbies.


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## Guest (Aug 24, 2016)

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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

See this thread: http://www.talkclassical.com/44510-would-great-composers-conservative.html and the Politics and Religion in Classical Music subforum....


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## arnerich (Aug 19, 2016)

According to greatmusiclearders.org they had this...

"Brahms was very passionate about things he liked one such instance reveals that he used to like toys called "tin soldiers" and even in his mid twenties kept them locked in his desk."

I play with legos and I'm 30, so I can appreciate this!


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

arnerich said:


> According to greatmusiclearders.org they had this...
> 
> "Brahms was very passionate about things he liked one such instance reveals that he used to like toys called "tin soldiers" and even in his mid twenties kept them locked in his desk."
> 
> I play with legos and I'm 30, so I can appreciate this!


Brahms has this image of stodgy old curmudgeon (which in some ways he was) but reading around about him, one often gets the impression of a playful and almost childlike personality, underneath the abrasive surface.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

brianvds said:


> Brahms has this image of stodgy old curmudgeon (which in some ways he was) but reading around about him, one often gets the impression of a playful and almost childlike personality, underneath the abrasive surface.


For most of his life he was a young man. He became only 64 years old.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Dim7 said:


> See this thread: http://www.talkclassical.com/44510-would-great-composers-conservative.html and the Politics and Religion in Classical Music subforum....


I said in that thread that few composers were liberals and apparently I was right only Chopin and Tjajkovskij at the bottom right.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Sloe said:


> I said in that thread that few composers were liberals and apparently I was right only Chopin and Tjajkovskij at the bottom right.


And remarkable, consider the times they lived in.

Another thing I notice now is that the spread here does not seem to correlate with nationality, with all the Germans being authoritarian (or whatever) and so forth.


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## Abraham Lincoln (Oct 3, 2015)

The compass is missing Mendelssohn.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Abraham Lincoln said:


> The compass is missing Mendelssohn.


Which is kind of strange, because as I understand it we have lots of letters by Mendelssohn to get a very good idea of where he stood on many things. But then, it wasn't intended to be comprehensive or even to be taken extremely seriously.


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## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

brianvds said:


> https://www.politicalcompass.org/composers


How the heck did they decide Schönberg was anywhere NEAR the left?

Berlioz and especially Verdi are major omissions, as two of the most important composers of explicitly political music - they'd be further over to the "libertarian" side than anybody else, Verdi at least slightly left of center.


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## Magnum Miserium (Aug 15, 2016)

Sloe said:


> I said in that thread that few composers were liberals and apparently I was right only Chopin and Tjajkovskij at the bottom right.


Debussy probably belongs in that corner too, though I wish he didn't.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Magnum Miserium said:


> Debussy probably belongs in that corner too, though I wish he didn't.


Then better that he spend his life as a composer instead of as a politician.


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