# Composers' lives and their art



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Does knowing more about a composer's life help understand the music? I'm reading Wendy Lesser's "Music for Silenced Voices," which explores the Shostakovich quartets by exploring his life. And yet she says near the beginning: "You are drawn to the life because you love the art, and you imagine that knowing more about the life will bring you closer to the art, but for the most part the life is a smoke screen getting between you and the art."

So why do we keep reading about and caring about the composers' lives? What do you think?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

I agree with her 100%. That does not include dumping learning about history, music history, a particular era -- all of which are good general information which helps understand the 
"why it is/was the way it is/was of the Ethos/Pathos of the era."

That study gains some understanding, a bit anyway, of why certain forms, formal developments, shifts in taste happen - from broader things like modal to tonal, polyphonic to homophonic, to the less mechanical, 'mood shift' from one era to another. Still, none of that type of information will ever get as specific as some would care to have.

And that caring to have such literal and specific 'understanding,' _I just don't get._ I suppose the reaction to something as abstract as absolute music fascinates some and they are of a bent of mind to be almost compelled to believe there is a literal meaning to just every note and every piece.

Like the gallery visitor who buys a painting, but includes in the deal wanting to meet the artist, "Because I'll feel closer to the work," (they won't: the work is the work) will often enough ( 80% of the time?) be better off not meeting the painter  Meeting / getting more of the person and personality of the artist as a key to knowing more of and about the art is a popular conceit.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

I am adamantly opposed to the idea that there is a one-to-one correspondence between incidents in an artist's life and incidents in their art, or at least opposed to the idea that if there were such a thing, we would be able to discern it without explicit direction.

Knowing something about the background of a piece may give you a frame of mind within which it may be more easily accessed, but it does not inherently get us closer to the music, and it may in fact distract us from being able to truly listen to it.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> *Knowing something about the background of a piece... may in fact distract us from being able to truly listen to it.*


A-yep; it is so much irrelevant clutter between the listener and the notes.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

I think that the composer's personal life (and this is a very broad thing) does affect his art. But, of course, it would be very naive to pretend that this is a clear one-to-one correspondence, as Mahlerian points out. It's a complex and chaotic interaction, where even the composer himself is not totally aware.
Check this short interview with Ligeti:


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

It was probably in the 19th century when the personal life of the artist became such a big deal. You couldn't watch _Hamlet _or _Julius Caesar_ and learn much about Shakespeare's life when he wrote them. I think that reading about a composer and learning their life story can be instructive, but not necessarily about pieces they composed. I could list countless works in Mozart's output that you'd be surprised he wrote after his father's death, or one of his children, or when his wife was ill. They seem unaffected by his grief and were written to fulfil commissions, and "that's all..."


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

It of course depends on what you want to get out of listening to music. There are those (the overwhelming majority, I would guess) for whom the appeal of music is its primarily aesthetic value, and for those listeners no knowledge of a composer's life is necessary in order to enjoy music. But there are others for whom the appeal of music lies in the way it serves as a representation of the times and circumstances in which it was written--a sort of sonic snapshot of history--and for these listeners knowledge of a composer's life could very well enhance the listening experience. Not that these two approaches are incompatible; I fall into both categories, depending on my mood.


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## Bix (Aug 12, 2010)

I would go to the limit of halfway here in agreeing with Wendy Lesser, I agree that knowing can often cloud the music but its important not to just listen to music in isolation, or in fact view any art in isolation. Many composers composed and do compose based on their current context - or even them looking back on the context of their own history, Shostakovich being a good example. Some composers of course wrote without this context, you wouldn't get closer to his music if you read about Satie, and knowing about Grainger's penchant for sado-masichism doesn't improve the relationship with his music (not that I have one, I used Percy purely as example).

I don't advocate all art being allegorical or being created out of every life action the composer lives through (could you imagine it, classical music would be like all the silly ballads you get in country music - _i gowd out the wrong side a bed, to find that my precious dawg is dead_ and so on). Not all art needs or indeed has a back story like PetrB said regarding the artist and the art buyer.

