# Classical Composers, that spend time in jail they were criminal or mobster ect 20th c



## deprofundis (Apr 25, 2014)

I wonder if some classical composers did some time in jail, deprofundis want to know all and everything, who is blacklisted because suspected of homicides, rapes, holocaust denier or revisionist, etc something verboten, who were, classical composers and mobsters per se or career criminal, double life?

I wont to know who were the rotten apples, people never discuss the event if talented or skill, solid works but a** h***s (sorry for the language).

I will ask a devil advocate question what if you find out, a classical composer was a monster serrial killer whom torture peoples before killing them, or a bloody mobster, would you still listen to the music or blacklisted them as a bad seed.

*Are you an audiophile and don't care about a classical composer personal ''frasque'' whit the law or you're sensitive about these issues?*


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Henry Cowell (link) is a famous example. There's also an urban legend that Stravinsky was arrested for a controversial arrangement of "The Star-Spangled Banner," but that's made up.

Do I care? No. I care for the music, not the composer.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

There are quite a few examples of noted composers being locked up. 

Messiaen was a prisoner of war when he wrote the Quartet for the End of Time. 

Michael Tippett was locked up as a conscientious objector (pacifist who refused to join the armed forces during WW2).

Schubert ran things close with the secret police of his day (and was, I think, once locked up for a short period) but he managed to avoid the fate of some of his friends who got locked up for longer.

I think Beethoven was once locked up for being drunk.

Satie was once locked up for a few days for causing a riot.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I don't know if Gombert counts, because he wasn't necessarily jailed but spend time in the galleys for fooling around with a boy. Neither jail nor galleys sound pleasant. According to one story, his Magnificat settings so moved Charles V that he got released. So regardless of the crime, you have to respect someone who could write music so moving that it could get them out of something like that.


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## flamencosketches (Jan 4, 2019)

JS Bach did 30 days for something silly that was probably considered a serious crime in 18th century Germany. I think he had a squabble with his employer.


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

I remember that I read somewhere in the book "Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music" that the composer was arrested, and this in his early years, not during or after the 1848 revolutions. After a fast read in this book now I cannot find the page where it's written though.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Domenico Cimarosa was imprisoned for his republican sympathies in 1799 (apparently only just avoiding execution) before being banished from Naples where he died soon afterwards.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

When the French Revolution erupted in 1789, Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, dubbed “Le Mozart Noir” by French concertgoers, joined the National Guard at Lille and a year later was selected to lead one thousand black soldiers charged with defending the ongoing revolution. When the French Revolutionary War ended, the Chevalier was a hero. However, Saint-Georges was wrongfully accused of misappropriation of funds intended for the troops, and he was stripped of his command and placed into prison for 13 months. After his release, the Chevalier was unable to restart his military and musical careers.


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## Ras (Oct 6, 2017)

deprofundis said:


> who is blacklisted because suspected of homicides, rapes, holocaust denier or revisionist, etc something verboten, who were, classical composers and mobsters per se or career criminal, double life?


The British modernist Benjamin Britten was apparently a pedophile - but did not get convicted.

The Renaissance composer Gesualdo killed his wife and her lover when he "caught her messing 'round with another man" (as Jimi Hendrix would have said). Werner Herzog made a movie about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesualdo:_Death_for_Five_Voices

Here is a wikipedia-passage about the killing - Gesualdo did not go to prison for his crime because he was a nobleman.:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Gesualdo#Domestic_murder


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Ras said:


> The British modernist Benjamin Britten was apparently a pedophile - but did not get convicted.


It seems that Britten was attracted to young boys. He didn't hide it. But there has never been any evidence that he abused any of them. He had a stable relationship with a many of his own age (the tenor, Peter Pears) and I have seen quite a few anecdotes suggesting that he was very aware of where the moral and legal line is drawn and was appalled by the suggestion that he might cross it. Unless you know of some evidence that I am not I feel your innuendo in poor taste at best.


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## Ras (Oct 6, 2017)

Enthusiast said:


> It seems that Britten was attracted to young boys. He didn't hide it. But there has never been any evidence that he abused any of them. He had a stable relationship with a many of his own age (the tenor, Peter Pears) and I have seen quite a few anecdotes suggesting that he was very aware of where the moral and legal line is drawn and was appalled by the suggestion that he might cross it. Unless you know of some evidence that I am not I feel your innuendo in poor taste at best.