Lesser states a good point but .... 'Hi, I'm Barry and I love a composer biography'


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Does knowing more about a composer's life help understand the music? I'm reading Wendy Lesser's "Music for Silenced Voices," which explores the Shostakovich quartets by exploring his life. And yet she says near the beginning: "You are drawn to the life because you love the art, and you imagine that knowing more about the life will bring you closer to the art, but for the most part the life is a smoke screen getting between you and the art."
> 
> So why do we keep reading about and caring about the composers' lives? What do you think?


With the Shostakovich quartets it can be extremely tempting to read his biography into them. For example, I find it almost impossible not to see something of the siege of Leningrad in his 8th quartet.

But as others have pointed out, one should not go overboard with such interpretations. I can't speak for others, but good music always makes me happy, including "sad" music. If dark or sad music really made me sad or depressed I would never listen to it. No, while I am moved by it and can understand why we call the piece sad or dark, it nevertheless exhilarates me in a way that I am pretty sure the siege of Leningrad would not have done, had I been unfortunate enough to be caught up in it.

Seems to me like music has a way of romanticizing pain and sadness in a Hollywood sort of way: all around him, people are dying and while Shostakovich as a person was surely as traumatized by it as anyone else, the composer in him got all inspired!

Or perhaps there just isn't all that much of a direct correspondence between life and art.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Of course it does. As Mahlerian says it isn't one to one, but Bach's music can only be enhanced by a thorough understanding of the circumstances under which it was written and the theological background of 18th Century German Lutheranism. As we progress nearer to our own time, our understanding of the world picture is clearer and the need for such biography is lessened.

OK we don't need (don't have) much of Shakespeare's biography but a thorough understanding of the Elizabethean world picture enhances one's appreciation of his work by illuminating the references he makes.


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## Kleinzeit (May 15, 2013)

When I get interested in someone's sound I want to hear more of it. Remaining in a state of not knowing anything about the artist would be painful. I'm like the bride in Bluebeard's Castle. Must engage the art on several fronts, can't help it.
(I got over a large balk about the Bach to Mozart era through assimilating the history, ceasing to think of it as a lost world.) 

But it does a disservice to art's practice & practitioners to presume that the life is coded in the art. The sausage gets made on the other side of the mirror (mixed metaphor under copyright).

However, persona-based art and art/life fusion work is something that has been shaping up for decades in postmodern gallery art, participatory cyber/conceptual art, algorithm-based art, and stuff that'll get a name in retrospect. Gillian Wearing, Ai Wei Wei, Tracey Emin, Marina Abramovic...

Art/life blending is built into pop culture too, with its machinery to pomp the personas of the stars & celebs in order to sell the product. 

An unholy alliance of both would (will) result in a sort of witting Truman Show situation. This makes me want to either get off the grid, or get in early with a Kickstarter.


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## CypressWillow (Apr 2, 2013)

I belong to a long hair forum. We talk a lot about whether or not someone should give in to their urge to cut their hair, color it, have layers or not, how to deal with split ends, how often to wash, blow-dry versus air dry, etc. Every so often, in the midst of all this obsessing, some wise person chimes in with, "It's just hair."
So for me, most of the time, it's [just] music. (Well, not 'just' but you know what I mean.) 
Sometimes, knowing something of the composer is a positive turn off. Reading about Grainger's strange relationship with his mama, and his sexual practices, and his racial theories, has contaminated my ability to enjoy his music. The music itself has the same charm and appeal, but the listener brings this unwelcome knowledge to the listening. I rather wish I hadn't learned about his life. And don't get me started on Wagner.
On the other hand, from the first notes of Chopin I ever heard, I've wanted to learn all that is possible to know about him. Why, I've wondered, does everything he ever wrote hit me so hard? Why am I so unable to resist, to go on about my business without stopping, thunderstruck? Learning about his personality (warts and all) has only made me love him and his music more. Yup, I love the person as well as the music. Partly, I think, because as an Enneagram Four myself, I recognize that he is also a Four (IMO) and his very sensitivities and quirks are familiar to me. The beauty of his music springs from the beauty of his soul. And I am a beauty junkie in music. To quote Don McLean (regarding Van Gogh,) "This world was never made for one as beautiful as you." 
Yet I remember that, as a child, knowing nothing of Chopin, not even yet his name, I was already in thrall to him.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Kleinzeit said:


> However, persona-based art and art/life fusion work is something that has been shaping up for decades in postmodern gallery art, participatory cyber/conceptual art, algorithm-based art, and stuff that'll get a name in retrospect. Gillian Wearing, Ai Wei Wei, Tracey Emin, Marina Abramovic...
> 
> Art/life blending is built into pop culture too, with its machinery to pomp the personas of the stars & celebs in order to sell the product.


Performance art is totally different in concept, how it that relevant to music? And the star system has little to do with someone's real life, most of the time it's a carefully constructed image.



CypressWillow said:


> On the other hand, from the first notes of Chopin I ever heard, I've wanted to learn all that is possible to know about him. Why, I've wondered, does everything he ever wrote hit me so hard? Why am I so unable to resist, to go on about my business without stopping, thunderstruck? Learning about his personality (warts and all) has only made me love him and his music more. Yup, I love the person as well as the music. Partly, I think, because as an Enneagram Four myself, I recognize that he is also a Four (IMO) and his very sensitivities and quirks are familiar to me. The beauty of his music springs from the beauty of his soul. And I am a beauty junkie in music. To quote Don McLean (regarding Van Gogh,) "This world was never made for one as beautiful as you."


Some of this is more your imagination than reality though, you will never get to know Chopin like those who actually knew him. So it's an illusion, and should that really have much to do with the music?


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

I suspect that Romanticism and the notion that the highest aspiration of art was the expression of the artist's personal feelings, and Freud and his ideas that all art revealed the artist's personal inner thoughts... even if unintentional and subconsciously... there has been an obsession with the artist's biography that one might deem the "cult of personality". At its worse this has resulted in overvaluing of even the most mediocre or simply bad works by "name brand" artists while ignoring the finest works by less-well-known artists. It has undermined the ability to experience a work of art as a work of art. Mozart gets dismissed by the Beethoven fanboys as "lightweight" because he doesn't wear his emotions on his sleeve. Wagner is continually painted in a poor light due to his imagined links with the Nazis... and poor Gesualdo and Britten...

I wholly agree with Mahlerian's suggestion that ther is not necessarily a one-to-one correspondence between incidents in an artist's life and incidents in their art... and even in those instances in which there is such an autobiographical element:

_"Knowing something about the background of a piece may give you a frame of mind within which it may be more easily accessed, but it does not inherently get us closer to the music, and it may in fact distract us from being able to truly listen to it."_

At the same time, I agree with PtrB's thoughts that rejecting the notion of a direct link between the work of art and the artist's personal life "_does not include dumping learning about history, music history, a particular era -- all of which are good general information which helps understand the 
'why it is/was the way it is/was of the Ethos/Pathos of the era._' "

or the belief that "_there is a literal meaning to just every note and every piece._"

I have always held with Oscar Wilde who suggested:

_The artist is the creator of beautiful things. 
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. 
The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.
The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography...

All art is at once surface and symbol. 
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. 
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. 
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors._

It will be interesting to hear Andre/Sid James weigh in on this issue as I know he is of a somewhat different train of thought


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> there has been an obsession with the artist's biography that one might deem the "cult of personality"... Mozart gets dismissed by the Beethoven fanboys as "lightweight" because he doesn't wear his emotions on his sleeve.


The Mozart example seems the other way around to me: it's because listeners evaluate Mozart and Beethoven purely on sonic terms rather than on historically informed terms that Mozart is judged a lesser Beethoven. If that evaluation is to be countered, it's going to be through some knowledge of the lives and times of both composers, which would reveal how anachronistic romanticism's emotional measuring stick is to Mozart's music.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

I also take a different view of romanticism's role in all of this. I don't think it is the cause of "biographical listening" (so to speak); on the contrary, I think it is the cause of the opposing view: namely, that artworks are sufficient in and of themselves. After all, there is no more quintessentially romantic view than the one that sees artworks as intimations of a higher form a truth, a kind that exceeds the truths expressed by language and rational thought. To experience composers through their music rather than through knowledge about them, to experience music with one's heart rather than one's brain... that is the romantic view, and it feeds the current belief that the purely sonic experience of music is all one needs in order to "truly" experience music.