I does indeed appear from the Wiki article on Britten that the controversy about his relation to young boys is still unsettled - I see now that it doesn't say he ever abused anyone:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Britten#Controversies


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Sokolov was sent to the camps for "hooliganism." Weinberg was arrested for being a Jew in the wrong place at the wrong time.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Ras said:


> The British modernist Benjamin Britten was apparently a pedophile - but did not get convicted.
> 
> The Renaissance composer Gesualdo killed his wife and her lover when he "caught her messing 'round with another man" (as Jimi Hendrix would have said). Werner Herzog made a movie about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesualdo:_Death_for_Five_Voices
> 
> ...


The late actor David Hemmings was a singer when he was an adolescent - he sang the role of Miles on the first recording of Britten's opera _The Turn of The Screw_. Hemmings was deemed to be very good-looking when he was younger so there is probably little doubt that Britten found him attractive, but Hemmings asserted that Britten never made a play for him or acted inappropriately in any way. Yes, Britten's predilections in this department were undoubtedly unsavoury, but the fact remains that he can't be found guilty for thinking rather than doing.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

In 1943 Soviet composer Mikhail Nosyrev was sentenced to death when he was a teenage musician in the Leningrad Radio Orchestra on the strength of alleged 'anti-Soviet' entries in his diary - the sentence was commuted to ten years in a far northern Gulag but after release he was never properly exonerated during his lifetime and his career was largely spent in what pretty much amounted to inner exile in the cities of Syktyvkar and, later, Voronezh.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

elgars ghost said:


> The late actor David Hemmings was a singer when he was an adolescent - he sang the role of Miles on the first recording of Britten's opera _The Turn of The Screw_. Hemmings was deemed to be very good-looking when he was younger so there is probably little doubt that Britten found him attractive, but Hemmings asserted that Britten never made a play for him or acted inappropriately in any way. Yes, Britten's predilections in this department were undoubtedly unsavoury, but the fact remains that he can't be found guilty for thinking rather than doing.


just to add to this, while I've never read about this aspect of Britten's life (I know he was homosexual and that's it) to be attracted by adolescents does not have anything to do with paedophilia but with ephebophilia, that like homosexuality it's not even considered a patology (there's also ebephilia that's more a grey area but still it's a different thing).


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Ludwig “The Hammer” Beethoven was sent up for armed robbery. Wagner was convicted for identity theft of a Jewish banker. Chopin was arrested for embezzlement from George Sand’s private estate. Brahms was arrested for adultery with Schumann’s wife, and Alma Mahler was imprisoned for the alienation of affection from Mahler.  And yet they overcame these fictitious charges and still achieved immortality. Within every sinner is a saint and within every saint a sinner that ensures hope for everyone.


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## JLi (Jan 31, 2018)

Wagner got arrested for tax evasion.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

JLi said:


> Wagner got arrested for tax evasion.


A warrant was issued for Wagner's arrest because he was heavily involved with socialist German nationals, and played a minor role in the May Uprising in Dresden. Following its failure Wagner and other revolutionaries were either arrested or fled. Wagner escaped arrest by fleeing from Saxony. He declined an offer of asylum from Franz Liszt at Weimar and went first to Paris and later settled in Zurich for his 12-year exile from Germany.

Below is a transcript of the warrant issued for Wagner's arrest:

Steckbrief:

Der unten etwas näher bezeichnete Königliche Kapellmeister Richard Wagner von hier ist wegen wesentlicher Teilnahme an der in hiesiger Stadt stattgefundenen aufrührerischen Bewegung zur Untersuchung zu ziehen, zur Zeit aber nicht zu erlangen gewesen. Es werden daher alle Polizeibehörden auf denselben aufmerksam gemacht und ersucht, Wagnern im Betretungsfalle zu verhaften und davon uns schleunigst Nachricht zu erteilen.

Dresden, den 16. Mai 1849.

Die Stadt-Polizei-Deputation. von Oppell.

Wagner ist 37-38 Jahre alt, mittlerer Statur, hat braunes Haar und trägt eine Brille.

Warrant of Arrest:

The hereafter more closely described King's Kapellmeister ["chapel master"] Richard Wagner from this place is to be brought up for investigations due to involvements with insurgent movements which occurred in this here city, but to date could not be reached. Therefore, all police authorities are to have their attention drawn to him and are requested to arrest Wagner in case of encounter, and report to us with haste.

Desden, May 16th, 1849.

Town-police Deputation of Oppell.

Wagner is 37-38 years old, of middle stature, has brown hair and wears glasses.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Another case of fraud, that only resulted in the cancellation of an honorary citizenship, has been that of the Japanese composer Samuragochi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamoru_Samuragochi
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/tag/mamoru-samuragochi/


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