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## Guest (Jul 4, 2013)

I think it is generally helpful to know something about the composer and the circumstances in which a given work was created.

Sometimes, there is a very clear connection between the substance of a work and its backstory - for example Prokofiev's Overture on Hebrew Themes for Clarinet, String Quartet and Piano, Op. 34.

Other times, the connection is more speculative. For example, we might infer things about Sibelius' Fifth Symphony, knowing that "Sibelius was commissioned to write this symphony by the Finnish government in honor of his 50th birthday, which had been declared a national holiday". Whether or not the backstory is manifested in the work or not is debatable, but at least can lead to interesting speculation.

What about the late works of Beethoven, Schubert, or Schumann? Is it not relevant that these works were composed when the composers presumably knew they were nearing the end of their lives?

I can see how it would be easy to over-analyze if for example you were writing a whole book about Shostakovich's string quartets. But ignoring the backstory as a listener to me seems pointless and counter-productive.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Eschbeg said:


> The Mozart example seems the other way around to me: it's because listeners evaluate Mozart and Beethoven purely on sonic terms rather than on historically informed terms that Mozart is judged a lesser Beethoven. If that evaluation is to be countered, it's going to be through some knowledge of the lives and times of both composers, which would reveal how anachronistic romanticism's emotional measuring stick is to Mozart's music.


It's actually countered by better performances of Mozart, those which are timid and shallow have plagued some performance so his music in the past, and given a wrong image. Music speaks far louder than words.



Eschbeg said:


> I also take a different view of romanticism's role in all of this. I don't think it is the cause of "biographical listening" (so to speak); on the contrary, I think it is the cause of the opposing view: namely, that artworks are sufficient in and of themselves. After all, there is no more quintessentially romantic view than the one that sees artworks as intimations of a higher form a truth, a kind that exceeds the truths expressed by language and rational thought. To experience composers through their music rather than through knowledge about them, to experience music with one's heart rather than one's brain... that is the romantic view, and it feeds the current belief that the purely sonic experience of music is all one needs in order to "truly" experience music.


I thought romantic era biographies were obsessed with the details of the lives of composers.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

BPS said:


> What about the late works of Beethoven, Schubert, or Schumann? Is it not relevant that these works were composed when the composers presumably knew they were nearing the end of their lives?


In the case of Beethoven, at least, there's no indication that he knew he was near his end. Up to his last few months he was quite active artistically and commercially, and had built a backlog of projects that he definitely planned to pursue. The picture of an old man, withdrawn from society and absorbed in otherworldly thought, is really an example of projecting Beethoven's music onto his life, rather than vice versa (which is the more usual case).


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

starry said:


> It's actually countered by better performances of Mozart, those which are timid and shallow have plagued some performance so his music in the past, and given a wrong image.


And yet the timid and shallow performersare as likely as anyone to appeal to "what Mozart would have intended." (See Norrington, et. al.) That's why listeners ought to check for themselves and decide which party is painting Mozart's image more accurately.



starry said:


> Music speaks far louder than words.


Bingo: that's exactly the kind of romanticism to which I was referring.



starry said:


> I thought romantic era biographies were obsessed with the details of the lives of composers.


Most biographies are; that's the nature of biography. But romantic era _music_ operated under the Schopenhauerian dictum that art exists above the world of mere human affairs, and ought to stay there.


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## Guest (Jul 4, 2013)

KenOC said:


> In the case of Beethoven, at least, there's no indication that he knew he was near his end. Up to his last few months he was quite active artistically and commercially, and had built a backlog of projects that he definitely planned to pursue. The picture of an old man, withdrawn from society and absorbed in otherworldly thought, is really an example of projecting Beethoven's music onto his life, rather than vice versa (which is the more usual case).


Or in my case, inflicting my ignorance upon my esteemed colleagues. I hedged a bit with the word "presumably" but really I was going out on a limb unsupported by knowledge of the facts.

Mea culpa.

But I feel a little bit more confident in the preceding paragraphs and in my general assertion that some awareness of the backstory can improve listener appreciation.


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Eschbeg said:


> But romantic era _music_ operated under the Schopenhauerian dictum that art exists above the world of mere human affairs, and ought to stay there.


They put not just the art but also the artist on a pedestal, so they had great interest in the artist as much as the work itself. Artists could become like celebrities.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

BPS said:


> What about the late works of Beethoven, Schubert, or Schumann? Is it not relevant that these works were composed when the composers presumably knew they were nearing the end of their lives?


As someone else pointed out, these three probably didn't know. And instructive example may be Bartok, who surely knew he was dying. There doesn't seem to be much of it in his last works, though I am very tempted, in the slow movement from his third piano concerto, to see a man looking back nostalgically at his childhood. The last movement though, is one of the most exuberant he ever wrote. Perhaps they had him on some strong meds. 

Brahms' late works all have this mellow, autumnal atmosphere. But then, one can hear that even in some of his earlier work.

Strauss' Four Last Songs do sound rather final.

And perhaps somewhat notoriously, Tchaikovsky tended to wear his heart on his musical sleeve.

Still, I don't think one can hear detailed autobiographical notes in music. A composer's biography can give one new insights, mind you, if it tells you something about his preferred theoretical framework, ideas current at the time, influences by other composers and so on. I'm not convinced a composer's personal life will tell you much about his music.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

brianvds said:


> I'm not convinced a composer's personal life will tell you much about his music.


This is not so much the issue.

The real problem is when people think a composer's music can unambiguously inform you about their personal life.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

starry said:


> They put not just the art but also the artist on a pedestal, so they had great interest in the artist as much as the work itself. Artists could become like celebrities.


Certainly. The deification of artists and the deification of art were not mutually exclusive, because interest in the artist was not conflated with the musical experience, which from Kant through Hegel to Schopenhauer became an increasingly self-enclosed, inward-looking matter.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

I can tell you why I am particularly interested in Wagner's life and writings: because I feel an inner kinship with the man and can relate to many of his thoughts, struggles and passions. True, some of these thoughts were a bit over the top, but I do believe his heart was in the right place. CypressWillow has put it beautifully:



> On the other hand, from the first notes of Chopin I ever heard, I've wanted to learn all that is possible to know about him. Why, I've wondered, does everything he ever wrote hit me so hard? Why am I so unable to resist, to go on about my business without stopping, thunderstruck? Learning about his personality (warts and all) has only made me love him and his music more. Yup, I love the person as well as the music.


While I do not exactly _love_ Wagner, I have the deepest respect for the man who could work such magic with his music. I'd love to know what he thought and felt while reading all those medieval sagas and romances that served as sources for his operas.


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

I don't think it's a terrible thing to _want_ to learn more about a composer's life. If we're already engaged by their music, why would learning about their history be a bad thing? For those interested in a certain composer, I say learn as much as you can about them whether it's positive or negative. Knowledge is power.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Neo Romanza said:


> I don't think it's a terrible thing to _want_ to learn more about a composer's life. If we're already engaged by their music, why would learning about their history be a bad thing? For those interested in a certain composer, I say learn as much as you can about them whether it's positive or negative. Knowledge is power.


I don't think anyone is advocating ignorance, or strongly urging anyone to not look into a composer's biography.

Biut you've glided over the point of the OP: often, anything one can learn about the individual composer yields 0 information about 'what the works' of that composer mean.

Sometimes, that knowledge which is power is utterly useless -- at least where it has no connection at all to the thing you want to know about.


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## TresPicos (Mar 21, 2009)

Neo Romanza said:


> I don't think it's a terrible thing to _want_ to learn more about a composer's life. If we're already engaged by their music, why would learning about their history be a bad thing? For those interested in a certain composer, I say learn as much as you can about them whether it's positive or negative. Knowledge is power.


It depends. If the composer was a truly nasty person, I would probably become less inclined to listen to his music. I can't listen to Gesualdo at all, for example, now that I... know.


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